Thanks to Buffalo Wild Wings I got to see the first half of the AL v. Clemson game, and thanks to my friends Glenn and Renae for going with me, especially when they didn't really care about the game. However, we sat at a table so Renae could see the AL, Michigan St. and Tigers games all at once.

And the best part--when I woke up this morning and checked Alabama had won 31-10!!! I wish I could've been at my parents church this morning!

VP's

Less than an hour after the announcement I think McCain made a great choice and less than a week after the announcement I think Obama made a mediocre to worse choice.

Will they ever show Palin with the baby in her arms? I doubt it.

Thankful Thursday

The author of a blog I "stalk" has a Thankful Thursday feature. I like it. Her list isn't typically profound but it makes a person realize the good things God blesses them with.

So here we go with my first Thankful Thursday list.

1. Fresh peaches. Michigan's are second best to Alabama's.
2. Booking a flight to see my nieces and nephews in their fall activities. (and my mom encouraging me to do so)
3. Seeing a friend from OH, going out to eat, and catching up with her life.
4. Listening to voice mails that I've saved over the last few years. I love to hear a voice saying, "Aunt Rhoda, . . ."

Goodbye Summer

Can it really be the last weekend of the summer? Wow.

There hasn't been enough time in the pool. I didn't read a John Grisham book this summer, and I'm sure there are other things I didn't do that I think every year I want to do.

However, I saw my parents and Mary and Joey twice. I got to spend time at the lake and fish. We're getting "harvest" from the garden, and I've been riding my bike. I love the long days of summer.

It's a good thing I like the color of the fall leaves. It's coming.

August 28

So many things to celebrate today:

#1 Happy Birthday, Jaimie!!!

#2 Happy 2nd birthday to my Honda Fit. In two years I’ve driven 33, 305 miles which means I’m averaging 16, 652 miles/year. That’s significantly less than the 20,000+ I averaged in Ohio and Illinois. Of course, I didn’t drive to AL in the past year but I did twice in the first year of the car.

#3 Happy 4th anniversary of my move to Michigan.

Cabbages and Kings--Of Death and Grace

Fifteen years ago I began reading The Banner, the publication of the Christian Reformed Church. Some of the articles I agreed with and others I didn't. It was interesting to see a different church's publication and the "sacred cows" they had. The one column I always seemed to like was called "Cabbages and Kings", written by an retired minister in the church for 40 years. He died of cancer earlier this year, but he had written enough columns for his last column to be printed in the August issue.

Click here to read it. Read through to the end.

Wednesday's Question

A man died, leaving $10,000,000 for his widow, 5 sons and 4 daughters. Each daughter received an equal amount, each son received twice as much as a daughter, and the widow received three times as much as a son. How much did the widow receive?

My morning "run"

This morning I was on my morning run/walk and apparently the Hudsonville High School football team was doing a run in the opposite direction of the square I was doing. That meant I crossed paths with them twice.

It was a bit intimidating but I was surprised at how many of the kids said hello or good morning as we passed. They obviously didn't realize that all I think about is the next step when I'm "running" and can't really think about the niceties of the morning.

Tuesday's puzzle

You have the misfortune to own an unreliable clock. This one loses exactly 24 minutes every hour. It is now showing 3:00am and you know that is was correct at midnight, when you set it. The clock stopped 1 hour ago, what is the correct time now?

Murphy's Law at Work

When I have everything in the FedEx bin early in the afternoon, the FedEx truck comes at 5:00. When I have something I need to send out at 4:40, he's been here and left already.

Another quirk

Lately I have realized after being told this by Renae for quite awhile that one of my quirks is I announce when I'm going to say something. Apparently (at least when talking with her) that I preface my comments with something like this:

"I have a question."
"I've been thinking about something."
"I have something to say."
"I have an opinion about ________."

Then I pause and then I proceed with what I have to say. She says I should just say what I have to say.

Feel free to point this (once or twice) if/when you talk with me.

The game I want to see

Yesterday I saw an tv commercial for next Friday night's start of the college football season with Alabama v. Clemson. I've been waiting for this game since I read about it. I've been an AL fan since I was a kid and my sister's family lives just a few miles from Clemson. Also, the minister at my parents' church is from upstate SC and a huge Clemson fan. The commercial had in small letters: Some areas will see Michigan St. v. California.

