#325 - Thanksgiving Blessings

We've had a great Thanksgiving weekend! I have lots of pics to post, but for now I'll just post one of Vicki, Trent, & Aidan! They stayed with us for a few days and we enjoyed their visit very much! I'm editing pics that I took of them right now :) And Brian and I finally upgraded to iPhones, so this will be my first post using it!

#324 - Our Twinkie Girls

Our girls have never really looked exactly alike, but sometimes Holly will put on a pair of Anna's glasses and she surprises us!

These girls are a hoot!

We're looking forward to Thanksgiving! We've had a busy week cleaning and getting our house ready for company. But Brian and I did manage to get a date night Monday night and we got some Christmas shopping done! He also bought my present early. :) I've been needing an external flash and they were on sale and I had a coupon, so we saved over $50! The girls had a sleepover with Nana and Aunt Pat that night. :) And last night Erica and I had a girls date night, complete with dinner and a movie!

My niece Vicki, Trent, and Aidan are coming tomorrow night and staying until Sunday! We are so excited :) They want me to take Christmas pictures for them on Friday and I plan on cooking our Thanksgiving meal on Saturday. Tomorrow we're going to go to Brian's mom's house and then to see his papaw. I'll probably do a recap post on Monday night with lots of pics from our weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Psalm 100:4-5
"Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
And into His courts with praise.
Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.
For the LORD is good;
His mercy is everlasting,
And His truth endures to all generations."

#323 - From 2009

I took pictures today of a family and I didn't want to post their photos on my blog without permission, so I went back into my archives!

I found this picture that I took on this day in 2009! Our crawlspace access is under our porch and we got tired of crawling under our porch everytime we needed to do something. So Brian cut out an access from our porch.

I know, how exciting to post it 2 years later! Haha!

Proverbs 1:5
"A wise man will hear and increase learning,
And a man of understanding will attain wise counsel,"

#313 - #322 - Our Last Few Weeks in Cell Phone Pics

I figured the easiest way to catch up with my P365 was to upload some pics from my cell phone that I've taken from the past few weeks! Then I can start fresh tomorrow. :)

The girls in their first ever paddle boating adventure.....by themselves! This was at our homeschool co-op fall cookout.
We went up to fill Granny's cooler with corn so she could feed their ducks.
One really nice afternoon we loaded up the bikes and went to a walking trail in town.
We attended a county fiscal court meeting. Uncle Larry (Poppy's twin brother) is the one on the right side in the pink shirt. Papaw got to come home today!!! He broke his hip on August 3rd and has been in the hospital, Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation, & a health care center since then. He was more than ready to be back home!!! The girls and I made some posters and we hung up some balloons to surprise him! :)

Psalm 30:4
"Sing praise to the LORD, you saints of His,
And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name."

#312 - He's Finished!

The girls and I are very proud of Brian! He has been taking classes at Eastern for his work during the past 2 years and he got his certification tonight!

I love this man! :)

Ephesians 5:33
"Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband."

#311 - The Final Product

Remember back in the summer when "I shot the Sheriff"?

They used that picture for their 2012 calendar!

We tried to get Brian's dad to stand to the side, but he just wanted to blend in. He is 3rd from the right in the second row.

Exodus 14:14
"The LORD will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.”

#310 - Official School Pictures

I'm helping with our homeschool co-op's yearbook class and we've been taking the individual pictures. Here are the girls' "official school pictures" :)

Holly - 4th grade
Anna - 7th grade

Psalm 119:105
"Your word is a lamp to my feet
And a light to my path."

#309 - Natural Bridge Field Trip

Last Saturday we took a little field trip to the Natural Bridge State Park. It was a beautiful day!

Here are a few pics from our day:

Even though we've been exercising more - that hike just about got me! Holly stayed back and hiked with me while Brian and Anna waited for us at the top!

The girls squeezing through - "fat man's misery!" on the side of the bridge.

The other side.

On top of the Natural Bridge.

We hiked on around to the rock behind of Holly in this pic.

Loved this tree :D

The girls standin on the rock with Natural Bridge behind them.

Brian and me

The last time we were here was on our 1st wedding anniversary! I'll have to find that pic and scan and post it!

Natural Bridge

Enjoying the view!

Very close to the bridge was the Red River Gorge area. There is a really neat train tunnel there.

Inside the tunnel.

One of the really neat rocks at the gorge.

It was a fabulous day and I can't wait to go back!

Psalm 119:18
"Open my eyes, that I may see
Wondrous things from Your law."

#308 - Our Family's Biggest Loser

Two weeks ago yesterday I had to have a physical for our health insurance and my new doctor told me about a website that helps you track your daily calories and exercise. So Anna and I started doing it that very day I went to the Dr. and we've been doing a lot of exercising! But it also means that I've been getting up earlier and going to bed earlier, so my blogging time has been cut a little bit. :) We've also been busy and I'm going to try to get everything posted and caught up by the weekend.

