This is a photo of Leslie's (Springfield friend of Sue's) son Jeffrey with his beautiful baby. Jeffrey is in Iraq.

PHOTOS FROM MIKE MADDEN: Mike, his parents Curt and Virginia, Curt and Virginia and Baby in 1953, Sean, Mike's vinyard
[Mike and Sean are our first cousins, sons of Curt and Virginia. Uncle Curt was mother's brother. For you family historians, Mother was the oldest of four. The others were Curt, Mildred, and Kent. All are deceased. Aunt Virginia lives in a retirement home in Springfield, MO]

And here is the note Mike included with his photos:

"Hey, sport! [He is writing to Sue!] I wish I wasn't so busy. Maybe Quest Diagnostics will retire me soon and I can get all caught up. When I retired the first time, I got caught up and didn't like it, though.

I got pretty overwhelmed with the vineyard this summer. This was the third year for about a third of the vines and they just went wild. I spent every minute of every weekend trying to stay caught up with maintaining trellis problems, tying up vines, mowing and spraying. In the meantime, my day job was busy, too. I have 4 call centers to run and I'm trying to build a 5th one for a new product. I also help design software for our current products and then implement software changes that drive better performance or efficiency improvements.

Sarah and I had a great time last year at Hermann. We are doing it again this year, but I didn't know if I could go until late last week and we are going to be there Saturday and Sunday of this week. I did hear from Sabrina but I thought they had decided they weren't going this year. I remember that great meal at The Cottage restaurant off in the woods.

I'm pretty burned out at this point. I've been getting home at 9 or 10 at night every night and then working the vineyard on weekends. Here are some pictures you might like.

I noticed you were over in Louisville. I think that is a very fun town. Hope you are feeling OK. You did great last year in Hermann. Especially in the bar!

Hope to see you soon.

Mike"

I have an update and some really great pictures from Mike Madden but have to wait until Rose has time to help me post them here.

I have to update before I forget all the great things that's been happening to me. After I flew back from Louisville last Thursville by myself (I may have already put that in here), on Friday Chris (aka Ding) and Shelly took me to see Melba. Melba worked with Brick and knew the kids' Dad quite well. After our visit with Melba we went out to dinner. On Saturday Rose dropped me off at the Ameristar Casino where I met Margaret and we tried our luck for a while. [He said he had taken a sleeping pill.] I spent the night with them and we visited Sunday morning until Rose came and to get me. When I got up, Norman was coming in the door with fresh donuts. We visited more when Rose arrived, and I had to come home to take my nap, a daily ritual.

I forgot to add that Goldman took me to see Fat Jack on Saturday morning. This time he was sitting up in his wheelchair and went to the lunchroom for his lunch. He said he had been doing therapy and has lost about 40 pounds. He invited Goldman and me to have lunch with him but we declined.

Pete call Saturday morning with his weekly call. He and Janet were beginning their move to town. At that point they only had a table and some chairs. Sounded like enough for a poker game. They had been without electricity for several hours Friday night. He thought a car must have hit a pole.

A really good friend of mine and Rose's, Mary Myers, was stricken with a very painful virus on Sunday and admitted to the hospital. Ding took me to see her on Monday, and Mark (Spreitler) took me to see Melba on Tuesday. -I hope I got my days and patients right-I thought I had my hospitals mixed up when Mark and I were sitting in traffic!

Mary went home on Tuesday and Melba is going home today. Melba is much improved and her husband, Roger, thinks her home atmosphere will help boost her recovery even faster.

Leslie, our former neighbor in Springfield, just returned from a trip to Seattle to visit her grandchildren and daughter-in-law. Jeffrey, her son, is in Baquoba, Iraq. Let's all pray for him every day.

Rose and Shirley continue to take such really good care of me. I do as much as I can and exercise every day. Brother Joe and I talk on line almost every day. Time for breakfast.

Brayden is Chucky from the horror movie Childs Play and Jalen is Chris from the rock band Slipknot.

IF THESE TWO GUYS COME KNOCKING AT OUR DOOR ON HALLOWEEN, WE WILL JUST GIVE THEM ALL THE CANDY WE HAVE!!!!

We lifted this interesting bulletin from niece Sabrina's Facebook Page:

"My son Brett, my cousin's wife Shelly and I ran the Gumbo Flats Pumpkin Run yesterday. Shelly and I ran the 5K while Brett ran the 10K. He finished about 2 minutes after us and placed 47 out of 595, first in his age group of 14 and under. Never mind how we placed. We trained, he didn't. =)"

Brett (we think) still holds track records from Middle School.

I'm back in Missouri. Scott and the boys took me to the airport in Louisville. It was an uneventful trip back. Ding and Goldman picked me up at the airport here in St. Louis. Rose and Shirley were attending a three day Jungoan get together and had meetings last night and couldn't be there. Rose even had some of those meetings today, and it's her birthday HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROSE!!!! Chris, Goldman, and I went to dinner at TGI Friday's after they picked me up.