Guess which game will be showing in west Michigan? Not the one I want to see!

August Mornings in Michigan

Most work mornings I get up at 6:05 (the extra five minutes is hugely psychological for me) to do some form of exercise; currently I'm running and walking to run a 5k in October. It's August, which is still very much summer, and it can be very humid and hot or it can be a bit chilly.

It's always funny to me as most mornings I see someone from my condos going out for a walk. I'm in shorts and a t-shirt and they will have long pants, sweatshirt, and jacket on.

Mmm, good carrots

Over the weekend we harvested carrots anticipating putting some in the fair (but that's another post). Last night I finally got the carrots cleaned up and sliced some for a snack today. Renae is not a big carrot eater, but we both agreed that fresh garden carrots are really good. Typically I've only liked the baby carrots in the grocery store, but these were as good or better. I almost wish I hadn't frozen as many as I did last night so that I could snack on more. We're pretty sure we'll find more if we dig more.

We actually found them rather hard to get out of the ground and broke several. I also learned to not plant them quite so close together as we have some very misshaped carrots with 2-3 growing together.

The next big garden chore is to dig potatoes but we may let that go another couple of weeks.

The tomatoes are just now getting ripe so I also have some cherry tomatoes to snack on today as well. The peppers are getting bigger so that means salsa is just around the corner!

You are invited to join me:

My training for this is going rather slowly, but my goal is still to run this event.

Tuesday's question on the board

Peter picked one pepper more than Paul. Pat picked one pepper more than Pam. Peter and Paul picked 10 more peppers than Pat and Pam. Peter, Paul, Pat and Pam picked 60 peppers. How many peppers did Peter pick?

Chapmans on GMA

Found this on another blog and sat at my desk with tears in my eyes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh2VFkF7NLo

Interestingly, Chapman had earlier written a song called "With Hope" after a friend's child died. The chorus lyrics:

We can cry with hope;
We can say goodbye with hope
because we know our goodbye is not the end.
We can breathe with hope
Because we believe with hope
There's a place where we will see your face again.

The Cottage

I had two great weekends with friends at their friends’ lake cottage.

Between the two weekends I caught 7 bass but had to throw one back as it was too small. I also lost at least three before I got them in the boat; they were really, really big too! The picture here is pretty rough since we just got off the boat about 9:00 after waking up and starting to fish at 6:30. This was my 16” fish.

It was great to sit on the beach and hear the water lap up on shore. The weather was good. The first weekend on Sunday morning at 6:30 we were on the lake in jeans, t-shirt, sweatshirt, and yes a light winter coat! Thankfully the sun came out really nice in the afternoon. The evenings were cool for sleeping but it got warm during the day.

The downside to lake cottages is how close they are. The neighbor two doors down (one small storage cottage in between her the cottage we were in) and her friend sit out in the yard with binoculars to see what is going on out on the lake. They also watch out and let you know what you’ve been doing. It is rather freakish.

I’ve decided I would like to live on a lake. I don’t think I’d want a house and a lake cottage as you would have to maintain two residences, and you’d always be going to the same place. As nice as the fishing was, it would get old to fish the same lake all summer long. However, I like the water so it would be nice to live on a lake but still vacation to other places.

That time of the year

People often ask if I like education or business better. I say it depends on the time of year.

This is the time of year when business is better. I don't miss the thoughts of August when it was, "Only two more weeks", "only 8 more days", "Only 4 more days. . .". Right now it's kind of nice to continue with life as it's been and not have that rude awakening of having to get up and go to work again. And it's nice to know I can take vacation any time in the fall I would like to.

Now, late May/early June is the flip side.

More Trip Pictures

Saturday night Molly and I took the boys miniature golfing. I thought the giraffe with it's head broken off and on the ground could be rather traumatic for small children.







As soon as we got out of the car at the zoo I took a picture of the wildlife.




Can't see faces, but I thought this was funny. The boys make me laugh to see them interact and the ideas the come up with.




