Mexico Cruise

For our thirty fifth year wedding anniversary Jason , Jessica, Brain and James gave Anita and me a Cruise to the Mexican Riviera. They came along so we made this our Christmas get together also. We all had a great time. This was Anita and my first time to go on a cruise. We all met at Long Beach,CA. so the first group of pictures are there and that is were we boarded the cruise ship. It was a seven day cruise, we spent the first to days at sea. We arrived at the farthest spot first, Purerto Vallarta.Second stop was Mazatlan and the third was Cabo San Lucas.We did something special at each stop. We hope you enjoy the pictures.Thanks again to Jason, Jessica, Brian and James for this wonderful gift!
Click on this link www.vimeo.com/2528644
Give it a few minutes to load if you do not it will start and stop a lot.

California Dreaming

November 9, 2008 I flew out of Monroe with Nette, Angeleah, and Samuel. Jessica, James, and Brian picked us up at the airport in San Jose, Ca. We spent 10 days with them and had a wonderful time. We took a tour of the jelly belly factory and brought home many jelly beans and other sweets. We went to Emeryville and shopped til we bout dropped. We spent a morning at the botanical gardens in Berkley and had lunch at Angelines Louisiana restaurant. We went to Muir woods and saw giant sequoias. We spent a day at the outlet malls in Vacaville. We bordered a train and had a dinner trip with a murder mystery play. Nette and I kept James and Samuel and gave Jessica and Angeleah a day out. They rode Bart into San Francisco and spent the day shopping. They brought us the best cheese cake from the cheese cake factory. We all had a great time and it was so good to be able to spend time with Jessica and her family.

Veteran's Day Event

This pass weekend I had the good fortune of being able to go with my father-in-law, Oscar Rawls (a World War II Veteran) to a Veteran's Day special event . This was held at the Chennault Aviation Museum on Kansas Lane just down from the Monroe airport. I'm so glad I went, it was really heart warming and moving to see the large turn out for the protectors of our Liberty. I could not hold back the tears. Here is a short video of the event.

Branson Trip Nov '08

Anita and I had a chance to go see the fall colors in north Arkansas this past weekend. Since we were so close to Branson MO. we decided to stay there. We had a great time, the weather was great except for the fog in the early mornings. We went to two shows, Dixie Stampede and Pierce Arrow. Both were great but Pierce Arrow better. Great singers and comedian that kept you laughing so hard your sides hurt. The colors of the leaves were not as vibrant as we had hope but over all the ride down scenic HWY 7 in Ark. was beautiful.Here is a short slide show of some of what we saw.

Stuck on You

Short video

South end

North end

Hard Rain

Flooding

The hurricane for us has been mostly rain. There are a lot of people without power in the area, but we have been very luckly only lost power for a few hours. This is a video of the road after rain on Monday and Tuesday. I did drive through this to get to work, I was thinking the whole time "not smart" because it was getting deeper and deeper. I would not have been able to drive through this with a car. It rained in this area almost all day Wednesday, also we had some tornados reported close by last night. In all it has been reported approx. 15 to 20 inches of rain since Monday. I did not go to work today, both north and south ends of our road are flooded even more than yesterday. I will post some more pictures.

Labor Day Weekend

Jason came up from Houston for the Labor Day weekend. He was here Friday night through Monday am. Due the hurricane he left a few hours earlier then planned to get ahead of the wind and rain. It was great having him home even for that short time.

San Antonio

We arrived in Houston on Thursday, July 24Th. When Jason got off work at noon on Friday, We left for San Antonio. We stayed downtown on the River walk. We went to the market square and ate at Las Margarita. Saturday we visited the Alamo, took a boat tour on the San Antonio River, went to the tower of the Americas and went up to the observation deck and saw the beautiful city of San Antonio. While we were there we ate in the rotating restaurant, the Charter House. We give it 5 stars. We went to Sea World and watched the shows, we had a great time there. Got back to Houston on Sunday and celebrated Jason's birthday with a movie and dinner. Hope you enjoy the short video.

More Summer 2008

I promise some more pictures of James, Jessica and Brian visiting us. Jason came in too during the fourth of July holiday. I also have some video I'm working on for later. I know you will enjoy this slide show, there are some good pictures in here.

No Shirt

Jessica and James came home for a visit they were here 3-1/2 weeks, it went by so fast. We greatly miss them already. While here James showed us how to relax and have some fun. He wanted to go swimming but the bucket just would not do, so we got him a small pool. From there we move up to the big pool at Aunt Net's. Here's a video of the fun. There is a lot more but I have not had time to put together of some other things we did. I will post them as I get them together.
ENJOY!

Time in a Bottle

Anita had a chance to go out to California and visit James, Jessica and Brian back in March. Here are some pictures she took while there.

Rawls Family Reunion 2008

The descendants of Monroe and Fara Rawls had their family reunion March 8, 2008. We met at Pioneer, La. J.O. Rawls family had about 50 present. Tommy and Cheryl from Oklahoma, Chris from Mobile, Alabama and cousins from Kansas and Texas were there. Family members from Ecell, Red and Alfred Rawls. We had approximately 130 people present. We had catfish with all the trimmings. Lots and lots of desserts. It was good to see everyone again.

Sunday, the next day we went to Daddy's for lunch. All six of his children were able to be there. We had a great lunch and played dominoes most of the afternoon. We fished a little and played some more dominoes.

Fishing

Back on March 9th Anita's youngest brother Tommy and his wife Cheryl were here for the Rawls Family reunion. They both love to fish. Anita's father has had a catfish pond at the old home place for a long time. Whenever Tommy & Cheryl comes back for a visit (they live in Oklahoma) you will find them here with rod in hand and a Big Old Grin enjoying the quiet time. Net,Naaman,Anita and I spend a little time with them.

Just alittle update

Hello everyone, it is hard to believe time is slipping away so fast. It's been six weeks since my last post, not alot has happen. It has been very busy at work leading up to our ABS trade show and since then very busy. Things are slowing some now, enough so I can catch up. I did not have a picture of all of us to post last time. We used Brian's camera to take our Christmas group pictures. They put them on their website so I could down load them. Here is one.

Christmas 2007

Jessica and James arrived in Louisiana on December 15th. They stayed here for a week, during that week Aunt Net and Mr. Naaman came over and Aunt Net made chicken and dumplings. Angeleah, Dustin, Uncle David, and Uncle Daniel enjoyed the dumplings with us. We had our
"Rawls" Christmas on Thursday at Poppas'. We left Saturday, the 21st and went to Houston and had Christmas at Jason's house. Buba flew in to Houston on the 19th and Brian flew in on the 24th. We all enjoyed the week together. James was a little angel and really enjoyed the park and the outdoors. We toured NASA Space Center and everyone had a great time. We came back home on the 30th and Buba came with us and we have throughly enjoyed this time with her.