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KidPak, virtual march, spaghetti, Ahsoka, Braves sweep, hummingbirds and birds, watering, hydroponics program, ancient marble busts... updates coming soon...

Hydroponics Garden

 

We started a hydroponic garden today, something that I've always wanted to try out.  You can see Mom carefully placing the tiny seeds into the different pods.  Step one is filling the tank there with water, and a carefully measured amount of nutrients.  The plastic baskets contain these soil cones, and next you see Mom doing the placement of those lettuce seeds.  We're doing three different kinds of lettuce and some arugula, some easy items to start out with when trying this for the first time.

Next step is covering the openings there to limit the light into the slots there, because more light will cause the growth of algae in the nutrient-rich water below.  And then there's the plastic caps that help contain humidity and heat as these little seeds start their growth.  

"Just make believe... you're a tiny little seed... a tiny little seed that's reaching up to meet your need..."  I was at EPCOT for the opening season in Orlando, and I remember visiting the pavilion for "The Land," and I'll always remember the hydroponic plants there and thinking how cool it would be to do that in our own house. 

Anyway, you can see the gauge that shows the water level here, and of course the light setting is on for seed growth.  That light is programmed to show for sixteen hours, and it turns on and off automatically each day at particular hours.  There's a phone ap that helps you keep up with the progress, lighting and so forth, and so here we go!  We'll have fun looking at these plants grow the next few days.

So Maddie was with Nate's family today, celebrating Nate's grandfather's birthday.  She got back later on tonight as we were re-watching some of the series "Ahsoka."  Earlier, we had the Braves game on, and we watched Atlanta win yet again, which meant that they won another series.

I'm still climbing Mt. Everest, virtually of course.  But in the meantime, the medal from my last virtual walk just came in the mail.

Pretty cool stuff!  It came with a smaller pin, one celebrating the fifth of these medals total.  This makes six now:  Scooby Doo, Thanksgiving, Elvis, Forbidden City, Dublin, and the Moon.  This trek up Mt. Everest continues, made even more fun when watching some of these Mt. Everest episodes.

We've had such a huge amount of birds with us on the back deck.  We've had a lot of fledglings there.  There's been a fledgling robin that's been with us, but our favorite lately has been this really, really young bluebird.

That's the bluebird family.  And here's that fledgling robin that also just dropped by. He's been here for about two weeks now, so he's getting older.  But he's still welcome here at the back deck!

It's been a great day.  We closed things down with several pages from "Snuff," that Discworld book.  Commander Vimes has saved the day again, or possibly - there's some smugglers to chase after, and of course a terrible villain to hunt down.  

We said our prayers after reading, and it was time for bed.  Got to get up early for church tomorrow!

National Doughnut Day

 It's National Doughnut Day!  We actually made a special stop for some of these gluten-free doughnuts at a grocery store in Cumming, waiting until everyone was together tonight to get that tasty snack.  I still spell the word "doughnut," but it seems as if "donut" is acceptable too.  I think that's society getting lazy!  Nevertheless, these chocolate donuts are pretty delicious!

Earlier today we had an appointment with Doc Williams, our chiropractor, and that's always a pleasant trip.  We got right in and did some catching up and of course got our adjustments too.  We've been visiting Doc Williams for quite some time now, haven't we?

And after that, it was off to Texas Roadhouse for some lunch!  Maddie loves - loves - the rolls they have there.  She moves so fast on those I literally didn't notice that she had already eaten two essentially the moment we all sat down.  It was a good visit, with all three of us really enjoying that meal.  Mom and Maddie got their usual six-ounce sirloin, although Mom goes for medium rare while Maddie has hers well done.  I get a steak salad, medium rare, which is really good.

Tonight we had a big event at KidPak, an occasion where entire families could enjoy a fun Friday night service at KidPak.  We set up a standard sort of service with a skit and everything - I did a mad-lib that involved parents, and some "mighty men" dads doing some goofy things on the stage.  All in all it was a good night!

