Molly and Charlotte

Welcome Little Charlotte!

Shayla

I took this picture of our cute granddaughter Shayla on February 18, when she and her mommy were visiting. She is in the cutest stage now...creeping and cuddling ...laughing and babbling....She is 9 months old and the first child of our daughter Larissa and her husband Jon (Nelson). They live in Fillmore, California. She's a vegetarian baby so far...her mom has been a vegetarian since 7th grade. Her dad loves meat and grilling it outdoors. We shall see what develops. Larissa is such a good mommy. There is a picture here of Larissa introducing Shayla to her great grandpa (John Robert Hulihan) for the first time.

Dad starts to tell a story

This was one of the dozen best things I did on my vacation to Stevens Point last October! Unbeknownst to my dad, as I sat in the backseat of his Mercury Grand Marquis with my tiny digital camera, I put it on video recording mode. It could only stay in this mode for a few seconds, so we only get the first part of the story. Sandy is sitting next to me in the back. And my mom is sitting on the passenger side up front. They can't be seen in this video and they were quietly listening to my dad, so you do not hear their voices.

The second part of the story is that my dad and his little brother Wayne (Dad used the name Dennis, but her meant Wayne)ended up waiting and waiting and waiting for Uncle Pete to come home from church so he could drive them into town. Uncle Pete never showed up and so they had to make a move. My dad, being the older of the 2, decided they would walk home. We are talking 11 miles, maybe more...this is from the south-east side Stockton to the north-west side of Stevens Point. I would love to clock it.
And so they did walk! I imagine they got home, very unaware of their fatigue, and grabbed those 2 dimes from the kitchen table and then walked-no ...ran... to the movie theater downtown. Uncle Pete never said anything about the incident, but my dad thinks he stopped at the tavern on the way home from church and simply forgot about his task to drive the boys back to Stevens Point. In this little video, I love my dad's voice and accent...and the tree-lined highway (we were on our way to the Rudolph Cheese Factory that day.)

Sweetness and Light

Here is a recent photo, taken February 2008, of our daughter Kelsy Renee. I am currently so happy she is living at home now after being gone for 2 and 1/2 years. You see, she left home about a week after she turned 16...to live in Utah with her older sister Amy and Amy's husband Fox. Kelsy enrolled in a brand new charter school up there...a high school that guarantees you will also have an associate degree by the time you have earned your high school diploma. The school had just opened its doors and we are grateful that Fox discovered it. Now there is a very long waiting list to get in. It is called Utah County Academy of Science....or UCAS for short.
Kelsy got very adept at riding the city bus and also showed tendencies for loving to walk outrageous distances after a hard day of school and work (she worked at Sonic, a fast food place..she was a car-hop on roller skates.)

After graduation, she attended University of Utah as an art major. After completing one semester (living in a dorm for a while and then living off campus in Salt Lake City), she moved home here to Victorville on what I like to call a creativity sabbatical. Since home, she has just been a wonderful presence of "sweetness and light" here. The dogs are getting much more attention and this old house doesn't seem so empty anymore. We have fun trying new things together. I am helping her fine tune her driving skills so she can take her driver's test. When I introduced her to my dabbling in raw food lifestyle, she eagerly read many of the books and even purchase a food dehydrator. She made some very tasty vegetable "crackers"..and we now process our raw nuts and sunflower seeds with it, soaking them overnight to get the enzyme inhibitors off and then drying them back to a state of crunchiness in the dehydrator.

Kelsy is adventurous, fun, creative, loving, kind to animals, artistic, disciplined, etc..etc...!!!! So glad to have her home for a while! Our baby!