Will Wonders Ever Cease HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013

I hope the New Year brings you all joy and happiness!! Saturdays are usually my trash pick up day, cutting up stale bread and soaking it with broth to soften it up for the animals and cleaning my apartment.  Though I have closed off the bedrooms, so I just need to clean the living room, bathroom and kitchen.  I had boiled a pumpkin and decided I will make pumpkin cake-bread.  I say that because it taste like both!!  But back to wonders never  cease, while my cake-bread was baking, I got ready to go outside to pick up trash and getting ready in this weather is no easy task!! I have 4 layers on the bottom plus pants and 4 layers on the top plus a hoodie, a hat, scarf, gloves and a coat plus rubber gloves to pick up trash.  By the time I finished dressing my cake-bread was done.  So down stairs I go and I was picking up trash on the way to my spot and as I turned the corner I notice someone or ones had clean ALL the trash on that street.  They even cleaned the gutters and it was in piles on the street for the trash collectors to pick up.  Hmmm.... I wondered if the trash collectors would come. Since I have lived in this apartment 6 months, this is the 1st time I've seen this happened so you can see why I was just a little skeptical.  But sure enough the next morning, I went outside, and it was picked up by the collectors. Wow that's all I can say!! Hopefully it will stay clean for a while.

Below is a side show of my trip to Georgia...  I have no new pictures and thought you would like to see these, this was during the summer and the trip was awesome!!  I hope you can see it, I am having trouble embed this in the blog...



New Year's here is celebrated more like our Christmas back home. They exchange small gifts like candy and cookies and serve lots of food. Most stores are closed (but will re-open on the 1st business as usual).  What is popular here and is not illegal is firecrackers.  They have been going off constantly for a week.  I see small children lightening them and I cringe.  I guess that they will figure it out when a child is hurt with a missing finger, hand or worst fatally hurt.

Well, the weather is Sunny today, High 32 degrees (a regular heat wave!!), but all the snow has melted, which is a blessing for me. I HATE snow.  School is out this week so I am making some games on sentence structure and irregular verbs for the students. I cannot find index cards, so if anyone is sending me a package I could use, white and colored index cards and simple lament without a machine.  I also have a meeting this week with a local veterinarian to find out the cost of neutering and shots for homeless cats and dogs and basic emergency medical care, I am hoping to write a grant to fund this project.  I have a couple of Azerbaijani  helping me, so please put this on your prayer list and hope I can do something for them.

Life Challenges:  Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year... Ralph Waldo Emerson