Surgery and Recovery

Guess it's about time to update again. The month of January has been a challenge for both of us. Since my shoulder surgery on January 3, I have been out of commission but I'm slowly recovering. I do mean slowly. It's been a long, painful process. I'm starting my third week of physical therapy. Each day I am able to move my arm a little more than the day before. Wow, I'm even typing with both hands (sort of). I will have at least three more weeks of therapy. Then I will be mostly recovered, but will have to continue the home therapy for a while.

Tom is an angel. He has kept up with everything around here - the cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry -- everything. I told him that I didn't know he could cook like that. To which he replied, "I guess I screwed up. Now it will be expected of me." Yup. Well, maybe I'll give him a break in a few weeks. He deserves it.

Camphosting again at Ft. Yargo

File this under the oddities of camphosting. A group of campers found some sapplings left over from trimming along the trails. They brought them back to their campsite and, because the sapplings were too green to burn, they spent the rest of the afternoon building this Tee Pee. The downside to this was that they dismantled the Tee Pee and left everything in a pile for the camphost to clean up.

Happy New Year

2007 slipped quietly away, and very quickly it seems. We started this blog just a little over a year ago and although we're not very regular in our postings, we hope you enjoy our blog.

We had a eventful week. We left Watson Mill Bridge State Park on Monday, New Years Eve and drove over to Ft. Yargo to begin our hosting duties here. Hosts Ed and Gail left just today, Wednesday but we expect to see them hosting in the near future.

On Thursday, Jan. 3, Nancy has to go in for rotator cuff surgery on her right shoulder. It is outpatient surgery so we'll be home the same day. The surgery will only take an hour or so but the recovery period including physical therapy will take 3 or 4 months.

Winter has finally arrived. It is freeeeezing. Last night was in the low 20's with the high today at 38. Tonight it is supposed to get into the teens. Brrr!

Christmas in Georgia

The Christmas shopping is done, and mostly wrapped. We sent out the Michigan kids' gifts and exchanged gifts with Eric's bunch, so we will be staying home and out of the malls and traffic this weekend. We'll spend Christmas day with Eric and LeAnn and girls. LeAnn's parents and grandparents and others will be at their house for a wonderful southern style dinner that is prepared by LeAnn. We look forward to it every year on Christmas day.

Pictured is our tiny Christmas tree that sits on a tabletop in the motorhome. It looks much bigger in this photo, but it is actually about 18" high so Santa has to leave tiny presents around it.

The latest view from our front door.

End of the Season

The end of the '07 season has arrived with the end of the National Peanut Festival. This also may signal the end of an era that started in the summer of 1965. 42 years in the fairs and festivals is enough. We are putting the business up for sale and have opened another blog, http://tomanan-fotoguys.blogspot.com, to accomplish this end. Until this happens we will be enjoying another season of camphosting at Watson Mill Bridge and Fort Yargo.

Hey, Ed and Gail

Look -- we updated our blog!

What a busy summer

After a whirlwind summer of travels, working at the fairs, and visiting family and friends in Michigan over the summer, we are now back in Georgia. We finished up at the Georgia National Fair last weekend and came up here to Ft. Yargo for some R & R. It was great to see everyone - this is like coming home. It was wonderful to see our family, Eric, LeAnn, Kaylee and Victoria.

It is raining here tonight, much needed rain. It will take weeks of rain to bring the lakes back up to normal levels. Lake Lanier is so low that they say it would have to rain one half inch an hour non-stop for about six weeks to bring it back to normal levels. Not much chance of that happening.

We have been taking it easy here at Fort Yargo. Trying to, in between medical check-ups, taking the grandkids to a movie and visiting with friends here. We will leave on Monday, Oct. 29 and head to Dothan, AL to begin the National Peanut Festival. That will be our last show of the '07 season.

After that we'll go over to Watson Mill Bridge State Park east of Athens to camphost for six weeks.

Early Fall in Michigan's UP

If you saw the firetruck below then you know that we worked out our problems about uploading pictures to the blog. Well, OK, Nancy found the problem. We have been having this type of problem since we installed a new pop-up blocker. We just never know what it's going to block. She fixed it just in time to upload these pictures from the U P taken while we were working the fair at Kinross Mi. These pics were taken at the end of August from the front door of our photo trailer. We can not remember seeing the colors change so early up here. The dull brown shows the lack of rainfall this year in Michigan's U P. Normally the fall colors are blazing up here. We have left the northland and are now in Allegan Mi. for the Allegan Co. Fair.

BCYF

This blog will not let me post a picture today so I will have to be satisfied with a pictureless post.
That's tough to do when you make your living with a camera. We are at the Berrien County Youth Fair in Berrien Springs Mich. This is one of our favorite fairs as it has everything a fairgoer could want. Today there is a large fire truck across the street and they are demonstrating the ladders and lift bucket(aka the cherry picker). The truck has hydraulic lifts that lift the whole firetruck off the ground and makes it level so that they can send the bucket up 4 stories. I'll try again to upload the pictures.