This is one of my favorite pictures as the boys walked to the Hermitage path. Jeffrey was really cute with his head set on and carrying the Zoo backpack we had bought to carry water bottles. John Michael was close but just behind him in a big brother way.


The boys enjoyed swimming both in the late afternoon and the next morning. Although not in these pictures,they were wearing their Crocs as they were trying to kick them over the fence as they jumped in the pool.


The trip was a huge success in my book. I greatly miss everyone!!!

Trip Pictures

Oops, I meant to post this on the extended family blog which I eventually did, but now I've decided to leave it here as well.

Thought I'd share a few pictures of the overnight trip Mom and I took John Michael and Jeffrey on. It was a lot of fun, and the boys were great. The temps were close to 100 and the humidity felt like it as well. Jeffrey prayed on Monday night: "Thank you God for what we could learn at the zoo, at the Hermitage, and in history."

Playing games in the hotel. We had some pretty hot rounds of Rummikub, Pit, and Quiddler.

The boys and Grandma waiting to enter the Hermitage, home to the 7th president Andrew Jackson.

The boys and Grandma at a cannon at the Battle of Franklin, the deadliest half hour of the Civil War. I've driven past the sign on I-65 well over 100 times and had never considered stopping, but it was very well worth it. We went there based on a recommendation from my minister's wife as they had just visited that site the previous week.

At the zoo posing like a meercat which you can barely make out in the middle of the picture:

The four kids waiting to leave for church on Sunday morning:

Bike

This is my newest ride. Today I buy a helmet.

This is a "comfort" bike. Notice that the pedals are forward instead of almost directly below the seat which makes for a different ride and the distance between the seat and the handle bars is also greater than typical. I like not feeling scrunched up which I noticed when I test rode a cross bike (between a comfort and a road bike).

I’ve got pics from the trip I need to download, but here are three quick flying events that struck me funny.

1. On the first leg of the flights on Friday, the flight attendant just wasn’t your typical image of a flight attendant. I know they don’t have the height and weight requirements they used to so flight attendants had a beauty queen image, but this lady just looked as if she didn’t have all the room in the house finished. Anyway, there was quite a bit of turbulence as we neared Cincinnati so after a very bumpy couple of minutes she got on the speaker and said, “Folks, I can’t pick up the trash. I’ve got to sit down!”

2. Yesterday I went into the restroom at the Nashville airport. There were probably 6-7 stalls on each side and I walked down the middle to one on the end. I passed the only stall that was occupied but didn’t try to go in as there were plenty of empty ones; however, a voice said, “Someone’s in here.” A couple of co-workers today thought I should’ve said, “Someone’s out here too.” It was just weird.

3. On the last leg of the trip last night (delayed by three hours since I took a voluntary bump to get the bonus Delta dollars), the lady in front of me apparently had never flown before. Every noise such as the beeps when the seatbelt sign turned off and especially when the wheels went down made her jump, flinch, and gasp. It didn’t help that we landed just as a thunder storm hit so there was lightening flashing a couple of miles away and the plane had to abort its landing, circle around, and land on the second approach. There were fire trucks and other rescue personnel out on the runway—I’m not sure if they were for us or something else. I don’t know what she would’ve done had she been able to see them.

Day 2

Today was a full day--

1. Grandma's big pancakes

2. Shopping at the mall on a sales tax free day!!!

3. MK facials--does it get any better than that?

4. Miniature golf. I thought the headless giraffe was a bit traumatic!

Day One of the trip was a long day of travel. I worked all morning and then went to the airport at lunch for a delayed flight which ended up leaving about 3:30. The highlight of the air travel was getting to see Ryan, Sarah, and Micah. I'm not sure if Micah is dancing or praising the Lord.





But the highlight at the end of the day was definitely turning on my parents' street and seeing Jeffrey sitting on the porch (Grandma had gone in to get a drink) waiting for me. He darted in and soon he, Grandma, K-Daddy, Lauren, Lindsey, and JM all came out.

Sales Tax Holiday

Click here to see if your state is participating in a sales tax holiday. Thankfully I'll be in a state this weekend that has the holiday since Michigan isn't on the list!