So we've had these pillars in the hallway, and not quite sure what to do with them.  Someone was trying to remove them, and then we started to think about our "Hall of Faith" series in June.  That's when Mom came up with an idea to put images up on top of the pillars, images of various Bible heroes.  So I went to AI of course, and we got with a local printer (who is amazing) and we made these busts on pedestals.  I think the only thing we need now is perhaps a label so the audience will know who is who up there.  But this was a great idea from Mom!

And that leads us to baseball of course.  The Braves won yet again, still the best record in baseball and still powering forward.  Tonight's hero was Mauricio Dubon, who homered yet again and has just made a huge statement to us in Atlanta that this guy needs to be voted in for the All-Star Game, no question.  I'm very opinionated about this, but his defense on the field and his clutch hits behind the plate have made him literally an "all" star, as he plays various positions on the field and still hits behind the plate so well. 

We read from our book tonight, and said our prayers.  Mom and I do these puzzles each day for fun before bed, just some challenging word games:  there's Wordle, of course.  And there's a game called "Connections" that gives you sixteen words and a goal of finding groups of four that are connected in some way.  There's a mini-word search that's often a bit of a challenge, and then finally there's "Strands," somewhat of a word search where letters don't exactly go along in horizontal or vertical lines, but in fact twist and wind about.  Anyway, we've been doing that each day, and it's a pleasant diversion.  That and reading each night too. 

Oh, and speaking of daily things, I'm still marching up Mt. Everest.  Virtually, of course.  The virtual walk has been all about getting to base camp, but the stuff I'm watching online right is a little further along, a lot of acclimatizing to the elevation.  It takes a good bit to get used to that extremely high altitude.  It's been pretty awesome.

Okay, it's time for some sleep now.  We've got a quiet day tomorrow.  There's things to do, but nothing demanding.  We'll get a good night's rest.

Semiquincentennial Snack

Here it is, a semiquincentennial brownie with ice cream on top that's just one perfect way to celebrate our nation's 250th anniversary!  Today Mom and I were over at Cracker Barrel in Braselton, all part of our journey down there to the campus to get some props ready for this weekend. 

Of course, they're doing the same thing down in Braselton's KidPak too, so things are lining up for a great weekend with "Heroes of the Bible."

Here's a post-card I got from the journey up Mt. Everest, starting down at the Namche Bazaar.  It's quite a distance to go just to get to base camp, but it's an amazing journey.  I've been watching a few different ongoing documentaries about the journey, all while I walk along at an inclined walk.  It's a shorter journey than that virtual moonwalk, but it's been pretty fun.

Here's an update on the small garden outside - I was watering that this afternoon.  The weather is drying out somewhat, and the temperature is rising in the afternoons, although it's still kind of cool in the mornings and evenings.  Really nice porch weather!  Here's some pictures of some blooming roses in our back yard:

Maddie drove to taekwondo tonight, and that was a good class of course.  She's helping a lot of the other students and is really kind to the little ones.  She's somewhat of a hero with a "good aura."  She's also legendary because she "cut her neck off," which is how things sort of got translated from the accident a few years ago.  Funny how kids talk!

We got home to watch the Braves fall to the Blue Jays, but even in defeat there is a lot of fun at the games.  For one, we did score a few runs.  And then there was this moment here:

It's this weird shirtless movement that's going on all across MLB, which started out in St. Louis I think.  One of the commentators was out there in this massive section in the upper deck area, dressed as a patriot right in the middle of them when Dubon hit a home run, which is about when this image was captured. 

We continued reading tonight, and the adventure is clearly on this runaway steamboat vessel.  Things are going crazy down river, with plenty of danger sweeping in from behind, plus all kinds of danger onboard.  It's been a fun read, one we'll continue tomorrow night.  Okay, time to get some sleep. It's been a good day!