Thanksgiving, 2015

The last few days have been busy. Between dealing with John’s death and preparing for Thanksgiving, I’m ready to curl up and just read a book!

We had a really good dinner. Fourteen of us! Lots of good food, conversation and decent weather. It did snow Thursday night and most of Friday. It made taking Morgan back to Ft. Collins a bit dodgy, but we managed. Lori and family left Saturday. Toni and family left this morning. Stefan is still here, and we are enjoying his company.

Next week will be busy with John’s funeral up at Ft. Logan cemetery, and the big CASB conference in Colorado Springs. After that, we help Beth sort out the house. Maybe by Yule, I can sit down and relax.

Time to begin a new chapter

In that crazy thing called life. Eight weeks ago, life went to hell in a handbasket. Every time something happened, I thought… “It can’t get any crazier, complicated, worse.” Well, it did. It’s been two weeks since Dad died. We had all the family here that weekend. Aunt Toni and her son Kris, Lori and Bill, Jill and Daniel. It was hectic, sad, wonderful and productive.

While so much of the family was here, we went through a lot of Dad’s stuff. We sorted out clothes, backpacks, drawers full of stuff and even set some aside to look at later. We also moved Dan and I into the bedroom that had been my parents computer room. A door to slam at last. 🙂 First pics are with Daniel and Mom and how the room looked. The next three are how it changed. It was a lot of work. Thank goodness for Bill, Lori and Daniel’s help!

The last of the company left on Monday, and Tuesday we were heading up to take a bunch of stuff to the ARC and then buy some groceries. Just as we were getting ready to leave, the phone rang. It was Tara! She and Celestial had driven all the way from Kentucky to see GiGi (my mom, Great Grandma). So, we had a whirlwind 3 day visit. It was wonderful.

They left on Thursday, and it was time to try and get back into the swing of things. Meetings, work and gardening. More on that later.

A Little Wet…

Yesterday was a surprise. Started out hot and around 3pm, it began to drizzle. Then pour. Thunder, lightning and so much rain! A few drips, but we weren’t worried. It never rains long around here. High Desert Alpine Climate and all…

We went off to dinner at my parents amidst the drips. It was a good dinner as my Aunt Toni, Uncle Karl and their son Kristopher were there. We ate, talked and laughed until nearly 9pm.

We came home in the rain. When we got inside, we had to inspect the house as water was running down the yard. The dog was soaked. and so were various floors in the house. We know there are still issues with the Wendy House roof. And in time honored tradition, they leaked as the rain poured. We know and are use to the front porch leaking. It needs a whole new roof, but that takes more dosh than we have at the moment. We know that there have in the past been various leaks in the kitchen and what we call the herb room. However, for the last 3 years the only leak in the main house has been in the herb room. Until last night. Five separate leaks of different intensity in the kitchen and the one in the herb room just poured.

We got out the mop. Emptied buckets and other things that filled that had been in place during the last rain a week or so ago. I had to ‘rescue’ my sewing area as the rain came in the side window that accidentally got left open. Then we went to bed.

At 5am, it began to rain hard. I listened to the steady drips turn into torrents. When we got up at 7am, we repeated last night’s bucket and mop duties. We also marked where the roofs had leaked. Why? Well, because on Saturday and Sunday, we will be repairing the roofs.

Then it was off to say goodbye to my aunt and uncle and run a few errands.

This afternoon, as the clouds finally cleared off and I was able to open doors and air out the houses. For the record we got nearly 2 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. Not bad for a place that normally gets 15.5 inches of rain/precipitation a year.

So Proud!

My aunt, Toni Sudar-Laumbach has been given a very prestigious award.  🙂 The following is the press release.

Toni

LAS CRUCES – Toni Sudar Laumbach, daughter of the late John and Pauline Sudar and 1965 graduate of Walsenburg High School, has been named the 2013 recipient of the Edgar Lee Hewett Award by the Historical Society of New Mexico.

The award, given annually for outstanding service to the people of New Mexico, will be presented to Laumbach during the HSNM Awards Banquet on April 20 at the Las Cruces Convention Center. Laumbach is one of the original staff members of the New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces, N.M., and the facility’s chief curator.