My wanting updates from other people paid off from Uncle Joe. He's been working several days, a little at a time, on a railroad track motor car which is parked at the Springfield railroad museum. It has not run since about 1985, and they have no tracks to run it on at the museum. The museum people feel it should be kept in as good condition as it was the day the former owner donated it to the museum. He will try to send photos later.

Joe also wrote that he worked Tuesday, October 20, until noon at Wheeler Heart and Vascular, a part of Cox Hospital. His routine assigned volunteer day is on Tuesdays from 8:00 am until noon. Joe's oldest daughter, Lisa, goes to San Diego around November 18 for an awards presentation. She is candidate for teacher of the year from the midwest section of the U.S.A. Joe, his wife Mary, and Lisa's husband Jack are flying out to San Diego to be present at the ceremony.

Thank you, Uncle Joe and family. Keep us updated.

I have a nice update from Mike Madden with lots of pictures which I'll post soon. Rose is busy with housecleaning right now, and I can't get her to stop. (Not like when we were kids.) She has to help me with posting pictures. Chris is coming to take me to go see Melba in St. Anthony's hospital and then to dinner. Goldman is taking me to see Fat Jack in the morning.

Happy Birthday Aunt Rose!

I had P.E. yesterday. I liked it. we are taking my granny to the air port. To take her back to st.louis. bye

Hello! My name is Jalen Spreitler! I'm in the 6th grade. Its okay(not!) I'm i something called "Drum Corp" and tes I'm awesome. I'm sure you saw my little bro's section. I LOVE video games(duh). I like to go to granny's lake house,sk8 board, swim, etc. I'm 11 going on 12. I won a Guitar Hero contest in Louisville on expert mode. You know why I won... its because I'M JUST THAT AWESOME!!!!! If I could change my name it would be... mmmmmm... AWESOME!!! Who ever is reading this must love to be AWESOME!!! Well gotta do my homework(stupid, stupid homework). Talk to ya laters. I might even make my own blog. I think I'll can it... Jalen the AWESOME kid. Well see ya.

I'm up early this morning but it's an hour difference here in Louisville and I went to bed early. Brayden doesn't have to get up for another hour and then we're going to go to school in a taxicab again. His blog entry was work from his end. He had to go to the refrigerator to spell what he likes to take for lunch. I told him I had never had that for lunch. There's a poster of St. Louis here in the living room that helped him with that spelling but other than that he was on his own.

Brother Joe sent me sent updates on happenings with his family which I'll post when I have a printer. I told him to send me hard copies -not IMs- because my memory is so bad. At first he didn't know what I meant. Then I got the update and Scott's printer didn't work. Scott is going to try to print it at work today.

If this 6 year old boy can post on the blog then we should be getting some updates from other parts of the country. Thank you, Joe, for your newsy report. Joe told me he doesn't like to update but he loves to read it. I'm sure people get tired of hearing about me!

My friend Melba is not doing very well. I'm sure that some of you have met her on occassions over the past 45 years. This stroke has blinded her in one eye and only left 10 per cent in the other eye. I did talk to her last night and she and I decided that God must definitely be a man because no woman would do this to us. She still has her sense of humor in spite of it all.. She told Roger to cover her because she thought she was showing her ass. Then she said it didn't matter since she'd been showing her ass for years.

I'm going to fly alone again tomorrow evening for the second time since I've been like this. Either Ding or Goldman will meet me at the airport. Again, I get that royal treatment. Melba's husband wanted to know if I was flying on my broomstick what with Halloween coming up.

It's Brayden's favorite day at school - P. E. Day. I never liked that day and, as I remember, they made us do it three times a week. These boys can't believe how seemingly primitive things were when I was in grade school. I didn't go to a one room school either. Time to get him up.

my name is Brayden. i am 6 years old. my brother is Jalen. he is 11 years old. I have a dog named Layla. and a cat named Leo. I like p.e. at school. My teacher said i am the smartest kid in my class. her name is Tammy Walker but all the kids call her Mrs. Walker. I don't like school. I do learn there. I like star fruit and lunchables nocho kind. My granny is visiting me and my brother and my dad and we live in Loville and my granny lives in st.Louis with my 2 favrite aunts. ther names are rose and sherley. My granny is sisters with my 2 aunts.

I'm having trouble getting on the blog to post and have been frustrated all night with the struggle but made it. I'm not sure how I did it. Aunt Rose gave me some help on line and I'm afraid to get off this posting because I might not get back on. Brayden wants to help me with a posting while I'm here so hope he can be here this afternoon and also his brother. Unless I'm still typing, I hope I can figure out how I got on to post so he and I can get back on. His brother wasn't here last night. Scott goes to work very early so I rode with Brayden in a taxi to school. He explained to me that I'm too old for 1st grade so I had to come home in the taxi.

