Grandma's Christmas Cactus

Last month we did some shifting of furniture between our home, my parent's and our son's & his girlfriends. In the process of shifting all the furniture this is what finally came home to me. The Christmas Cactus has been in my mom and dad's care for several yrs now.

This is my maternal grandma's Christmas Cactus. She got it in 1962 from a lady. It was already several yrs old. It is over 60 yrs old and can be much older than that.

I remember as a child visiting grandma at the farm and peeking into the Christmas Cactus. There was a creek and there was always little frogs. Mom told me abt the room the Christmas Cactus was in and how the little frogs got in. As a child it was always fun to look for the little frogs in the Christmas Cactus. We would sneak over when the little frogs were croaking and try to find them, we could only look, never touch the Christmas Cactus.

In the move from mom and dads one of the young stems broke off so I have it in water right now, it has finally started rooting so will need to put it in a pot. I can only hope I can keep the Cactus alive for several more generations to enjoy.

Boy am I glad we no longer have AIG

I'm sitting here listening to all the questioning of Liddy over AIG. Boy am I glad we got rid of AIG yrs ago.

I'll never forget when we got our statement and our rates skyrocketed. Our independent agent could not get an answer as to why our rates had skyrocketed, we never had a claim, our credit is/was good, we pay our bills on time.

Well, since they couldn't give us an answer our agent checked and found us a much better insurance and we have been happy with them. No large increases when renewals come up. I love it, of course our insurance company does not insure in high risk areas so we don't have to pay for losses in high risk areas.

I look back and now wonder if the large increase AIG tried to do to us was to cover the losses at the portions of the company that was failing.

Congress, you need to wake up and quit handing out our tax dollars like they are candy on Halloween. We deserve complete accountability and transparency.

Any company wanting taxpayer bailout dollars needs to renegotiate all contracts (Union, CEO, Etc) or else they should NOT get tax dollars. I don't care what the name of the bonus is, if you have to use tax dollars to keep the company going then you don't have dollars for bonuses of ANY KIND!

Crown Point Columbia River Gorge

While on the Old Highway in the Columbia River Gorge we of course had to stop at Crown Point. What a beautiful view of the Gorge. Wish it had been warmer, it was cold and wet but still a wonderful trip.

Multnomah Falls

I always love watching the Falls. We stopped at Multnomah Falls while taking a drive on the Old Highway in the Columbia River Gorge. It was cold and wet but beautiful.