Our Canadian friends

Please take a moment to go over to Leslie's blog and read her Canadian insights into Obama. She makes the best points. Thanks Leslie! Thanks to Canada for always being our friend and for caring what happens here in the U.S.

Then run over to McMama's blog to see what a great God we serve and what miracles he does!

The weekend....The baby shower!

What a great weekend! It was baby shower time for Mary Grace in Pensacola! We had a wonderful time at the shower and just visiting!

Mary Grace hates baby belly pictures and is probably going to kill me, but doesn't she look precious! Little Grady was trying to show off for the party!

























Mary Grace with her hostesses, Lauren and Veronica. They did a great job with the shower, the food was great!




























Sitting, Mary Grace with sister Katie,Sister Emily and me.

























Sitting, my sister Cathy, me, Sister Emily and Mary Grace....standing Sister Katie and our good friend, Carol.




























Sitting....Sister in law Robin, Mary Grace, sister Emily......standing....sister Katie, step mom, Charlotte, mother in law Elaine and Sister in law Janeen.






















Mary Grace opening presents! This is the fun part. The cake sitting beside Mary Grace was made by her sister in law Janeen and had all sorts of things...it was so neat and creative.

























Lots of presents to open! The baby will not be deprived, trust me!

Whew....that was hard work... next they have to figure out how to get them home!

After the shower, we went to my sister's home to change clothes, then went to Mary Grace's home where her brother Brian and her dad and pretty much everyone (except me) was putting together the pack n play and the stroller, sorting clothes and then Mary Grace treated us to chili supper which was yummy!

It's always so wonderful to get us all together. Especially for such joyous events. So come Christmas time, I imagine we'll all be back in Pensacola to help Mary Grace deliver her baby boy!

As always, the weekend went too fast and too soon it was time to get back home.

Russell and Tommy spent the weekend in the woods hunting. They didn't murder kill anything but they had fun.

My mind was totally at ease because I had a great friend/house sitter come to take care of our animals. Thanks Dabney!

Randomness...

No, the solution didn't work, but it broke me out in the hives! That'll show me! I know, I'm just a nut case. One day, probably when I'm too old to care, someone will invent something that really makes you lose weight fast!!

I'm very excited because tomorrow I'm going to Pensacola for a baby shower for one of my girls.

Mary Grace, the blonde, is having a sweet baby boy at Christmas!

This will be the first time in almost a year that I've seen the three of them together. I just can't wait!

For those of you who don't know the story of our friendship, their mother was a good friend of mine. She died several years ago and since then I've watched her girls grow and become women. I can't imagine my life without them.

Now they have all graduated from college and are working and we all know what that means.....they are scattered across the country!

They also have a brother and sister in law and they'll be here too. They will all have a little family reunion with their dad and stepmother. I'll have a reunion with them too!

I often think how happy their mother would be at the grown ups they have become.

You can just call me the investigative reporter!

Yes tonight I'm going to try out the solution . This is providing so much good medicine in the form of laughter for my husband that I just can't give up! He helped me pull that waist cincher tight and I'm wearing it to bed fully expecting to wake up tomorrow with a tiny little waist!

Of course, I'm also the one who tries every new beauty cream and expects to wake up the next morning beautiful. Yes, I get disappointed a lot!

I'll be giving a report tomorrow. Stay tuned!

The Problem.....the Solution....

You know how sometimes people just have that natural ability to problem solve?? Well, I have been working on this particular problem and suddenly today.......having gone from church to the store to pick up some of the problem that I had been craving.......it just came to me. The solution to my problem was so simple.

So in the store, I pick up a couple bags of the problem and head back to the solution area. My dear, unsuspecting husband comes up as I'm comparing solutions and falls to the floor with laughter suggests that maybe if I just don't buy the problem, I won't need to buy the solution.

But ever the optimist, I replied that I wanted to try this my way. So here it is...

The Problem

The Solution

I so hope this works! I'll have to let you know later....gotta go now, the problem is calling my name!

Things I remember.....

In these uncertain times, our trust cannot be in any one man or institution, but only in our Sovereign God.


Having said that, I just want to randomly and in no particular order, rant say a few things I remember.

The other Sunday night at church, our pastor was telling about standing on the grassy knoll in Dallas and seeing the X marks on the road where JFK was assassinated. He then said something that was very profound for me. He said JFK was assassinated a year before I (the pastor) was born. JKF was assassinated when I was 11 years old.


I don't say that to make the point that our pastor is young and I'm not....:) ....but to say 3 generations have passed since these and the things I talk about following have happened, and yet I can still remember not only the events, but the fear, horror and dread that accompanied those events.



