God's Beauties

Last weekend, we spent the weekend at a church retreat. I always like...no, make that LOVE...this retreat, because for $120, we camp and eat. No cooking!!!! The food is always varied and delicious, too :-)

So anyways, I walked around the lake on the boardwalk every single day that we were there (in addition to back and forth to the camper zillions of times a day, plus riding my bike around!) Sunday morning dh walked with me, and we were blessed with a real NATURE walk. First, we came around a bend, and there was a doe 15 feet ahead of us. We stood and watched each other, and she finally crossed over the boardwalk and into a more brushy area where she watched us slowly pass by. Guess there were some good eats and she wasn't going to leave them! Then, further down the boardwalk, we encountered a hummingbird. Now I don't know about you, but I love hummingbirds. They're just so cute and tiny and active. This one was definitely active! So active that I'm not sure she knew we were there. She was enjoying the purple thistle flowers clustered next to the boardwalk. It was neat seeing her circle each flower, then flit to the next flower and circle it. Then she found a stand of wild snapdragons. She buzzed several before she found one that was full of nectar. Then she quazi-perched on a blade of grass as she drank and drank and drank from the snapdragon flower. She finally got her fill and went up into a pine tree for a bit of a rest. We probably stood watching her for 5 minutes before we finally moved on. My dh even commented that we'd had a REAL nature walk ;-)

Today's Praise!

My dh is going back to work tonight! You may remember, he had a heart attack Memorial Weekend, and he's been off work ever since. Off work means no incidental income because he's not technically f/t, so he doesn't get paid sick time, or benefits. No biggie, except when he has to be off ;-) Anyway, he's doing really well--he's building good exercise habits, and he has a stash of healthy foods ready to take and squirrel away at work instead of eating pizza and junk food all the time.

One other great piece of news. He had a lipid profile drawn last week, and his cholesterol dropped from over 300 when he had the heart attack, to 147 now! That's >50% in 2 months! A bit of the credit can go the medication he's on, but that would only have dropped his level 20%--the rest of the credit goes to his exercising and eating a vegetarian diet. Rock on, hubby :-0

Such a flunkie mom

Some days you just don't have a brain ;-) DD10 was at her art class this morning, so I did school with ds5 while she was gone. Got all done and started to fix lunch, when I realized we hadn't touched his math! Bad mom!!! But thank goodness for www.rainforestmaths.com! I brought my computer out to the dining room table and got him going on that site, and I think he played there for nearly an hour! He loved it and wants to do his math there every day. I suppose now I've created a monster, LOL ;-)

Things that don't go bump in the night

Good thing we don't go to bed very early--you miss so much if you do ;-) I was just ready to read to the kids before bedtime last night when my mom called and said it was party time--the Night Blooming Cirrus was blooming. If you have never seen a night bloomer, it's a cactus plant that has the most spectacular, huge, fragrant, white blooms. Each bud only opens once, after dark, and it will be closed by the time you get up in the morning. Mom had been at my house, and when she walked back in to her house, she could smell the flower. Actually, we found 3. Nothing like pictured in the above link--can you imagine THAT many??? The most we ever had at once was 14, when I was a teen--we had a big party that night!

As we were heading back across the lawn to our house, the International Space Station passed right over our heads. I read on Friday that it's supposed to be visible a lot this month--that was accurate info, evidently ;-) I see that if we go out a bit after 10 tonight we should see it again, so maybe we'll give that a try. We have a lot of tall trees around our house so it has to be directly overhead for a good view. To see when it might be visible from your neck of the woods in the next couple of weeks, check the Human Space Flight Orbital Tracking page.

So, my word of advice for your Sunday is: go out after dark, you never know what you'll see ;-)

We're home from vacation!

I know, I'm neglecting my poor blog again ;-) So here's the long-awaited photo update to show a bit of what we did on vacation.


Here's ds5 playing Legos with Auntie (dh's younger sister, with whom we stayed)

And here he is, sleeping. I went to wake him up one morning and couldn't even find him--there was just a pile of blankets on his air mattress. I thought he was in bed with Auntie, but he wasn't. Finally I found him under his pillow and blankie--he was so zonked he didn't even hear me take the picture!

