Mystery Solved; Ships and Planes

The mystery of the wild animal is solved. (See Sept 5 blog)

So it WAS a bear after all!

Here is the CHE Home Ec. project they did this week: Ship-a-Fruit.

A scene from violin group last Wednesday. Getting arranged.

Some car entertainment inspired by the Olympics.


Since I'm on the phone right now....(wow - multi-tasking....Sorry Ch!)am not writing too much. Just the usual stuff this week, nothing unusual.

Will do more next time. Sad that R&C are actually leaving on Tuesday. Heading by Air India to the UK. Our desperate measures have not hurried things on enough. But all things are in God's hands....

They'll be here for an "oulaas" lunch and visit tomorrow. Pray for them. Actually, maybe they'll be leaving the US just in time as the economy crashes for real behind them. We all need to rely on God to supply our needs - our own work might not cut it from now on. It will be a learning and growing experience for all of us.

Til next time...

Second Week of September

Well SOMEONE'S relaxed and smiling! Our schoolhouse regular! Every time I ring the school bell, she's the first one at the door, just leaping, slobbering, whining and scratching to get in - a very good example to all the other students! Yes, my baby, a model student. You get an 'A' for the week. Precious.

This is my baby when she was a few months old

Just cannot come up with a good title to describe this past week. Maybe "a bit of everything" would do. For a little background history, I volunteer on the Board of Directors of the local chapter of the non-profit group: CHADD (Children and Adults with ADHD). On October the 2nd, we are bringing Dr. Russell Barkley to Chattanooga for a seminar - a leading researcher and author in the field of autism, ADHD and probably other mental disorders. Bringing someone of this caliber into town requires some preparation, planning and footwork. I've been doing some of the latter lately. Nuff said....Our greatly capable coordinator, who by the way, was just elected the NATIONAL CHADD VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR, (Yay Pamper!!) is the most hardworking among us so I will not mention ANY more that I do - it pales in comparison!!

Here are a couple butterflies from our Callaway visit 2 weeks ago.



Then, tomorrow, the community orchestra I play cello in, the ETSO, is performing our outdoor Fall concert. It wouldn't be so bad rehearsing almost every night this past week, but the music is tough (at least for me) including Brahm's Symphony #1 in c minor. The other two pieces are Brahm's Academic Festival Overture and Tchaikovsky's Violin concerto in D, Opus 35, which are both a bit easier. Not really your usual "Pops in the Park" but hopefully enjoyable to our esteemed outdoor audience. The programme starts at 7pm if anyone would like to join us!

C's orchestra experience is getting better and better as the music becomes more familiar (except when we get new music and have to, horror of horrors, SIGHT READ). The beginner orchestra is packed into its little room. I think they have 27 or so in it now and really need a larger space. It's stressing out the conductor!

And now today (starting last evening) poor C is suffering from a fever of 103 and, earlier, a sore throat. We're hoping it's a one day thing! Sadly, we missed SS and church, and also the special biking excursion along the Riverpark with the Adventurers. We were secretly hoping it would rain so they'd have to postpone and she'd get to go another day....but no, it was a beautiful sunny day today. (We're BAD, aren't we?).

Got to call Aletheia this week. It was nice to talk with Aunty K. and catch up on some news from that side. Hope your back improves soon, A.K.

R&C are packing up and selling stuff. Will be moving to the UK in just over 2 weeks! VERY SAD - though we wish them all the best. Hey world - hire this man - he can do anything, invent anything, manufacture anything, build anything; he's entrepreneurial, hardworking, loyal, - a people person - HE'S YOUR MAN!!! He will be worth millions to you - and I'm NOT making this up, people!

Well, now I'm going to see if I can find any photos to go with this blog....maybe some of baby Ca whom we visited on Thursday, now going on 9 months old!

Little Ca is cutting teeth - ouch!

Bye til next time!!

Orchestra and all

2008-2009 School Picture

Exciting times - C has been invited to join the beginning orchestra at AWS. She is the youngest there but doing OK so far with a little help from me with counting and bowing. She has been sightreading this week but with a little more practice, she won't even need my help. The only 'problem' with this new endeavour is the very difficult schedule - right in the middle of the day and both days are at different times. So we have to find something to do in town for 2 hours on Tuesdays (CHE day) and 1 hour on Wednesdays (also violin group day) unless we do a lot of travelling back and forth...:-(

The sun is setting earlier and earlier now - approaching 8pm and going at about 10 minutes per week. Kind of depressing, but is good in that we tend to go to bed earlier. Just wish it would stay constant at around 7pm. Guess we'll have to move nearer the equator for that. Talking of moving - I'm ready to go somewhere - and be a missionary in a foreign country. It just seems easier than being a missionary at home, ha ha. Well, life is not meant to be easy...just wish it were!