During Laumbach’s 17 years at the museum, she has conceived, designed and implemented most of the exhibitions and public programs for the museum, as well as seeking out, acquiring, cataloging and preserving the museum’s collections of over 10,000 items of historical and cultural significance.

“Toni has been the face of the museum in its many public and scholarly venues,” said Museum Director Mark Santiago. “It has been largely through Toni’s ideas and hard work that the Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum has grown from a relatively modest operation with only one exhibit gallery and no public educational programming, into a full-fledged tourist destination.”

Laumbach’s abilities have been shaped by a long career in museums that gave her many unique insights on the development of cultural institutions. As an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico, she worked for Museum Director Dr. J.J. Brody and studied under the renowned archaeologist, Dr. Florence Hawley Ellis. As an undergraduate, she rose through the ranks at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at UNM, serving as both registrar and collections manager.

In 1972, Laumbach became the curator of the New Mexico State University Museum, where she helped organize and catalog their collection. In that role, she also taught NMSU’s first museology classes and organized students in the preparation of the museum’s first exhibits.

Following other dreams, Laumbach enjoyed a successful career as a registered nurse, working in many capacities, both technical and administrative, in the Las Cruces area. However, her true love was museums.

With the development of the concepts for the Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum beginning to take shape in the late 1980s, Laumbach approached those in charge of the project and joined the team in 1996, shortly before the museum building was completed. Aside from being the museum’s first registrar and chief curator, she has performed a variety of other tasks, including serving as the interim director in 2005-06.

In addition to her many museum achievements, Laumbach also has continued to pursue a career in archaeology, where she has demonstrated extensive knowledge of prehistoric and historic pueblo ceramics. Most recently, she curated the museum’s exiting new exhibit, “The Cañada Alamosa Project: 4,000 Years of Agricultural History.”

“The contributions of Toni Laumbach in preserving the historical legacy of New Mexico make her a fitting choice to receive the award named for that pioneer historian and archaeologist, Dr. Edgar Lee Hewett,” said Santiago.

Cheyenne!

Last week we went up to Cheyenne, Wyoming. We visited my son Erin and his wife. It was a good visit with Logan trying to do genealogy and figure out the family connections. 🙂

Logan: What do I call you? (meaning Dan)

Dan: Well, you can call me Dan or Grandpa Dan or Papa Dan. It doesn’t matter to me.

Logan: You live with Grandma Sudar, but you aren’t my Grandpa, so I’ll call you Dan.

Which was great. Ewan on the other hand was a giggle. I asked for a hug and got “No! No touch!” Okay, he hasn’t seen me in a while, I understand. Logan hugged me and Dan. I asked Ewan if he’d hug Dan, thinking we’d get the same answer. Instead, we got… “Paaaapa!” and a great big hug. LOL! Ewan did make up with me later.

We drove all over Cheyenne. Lots of beautiful houses and buildings and these big 8ft cowboy boots. I took lots of pictures, and some of them are posted. We also drove out to Vedawoo Rocks. I remember a picnic there as a kid.

All in all, it was a really good trip. On the way home, we stopped at IKEA and bought a desk for Dan and a bed for us! Wheeee! Dan wasn’t too enthusiastic about it at first. Thought it was just an expense we could do without. I said I wanted a bed frame!  I explained it had been nearly 24 years since I had a nice bed frame. So, we bought it. Morgan and I put it together and it is heavenly. About 30 minutes after we went to bed that night, Dan rolled over and apologized. He decided that I’d made a good choice. 🙂 Come to find out he’d never slept in a bed with a whole frame, just one of those frames on wheels things. So,… 🙂 I forgave him.

Here are the pictures of the trip. Oh, and as usual, I was behind the camera.

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Friday afternoon!

I am finally getting caught up! Yesterday all I had time for was a quick post just before I went to bed. However, yesterday was a very full day.

First off, it snowed again which made it very cold. Found out later that places like Cuchara got nearly 10 inches of snow. Brrrr! On the 15th of May no less!

Plus, around 5am, Stella started having kittens. By around 7am, she had four little tabbies and one black kitten. She looks to be a very good mom. :> Oh, and Beth was ill with some sort of stomach bug which caused havoc for her. I took her some gatorades and crackers while Dan headed to Aguilar for two jobs. I did some banking and then headed out to pick up Matt and Morgan who went on an all school rollerskating trip to Pueblo. They had a lot of fun in spite of the cold. I brought them back to the office because Beth was sick. They were going to spend the night here.

