Ann: If you dont know anyone with a scanner then you can send the photo to me Snail mail and I will scan it and send it back to you. Let me know and I will email you my address.

Slavika: Got the picture! Its what I figured you looked like! It was great and Maria did great in putting the silver frame around it. And a hawaiian dress to I bought several when I was there. Love them!

Maria: The collage sounds ike a wonderful Idea.

Will get mine done this weekend. We are going to the hills to a winery, Seems like our past time lately. But a good photo op to!

Brings back memeorie's We have been chating for a long time on this thread.

I will get a picture found this weekend and hopfully figure out how to send it to Maria.

Can't sleep so here I sit.

DH and I went to a retirement counselor yesterday to see where we stand with PERA. Between the Pera ,SS, and military Retirement we should be ok. That is always a big worry. I keep thinking that I'll have to work forever. Not true.

Well I'm going surffing the net and see what is going on in the world of cyber space. Talk to you all later.

Karen

Hi Karen
I read your post about the pensions you and DH would be illegible to receive. In Canada we have two government pensions. One is called Canada pension. If you have worked all your life and made contributions to the plan, when you retire you would receive about $800.00 per month if currently your salary is over $40,000.00 and you have contributed for a min. of 10 years. Then we have the old age pension, which I think might be like your SS and everybody gets it whether they worked or not and that is $461.00 per month. They have other plans where if your income is not high enough there is a supplement...things like that, but those figures are sort of the "average". Then of course if you did work and contributed to a pension plan at your place of employment you would receive that also.
I don't know how much the basic SS is in the states. Is it much like ours?
We are going to Costco this morning, so see you all later.

Lily:I will start looking for a picture that I would want you all to see. I will solve this problem, with all of your help
.
Slavika: Loved your picture. I have a theory, that when we get that collage all completed there will be a lot os similarities in the way we look. What do you think.

Hope everyone has a great weekend. I couldn't get on line all day as my ISP was down. So I spent the afternoon making posters for our next event, a Fall Festival. I will be glad when my term of office is finished. Only 3 more months annnd then it will be someone elses turn. :

'See' you later. Ann

Ann I agree. There likely will be a lot of similarities in the way we all look.....hee hee GREAT!

G'day all,

Just quickly saying 'hello' whilst I am waiting for the troups to return from their fundraising walk for research in diabetes.

I have to agree with you Ann I think it is uncanny how similar we all are.
Pleased you all like the collage idea, looking forward to doing it when I get all the pictures.

Karen it all sounds sooooo familiar. On our return from New Zealand we went to our financial advisor and if we were to quit working now, we should be OK financially.......we think

DH came back from Sydney very upset, they are putting a lot of pressure on him to re-locate to Sydney. They have given him yet another huge finance project (his expertise is really technical not finance ) We have done nothing but talk about a re-location to Sydney which we definetly will not do, it may mean a parting of the ways of Lucent and dh.
It is so difficult, we get told so many different things as to where to next etc. etc. We can cope with it all providing our home base remains in Adelaide.
I think they are bluffing and seeing how far they can push.

We are having a nice weekend and it will be nice having friends for lunch so we can think of something other than our immediate future.
DH is home this coming week and then back to Sydney again the week after. I guess that is when there will be a showdown

I must be off and check on my potato bake and set the table etc.

Cheers all,

Maria

Maria I think it is a great idea for a picture collage. You do think of the best things. Hope you get everything ironed out with them wanting you to relocate. I wouldn't be happy with that either. It seems like they are always pulling strings for you to go places and change their minds a lot.

Slavika did you get my email address? Want to see your picture. If you didn't let me know.

Wish we would hear from Glenda. I have been wondering how she is doing. I think I remember she was having some stress over her job.

Went to a pumpkin fest yesterday. It is the one I have had a booth in for the past few years. It was fun to visit but I found I didn't miss it. Especially the setting up and tearing down and loading and unloading the car. Have one craft show this year in November and I am thinking of dropping it too.

Going to get ready to take the dog for his morning walk Think I will go to the park and see the changing trees and maybe some deer.

Maria I tried to change my avatar and it is not working. Will have to play with it again later today.

Peggy

Hi there. Yikes Peggy I did send you my picture. The first time I sent you an email I forgot to actually "send" the picture. The second time I sent it I emailed it to you, LILY and ANN (WITH THE PICTURE) and I know they received there's. I didn't get anything back saying they couldn't deliver your email. I will try again right away (and I will copy/paste) what I said the first time on to the new e-mail. Sorry Peggy. If you don't get it within the next couple of minutes please send me your email addy again.

PEGGY....I still had your email that you sent me with your addy on it, and I don't know why, but when I put your name in the address line it looks like it went to a earthlink addy. Was that maybe an old addy of yours?? I think you should receive now.

Marnie I had a couple of email addresses for you so I sent my picture to your (attbi) one. If you did not receive it let me know.

I just sent my picture off to you Maria. Feel free to chop out my DH. I'm not sure he would like his picture posted on the chick site. Also I hope I did it right. Seemed like it took forever to send. The picture was taken 2 years ago I think. It's one that I have in my before and after frame for WW.

