Stamps

Way back when I was a young child, I started collecting stamps. My grandma Smith actually got me started right before my family moved to Germany. While I was living in Germany (dad was in the Army) I learned about soaking the stamps to get them off of the envelope.
When we came back from Germany and I was working on some stamps and put them in water, Grandma was (I think) a little shocked. She had never heard of doing this.
A couple of weeks ago, Magie and I were at a friend's house helping the friend get ready for a moving sale. This friend, Kathy, gave me some stamps for Andy's collection. He may not get them all.
What brings up the stamp story? My mom called this morning and said that Grandma had passed away early this morning. There will be a graveside service on Wednesday back in Kansas.

Shoes

We have a thief living in our house. His name is Maks (Maximum Force Against Coyotes). Maks is currently three months old and loves shoes. I can not find at least four shoes. I have half of a pair but the mate is missing. And I have looked. I'm wondering if Maks ate the shoes. I hope not because I really like my slippers. For a Great Pyrenees, Maks is a soft, sweet and so obnoxious dog. We had one when we first moved to the country. Bear was a GP crossed with a malamute. He would chase down a coyote and shake it. Right now, we are keeping a real close eye on Maks, not only is he too young and small to deal with a coyote, he's probably try to play with it. And while he may enjoy hiding my slippers, his favorite chew toy...either cat, Ming or Smokey. He's learned NOT to mess with Sheba.
In other news, with the snow we had last week, I am ready to move to town. So is Alex and Peter is almost there. Andy doesn't want to move. It snowed Thursday night, we had a snow day from school, Peter didn't go to work. With the drifts and no one to clear the HOA roads, it was Tuesday before Peter could go to work. I wasn't willing to risk getting stuck so the boys had an extra day. It was the first day they had missed all year, so much for perfect attendance. The HOA road grader cleared two roads and the battery failed after that. Before they did our road. So part of the two miles to county road, we are driving on pasture, it has less snow than the roads which have sunk below the pasture ground level and tend to fill with snow. Driving across the pasture definitely isn't good for Peter's car and I don't like taking my truck across. There are way to many bumps and we've gotten flat tires from the sagebrush.