Watermelon Creek

Watermelon Creek

Off We Go - Fall Tour

Monday, C and I, drove up into the mountains to see the fall leaves and some of our favorite country in Idaho. Our lunch picnic stop was "Ten Mile" campground above Idaho City. This place has been near and dear to our hearts since camping there with the Jacksons last summer. The boys nicknaned this "Watermelon Creek" because we stored our watermelon in a stretchy, mesh bag in the creek there. We had so much fun there with the J boys. The scenery was great and the trip was exactly the kind of thing C and I love to do. When we moved here from Wyoming, three years ago, I thought we would really miss the Uinta Mountians outside of Evanston. But we love the mountians of Idaho and are having a blast discovering new places. Fall, you gotta love it!

Yankee Stadium

NEW YORK - Even Yogi Bera knew this was the end. As baseball said farewell to Yankee Stadium, one of the game's most beloved players stood beneath the stands in a full vintage uniform. Now 83, the man who coined the phrase "it ain't over till it's over" put his own stamp on the day. "I'm sorry to see it over, I'll tell you that," Bera said. The goodbye completed an 85 year run for the home of baseball's most famous team. What began with a Babe Ruth home run on an April afternoon in 1923 ended Saturday, September 20, 2008. -The Associated Press.
And I am sure my dad, Stuart H. Simpson, peering down from heaven, had more than one tear in his eye. My father was born in Brooklyn in 1912 and went to Yankee Stadium as a young boy. He and his "pals" usually couldn't afford a ticket in to see the game, so they would hang around the outside of the ball park until they let the youngsters in to the bleachers for FREE, sometime around the fifth inning. I can still see the look of wonder and excitement on his face as he would tell me of those times. "Barbi," he would say, "can you imagine a bunch of young kids getting to see Babe Ruth, Yogi Bera and Lou Gehrig play? That was great, just great. Those were the days."
For my sisters and I, "the days" were summer days, now in Wisconsin and Michigan, cheering along with dad as we watched the Yankees on television. To this day I am convinced that that was the real reason we owned a TV. And we all grew up to be avid Yankee fans. Thanks dad! Oh, and GO YANKS!!

New Yellow Pencils

School started today in our neighborhood. For three years now C and I have NOT been there to greet our new students. Somehow, it still tugs at my heartstrings. We are glad we retired and we only need to read the newspaper headings about how students are performing in the Standardized Tests to remember why we retired, but the thought of new students, new expections and new pencils can make me melancholy. Todays new students will hope that their new teacher is cool (awesome), their expections will be for great friends and terrific learning experiences, and their pencils will be push pencils with scented lead! I have already bought mine. I don't by any means need new pencils, but I have them. I wish the best for the kids today and a tiny bit of me wishes I were going to be there at the door to greet them (with my new pencils).
P.S. Yes, kids still need pencils today but they also need a TON of other stuff. The marker boards in their classrooms require them to provide dozens of markers. Do you know how many crates of chalk you could buy with all those markers?

Sitting on a Log

This is one of our favorite pictures of our four girls. We were camping in the Uintas behind Mirror Lake. They are all so happy. Tory is about ten, Lucy is two, Megan is around eight and Erin is six. Wonderful times!

First Post

Here we are and Off We Go! All four of my daughters have blogs and Mom has been dragging her feet. So now, they are tutoring me. (Funny how they grow up and become so smart.) Now we, CS and I, are off on a new adventure on the net.