The Merc was open for an extra week this past week. have been having hotter weather. We got to go 2 days (as I only found out it was still open on Wednesday evening).
The water even warmed up from the previous week! We

On Wednesday evening we also had Adventurers II - a full uniform day for photos...I'll
include a group one if we get copies! There are about 27 in her class, I hear (didn't count). That includes only about 7 or 8 girls! Yeah, I don't know what was in the water that year!

Here's a paint-by-number I did a few weeks ago.

Talking of wild animals, what do you think?

I think this is a bear's scratchings. S thinks it's a dog...Maybe it's one humungous dog!  This was behind the barn close to the woods. I let Caridee free and she made a beeline straight for that area, sniffing and definitely in 'hunting' mode - but didn't show up with anything!

Some luscious fruit for supper prepared by our illustrious chef, SJohnson - the cantaloupe, honey dew and watermelon are from the garden.

CHE in its second week. I may have mentioned there are 11 in C's Home Ec. class.

Got a second wasp sting this week...disturbed it drinking from the hummingbird feeder I had come to refill. So much for gratitude. Immediately sprayed Gold Bond on it but you know what? Activated charcoal works better - I just waited too long before putting it on.

I'm accompanying someone on organ tomorrow - it's been too long and now it's stressful to do this kind of thing...

We're having lovely weather - no inkling of the rough weather in the path of the current hurricanes. We wish them the best as they brace for the worst. Since I don't keep up with the news, I have no idea where the storms are right now - maybe they pushed off harmlessly to sea...?

And lastly, here's a photo of my maternal grandparents.

Grandfather came from Wales and Grandmother from 1820 settler-from-England stock. Will sometime get one of the paternal side. The only one I know of is a small 3 X 5 and they're in the distance...

May your Sabbath be blessed and happy.

Callaway Balloons

Since I deleted these photos from the blogs and (I thought) copied them... somewhere....I haven't been able to locate all of them, hence all the blank spots here and in the other blogs of 2008 and 2007.  I'll keep working on it!

The lake at Callaway

This Labour Day weekend we decided to use up a couple coupons for free hotel nights. The closest available was in Columbus, Georgia. Great, we thought, we'll visit Callaway Gardens on Sabbath. Later we found out it was the annual Hot Air Balloon festival so we got a double treat.

Some of them were hard to hold on to!!
Some of them got away! Right after this picture, the basket banged into the tree! Fortunately no-one was hurt but I think the pilot paid more attention after that, and C tried harder to hold onto them!

Here are some more photos around the gardens.

These muscadines were as delicious as they look! We had a wonderful chat with the gardener who told us all about them and some future plans for the Callaway Vegetable garden.


We visited this lovely chapel but decided not to wait an hour for the organ recital.


Two love birds sitting on the bridge to happiness.


These next ones will have to wait to be enlarged. This is taking a long time!!




G and J came down to visit this w/e. We'll see them tomorrow since we were away.
R is also bringing my car down which he nicely fixed for me! Thanks, R! They're going to be leaving for the UK in a month since their immigration papers have been held up by who-knows-what! But hey, I'm proud of them for doing it the legal way!
More updates later...

Dog (Cat) Days

of summer. Not much going on this past week except for a couple "opening" 'picnics' - one for Adventurers and one for our CHE co-op. We also had our first violin group on Wednesday and cello group on Thursday.

What are you dreaming about Bud?

SO hard to be a prisoner

Buddy has to wear a bib for drooling

What a sweet boy is Booboo!  Always happy for a snuggle, just like Bud.

And you're a sweet girl too!

Question for the week: Will America come to economic collapse in the next few weeks? We are hearing about it... How easy it is to continue as we are and to bury our heads in the sand. But we know that life as we know it will not continue on as it is now forever - God is about to wrap things up and has warned us in the Bible that things will not be pleasant on the earth just before His coming, as He withdraws His protection and allows the devil to have his complete way. Don't lose hope during this time. Remember the Israelites and how God brought them through one thing and another until they eventually reached the promised land.

