Henny attends Mother-Daughter Tea

Fred's Fun Funeral

Ever really enjoy a funeral? Here's one that takes the cake! You see, Walter's brother Fred back in Maryland was diagnosed with CJD ( more commonly known as Mad Cow disease) in March. It took him very quickly, and was a shock to all the family. Fred had been retired and single for some years and enjoyed his passion for spectator sports, golf, and country dancing.

When his friends and family gathered to celebrate his life at his memorial service, there was fun and laughter, as Fred would have wanted. One of his old golf buddies entertained us with funny stories about Fred. While he was speaking, his cell phone rang. "Hello. Oh, hi Fred!" Fred wanted to know if so-and-so was there in the congregation. Then he demanded anyone who had borrowed his golf clubs to please return them to the altar right now! Three fellas ambled up with golf clubs in their hands. Everyone was given a golf ball Fred had marked with his initials. His square dance friends came in full regalia--ladies with their full skirts with crinolines. His daughter gave a touching remembrance of her father. Walter said a few words including the fact that Fred was so addicted to line dancing that he had to enroll in a two-step recovery course!

Walter misses his weekly Sunday afternoon chats with his brother, and his children and grandchildren miss him very much. He left a godly heritage and is now enjoying life with his heavenly Father in heaven.

Bible Character Tee-Shirt Number 28?? (I've lost count!)

What Bible character could have worn this tee-shirt message?   "I have no earthly parents."
Thinking of Adam and Eve? Yes. Who else? What about Joshua? The Bible says that he was the son of Nun.  Smile!

Usually I have these character quizzes on green tee-shirts on my blog, but with my updated computer and the latest improvements, I can no longer figure out how to get that image up onto my blog anymore! I just learn how to do something, and then my program changes and I am set back. How frustrating is technology to me! Even our television--I dream of the old days when all you had to do was turn it on, choose one of your four channels and you were all set to watch your favorite program!

Poultry Feed Bags

How excited I was to accquire this brown paper chicken feed bag! We discovered a little business set up in an old Stae Bank building in the little old town of Weston, Texas. Here the proprietor sells fresh eggs, local honey, and driveway beepers! He has a big rustic chicken (similar to my front yard rooster) outside his shop which attracted my attention as we drove down the main street. He has some old poultry-related items like egg scales to decorate his place--sorry, he says, they're not for sale. But he did have some chicken feed bags hanging around, one on his front screen door, which I offered to purchase from him. Lo and behold, he was happy to give me one, so I came home delighted with my treasure, as well as some delicious honey!

I noticed that the feed was from the Martindale Feed Mill (a subdivision of Alan Ritchie Inc.) in Valley View, Texas. Our son Wes is familiar with them, as he once pastored the Methodist church there in Valley View. What a small, wonderful world!

Front Yard Chick

Our front yard rooster now has company--a yellow chick! Notice the scissors blades for beak and washers for eyes. Her body is a round harrow disc blade (from a farm implement). Eat your heart out, Aunt Annie and Uncle Bob! Bob, you could easily make this yourself! Next on my list to look for is a hen!

Meet the Tater Family

Here is a family picture of the Tater children. Mr.and Mrs. Tater have worked hard to train their children up in the ways of the Lord. But it is up to the children to walk in godly ways. Here are the Tater children:

Left to right, Dick Tater. He is very bossy and tries to tell everyone else what to do.

Emma Tater likes to imitate beautiful movie stars. She tries to be what she is not.

Hesi Tater - When his parents ask him to do something, he stalls and says, "In a minute." He does not obey immediately.

Next is Spec Tater. He is much like his brother Hesi, as he likes to sit back and watch everyone else work. He reminds me of a couch potato, who prefers spectator sports, watching the football players work hard while he is taking it easy. 

Beside him is Sweet Tater. Everyone loves her because she is so kind and good.

Agi Tater is a whiner and complainer. She gets everyone upset.

Then there's Common Tater. A commentator is one who tells all the news. Common prefers to tell only the Good News. In fact, he wears a colorful headband just so people will ask him about it and he can explain to them the best news of all, the gospel of Jesus. He shows them that our hearts are black with sin until the (red) blood of Jesus washes it white as snow. The green is for our growth in the things of God, and the yellow is for the streets of gold, our home in heaven. 

