New house, Christmas Parties and World Records

If you all remember back to mid September, we took a short trip to Hell.
While we were there, took part in an attempt to obtain a world record for the longest parade of hearses.
Well, I recently received an email that read like this:


" Congratulations! You are now OFFICIALLY a Guinness World Record Holder!
You can read more about it at http://www.largestparadeofhearses.info
And as always, more information will be added to the site, as it becomes available. "

And to catch everyone up on the happenings here at home, it's been a slow month so far for funerals. But don't think that I'm not doing anything or that I'm bored.

 This is my sister, who stayed at our house watching our dog Pugsley while we were gone on our trip. She is standing in front of her new house just two miles from my house, that she purchased after we got back. It is a large house with plenty of space for anything you could want to do in a house.
She is taking on a new role now that Mom is gone. She will be hosting all our family functions and even welcoming stray family in to her many empty rooms.
One huge thing that she will be taking on is bring our father into her home. There is a beautiful main floor master suite that he will be staying in. Here we will all be able to take part in caring for him. He will be 88 years young next month. He misses Mom very much and needs the family interaction that he is missing while living in the assisted living residence that he and Mom moved into three and a half years ago. My sister that is a chef will be preparing his meals daily and I have always taken care of his finances and medications. Having him in the house will make it easier for everyone to pitch in and care for the man that gave everything for his eight children. We are all looking forward to many happy years in this new home.

However, the previous owners did not seem to love this house as much as we do. There has been an extensive list of fixes that have to be done. We are having our first Christmas celebration in the home on Friday! We still don't have a living room floor installed and "stuff" is everywhere!

 The weather has been unseasonably warm. I took this shot of this sweet william yesterday in my garden. Although the leaves are all gone from the trees, the grass is still green and flowers are still blooming. The river that is between my house and my sister's new place has flooded several times this fall because of all the rain. This has brought up issues with the new basement flooding as well. And we've yet to have a snow that has stuck around longer than a few hours.

Just to make life a little more interesting, I just learned of a funeral for Saturday morning that I must do. This when combined with the Christmas gathering on Friday and the fact that Ed has sent out invitations to a New Orleans, Mardi Gras style Christmas party at our house on Saturday, will mean that there is no resting for me. You might recognize the mask here from our Mardi Gras costumes on board the ship. And the rest of the tree decorations are all new for our new love of the purple, green and gold. We had to do something with all those beads.