I stand corrected

In looking through some boxes this morning (yes, we still are in boxes to some degree and probably will be for awhile), I found some of Miss E's old menus and found I had misremembered the name of her restaurant...so I have corrected the title on the blog, but the URL will remain the same :) Don't you just love how creative children are? Miss E made this when she was about 3.5 years old. (she's 6 now, and when I showed it to her this morning, she laughed and commented about how she spelled "special" wrong ;) )

School Starts Tomorrow

Well, tomorrow marks the first day of the new school year here in our household. Miss E is so excited to start that she didn't want to lie down and go to sleep :) When I mentioned we were starting tomorrow, she sat straight up, swung her legs over the edge of her bed and just sat there beaming with excitement :) I asked her if she was ok and she said, "Mama, I'm just so excited we're starting school tomorrow!" What a blessing! Miss A and Mr. E are excited as well - pray for us as we embark on a new year of "formal" learning!

Spontaneity

Ok, well the spell checker says I spelled that right, so let's get on with it.

Some may say we're a spontaneous bunch around here. I'd have to agree and I'm glad of it!

Sunday a.m. when I woke up I didn't know where we were going to be going for worship services. CKB didn't have an appointment and we hadn't decided the day prior. In the course of getting ready to go, we decided to go up near Whitesboro to the Dixie Primitive Baptist Church.

Anyway, we had a nice drive out there and enjoyed the country sights. CKB was blessed to preach on Remembrance (and probably some other things I missed while trying to keep 4 children under the age of 6 still AND quiet on our pew).

As a sidenote, there are times when CKB will have the same "subject" on his mind for many weeks in a row. We may or may not be at the same church houses many weeks in a row (usually aren't these days), but the "subject" will remain on his heart. There have been times he's commented that his wife might be getting tired of hearing the same thing over and over again, but as all of you with small children WELL know, we mothers don't hear everything every Sunday a.m. due to our efforts to educate the children on how to behave during services and trying to keep them from distracting others. I've often replied to my dear husband that I don't mind at all when he preaches on a similar "subject" for a few Sundays in a row because sometimes it's not until the 3rd or 4th time that I feel like I'm really HEARING what he's preaching. Now, maybe it's just me; those of you with less "distractions" (ie, children) that hear every word, God bless you, but I, for one am thankful for hearing the same things over and over and over sometimes for without the multiple "hearings" I surely would miss a lot! I'm sure that all could have been said more eloquently, but hopefully y'all get the point :)

Again, I digress.
Where was I......ah yes, spontaneity...so, after services we headed off. On our way to the church house that morning we'd decided we wanted to head up into OK (that's Oklahoma, just in case you were wondering) for the afternoon, so off we went. We found a Sonic along the way, got our standard fare of corn dogs, grilled cheese and slushes for the children, a couple of hamburgers for CKB and I and off we went. It was such a wonderful feeling to just GO - nowhere in particular that we had to be, nowhere in particular that we wanted to be, except just to all be together. CKB was in charge of the map and I was driving. We headed north, naturally, and soon realized we need to just get an OK map since we live so close to OK now and our TX map just isn't detailed enough for the part of OK it shows. Still, we were able to navigate quite well as CKB is an excellent map reader...unlike myself :) We all have our faults and failures, eh? :)

So, we decided on a course and off we went, north on 377 up through Madill, OK, then on farther north on 177 up to Sulphur, OK. At Sulphur, we headed west on 7 to meet up with I35 and start our trip back home and boy, are we glad we did. Going along on 7 we happened to pass through just a small part of the Chickasaw National Recreation Area and it was beautiful! We immediately agreed we would have to make another trip up that way just to go there and spend a day exploring. Upon reaching I35, we headed South, back into Texas. Before reaching TX though, we passed by the exit to Turner Falls in the Arbuckle Mountains which is beautiful as well. We stopped off at the welcome center on the TEXAS side of the OK/TX border for a quick break and as an unexpected blessing ran into some folks from the New Boston Primitive Baptist Church that we had seen recently at the meeting we attended at the Paris Primitive Baptist Church. You just never know who you'll see and where!