I remember (or I remember hearing this talked about and probably learned it in school, since I was probably only about 5 years old when this happened) that Nikita Khrushchev said Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you! Or to put it as I've always put it, We will bury you with your OWN shovels! I challenge you to think about that, is that not what we're doing right now in America?

Our economy with our greed and our feeling that we deserve things that mean we will be living above our means. Things that we and our parents and their parent's generations worked years and saved to get? Taking God out of everything, challenging the Pledge of Allegiance.....for heaven's sake, the countries that hate us really don't have to do a thing. Just sit back and we'll bury ourselves with our own shovels.

I've always had a little saying I used with my children.....when you dig yourself in to a hole, STOP digging. American is in a hole. We've been digging for a long time. I think we should stop digging and begin to fill in the hole.


I think I must have been 10ish during the Cuban Crisis. Living in Florida with Cuba right below us, I was terrified. I remember the bomb drills! BOMB DRILLS! In my elementary school! Not 10 blocks from my home. My brothers and sisters and I are spaced 4 years apart, so several of us were in different schools. Daddy worked all over the county in his business. Mama was at home with a baby or three more. My biggest fear during that time was that we would be bombed (If you lived through that, you know that we really believed that could happen) and we couldn't all get together. That we couldn't find each other. I can remember that feeling even today.



I remember JFK being assassinated. I was in the 6th grade. We had a moment of silence and were then excused to go home for the day. I remember thinking what will happen now?



These are things people just 12 years younger than me didn't live through.



I know other things have happened, but I'm not sure I have actually felt fearful for our country on our own soil again in that way until 9/11.



Or until now, when it seems like we are indeed burying ourselves with our own shovels.

Thanks Leigh!

Thanks Leigh for this award!!! This is the love award and I do love reading Leigh's blog.












I want to pass this along to these blogs that I enjoy


reading........




Theresa


Leslie


Tonja

Dawn


There are tons of other blogs that I love to read! In fact I learn so much from other's blogs and i've found the most generous women in blogland. So to all of you I really give this award!

Standing in the rain.....

My sister stood in line for hours in this.....

To see this!























That's right on a rainy, stormy day thousands stood in line to hear our next Vice President of the United States speak.

Her pictures of Sarah are grainy because she was sitting up in the nosebleed section. She did get nearer while Sarah was signing autographs, but not quite near enough to get to shake her hand.

I'm so thankful that from the first time I saw Sarah Palin, she was not afraid to stand on a public stage and let her Christianity be known.

Our nation has gradually shoved God out of everything public and now we are seeing hard times. A result of that?? I won't speculate, God doesn't need me to speak for Him. I think all we need to do is take a good look at our country.

Then we need to PRAY.

The Pasture

We were in luck! The Welcoming Committee was off for the weekend!

You can drive for miles and miles in the 44 thousand acre woods called (at least by DH's family) Moody Pasture. The pasture contains millions of pine trees which were used for turpentining in Russell's grandfather's day, today they are harvested by lumber companies to make whatever various products pine trees make.

On this land are so many ponds and lakes and most of them are that sparkling blue that doesn't seem real. They also have sandy beaches. There is even one pond called the Russell J*nks Car Wash. In his mid 20's, Russell stopped one day to take a picture of a big 'gator and apparently put his truck in neutral instead of park. It started rolling and by the time he got to it it was hood deep in the pond. He sheepishly had to get help and get pulled out of the pond! That name is even on an area map of the acreage. If only someone had gotten a video of that!

Below is a picture of an old oil truck. We camped in a place called the oil well site.....years ago there was some drilling for oil done there. The wells are capped off and no one seems to know if there was any oil found or not. The family sincerely hopes they drill again and there is oil because they also retained the oil and mineral rights, which they have paid taxes on for years with no return. That's the pits! I'm not sure why the truck was just abandoned there, but as you can see the forest soon takes in whatever is left there.

Then, there's this little red car that is also being consumed by the trees and underbrush. I mean, did someone just drive in and decide to walk out??? It's a long way to the highway. There's no dead body in the car, someone checked long ago!

This is looking down one of the many, many roads that criss cross through the property. Most every road has a name. In fact, there are even a few street signs.....and intersections.....no kidding......not that it would help someone like me if I got lost. But my husband knows these woods well, having been in them all his life.

We saw a total of 4 deer at different times running on these roads.

















Here are a few rows of pine trees. At the oil well site, they were doing some cutting. When they cut, they take the pine cones for seed and put them in the nursery to start a new crop. There were huge basket like things filled with pine cones.

























Then right smack dab in the middle of these 44 thousand acres is a cemetery! Most of the headstones are people who died in the late 1800's and early 1900's.


