Last Tuesday Brian thought of the idea of doing a biggest loser for our family. So we separated into teams with Anna and me on one team (since we had kind of already started) and Brian and Holly on the other. The goal is to see which team can lose the most percentage body fat by April 1st, 2012. The winners will receive some $$moolah$$ :) We had our first weigh in last night and Anna won for the week! We've just been eating healhier and trying to get back into the habit of eating better foods.

Here is my progress and widget from the site:


1 Corinthians 6:19
"Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?"

#307 - Water Treatment Plant Field Trip

I'll eventually get caught up with my P365...maybe. :)

Last week we went with our homeschool co-op group to our local water treatment facility. Anna is taking a chemistry class and one of her teachers set it up for us. It was very interesting and we learned a lot.

I'm going to share what I remember about the process, just so we'll have something to look back on and review. Just bear with me. :)

Our city gets it's water from a lake reservoir that is pumped into another spring fed reservoir, that eventually ends up at the treatment plant. The picture I took from the first room/stage it comes into had some kiddos from our co-op in it and I didn't want to post without permission. But just imagine a room with two HUGE tanks :)

At that step they add chlorine and some other chemicals to the water to make the organics all clump (technical term: coagulate:) together. The above ^ picture is what the water looks like with all of the "organics" rising to the top. The organics included leaves, dirt, fish particles, etc. Swimming is not allowed in the reservoirs and there are no streams leading into it, so it is truly clean(ish) water when it gets to the treatment plant.

The men that work there and gave us the tour called this nice stuff - "sludge!" In the picture above, that top layer of sludge is being poured off of the water.

Then the water is transferred into several different tanks where it goes through another filtration process. It is pushed down through several layers of charcoal/sand/etc? to be cleaned.

While we were there these cleaning tanks were getting backwashed. Kind of like when you backwash a swimming pool pump. I think they said that each tank gets backwashed every 48-52 hours.

These pumps were at the bottom of those filtration tanks. There the water was pumped into water lines that infused more chemicals and sanitized it. From there it was pumped into a huge underground pump up on top of a mountain beside the plant. Then it will eventually end up at our house! We normally buy water bottles and even after knowing all of the steps they carefully take to insure our drinking water is safe.......I'll probably still buy our drinking water!

After our tour was over we walked down to the sludge ponds.

This is the stuff that was poured off of the top in that first picture. :) These are holding ponds that get emptied every so often by someone that comes in and pumps it to a farm. Believe it or not there is some great nutrients in that sLuDge! The trees were still pretty and if you didn't know any better you'd think this was taken at a pretty lake and not at a holding pond for this stuff......

Ha!

It was a great day and we were excited that Brian got to go along with us!

Very interesting to know that all of the water that was created @6000 years ago on this earth is the water that we use today. It is always going through the water cycle.

Genesis 1:1-10
The History of Creation
"1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”
7 Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.
9 Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good."

#300 - #306 - Catching Up!

Wow, it feels like I haven't blogged in forever! It's just been a busy week and our computer has been doing crazy stuff again! Something about a drive not being installed properly, so another re-boot is coming it's way soon. :)

So to catch up:

Last weekend I took pictures for some friends and their precious little girls. We had a great time and I've spent a lot of time this week sorting and editing the 767 pictures that I took.

Sunday our morning worship was great and after church Brian thought of the idea for everyone to write down 2 things we wanted to do and whatever was picked out of the bowl we'd do. So the first thing out was "go to the mall" :)The second one picked was "go to the mall!" Hmm.... Then we picked a third thing in case we had time to do something else and "Best Buy" was the next one drawn! So to Lexington we went. Of course, just to look, not to buy anything. Anna had a little b-day money that she was able to spend, but she decided to keep saving up for something bigger. And I just drooled over the external flashes at Best Buy.

Monday our homeschool co-op was cancelled because of halloween so after some school we headed over to the farm to check the trail cam. We just viewed the pics on my camera and left that memory card in the trail cam, so I'll be sure to post those 30 pictures of 3 black cows that were captured next time.....haha! But on our way back out of the "holler" Holly almost stepped on this tortoise/turtle (I should know the difference being their teacher, but I won't lie - I have no idea!) But check out it's eye ^!So after taking turns holding it we headed on home.We don't celebrate Halloween, but we did buy some candy to have on hand for this cutie when she came by.

The girls are always dressing up and they both did dress up on Monday as Nancy Drew so Bella could see them, but they ended up changing before she got there.

Yesterday we toured our local water treatment plant with our co-op and I'll do a post on that soon. It was very interesting! So I think that pretty much catches us up for the last week.

1 Thessalonians 5:22
"Abstain from every form of evil."