Last night Scott and Brayden had nachos or tacos for dinner. Maybe both, I'm not sure. Not me. I had leftover steak and baked potato and Texas toast. Brayden was incredulous that there was anybody that didn't like nachos and tacos. Aunt Rose was with him on that one. He made me eat one bite of something and warned me that it was going to be hot. IT WAS!!

I've enjoyed my stay here in Louisville tremendously. I meant to stay home last weekend when we went back on Friday. I was out of pills and had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday. Scott went back for a guys' weekend at the lakehouse. They were going to do a lot of drinking and card playing and some of them did a lot of fishing. Scott said they ate a lot of fried food including fish so I guess the fish were biting. I think the weather was a bit cold but they probably didn't notice. When they cook down there their only vegetable is potatoes. I know Doug fries the fish and Scott usually cooks breakfast, but they also eat some freezer food. Scott says he's back on his diet since the weekend is over. They chip in for the food and the cleaning lady.

Speaking of cleaning lady, cleaning ladies are coming here today. Scott had a flashback last night. I was having him 'clean for the cleaning lady'. He said it was just like when he was a kid at the Glenlea house. He finally told me that we had to leave something for them to do. With these two boys and a cat and a dog, they will have plenty to do. I think there might be a team of two. They just arrived.

I don't think I finished my plan for my trip over here. I went home last weekend and my original plan was to stay. I got my medicine, changed my doctor's appointment to Friday, Scott needed me, booked a flight to Tuesday and came back to Louisville with Scott. Rose, Shirley and I thought we were going to have the little boys for the weekend but they didn't get to come. Now I'm going home Thursday and going to the neurologist on Friday. If that's confusing, I understand. I'm going home Thursday. Also, it's nice to be needed. I can't do much but I can help out a bit here. The weather here today is beautiful and the forecast for tomorrow is good too.

I talked to Margaret for a while yesterday. It was funny. I was thinking about calling her and my phone rang and it was her. She has to go in the hospital sometime soon for either a CAT Scan or MRI. Either she wasn't sure or I'm not. Joe and I talked on IM this morning and he was going for a check up. Maybe I'll know more when Brayden and I update later today. Pete called with his usual Saturday call. They've bought a house in town and are selling the farm and Quartzsite. I think Joe said Pete is going to make a trip down there to get things ready to be up to market. I talk to Rose at least 3 or 4 times a day even when I'm here. Donald, that leaves you.

Rose's birthday is Friday. She will jump 2 years ahead of me for a while and 3 ahead of Donald. How did we all get so old so quickly! Norm's birthday is not too long after Rose's. I think Rose wants me, her and Shirley to go to that fancy restaurant again this year. Looking back on the blog you can see how they take such good care of you and pamper you. To be truthful, maybe I shouldn't go. In my condition people treat me that way all the time. Even in my sad condition I'm lucky and thankful to have all the people taking care of me and loving me. I never forget that.

While I've been here alone in the day and waiting to post on the blog, I've been reading back over old postings on this blog. There are a lot of postings that aren't from St. Louis. We're still the 'Aunt Camp' as Sandi as Sandi always called us. There's people we've lost track of or don't know what's going on with. Sandi and the bunch that spell their name wrong, the Kansans, I know of at least one in Arizona, the Alabamans, the Plattsburg nieces, etc., etc., etc. COULD WE PLEASE HAVE SOME NEWS!! I plan on getting to Plattsburg sometime so Scott figured out it's 195 miles from the lake house. Mfriend Leslie from Springfield {that King boy's wife} is going to Seattle this weekend to see her daughter-in-law and grandchildren . Her son is in Iraq.

Just had a phone call that one of dear friends from GMAC suffered a stroke. Melba Woolford She and I went through many things together. She worked with me and with Brick. I don't know how bad it is. I only had a voice message. Will call another friend back shortly.

I'm going to post this and hope we get Brayden this afternoon and he and I will write together. He doesn't understand that there weren't computers when I was in first grade. Dad didn't have them either in first grade. Maybe I'll hear what Joe had done today.

I haven't updated for a while since I've been to Louisville and am now back in Louisville. This computer of his is hard for me to operate. Chris had one of them and he picked it up while we were in St. Louis. I did fly over here with no trouble and am much more confident about flying alone and will fly home. --This is the computer that Chris worked on and it just went dark for a bit and I thought I had lost all my work --Chris would have heard from me ---It's still not doing things right. I'll make this one paragraph cause it won't let me change. I took a lot of Brayden's school papers this weekend and Rose and Shirley loved them. Jalen is in 6th grade and explained to me he doesn't have any. They use computers a lot. He is in an advanced 6th grade and has a 4.0 GPA. Brayden is the Smartest Kid in his Room and his teacher even says so. I didn't get to see them this evening but hope I do tomorrow after school. He wants to help me update the blog so we may do that tomorrow evening.

