Father's Day!!

This was a great day to celebrate John and our Fathers. We have great Dads, Charles and Olen, who taught us well. Bryan, JT and Luci have a great example of what a good, Christian man is in their Daddy.


Audrey is in town with her two girls, Maggie (2) and Haley (7 months). We had a great afternoon with all of them. Here are the pictures of our day:



Aunt Luci trying to hold Haley, who is nearly as big as Luci!

My favorite picture from today! Niece Maggie is only 2 months older than Luci, but what a difference those two months make.

The girls had a blast playing dress up and jumping on the mattress in Luci's room.

Princess Maggie.

Pretty Haley

Pucker up!

John is getting Haley ready for the next Huntsville Stars game.

I think we have a gymnast on our hands! Luci.

John loves taking the kids to the creek, and taking Maggie was no exception. JT always has fun, too. Maggie said the rocks made big splashes.

The whole gang--JT, Luci, John, Haley, Audrey, Maggie and Bryan.

This was just too fun to leave out. Trying to get 3 kids under 3 to look in the right direction is difficult!

Audrey and Maggie.

Bathing Beauties.

Bryan watching (?) the girls while Daddy cooks on the grill.

PICTURES!!!!

Here are the photos I couldn't publish before. I included the text from the previous post to explain them. Enjoy!

Here are our local heroes, saving property on Wednesday, June 13. If you had really good eyes and I had taken a better picture, you could see the burned place goes on and on back there--snakes through the woods to pretty close to the neighbor's house. Yipes!


John took Luci and Bryan for a ride. Luci will tell you that she loves riding, and that she hates it--it depends on whether or not she remembers how NOISY riding the tractor is! The tractor wasn't needed when we lived in the apartment while the house was built. John's gone a whole year without his little tractor! This was a very good day.

Aubie Update: Aubie is not here with us anymore. Apparently we were just boarding him for a few weeks for a neighbor. We still have not figured out which neighbor...but Aubie appears every once in a while, neatly brushed and still well-fed. He answers to Aubie, so we hope that his real family are not Bama fans.

Luci is learning to wash dishes...or, as we say around here, Luci helps us mop the floor. She applies the water and Mommy mops it up. (John says, "what do you mean, 'Mommy mops it up?!' I do the dishes after supper around here!" Yes, you do, and I appreciate it very much. Mommy mops up after breakfast and lunch.)

JT was invited to Tyler's birthday party at Chuck E Cheese's. I took Bryan and Luci, too, and bought tokens for them. Everyone had a blast. Luci loved counting out her tokens. Luci was scared of the climbing equipment until Bryan went up with her. Now she loves it!

Vacation Bible School was this week. Ours is a three-day program. We would have a longer program, but as Jeannie, one of our VBS leaders says, "Three days is all the fun we can stand." The face painting booth on our last day (we had a county fair going on, really fun!) was outside the nursery window. Luci talked the nursery ladies into taking her outside to get her face painted. I think she'll be in politics someday! She can talk people into doing all sorts of things.

Luci is learning to do handstands all on her own, without any prodding from us! That bowl in front of Luci is holding a snack. It is not a doggy water bowl, no matter what it looks like. :)

Kalyn and her Mommy came over for play today. It was so fun! Kathy brought another outfit her mother, Millie, made--it is so cute. Luci's wearing the new outfit and bouncing as hard as she can. Kalyn is busy chatting on her cell phone.

Bryan was able to pick the first vegetable from our garden. He ate a tiny radish yesterday and proclaimed that it tasted just like a radish.



JT made bubble gum! Laura, Katie and Suzi-Q, JT's bringing some to share! We can have a bubble-blowing contest!

Fires

We are under critical drought warning. Extremely dry, the same conditions that Florida had when their big fire started on the Georgia border last month.

Yesterday there were fires in hay fields very close to us. If the trees had caught fire yesterday, well, I wouldn't be using this computer. It was waaaaay too close for comfort. Our neighbor, Tree, called and told me to look out the window. Black smoke. A combine had caught on fire. Her husband is a fire fighter in town but was called up to help the volunteer force out here. Tree (her nickname; her given name is Trinicia) said he'd call back if we were to evacuate. I panicked and called John, blubbering to him. Then I got the boys to get everything they thought was precious and put that stuff in the van. I got out boxes of things from China...Luci lost her home once, I am not going to let her lose her homeland twice. My stack of boxes was 4 feet tall and the boys had the XBox and various games in the van. Now I know what they think is precious! :) JT said that next he was going to get his t-shirts and pants. At least one of us would have clothes. (Luci would have something, also; I got several of her outfits and some socks and shoes, too.)

At this point of Susan's panic, Bryan came in from the backyard and said the smoke was all white. What a relief. We got in the van and drove to see the damage. It was an awesome, awful sight. I looked the area up on the Google maps. They have taken new photos of our area in the last couple of months. Our house is now on the satellite photo and the area that burned got as close as about 2,000 feet as the crow flies. All together, the field was a meandering 1/2 mile of dry hay (now ash).

THEN...Today I looked out the back window and saw smoke again! This was south of us. I called 9-1-1 and the lady there said that the fire department was already there. I asked her if the trees had caught yet, should I start packing? She put me on hold and when she came back in a few seconds, she told me that she didn't know, but the guys were already working on the fire. JT and I hopped into the van and headed out to see just where this conflagration was. It was just a bit further from yesterday's, and it was heading south, away from our house.

This is just too scary. One time, when I was about 7 years old, we were on a vacation to visit the relatives in Tennessee. I remember Grandmother saying she was praying for rain. I thought that was a stupid thing to pray for, didn't she realize we were on vacation? Mom probably thought, "oh, no, there are FIVE children and two adults in this station wagon, it had better not rain!" But now I understand, and I am the silly grandmother praying for rain.

Catching Up

I have a bunch of pictures to post, but I can't get that part to work right now. I'll just describe some of what has been going on and later post some pics.

Aubie Update: Aubie is not here with us anymore. Apparently we were just boarding him for a few weeks for a neighbor. We still have not figured out which neighbor...but Aubie appears every once in a while, neatly brushed and still well-fed. He answers to Aubie, so we hope that his real family are not Bama fans.

Luci is learning to wash dishes...or, as we say around here, Luci helps us mop the floor. She applies the water and Mommy mops it up.

JT was invited to Tyler's birthday party at Chuck E Cheese's. I took Bryan and Luci, too, and bought tokens for them. Everyone had a blast.

Vacation Bible School was this week. Ours is a three-day program. We would have a longer program, but as Jeannie, one of our VBS leaders says, "Three days is all the fun we can stand."

Luci is learning to do handstands all on her own, without any prodding from us! I can't wait to post that picture.

Kalyn and her Mommy came over for play today. It was so fun! Kathy brought another outfit her mother, Millie, made--it is so cute.

Bryan was able to pick the first vegetable from our garden. He ate a tiny radish yesterday and proclaimed that it tasted just like a radish.

JT made bubble gum!

You Know You Live in 2007 When....

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven't played Solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12 You're reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't#9 on this list AND NOW YOU ARE LAUGHING at yourself.


(and I would add my reaction to this list as #16--You automatically think, "I'll post this on my blog!!")