In the foreground is the baby of the family, little Tater Tot. Who knows what he will grow up to be. We hope he will follow the good examples around him and learn from the bad examples. Hopefully he will grow up to be a regular Medi Tater on the Word of God.

Which kind of Tater are you?

Glimpses of my Birthday Party!

 This year the Chicken Lady turned 70! The kids all came home to help me celebrate! Here is Anna (from Oregon), Wes (from here in Plano), Marie, Walter, and Wayne (from Austin), This was the best and most memorable birthday party I ever had! It was so much fun and games, and just the family all being together blessed my soul!

 Here is the youngest granddaughter, Romy, having a good time.

 This is Romy painting a strawberry picture with paint made from a little water mixed with strawberry Kool-Aid powder. When the paint dries, you have a scratch-and-sniff picture!

 Here is my beautiful and delicious birthday cake with little chicks added to make it even more perfect!

 Here Mallory is about to send me on a treasure hunt. I will discover a chicken from Costa Rica which Leah just brought back from her spring break trip down to visit Rachel who is there to study for a year. Rachel, by the way, "attended" the party via Skype! What fun to have her watching and listening to us all! The only other family member who could not be present was Anna's husband, Sean.We sure missed him!

 Here is Romy watching me open presents. Notice the gorgeous, soft and fluffy white robe with the chicken applique and my name on it!

This is a print from an old photo taken in Oregon in about 1900. It has chickens in the foreground. 

It is framed over my couch right now! Thanks again, Anna! 

 Of course, the Chicken Lady's party is not complete without the Chicken Dance, and Anna made sure I had a proper costume for that! Don't you love it? Aren't those feet the best!

 On Sunday we all attended Wes's church in Rowlett. Here we are in the parking lot walking with Romy.

When we girls get together, we always do some crafty things. Here is a simple activity--Take chenille wire, shape into a letter or word or your name and wrap with different colors of yarn.

 Cousin Chloe taught Romy how to model--she's wearing one of my chicken aprons!

Here Romy is holding one of the four little baby chicks I had purchased at the feed store for this special occasion. Everyone enjoyed watching them and holding them.

Two Special Surprises

We recently visited Sean and Anna at their home in Portland. What a fun time we had, all crammed into three and a half days! Here is a partial list of the wonderful experiences we had there, not in any particular order:

1. Eating Anna's cooking--yumm

2. Walking in their neighborhood--so unique--no zoning there? You can walk by residences; small restaurants; coffee shops; industrial buildings; a railroad track; small, manicured front-yards with colorful flowers, vegetable gardens, or hens in a coop under the front porch; old historical homes; a "city flower garden;" antique shops; even a hat museum; all mixed up within an easy walking distance of their house! What fun is that?!

3. Visiting the hat museum - who would think that hats could be so interesting, even to Walter? We learned so much from the lady who took us through this historical house full of all kinds of hats! We learned about how felt was made, and why hatters became known as "mad hatters." She mentioned that this is the only hat museum in the country, by the way.

4. Just exploring Anna's house is a pleasure to me, seeing how she decorates and taking pictures of some of the pictures on her walls!

5. And, of course, she took us to her art studio downtown, where she works. There are samples of her artwork all over her walls. (You can see samples at her website: http://www.annamagruder.com/.)

6. A visit to an art gallery where her works were on display

7. An overnight visit to the coast - sampled cheese at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, walked in the rain on Cannon Beach at low tide, stayed in a quaint little motel room

8. Junk shoppping at antique shops and thrift stores

9. Enjoying Anna and Sean - Sean has been climbing the walls--oh, I mean rock climbing--as well as his bicycle riding.

10. Meeting old family friends, Abby Henry Kindrick and her husband Grant and son Miles! Abby is the daughter of our dear friends Dave and Sandra Henry. What fun for our Abby and Anna to end up living in the same town in Oregon! Anna arranged for us to eat together at a restaurant in town. What a sweet family they are!

And the two special surprises we weren't expecting:

1. Walking into an art gallery where the first thing I saw was a large painting of Anna's face done by a fellow artist!

2. Visiting Camp Magruder, a Methodist camp, on our way to Seaside - we walked in there and announced that we were the Magruders! I wouldn't doubt that the Frank Magruder after whom the camp is named is distantly related to Walter!

