CheriasChatter.com

We are always looking for ideas to decorate our yard and  I thought a new birdhouse was needed.  My car tags ran out in July and I decided that I no longer wanted my name displayed, so I applied for new tags and although the state of Virginia likes for the old tags to be turned in, I decided against doing so.  As you can see, Rick made me a new birdhouse and used one of my old tags for the roof of the house. 

He also makes birdhouses out of old metal mailboxes, so if any of you folks would like to purchase a real ‘homemade’ residence for your feathered friends, just let us know and we will get to work on your very own birdhouse.  We will ship to US addresses and just leave a comment on here if you would be interested and we will get back with you on prices and any information we need.

Madison’s dad Rob brought over to our house a train set that was his when he was a kid and we set up part of it for her to play with.  As you can see she loves it, although we don’t have room to put all of the pieces together.  We enjoy watching her play and because she watches “Thomas the Train” on TV, that is what she calls her train.

Saturday Rick and I decided to take a ride through the country looking for photograph opportunities.  We took the ‘long way’ to the town of Marion, Va and as we were passing through the community of Merrifield I asked him to stop so that we could get a picture of this ole store building.  I don’t recall ever knowing the proper name of the store, just the ‘store at Murrayfield’.

My grandparents on Dad’s side of the family, John and Callie Dolinger lived at the end of the little lane that intersected with the main road running through the valley.  On Sunday afternoon we would visit them and have a great meal and Granddaddy always had a bunch of candy laying on his bed and we kids were expected to have a snack.

We helped work in tobacco with Granddaddy and often times we either stopped by the store and grabbed a snack from there on the way or we were allowed to walk back to the store for a short break and get a ‘can of pop’.  Kids today sure have missed out on a lot of fun and will never have the same memories that us ‘older folks’ enjoy.

Madison has an old beach towel that she loves to carry around while playing at GranGran’s and she is always finding something interesting to do with it.  A few days ago she caught Houdini laying in Papaw Rick’s office and took the opportunity to wrap the towel around him.  This is the result of her ‘blankey’ experience that day.  It is hard to say which is the cutest, but I believe Madison probably wins the cute contest and Houdini wins the ‘tolerance’ contest.