Let us run the race set before us and not be slackers. The Olympics have shown us how much preparation and discipline is needed before reaching that level. Spiritually we need to be prepared too - to practice being completely surrendered to our "General" Jesus and to practice living by faith during the most trying and tough times of earth's history.

Pray, pray, pray!! Here is a quote:

"We do not value the power and efficacy of prayer as we should. Prayer and faith will do what no power on earth can accomplish" from the book,Prayer, by E. G. White, p.83.

Not much news this week. Happy Sabbath!

Back to Olympics, uh....School

This is what I did last week instead of the blog:
I hope it works, Aunty K!

Yes, it's the Olympics 2008, as you all know. We've had special dispensation every evening to stay up and watch. Last night was the Women's Individual All Around Gymnastics competition which was well worth the 1:15am bedtime (for me only, of course)! A hard-earned 1-2 for the Americans - they deserved it. Phelps, the bionic swimmer-man has been fun to watch too.

So - given that we're having late nights, we're not quite on our school schedule exactly yet, but amazingly, have gotten most everything done every day. We've even managed to get to the pool about 3 times this week. C and Ad practiced their "synchronised jumping" off the edge of the pool.

On Thursday we had our first nursing class. As expected, the theory part wasn't so interesting - but the practical was fun - until the dog chewed up the thermometer!

(In case you didn't recognize her, that's Heidi, Mom - looks like she needs the ER, doesn't it?)

Mom and Dad J arrived on Monday evening then left again Thursday morning for Arkansas to visit P&K. Wish we could have gone, but several appointments prevented our going. We're still trying to work it out to go this summer. The folk will return next week for a day or two before heading back to Florida. Wish they lived close by! (as too, the RSA folk!).

We've been having some hot, dry weather this week but have been harvesting a lot of cantaloupe, ochra, green beans, some cucumber, red bell pepper, tomatoes, tomatillas etc. Watermelon and Honeydew are coming along really well. Finally pulled up the corn and will use the husks for our fall decorations. S has planted more winter squash and will use the corn rows for fall/winter things like greens. C is now officially "sick of tomatoes". I'll remind her of that come winter when all we have to eat are GMO green-picked tasteless red-things.

Sunday brought our first cello lesson of the new school year and we're working on Humoresque. The idea is to play it slowly and elegantly...

Well, my Sanctuary studies are continuing and I'm continuing to learn things. Will have to share them sometime. Am also studying the Bible with a friend and enjoying it immensely. Friend, CAM, and I are scheming to start a weekly study at her office and invite any interested persons to join us. I'll keep you updated.

Til later...

Fleas and Peas

August is here and along with it, lots of those abominable little creatures called fleas. Can anyone tell me what purpose they have in life? Do they do any good? (as with ticks). By the way, a good way to dispose of them is with sticky-tape. (That's my little helpful hint of the week).

Last Sabbath we joined the LBA family for fellowship and a nice hot walk which somehow, inexplicably ended up at the blueberry patch...Yum yum! That was a good part of supper.

A and C have been constant pals this week, seeming to play non-stop. They're having a good time before school starts in less than 2 weeks. Suddenly C wants to do nursing this school year. We're done with the world wars - she found that too ugly and gruesome and it wasn't quite as glamorous as she thought it would be!!
(thank you, nice spell checker....)

We didn't get much swimming in this week - it rained almost every afternoon and A had a chesty cough but they did get some in on Sunday. All the rain is helping to split the tomatoes and we can't eat them fast enough.

Not much news this week. S flew to Charlotte, NC for a day but other than that have pretty much been homebodies. We're picking a lot in the garden now - WAY too many tomatoes to eat fresh, for one thing! We've been giving a lot of them away too. Our vegie picking list is now: corn (near the end), carrots, red bell peppers, green beans, jalepeno peppers for S, tomatoes, ochra, zucchini, melon, herbs, some swiss chard (a little hot for it now but it'll revive), beetroot, tomatilla and cucumber. It is lovely to have fresh stuff, I have to say.

Anyhoo, that's it for this week. I'm sure there are some more mundane details but it's not good for you to fall asleep at your computer....

Here's a flashback to our California trip. L and C - intrepid explorers...

Happy Sabbath!