Some Unique Finds from Portland, Oregon

We visited our daughter, Anna, and her husband Sean, in Portland, Oregon, in September. One of our favorite things to do is to hit the antique stores and thrift shops. Here I am in a Portland thrift store with a chicken-decorated shirt that was just waiting for me to find! Someone had glued these chickens all over the shirt. On one side it says in small letters: "Chick Magnet." The chickens were made from art foam, feathers and googly eyes. It so inspired me that I had the children in Wednesday night Children's Church making these chicks to take home as refrigerator magnets.

How did I relate that to the Bible lesson for that day, which was about the book of Ezekiel?? Well, the earth was pretty bleak and the prospects pretty black for the children of Israel at that time, and the prophet Ezekiel gave them a way out, the offer of repentance and deliverance. His message gave them some bright, cheery spots of hope in their world black with sin and impending doom!


Can you guess what this chicken is used for? Give me your best guess before you read on!

Anna had found this chicken and was excited to give it to me when I was there. She really liked it herself, but she loves me and knows that I would go bananas over it, so she had decided to give it to me, the Chicken Collector!

Well, neither of us knew exactly what this chicken was made for. The only clues we had were: on one side it says "Tuppercraft." On the other side of it are the words, "Pin Kaddy." We were puzzled. We guessed that it was made by the forerunner of Tupperware, probably in the 1950's or so, but how it was used for pins was a mystery to us.


Then, as we were out shopping the antique stores and thrift joints in the town (which pastime is our favorite thing to do together), I stumbled across another one just like it! But this one came in its original box--with directions!

This is a diaper pin holder. You store the pins over the chicken's head, where they click into place and are held there so that Baby cannot take them off. The tail of the chicken is for opening or closing a diaper pin with one hand. You hold the pin in the opening in the tail and twist -- the pin will snap open. Twist it the other direction and it will close. What fun! We had never seen anything like that before!

So now both Anna and I each have a chicken pin kaddy and we are both happy! :)

The Story of Speckle

This is a copy of a children's gospel tract which I found taped in my scrapbook from my early childhood in the 1940's. When I recently came across it, I did not really even remember it, but I was so delighted to think that my signature story I like to tell as the Chicken Lady is very similar. In my story of Henny, the hen covers her chicks with her wings to save them in a barn fire. In the story of Speckle, the hen is burned in a grass fire. Both illustrate the beautiful truth that Jesus gave His life to save us from eternal destruction. I love that!

I have made copies of this tract to pass out to my friends. I like to point out to them that you can tell it is an old publication by the mailing adress at the bottom--"Chicago 7." My young friends, who have always known zipcodes, have no clue what I mean by that. Do you? :)

By the way, I have found several other children's tracts which my mother placed in my scrapbook for me. One is a story about a mother doe and her fawn named Bambi.

"Flapper Filosofy" and "Modest Maidens"

I recently ran across these newspaper panels my mother had cut out and colored with crayons in her day, the 1920's. (I am still looking through the stuff my mother saved from her childhood!) These clippings have the name "Faith Burrows" in the top lefthand corner, and "1929 King Features Syndicate, Inc." at the bottom. According to info I found by Googling, this series was called "Flapper Filosofy,"and featured girls in the latest fashions of the day.

Does anyone besides me remember the "Modest Maidens" one-panel comic strip that appeared daily in the Marion Star, our local newspaper in the 1940's and 1950's? I remember them because as a girl I used to cut them out and paint them with water colors. I found this sample of "Modest Maidens" on the internet, but I never saved any of them for 60 years!

This makes me wonder--do you suppose that one day as a child I complained to my mother that I was bored, and she suggested coloring the black and white comics in the newspaper, as that was what she did as a girl? Hmmm....

Necktie Window Valances

Once when Walter needed more tie racks to accommodate his tie collection, and I needed new valances for the two windows in our north room, I came up with this solution--I threw his ties over the curtain rod. They have been a novelty to elicit comments from our guests! The only ties that are not here are the ones he currently wears the most, those with his granddaughters' pictures on them...or Dirk Nowitzky or the Cowboys or whatever!