Winnie Mullins

Hi everyone, I hope each of you are doing well. This week we send Happy Birthday wishes to Mr. Don Taro. We very much appreciate everything you do for our Valley Home community, Donnie … Happy Birthday to you.

This week I would like to encourage each of you to mark your calendars for Wednesday, October 9th! There will be extremely important information concerning our Fire Service; this is not just for Valley Home, but the entire district. Although this important information is for everyone in our Fire District, here in Valley Home we already know what it’s like to have the doors on our station closed … and up until now, at least we could call 911 and an engine would respond. Everyone in our Fire District needs to mark the calendar and come to Valley Home School at 6:30pm on Wednesday, October 9th. This is a regularly scheduled MAC Meeting: CHP, Fire, Sheriff, School Superintendent Bill Slikker, Stanislaus County Superintendent Buck Condit, and Public Works Department personnel are usually all there to answer your questions. We are grateful to each of our first responders and to each of you who work so hard for our communities.

To all residents of our fire district: please come to an important meeting on Wednesday, October 9th. This is a regularly scheduled MAC meeting with CHP, Sheriff, Fire, Stanislaus Public Works, School Superintendent Slikker, and Stanislaus County Supervisor Condit will be there to answer your questions. This meeting is of the utmost importance to each of us … concerning our fire service. Please come hear the plan for what’s going to happen with our fire service; right now we can call 911 and at least we can still get help. Please come hear the possible life changing plan going forward … this meeting is extremely important to each of us; our young, our elderly; our school children … all of us. Circle the date, October 9th at 6:30pm … Valley Home School.

This week we share very sad news. Our precious friend, Marina Knudsen, passed away after a very hard-fought battle. Heaven has gained a sweet beautiful Angel. Marina was an amazing woman, always full of happy energy and so much enthusiasm.

Our Valley Home Fall Harvest Festival was started many, many years ago as a way for our school and community to come together and celebrate our way of life and our harvest season.

Hello to each of you. It is finally cooling off a bit, just in time for our Fall Harvest Festival this Saturday evening, October 26th. I hope you all will come, enjoy this beautiful fall season … have a delicious dinner and support Wyatt. Tri Tip dinners are $15 and include yummy seasoned tri-tip, a serving of Valley Home Community Cookbook beans, a dinner roll and a beautiful garden salad. All money from the dinner will go to Wyatt and his family that evening.

Hi everyone, I hope you are all well. I wanted to share with you the appreciation I have for our Fire Board and each of our first responders! Our Fire Board has worked tirelessly to try to save our district, each of them has given up countless hours with their families. Hours that they will never get back … and they did this for all of us.

Hi everyone, I would like to say “Thank You” to each of you who have been praying for me. I deeply appreciate you taking the time from your busy schedules to pray for me. For those who may not know, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in September. It turned out to be three different types of cancer, including invasive carcinoma. I had a mastectomy on Monday, October 28. I am doing well. I know this is very personal; the reason I share this with each of you is also very personal. Each one of you are very important to me. Your well-being is important to me. We all have things in our lives that we cannot control … cancer is one of them. We need God’s help; we need his merciful arms around us. I need to share with you that I should have been checking … checking much more often. I should have done better. A strong advocate of self-checking is our very own Teresa Hammond. Teresa is one of the many women who fight this battle daily. I write this column from my heart to ask each one of you to please check often … even our gentlemen, but especially our women. Please check often; it’s amazing what can be done to help us. Please don’t do as I did … please do not be afraid to self-check. It was actually by accident that I noticed I had a large lump in July. I picked up my hairbrush to reach up to brush my hair and accidentally hit my right side; I went to my doctor. Tests took a bit of time; I was diagnosed in September. I wish I had checked more often. It can save our lives. Thank you for reading this. May God bless us all.

The strength of our great nation … our veterans are the backbone of our freedom. We celebrate each of our veterans; we honor the service each has given to our great country.

Hi everyone, I hope you are all well and are ready for a wonderful Thanksgiving. What a pretty time of the year it is … so many beautiful leaves changing their colors. It definitely looks like fall all around us.