I don't have words to describe this day except to simply say it was a wonderful day. Peaceful and relaxing; full of the beauty of God's creation; simply wonderful.

Gigantic Spider Web!

Destination: Lake Tawakoni State Park


Well, the other day...Friday, I believe, CKB read a news item about a HUMONGOUS spider web found in the Lake Tawakoni State Park. See here before you continue:

http://sciencemode.com/2007/09/02/huge-spider-web-attracting-the-curious-in-texas/

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iczi846SZROJfAb4muCH1LyvDRIA

and DEFINITELY see picture here:

http://media.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2007/aug/spiderweb540.jpg


Ok, so we thought this would be a good way to start off our school year - with a field trip :) So, being as CKB works from home and can take a little time off during the day and work later that night to "catch up", we pile into the van and take off to Lake Tawakoni....after a fun drive whereupon we follow yahoo map instructions and end up on some interesting roads (and I'm being nice here in that description) we finally make it to Lake Tawakoni State Park. Not much fanfare getting to this park....I think we came in the back way...not a single brown highway sign to let us know we were on the right path....again, I think we came the back way....envision partially completed roads....mud covering pavement roads....roads with NO street signs to tell you if you're even turning onto the right road....fun fun :)

So, as I was saying, we made it to the park and told the lady at the gate we were there to see the big spider web. She gave us a park map and said, "well, I don't know how much is left after all the rain and wind we had earlier today". Hmm. Ok, we said and proceeded on.

We drove on to the area where we were supposed to get out and walk from and headed on....wisely leaving the stroller in the car since due to the earlier rains, the paths were a tad muddy.

Here we are on our way to find the spider web(s):

Miss A: Where IS the spiderweb?

Mr. E: It's down this dark, creepy path...come on!


Miss E: I'm not too sure about this Daddy...

CKB: Come on, it'll be fun!

Mr. Baby: As long as I have my handy sippy cup, it'll be FINE!



..about 1/4 mile in, we found the right area, but sadly the storms had wreaked havoc on the massive web. We knew were in the right area as there were spiders EVERYWHERE - shudder - but it was still pretty neat to see what was left - the web was not gauzy and white, but BROWN, no doubt due to all the creepy crawlies who met their demise in it - and yes, it stunk pretty badly, but still, pretty neat to see different kinds of spiders virtually everywhere you looked. Somehow we made it out alive...er...I mean without anyone getting stuck in webs or having a spider fall on them :) Below are a few pictures from our trek....you never know where you might end up in a day, ya know? :)


We saw little spiders:




BIG SPIDERS:


interesting egg sacks and all sorts of little critters crawling around the webs:



Here is what was left of the web

close shot: (you should be able to click on this and any of the other pics for a larger/better view)



Notice how far away the wise photographer is from this haven of spiders galore! He he he. Seriously, it wasn't so bad :) and I was right there in the middle of it too...for a few moments ;)

On our walk back to the car, I think Mr. Baby's expression sums it up for us:

Mr. Baby: I do NOT ever want to see or smell that thing again!

Where's my sippy cup?!

(isn't that little hand on Daddy's back just precious?!) :) 'til next time......

September is Thyroid Cancer Awareness month

As you now know (if you read my previous entries, that is), my sister has thyroid cancer. She is currently in isolation in her home after receiving her RAI (radioactive iodine) pill on this past Wednesday. Please read the press release below and BE AWARE - a quick "neck check" at your next dr. visit wouldn't hurt!

Please continue to pray for my sister, Rebecca, and her family. Thanks!!!

PRESS RELEASE

ThyCa Invites You To Help Raise Awareness for Thyroid Cancer
Awareness Month -
ThyCa Volunteers Urge Everyone To Ask for a Neck Check for Early
Detection

Free Downloadable Tools and Tips Available at www.thyca.org

Thyroid cancer is one of the few cancers that has increased in
incidence over the past several years. It will be diagnosed in a new
record total of 33,550 people in the United States in 2007.

