Church picnic

Yesterday was our church’s annual picnic.

We get together each year in autumn to have a picnic together, play games, go horseback riding, and just have fun together.

It was unseasonably hot this year. I choose to stay inside where it was air conditioned. Destiny stayed with me. We watched Bowden while Suzanne went horseback riding.

Boiled shrimp, fried shrimp, fried chicken, fried catfish, hushpuppies, French fries, coleslaw, potato salad, pickled green tomatoes, and onion, cucumber, tomato salad, with sweet iced tea and a fudge brownie.

Needless to say, after eating all this being the gluten I am, I could hardly move, and didn’t eat for the rest of the day.

Suzanne’s birthday dinner

Today is my older daughter’s birthday. We had her birthday dinner last night. I prepared her request of spaghetti carbonara, lima beans, garlic bread, and chocolate cake.

I also bought a music album for her that she wanted to get.

Mother’s trip to the Ark Encounter

Mom traveled by bus with her childhood best friend and several others to see the Ark Encounter this past week. My her step-daughter was able to drive to join her for this and they had a great time.

See You at the Pole

This past Wednesday, I took my daughter to school early so we could take part in, ‘See You at the Pole’.

‘See You at the Pole’ (SYATP) is an annual gathering of Christian students at school flag poles, churches, and the Internet for the purposes of worship and prayer. The event is student-initiated, student-organized, and student-led, and it usually takes place on the fourth Wednesday in September.

Prescott Raceway

Red Spider Lily

Flip Sunday

Flip Sunday is when my church, once a year, changes the order of church on Sunday morning to introduce Sunday school to people who normally only come to worship service.

We usually have Sunday school at 9:30, dividing into smaller classes by age or gender, and study parts of God’s word together. Then we come together at 10:45 to have a worship service with singing, prayer and a sermon from our pastor, who is an excellent teacher.

On flip Sunday, we have worship service first, and then Sunday school. After that, we have a potluck, where everyone brings some food to share. I have made a salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, black olives and pasta, with an Italian dressing.

Here are some links to our pastor’s blog, videos of our Sunday morning worship services, and to a movie about Jesus’ life, which you can watch in 2,149 languages.

Hot Springs Labor Day weekend

I decided to take both my daughters and my grandson on a mini vacation in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

We stayed in a hotel and ate in restaurants. We went shopping and saw several of the local attractions, as most tourist might normally do.

Because it was three people, instead of two, and we were not camping and cooking, it cost me around $800 for the three day weekend.

We left Saturday morning, and the drive was only two hours, so we had lunch and then before we even checked into the hotel, my daughters wanted to go to the cinema to watch ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’.

After checking into the hotel, they wanted to go shopping.

The next morning, we attended a nearby church before having brunch.

We went to ‘Mid-America Science Museum’ in the afternoon. We have been here many times. The Tesla Coil can be kind of loud, so Bowden had headphones. He wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

Sunday evening, while Bowden and I stayed at the hotel to rest, the girls had fun at an escape room.

Finally, on Monday, before returning home, we went to the Alligator Farm Petting Zoo.

Destiny’s birthday

1) Big sister Suzanne with baby sister Destiny. 2) Destiny just before we moved to China. 3) Grandpa taking Destiny to her first school. 4) Now she is 15 years old.

We called my daughter to the table and had put a single candle in a dozen mini blueberry muffins, told her, “Happy Birthday’, and that was it. But then we surprised her with her favorite meal, cheesy chicken spaghetti and corn. I fixed the spaghetti. My mother cooked the corn, as well as, asparagus and butter beans.

For desert, my daughter wanted a coconut cake, which I surprised her with. I don’t like coconut, so I also had a chocolate pie.

Shrew

Baby found another shrew right outside the house front door and was just playing with it. I’m not sure the shrew was having fun. At one point, I thought the shrew was hurt and caught it, but it was fine. When I let it go again, it got away. Baby was sad.

Tractive GPS pet tracking

We can now see everywhere the cat goes. The dark blue thing on her collar is a GPS. We can monitor her using an app on our phone or tablet. The orange tile can help us find her using Bluetooth and plays a song.

Storm damage

My gazebo got flattened. A nearby neighbor’s tree was blown over. And a building at the end of the street had part of it’s roof ripped off.

Back to school

First day of 9th grade.

Rattlesnake

It was only a matter of time before Baby brought a snake home.

Family

Lawn mower

I recently needed to change the blades on my lawnmower. I bought a lift so I could reach the blades on the underside. I could only change one of the two blades, because the other was too tight. I going to try to change the other again later. I think they are going to work very well.

An odd few videos

The tray is for holding bird seed. Since my cat loves to catch the birds, we moved the seed to a hanger in the back. Sometimes we have squirrels visit out front. I guess these birds didn't get the message about the seed moving.

We had a family of three raccoons visit out back one evening.

Since Baby was lying in front of the car when I had to leave to go to the store to pick up groceries, I took her with me. She used to ride with me often, especially to take Destiny to school or pick her up after. She didn't like riding at first, but got used to it and seemed to enjoy it when she realized she was safe. This time, she wanted to talk the whole time to the store and back.

Mom’s birthday

It was a long day. I took the day off because my older daughter, who severely broke her ankle a few months ago, needed me to take her to a clinic in a nearby town so the doctor could remove some screws that were holding her ankle together for it to heal properly. Before we went, I mowed the front and back lawn, since it is cooler in the mornings.

After we returned in the afternoon, I picked up a flowering bush as a birthday gift, and went home to bake a chocolate sugar free cake with sugar free frosting. I also cooked fried shrimp, garlic bread, baked beans and asparagus for my mother’s dinner.

Cat Parkour

My bedroom is on the other side of this wall, and since I wake up early every morning, I go to bed early every evening. As you might can imagine, it can be quite difficult to get to sleep with the cat exercising.

Because it’s summer time now, and our cat loves to go outside. I let her out in the mornings, but by noon, the temperatures our around 40 degrees Celsius. I keep her in the house for the rest of the day. She naps most of the afternoon, but is full of energy by evening. We have to play with her to get her to settle down so everyone can sleep.

After coming home from vacation.

Our cat was happy to see us come home. I still had to cut the grass outside, unload and unpack, and put up the tent in back of the house so it could dry before storing it away for the summer. Destiny also helped me to put out, inflate, and fill the pool before placing the gazebo over it. Needless to say, I was ready for my summer working hours to begin on Monday, even though it was Memorial Day.

She gets into all kinds of trouble. She accidently tore a hole in the top of my gazebo and nearly fell into the swimming pool. She loves to hunt all kinds of things outside in many different places and bring them into us, such as this skink she took the tale off of.

When Baby is closed up inside the house because it is too hot outside; more than 40 degrees Celsius; she sits at the door begging to go out and trying to figure out how she can open it.

When she does go out, it is always to hunt. One day she caught a rabbit and brought it inside the house. It was screaming when she brought it inside. And other than losing a big tuft of fur, it was fine, so we took it out back to release it, leaving Baby inside so she couldn’t see where we let it go.

The very next day, she caught a mouse and brought it inside. It was still warm, but not moving. Either it was playing dead or actually was dead. There were no apparent injuries. I through it outside far from the house where hopefully Baby will not find it to bring it back in to play with.