We got to visit dh's two sons who live on the East Coast, and meet the rest of the family that we hadn't met yet. Here is oldest brother with his 3 y/o twins, and of course my kids.

One of the highlights of our trip was attending one of the last performances of Beauty and the Beast on Broadway. The show ended a week after we saw it! DS5 professed to not like the show--except of course when Gaston met his demise--but every time some techno-trick happened onstage, he was all eyes and ears and wanting to know how they did that, plus counting how many spotlights might be shining on a particular actor at a particular time, and of course, figuring out all of the colored lights! He didn't wiggle and squirm a whole lot, so I'm thinking he enjoyed it more than he let in ;-) Here are my kids and their little cousins in front of the stage door with the poster.

Another highlight was the trip dd10 and I took to American Girl Place, on her 10th birthday. We even did it all by ourselves--no daddy, no other relatives! We took the bus into the city, and then walked the 10 or so blocks from the Port Authority bus station, over to the store. And it wasn't even scary for us country bumpkins ;-) DD got her doll's hair styled, and bought a couple of small things for ds5 (lip gloss and a bath puff) with her money, and then I spent money on her for her birthday. She bought 4 outfits, 2 pairs of shoes, and a few other things--and then dh called and said to spend a bit of money on his debit card as well, so she got to pick out an outfit for herself to match what she'd gotten her doll. We attended "Circle of Friends," their stage-show musical, and also had lunch in the cafe. It was a wonderful, fun day. Here's a pic of us at the cafe.

At the Ben Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, there were many learning experiences, including a huge model of the human heart that you could go through, a lifesaving trainer, dissections, and lots of other fun stuff. There was also an electricity exhibit with lots of self-powered generators. Here ds5 is turning one of the many cranks he turned that day, to make something light up or move! After that, is dd10 in her new job. She's been hired as a telegraph operator. Now to brush up on those Morse Code skills ;-)

The King Tut exhibit was in this same museum, but of course, you can't take any pictures there--what a shame :-( I'll have to steal my grandpa's DVD of the exhibit when I want a refresher. Suffice it to say, the exhibit is fabulous! What a wonderful collection of antiquity. The displays were labelled well, so I could explain even to a 5 y/o what most of the artifacts were. He was most interested in anything that had gold in it ;-) He also was impressed by the two oldest trumpets in the world. And, having just read the Biblical account of Moses and the 10 plagues, he liked seeing Pharoah's sword and imagining that it might have been like what the Pharoah in Moses' time also had.

We visited the ocean one sunny warm afternoon. Gorgeous day but the surf was high--probably 4-6' waves breaking at shore, and the rip tide has been dangerous all summer. SIL actually broke a bone in her foot! A wave knocked her down, and as she was trying to get up, another wave hit her and hyperextended her foot and cracked a little bone behind her 3rd toe. Ouch! So now she's in a cast and her summer in the pool isn't happening the way she intended ;-)

Another day on the water was spent visiting the Statue of Liberty. A word of warning--you can't just go to the island and go into the Lady anymore! You have to have a pass to get in to her, and that pass has to be reserved 2-10 days prior to your visit! We didn't know, so we didn't go in. Oh well, it was a nice day for a boat ride, and we had a great walk around the island.

I don't have pics of our messed up hotel reservation, but a word of warning to the wise--don't book if you're talking to an operator in a Third World country!!! I booked thru Yahoo Travel, which uses Travelocity, and they booked me into a hotel 1.5 hrs away from where I wanted to be! Needless to say, we were NOT happy campers over that screw-up. Added to that, when we got home, I discovered that they charged me for cancelling the reservation, even tho it was their mistake, so I now have to wait up to 14 days to get my money back! You wouldn't need a pic of that--just think of a teapot steaming, that would be me, LOL. And now you've been warned.

That's the nutshell version--the rest would be way too long for a blog. Maybe next time I'll blog daily, LOL.