This is one of many reasons why ThyCa: Thyroid Cancer Survivors’
Association, Inc. sponsors Thyroid Cancer Awareness Month.

September will highlight the year-round activities of ThyCa
volunteers to:

• Increase thyroid cancer education;

• Raise awareness of the importance of early detection, treatment,
and lifelong monitoring; and

• Inform the public about ThyCa’s free information, resources, and
support.

• ThyCa also seeks to raise awareness of the need for more thyroid
cancer research.

ThyCa encourages everyone to ask for a neck check the next time they
visit their doctor. Signs to discuss with the physician include a
lump or fullness in the neck, lymph node swelling, difficulty
breathing or swallowing, or voice changes. A neck check can be done
quickly. Most thyroid cancer is treatable if found early, but some
types are aggressive and difficult to treat.

ThyCa's web site has a section titled Raise Awareness
http://www.thyca.org/awareness.htm
It has a radio public service announcement, plus numerous
downloadable materials. Among these are flyers entitled, “Find It
Early” (http://www.thyca.org/findearly.pdf) and “Know the
Signs” (http://www.thyca.org/knowsigns.pdf), a fact sheet titled
"About Thyroid Cancer” (http://www.thyca.org/AboutThyroidCancer.pdf),
and several additional publications.

Free wallet cards and free awareness brochures featuring actor and
thyroid cancer survivor, Catherine Bell, co-star of the hit TV series
J.A.G., are also available by mail.

ThyCa invites everyone interested to help with thyroid cancer
awareness efforts in their communities. Among the activities and
events during September:

• In Pennsylvania, on Saturday, September 8, from 8:30 a.m. to 4
p.m., the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and ThyCa are
sponsoring the Pittsburgh Thyroid Cancer Seminar, with numerous
physician speakers during the day.

• In Maryland, on Saturday, September 15, from 10:30 a.m. to noon,
Leonard Wartofsky, M.D., thyroid cancer specialist and past president
of the American Thyroid Association and The Endocrine Society, will
speak and answer questions at the monthly meeting of the ThyCa
Washington, DC, Thyroid Cancer Support Group.

• In Indiana, a volunteer is working with her surgeon on an awareness
campaign using the literature and materials from ThyCa.

• In Michigan, a volunteer plans to place an article each week in
September in the weekly employee newsletter at her workplace.

• In New Jersey, a corporate nurse will give a presentation and
distribute thyroid cancer awareness brochures and wallet cards to the
company’s more than 400 employees.

• Local support group meetings will bring thyroid cancer survivors
and caregivers together in person in September, as well as every
month, around the United States and in Costa Rica and Philippines.

• Survivors and caregivers around the world are wearing and giving
awareness wristbands and pins and giving awareness brochures and
flyers to their friends and relatives.

The web site www.thyca.org has more than 600 pages of information
about all types of thyroid cancer, diagnosis, treatment, research,
clinical trials, and questions to ask your doctor. It also has
numerous downloadable publications plus details about local support
groups, e-mail support groups, a calendar of coming events, the Rally
for Research, and the 10th International Thyroid Cancer Survivors’
Conference, to be held this year on October 19-21, 2007, near San
Francisco, California.

For information and free materials about thyroid cancer, ThyCa's free
support services, and the conference, e-mail to thyca@thyca.org, call
toll free 1-877-588-7904, fax to 1-630-604-6078, write to PO Box
1545, New York, NY 10159-1545, or visit www.thyca.org.