This is Blue Pond. An absolutely breathtaking, huge pond. I've never seen it so low. We drove on dry ground that we have swum (looked it up, it's the right grammar, looks wrong!) in and boated on. A lot of youngsters learned to ski in this pond. It was sad to see it that low as it is a majestic pond, home to many fish, turtles, probably snakes and a few alligators. When I learned about the alligators, I stopped swimming there. I have a very vivid imagination and could feel the tug from underneath the water every time I got in to swim.

In fact, when Russell's brother died several years ago, his ashes were scattered in this pond. MIL was saying she hadn't been there since then and I said, He's on dry ground now. Just kidding.....well, unless they washed out further, they really are on dry ground.

I did not grow up going to the woods. The woods are a little frightening to me because I am a small city girl......very small city, but city nonetheless. To my husband, this is a sanctuary of safety and good times.

He was a bit wistful this time, saying he wished his grandfather (Pappy) had kept out portions of the land. But, as my very wise grandmother used to say if wishes were horses, we'd all be a riding. When my husband and his sister and cousins are gone, so will the rights to go there. Our children, who have grown up there will have the gate permanently locked.

Not too isolated!

Good news all around about our "camping" trip. We do have internet connection. Cell service is real spotty, but I like that. At least for a day or two!

One of the things I was concerned about was how dark I knew it would be out here. We took chairs outside, sat and leaned our heads back and looked up at the sky. The stars! Oh, my goodness, you don't really see them unless you're in the complete dark. We turned off the lights in the motor home and just sat in total amazement. I was looking for a falling star, but didn't see one. You will not hear me using the word awesome very much. That's because I think awesome means something that inspires awe and that we use it way too much for just the everyday things in life. But, let me tell you. Those stars were awesome, awe inspiring and a very visual evidence of the Creator. As the night grew darker, they just seemed to pop out and sparkled.

My husband said, how can anyone see this and believe there is no God?

Today, we rode around so husband could fill up his deer feeders. We saw three small deer crossing the road. I said Run, run for your life! Hunting season is near!!!! They must have heard me because they did run. Bless their little hearts!

I'm enjoying this. I have to admit I wasn't expecting too, but I am!

Off for the weekend....

We're off for a weekend adventure.

We're taking our motor home to the woods, and I do mean the woods.

Russell's grandfather owned a big piece of land about 45 minutes from where we live. Russell's mother lived there until she was in high school. They had a home, several other homes where workers lived and a commissary where they bought their daily supplies.

Russell's grandfather grew pine trees for turpentine. They had their own little school where Russell's mother and her brother and cousin, along with some other children who lived in the area went to school through the elementary years.

Later MIL's father sold the land, but retained hunting and fishing rights through his grandchildren. There are many beautiful ponds and lakes on the property and through the years my husband's family and friends have spent many happy times there. So, that's where we're going this weekend. We will take the motorhome and I'm just hoping we don't get stuck!

As you can see from the picture, this is the head of the welcoming committee in the pasture! I'm excited! Besides aligators, we know there are deer there, and if my imagination is worth anything, there are bears and wildcats......probably lions and other scary creatures!

I asked my husband what we were going to do while there, and he said he was putting up a tree stand, refilling the deer feeders.....please, I'm not in favor of the whole baiting the deer thing, so that part I just can't help. I then said, no, what am I going to do????? I guess I'll be taking lots of books. I've spent the morning getting the dogs ready. Putting the tick medicine on them. It is the woods you know! I do NOT want ticks on my babies!

We may or may not have cell and internet service. We usually get our internet through my husband's blackberry when we are on trips, but may not be able to get reception in the forestwoods. We'll see. He didn't inform me of this until this morning. So........have a good weekend everyone. If you never hear from me again, just know I'm in a bear's stomach somewhere in North Florida!

How did it become October.

Really! How fast can time fly? I did think of another stress reliever today. Candy Corn. That's right, you heard it here first! It is a great stress relief until a couple of days after you've downed the bag and you step on the scales. Here comes the stress again! Along with guilt and tight pants!

Today I took my mama to the doctor. She sang a song while lying on the examining table about October. She learned it in the second grade. The doctor was so impressed, she had her sing it again to the nurse. It went something like this ........

October gave a party, the birds and bees were there, the leaves of every color came drifting through the air. That's all she remembered....it was, after all, from the second grade and she's 85 now. Embarassing and uninhibited Amazing. That's my mama.

The doctor patted mama's stomach and said you look like you're pregnant to which mama replied, you're not so little yourself! The floor would not close over me, it just wouldn't.

When the doctor started telling her what she wanted her to do, she stopped and asked mama if she was going to do those things and mama said no, probably not. I just hung my head, shaking it all the while. She then said, well, at least I'm honest. Yes mam, you sure are!

Got her home, went to the grocery store and now I'm home! Home, sweet home.