While we waited for Dan to get home, Erin, Morgan and Logan showed up. With a bit of convincing, they went to the store and I made steak and potato pie for dinner. Half way through cooking, Dan got home. He’d forgotten a part and had to come back here for it.

We ate and cleaned up just in time for Dan to get home. He was too tired to eat so I saved his share for lunch. Around 9:30pm, Erin and family headed home.  Morgan and Matt went to bed and Dan and I finally had a little time to work out some things for today. Oh, and I wrote the first episode of Digitally Challenged.

This morning at 9am, my sister Pauline showed up. She had just come from a job interview and needed a cuppa tea to relax. We all chatted and then I went with her to her house and picked up chairs and a desk. Daniel was suppose to go with her out to Mike’s to unload the bus, but friends of his kidnapped him to buck bales of hay. Pauline left about 30 minutes before they got here. I gave them directions and out they went. With three young men, it only took an hour to move everything. I even got two more chairs out of the deal. 🙂 Wow! We now have places to sit that aren’t desk chairs.

We are suppose to have a business meeting in about 15 minutes. Erin, Karen, Carlos, Dan and I. A first! 🙂

I also took pictures of our furbaby. Brandywine came home today from training. Wheeee!

Brandy surprises Dan with a kiss

Brandy and Morgan in the garden

More later!

Springtime in the Rockies…

Geeze! We had the ultimate in flip-flop weather this week. First part of the week was warm. Flowers were blooming, trees budding and even the wind was fairly warm. Well, this morning it was cool and cloudy. I took the kids to Badito, and the clouds followed me home. I wasn’t at the office more than 15 minutes when Dan said it was snowing. I looked out the window, and there were big fat flakes landing everywhere.

We brought some firewood in and got the fireplace going to warm up the office. Dan had broken a lot of the dead branches off of the tree in the front yard yesterday. Some of them had been ‘widow makers’, so we didn’t want to leave them hanging. It had been a real adventure as he went up in the bucket truck to reach the branches. Mom and I watched as he pulled these branches off and dropped them to the ground. We have a nice stack started which will probably last about four hours.

By 9am, we had to cancel the day’s activities that we had originally planned. There was no way that Dan was going to climb the tower to adjust the antennas in the snow. It was bad enough the other day in the wind.Dan up on Aguilar tower

Doing that kind of work in snow,…. No Way! So, we rearranged our workday and started on Friday’s work. By this time, we had nearly 5 inches of snow.

Snow outside the office.

This meant that I had to do all the editing of the various webpages. Hardest part was trying to find a Terms of Service policy. However, WordPress came to the rescue! Thank you WordPress!!! Spending 20 minutes reading through and altering that document saved me so much work. Then we had to edit our “how to” flier for both the Budget Host and Aguilar. I barely got started on that when Daniel called.

Because of the snow, he didn’t go to Trinidad for his building trades class. I dug out Blue, our Ford pick-up, and headed over to the school. I picked him up from school, grabbed the snow shovel and headed over to my parents. Daniel brought Oscar. While Daniel shoveled snow, Mom and I went to run some errands. I grabbed lunch while we were out, and we arrived back at the office just in time for Erin, Morgan and Logan to show up. We had him running around the office pointing and jibbering away like babies do while the phones were ringing and Dan was printing the first drafts of the fliers off.

The fliers looked pretty good. There are two of them, and each has unique bits. He started the run for the Aguilar fliers as we finished eating. Dad called, so I took Mom back over to her house. Daniel was ready, so we piled into the truck. Lovely…. mud, snow, steaming wet dog, Daniel and me. I dropped Daniel and Oscar off at the house and headed back to the office. Dad sent a bag full of wood that we added to the fire. :> Lovely heat!

Then it was back to answering phones, editing and Google searches for information. Wheee! Tonight when I head home I get to tackle laundry, clean house and hem up Morgan’s trousers she is taking on her trip to DC.

And maybe, just maybe if it’s warmer, we’ll go to Aguilar and while Dan climbs the tower to adjust antennas. I’ll deliver fliers. We’ve got both T-1’s up and running, software working and money being generated. Huzzah!!! This might turn out to be a business after all.:>