###

Help spread the word…
- September is Thyroid Cancer Awareness Month
- San Francisco, California, October 19-21, 2007—The 10th
International Thyroid Cancer Survivors' Conference
- Free year-round support services, awareness materials, and education
- Visit www.thyca.org for details

###

Trains, Trains, Trains

As you probably already know, we have a great train enthusiast in our household. This summer we had planned to go and ride the steam train down at the Rusk/Palestine State Park. We called, made a reservation and thought we were all set to go until they called us back and said they needed to reschedule due to the heavy rains causing washouts on the track. Disappointed, we rescheduled and again thought we were all set. Fast forward to the new date 2 weeks later, I'm speedily packing up for a long weekend and the phone rings. You guessed it, they cancelled again. There had been a major washout and all train rides were cancelled indefinitely. Sigh. Oh well, I thought, at least I can stop stressing about getting all the packing done. I asked when they thought the train would be running again and was told they didn't know, but to call back in a few weeks. Sigh. Thankfully, Mr. E wasn't too upset...I believe he said something to the effect of "well, we can go to the zoo then" ;)

So, I was thinking about the train rides again today and wondering what the status was on the tracks and found this info.
http://www.texasstaterailroad.com/
Can you imagine being on the train the day this happened? Yikes!

Well, the American Heritage Railroad is taking over the train rides - I believe the State Parks lost their funding. From what I can see here, we could still go ride (as soon as the tracks are fixed), but it looks like the rates are higher as we suspected would happen.
http://www.texasstaterr.com/

Maybe we'll go sometime in the future, who knows. Or, maybe we'll stay a little closer to home for now and drive over to Grapevine to see what their trains are like.
http://www.grapevinesteamrailroad.com/depot.asp

Ah well :) For now, our little conductor will have to be content with running his batter-powered Thomas the Tank Engine trains around his tracks....in his room :)

Just goofing around...

We were just goofing around taking some pictures the other night and I thought I'd share a few - never got a good one of Miss E or Mr. Baby, but here are some of Miss A and Mr. E. :)
Please ignore the chocolate face in the last picture - I don't know what he does when he goes to wash his face!

Just goofing around...

We were just goofing around taking some pictures the other night and I thought I'd share a few - never got a good one of Miss E or Mr. Baby but here are some of Miss A and Mr. E :)
Please ignore the chocolate face in the last picture - I don't know what he does when he goes to wash his face!

Please pray

As some of you may know, I have a sister :) She and her family live up in East TN. What you may not know is that she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer a few years ago. She has had a thyroidectomy (in 2005) and is now in the final preparatory steps to have a RAI (radioactive iodine) treatment. She will go to the Nuclear Medicine part of the hospital tomorrow for her dose of RAI in the form of a pill, then she will go straight home and be in isolation for 3 days, and modified isolation for a week thereafter. She will not be able to kiss her babies for that whole week. Her children are ages 5, 3 and 2. There's so much more I could say, but mainly I just would like to request prayers from y'all for her. The RAI's purpose is to destroy the thyroid tissue that the surgeon was not able to remove when she had the thyroidectomy due to the proximity of the thyroid and vocal cords - there's about 3% of her thyroid that remains. The hope is that the RAI will destroy the remaining tissue, thus, hopefully preventing new thyroid tissue and possibly cancer cell growth in the future. I covet your prayers on her behalf and on the behalf of her husband and children. Also, for our parents who are lovingly and selflessly staying with them to help around the house and most importantly to care for the children while her husband is at work.

Thanks so much!
If you're interested, you can learn more about thyroid cancer at http://www.thyca.org

Here's a pic of her and her family from Thanksgiving 2005 :) (sorry sis, it was the only one I have, hope you don't mind!)



Pictured - my sister, and her family

On the road again....

Hmm, maybe that should be the name of our blog since we always seem to be on the road....

Ha, just kidding :) I did promise, didn't I? ;)

Anyway, as y'all with preachers in the family well know, preacher's families sometimes travel A LOT! We have been on the road a lot over the course of our 7.5 year marriage and this weekend was no exception.

We traveled down to Madisonville, TX to attend services at Fellowship PBC where we moved our membership recently. For those who do not know, our 3 eldest children joined the church and were baptized there just a few months ago.

Miss E joined 3rd Sunday in May and was to be baptized 3rd Sunday in June. When we went back to Madisonville 3rd in June (DH's appointment at that time), Miss A and then Mr. E both asked for a home in the church as well (good thing we brought clothes just in case - Miss A had told us she wanted to join the church for the entire month preceding, so we figured it would be best to bring clothes for her and just in case for Mr. E since we weren't sure if he might decide he wanted to as well based on some conversations he and his Daddy had had).