Maria. Help! The picture came back!! I tried to send it to your mesdeisgns address. Help!!

Slavika -Got your picture. Thanks. It is good to put a face on the name.

Peggy you too. Glad to meet you.

Also I love the idea of the collage. That way we can look at the person we are talking too

We spent some time raking and hauling leaves to the city burn pile. I think we made 5 trips with the trailer. What a lot of work
Karen

Hi all,
We had such a lovely day today. The weather was fantastic.. we went to Church with our DD and , her DH was golfing. My DD played piano for the service and we got the pleasure of looking after . After the service we went to her place for waffles and had a great visit with the two of them. My DH and I went around the neighboring areas trying to decide if we want to move south of the city and whether we should go into a condo. Still not sure what we are going to do, it is such a big decision to uproot and move somewhere else. Maria I guess this is what you are facing right now, but my problem is not as big as yours. I can't imagine leaving my city completely.
My DD scanned my picture and e-mailed it to me, but it is quite dark. Maria do you think you could lighten it or should I get her to mail it to me again?
There is some kind of a movie on tonight called "Hollywood Wives: The New Generation" maybe I will take a peek and see if it is any good.

bye for now..

Hi Everyone: We had a nice day too. A wonderful service this a.m. and our music minister has written some great songs that we are learning. Out to lunch, and then tonight we had our small group meeting here at the house. We are beginning to become friends, and that is the best part of this sort of get-to-gether. This Purpose Driven Life book is wonderful.

We have to watch the World Series now and cheer for Florida to win.

I'm looking for a picture. I haven't had any taken recently.

Karen, as you look into retirement, I think you will find that you don't need nearly as much money as you originally thought you" need. At least that is what we found. Where we are living the taxes are very minimal, we don't eat as much as we did, we only have one car, etc. Do you think you might come to Fl. or are you planning to stay north? I could send you some stuff about retirement in Fl if you like.

Trudy: Sounded like you had a lovely day with the Looking forward to seeing y our picture. 'See' you all tomorrow.
Ann

G'day all,

Ann that is re-assuring to hear that one doesn't need quite as much money in retirement
I would hate to go back to the days when we were first married and were on a very strict budget.
Looking forward to getting your picture, Karen's picture with her dh is really lovely, it is a very happy picture.

Trudy it should not be too much of a problem to lighten the photo.
We were lucky that when we moved 3 years ago, it was to an area we always wanted to move to but was always a bit out of our reach financially. DH is home this week and there is definetly no way that we would ever move out of our city.

Karen by now you will have got your photo back again, as I have already said, I really liked your photo. You look a very happy couple.
Boy that is a lot of leaves you have been raking!

Peggy Are you getting a message as to why your avatar won't work? I thought the one I did was small enough, if not I can reduce it further.
Yes I agree, I think the company my dh works for mess us about something shocking. Most of the time we take it in our stride but every now and again it really does get us down.

Slavika have you heard from Glenda at all??? Seems a shame not to have her in the collage.

Hi to Lily and Marnie.

The picture I am attaching was NOT send to me by Slavika but it could have been
We will all now have this mental picture in our mind when next Slavika and her dh are on holidays in Hawaii

Cheers all,
Maria

I'm so excited about the collage!

Won't it be great to see all of us. I just love the pictures of Maria, Slavika and Peggy. Yes, I do see similarities.

I sent several photos to Maria. My sister, Peggy, has a digital camera; I haven't a clue how they all go together.

On Friday DH, DS and I went on a picnic. It was our way of celebrating our birthdays. DH is the 15th and mine is the 18th. He's 3 days older than me! The whole day was so beautiful. We grilled steaks, mushrooms and I made a Greek salad. Zach (DS) taught us how to make 'Smores! Everything was so good - I think stuff tastes better outside. We were near the St. Croix River and then took the long way home amid splendid colors of autumn. Winter will be here soon enough.

I'll check in with all tomorrow

Marnie

Slavika I hope you got my email telling you I received your picture. I really like to see if my mental image fits. I just got rid of Earthlink about a month ago and the addy is the same just different service. That is weird how that happened.

Maria I didn't get any notice or anything about the avatar. I went to the change avatar and opened it. I thought it was there. I notice that this one doesn't move anymore. I was thinking that maybe they had to approve the picture and it took a few days. Going to go play with it some more. Loving that Hawaii picture.

Trudy we have been having some beautiful days too. I notice that there a lot of acorns falling. More than usual-hope that doesn't mean a cold, cold winter. Had enough snow last year.

Marnie happy belated birthday. Smores are too good. Just found a litttle idea of how to make them in a jar. You put the making in a jar and decorate the lid with a snowman head. Glue buttons on the jar and tie a little scarf or something around it. I need some little dollar presents for Christmas so I am going to make them.

Now it let me change to this one which is also one of their's. I am sure it is something on my end. I will try again tomorrow.

Good grief Karen you sure have a lot of leaves. I do too but don't think it is that many. All of the beautiful yards down the street hate me at this time of year. The leaves blow into their yards. I do the best I can but can't help where they blow to.