It's really cold here in Missouri today with occasional snow flurries, and it's supposed to be colder tonight. Rose dropped me off to get a haircut while she did some of the grocery shopping and Shirley did some of the other shopping. Needless to say, we hurried! I haven't heard from Margaret today. Yesterday she and Norman were going over to Scott AFB to have some prescriptions filled, and I'm sure they stayed home today unless they had to go out. The snow isn't supposed to accumulate much.

Ding and I went over to Belleville last Thursday to see Fat Jack. He was better than he has been in the past few visits. He is doing quite a bit of therapy and had been able to go out to lunch recently. Ding and I plan on taking him out to eat when the days get longer and it's not dark so early. There's a place nearby where we can just take him in the wheelchair. It's called Marco's on Main where Ding and I have eaten several times when we've gone to visit Jack.

Late on Friday Scott and Brayden arrived. We three old ladies were thrilled, to say the least. Brayden slept with Scott that night but was up first. I got up next. We sneaked in and he kissed Aunt Rose to wake her up. She didn't mind that alarm clock. Scott dropped Brayden and me off at the Hollensbe's Saturday morning on his way to Columbia, and Brayden hardly knew his dad was gone the whole weekend.

We had spaghetti for dinner Saturday night, thanks to Brayden. He did most of the cooking. He brought some of his school papers and read to us and did some 'seek and find' puzzles he brought. He amazed us. Shirley taught first grade for years and said she never had a student as smart as he is. I'm pretty sure that my first grade teacher, Arilla Deckard, didn't know what a rhombus was. He and Rose played football and then the three of us did 'pluses' and 'times'. He also likes to do spelling and write sentences.

Yesterday Karen and I went to the poinsettia display at Forest Park. It was raining and we had to walk a little way to get inside. Karen felt bad because she didn't bring an umbrella. I told her we would just walk between the raindrops. We didn't get wet. We had lunch at a place called PI. (Yes, I spelled it right.) Obama ate there about a year and half ago and sorta put the place on the map. He said its pizza was better than Chicago's. It was really good. We had some left and had it boxed to go. When we got back here, we realized we had forgotten the box!

Pete called for his weekly chat last Saturday. Nancy returned from Italy on the 18th - just in time for Thanksgiving. Caitlin is due back this week. I don't know if Kelly and the boys shot anything on their hunting expedition last week. Donald also called. They will be here sometime the week of the 21st and will bring pictures of their European trip and of their trip to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

Weren't the photos Mark posted great? He and Karen spent a lot of time putting those pictures on corks. We teased them about having to drink so much wine to get all those corks. After all that cooking Karen did for the dinner, she did another turkey for Drew to take back to school. We all ate so much that there wasn't any leftover turkey!