The photo of the two beautiful young women is of Sabrina (Margaret and Norm's daughter) and her niece Erice (Randy and Lynn's daughter). Erica is in her second year of college at Westminster in Fulton, MO. The middle photo is of Nathan, Sabrina, and Jacog. (Nathan and Jacob are Stephanie and Dan's sons.) And the third photo is of Stephanie, Sabrina, and Catrina--Margaret and Norm's daughters. WOW! What gorgeous folk!

I lifted these photos off Stephanie's (our niece's) Facebook Page just to post here.

Thanks for the posting privledges!

Here are a few pics from our Italy trip. We started with a nine day ride through the Piedemonte Region of Italy. This was a trip with 15 of our cycling friends from St. Louis. We rode about 425 miles, but managed to spend more time eating and drinking than we did riding!

Ride through beautiful scenery!

This is Karen and her daughter, Sally, who rode very well and enjoyed beating guys up big hills!

We ate lots of great food!

T
The Italian gentleman reaching for the wine glass toasted us and noticed that many were drinking water (we still had 15 miles and a big hill to ride) He said that would never do, That wine was the color of life and we should all enjoy for our health. He filled everyone's glass and we toasted to our new Italian friend. From that point forward we were no longer shy about consuming wine even if we still had some miles in front of us. Salute!

We got to drink a lot of wine!

Sue's Update. [For some reason, she could not sign onto Blogger directly from her computer]

I wanted to update the blog this morning before I go to Louisville this evening. I’m going to fly by myself for the first time in a long time. I’m a bit nervous about the trip but I’m looking forward to spending the week with Scott and the boys. I hope they’re looking as forward to spending the week with Granny. The weather here isn’t looking very good. We’re having lots of rain and some thunder and lightning, but I’m hoping it will pass before evening.

Scott spent last weekend in St. Louis for a hockey draft and a poker tournament but both boys were sick and couldn’t come with him. We missed them but I’ll make up for it by getting to spend time with them this coming week. Rose and Shirley have to spend the weekend in Chicago. Rose has to teach her class tonight so Goldman is going to take me to the airport and help me with preboarding. (That’s not a word according to spell check.)

Fat Jack is a GREAT grandpa. Chris and I visited him last night and the baby wasn’t born yet. He left me a message sometime in the night that the baby had arrived. He’s hard to understand on the phone so I’m not sure if it’s a boy or a girl but he’s certainly proud. Chris and I had dinner at our new favorite place – Marco’s on Main in Belleville. Rose and I will have the leftovers for lunch. They’re certainly good.

There’s more news about General Motors – and not good news either but I need to print my newsy email from my friend Liz before I update the blog about it. It’s really not such a great place to be employed at any more like it used to be.

The Cardinals best do better tonight. Scott will probably be listening to it when he picks me up. My flight arrives at 9:05 our time and 10:05 their time. He probably has one of those fancy phones which has a radio or television.

I would love to see some updates from other parts of the country. Mark and Karen are in Italy and are probably through with their biking and are just touring by now. I hope they’re taking pictures and will post them when they get back. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

I'll update today some though I'm trying to wait for news from family in other parts of the country. That Thursday that I went to the commissary Chris and I went over to Belleville to see Fat Jack again. He wasn't very good. He had the oxygen apparatus in his nose and we could hardly understand him when he talked. We went back to see him again this Thursday and he was much improved. He still had the oxygen in his nose but his talking had much improved. He and Chris spent a lot of the time telling off color jokes and I told them I thought I was going to have to go out in the hall. I tried to act shocked. We're going back again this week on Wednesday since I'm flying to Louisville on Thursday evening. I plan to stay a few days with Scott and the boys. Rose and Shirley are going to Chicago for the weekend.

Last weekend I went to the lake with part of my 'harem'. Doug, Mad Dog, and Danny Cullinane accompanied me down there. There was a lot of fishing going on. They caught 61 crappie and Doug cleaned all 61 crappie. At one time Doug said Danny was catching them faster than he could clean them. They cooked up 30 for supper on Saturday night and I ate some of those for lunch on Sunday. I went to dinner at Ruthie D's (Brayden's least favorite restaurant) with the neighbors, Dave and Judy Meisel. We had a delicious meal but probably just comparavle to the fresh caught and fried fish.

Scott is here for the weekend. The boys were going to come with him but both 'came down sick and weren't able to come. Needless to say, these three old ladies were bitterly disappointed. We did see Scott for a brief visit yesterday right after his arrival but he went off to be with his friends.

More later. Midmorning snack time.