December, 2011



Greetings!

Although we don’t live in the most colorful part of the United States, we have been enjoying beautiful red and yellow leaves mixed in with the evergreens as we drive about our area. Now we are being blessed by a beautiful carpet as the wind does its work, and we realize that another year has passed swiftly by.

 

Last year we celebrated an early Christmas as more than 50 friends and family from Maine, Arkansas, Idaho, and Nevada joined those in California to remember Betty’s 80th birthday which came two weeks before Christmas. As any of you born in December know, your birthday isn’t usually celebrated because it’s too close to Christmas so this was only the second birthday party Betty remembers having–the last one given her by high school friends on her 16th birthday. We were thankful for beautiful weather instead of snow as we had the year before.

 

Kandice Medina, Celian Adams, Boots Mitchell, Linda Adams, Emilia, Gillian & Deana Trujillo (front), Kami Kay & Lanita Medina, Betty, Diana & Fred Adams, Troy, Gloria, Ron & Maryann Keeping and Russ Mitchell at Betty’s 80th Birthday Get-together.

 

 

As we think back, we realize that most of our time has been spent here on our mountain this past year and that’s just the way we like it. It keeps us busy just maintaining tillers, chain saws, tractors and old vehicles that Celian uses around our 120 acres.

 

 

 

 

Yes, that’s way more land than we need, but since it’s been in the Adams family since 1938, none of the family want that to change, so I guess we’ll just stay on. We were late getting our garden planted this year because of unusually cool weather, can we say snow in mid May?

 

 

 

Our first plants were frozen out and we had to replant. We didn’t get our first ripe tomatoes until mid August and not too many this year, but we were thankful for the fresh garden produce that we did have. Now we are getting our winter garden planted and thankful we live in a climate that allows for that.

 

 

 

On Memorial Day weekend Fred, Diana, Linda, and Betty flew east to attend granddaughter Krista Medina’s graduation from Blue Mountain Academy in Pennsylvania.

She’s the third of our grandchildren to graduate from that school.

 

Family at Krista’s graduation: Linda Adams, KK, Kandice & Lanita Medina, Mary Lou Mitchell, Ben, Norman & Krista Medina, Ryland Mitchell, Diana, Fred & Betty Adams

 

 

 

 

This fall, her brother, Ben Medina, became Dean Medina as he is now working as assistant boys’ dean at BMA. Seems like the school just can’t get along without a Medina.

 

 

 

Older sister, Kandice, has been working as an ER nurse at a hospital in Washington, D.C. for the past few months after spending the summer with Ben and Krista on the staff of Camp Lawroweld in Maine.

 

 

 

 

 

Krista is now a busy nursing student in Tennessee and also a member of the gymnastics team at the university.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great granddaughter, Laurel Keeping, is being challenged as she studies nursing in her third year at the University of Arkansas, so we’ll soon have another nurse in the family.

 

 


 

Gloria Keeping with granddaughter Laurel

 

 

Kami Kay is the only Medina left at home and Mom Lanita would be lost without her help with Creative Memories activities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KK also enjoys playing the cello and harp and uses both of these skills as a member of the Youth Ensemble of New England.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We don’t see much of grandson Daniel Adams, as the past couple of years he’s been busy flying, teaching at an orphanage, and editing videos at a TV station in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our daughter Linda manages to fly up and check on us quite frequently as a welcome change from her stressful life as an ER doctor in East Los Angeles. The last week in July found her making sure that at least some of us were able to spend time in the Redwoods at the church camp where we enjoy meeting friends and being inspired by the speakers.

Bonnie, 1996-2011

One sad note this year was when Fred & Diana lost their precious Bonnie, who had been a member of their family for nearly 15 years.

 

 

 

 

Before long Diana realized that she really needed a dog to keep her company as she walked the mile to the mailbox and back so now another Border Collie mix, Huck, has become a part of their family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fred and Diana also enjoy conducting a Vegan Cooking Class once a month at their church.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Fred does research, prepares the handouts and shows multimedia presentations.  Diana experiments with recipes, demonstrates their preparation and provides full-meal "samples" to an average of 20 enthusiastic attendees each month.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, maybe it takes us longer to get less done, but you can see that the rest of our family is keeping busy and doing what we can no longer do. We are thankful for our health which is still stable, and as we send out this yearly greeting, we wish the same for all of you.

 

 

~ Celian & Betty Adams ~

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