Somehow between going back and forth to help each of them with getting ready and then drying off afterward, I managed to get a picture of each of them before they were baptized and then we had someone take a picture afterward of the whole family. I'll include them here for those who weren't able to be with us on that wonderful day.



Here's a quick pic I took of the church house as we left after services yesterday:

Fellowship Primitive Baptist, Madisonville, TX


After services we spent a little time outside taking a few other pictures (that'll be another post since the photographed haven't seen the pics yet ;) ) and ran into a few more creepy crawlies than I care to think too long about - here's one of the most noteworthy as it was incredibly huge (yes, things in Texas are definitely bigger, but in this case, I'm not so sure I'd say better!)

Now, I'm not a spider expert and honestly not interested right now in looking up exactly what kind of spider this is (Sis, got some time on your hands next week? Anyone? If you find out and find a link supporting your info, please comment here so we can all learn!), but I'd say it's some sort of very large garden spider - ick. Thanks to Steven for spotting it before I walked right into the web....and "it". (shudder)

All the children were tired and ready to head home after lunch and visiting awhile. We loaded them all up and Mr. Baby fussed for about a second and then dropped right off to sleep, whereupon he slept the whole way back home (well, except for a brief interval when we stopped at Sonic on the way out of town and I chose the worst bay to park in - next to a huge LOUD pickup - we moved to another spot, but too late, Mr. Baby was awake and crying - thankfully a sippy cup full of chocolate milk later and he was a sleepy guy again). Hooray! Amazingly, he slept through the night just fine later on as well - yay!

(pay no attention to the messy car...oh wait, I cropped that part out....well, mostly)

All in all we had a very nice weekend - it was hot, but not unbearably so and we enjoyed getting to see family and visit a little bit. Hope you had a nice weekend too!

Just one more reason to homeschool our children

Watch the video...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57327

Absolutely frightening.

Here we blog again

Ok, ok, this time I am happy with our URL and blog title :) I promise I won't change it again.

Sorry y'all had to go through another invite process! Forgive me? Pretty please?

Anyway, I'll start off with a few pics from a recent trip just so y'all can see some recent shots w/the children and we'll go from there!

We've been scoping out a few of the State Parks up in N. TX since we moved up here and these pics are from a day where we spent the day out driving and popped up into OK first and visited Lake Hugo State Park - the park was alright, but what we liked most was how the cabins looked and can definitely see ourselves spending a long weekend there this Fall. Then, we dropped back down into Texas (whew, it was good to be home) and stopped at the Bonham State Park. We'd passed by it many times on other trips and it was high time to see what it was all about. The park itself was pretty small, as far as what you could see from the road driving through, but there were many nature and bike trails in the woods that we hope to explore on another visit.

Here are a few pictures from that busy driving day.







After I hopped out to take this rather exciting picture, I noticed a sign immediately to the left of my open car door - see below:


Ooops....

house pics

My Kitchen - the Mess of Moving and not knowing where to put things yet -- ack!

Ok, so here we are - the kitchen - help! In the top picture - you see the sink- across the top of there/opening is where the dining room/eating area/table is. On the other side of the "wall" from the dishwasher we have one of those water cooler thingamabobs b/c there just isn't anywhere in the actual kitchen to put it - weird.

Here is the fridge we ended up getting for those who followed that tale recently on Loose Threads....the door to the left of the fridge/set of 3 cabinets is to the laundry room/pantry shelves. That is probably the thing about this house I dislike the most - I prefer the pantry to be separate, too much humidity in there from the CONSTANTLY running washer/dryer, but anyway, so I had thought to use these cabinets to the left of the fridge as pantry/food storage maybe....I just don't know.....help!

 

A desperate cry b/c I would not be thrilled for people to see my kitchen looking like this...but here I am, showing it to the world...I must really need help, eh? :)

just to upload

a pic

stroller pics