....

 .... another day of classes, boring lab, Braves get shut out, Nana's birthday at the Iowa State Fair, Christmas in Narnia, ... updates coming soon...

Camille's Last Day

Today was Camille's last day with us as an employee at the church, and of course she'll be greatly missed.  And of course, we made a huge deal of her last day, pretty much celebrating her the last half of the day or so.  We had fun songs on AI, Ansley made a really nice velvet cake, and we gave that Build-a-Bear we had made last week, while other gifts were given too.  It was just a nice last day, hopefully, but certainly a bittersweet one.  Maddie and Mom were with me at the office today to enjoy the festivities. Again, she's going to be with us from time to time from this moment on, just not as an employee - she "retired" so she could be a mom, which is certainly one of the more noble reasons to leave the workforce.  It helps that her husband has finished his schooling and got a nice job down in Alpharetta.

  

Maddie had taekwondo tonight, and we were over there - I was getting a few things done, including our next "Spy Games" booklet, plus a new skit for this weekend.  I was doing that from my little perch while watching everyone practice their taekwondo.  My hobby of putting all the Psalms to music is really moving on, as I'm at Psalm 109 now.  There were a few recent ones that were more challenging due to their length of words, but I got through those.  The biggest challenge is of course Psalm 119, a super long chapter of the Bible.   Eventually those will get shared here, I think, but they're turning out well.

 

Tonight was the Field of Dreams game, played on location in Iowa.  Mom and I watched that in its entirety, including all the ceremony at the beginning, Hall of Fame players emerging from the corn field just like in the movie.  The game wasn't terribly close, as the Phillies hit quite a few home runs into the corn fields.  Still, the whole event is just amazing to watch.  There's a wonderful nostalgia  about the whole thing, and I'm glad they do it once a year - the only official MLB game in Iowa each year. 

We went to bed early today, this after reading and after saying our prayers.  It was a bittersweet day.

Car Becomes a Limousine

Well, Mom wasn't feeling great so we didn't get to go to the Braves game tonight.  At least the tickets did go to a good cause:  David Austen, our nephew, got to go and he had a great time.  We were watching on BravesVision, who were the ones kind enough to send us the tickets to begin with.  Sadly, I just picked the wrong night to try to go.  The bight side of things is that the Braves won the game with some authority, something pretty fun to watch tonight.

Maddie was back at school today, of course, and this time around I was the one dropping her off at school again.  Which is not ideal, but we'll get the vehicle looked at by an adjuster as soon as things line up.  These things take time, including of course getting the car to the appropriate location to have it fixed up.  

Here's a diagram of the incident that we got from the police report (a few days from now!).  On it you can see the car struck Maddie's car from behind, drove into oncoming traffic, into a ditch/creek bed, and apparently became a stretch limousine.

We told my parents what happened to their car - again - and once everyone knew that things were okay, we all laughed because for some reason there seems to be an invisible target on the back of that car.  So yeah, once again we're getting it all fixed up.  But until then, I dropped Maddie off, and will likely do that again in a few days.  Hopefully we'll get this all worked out.  This afternoon, she went back to Nate's house after college and eventually came back home.  

We're working on a new "Spy Games" booklet, and also getting some things done for this weekend.  It's been a busy week, especially with Camille retiring this week.  Sad upcoming day, but she's going home to be a stay-at-home mom, and that's nothing you can be upset about.  We're happy for her.

Maddie and I continued reading tonight, more of Susan learning of her family heritage in "Soul Music."  It's been fun to read this one again.  We said our prayers after this, and got some sleep.

Prophets and Cookies

 

So we're working on this one message about the book of Amos.  And I'm glad this one came around - I read Amos and developed a decent message with help from God of course.  The fun part were these activities in the book that were centered around Amos.  I'm not kidding:  every single one involves chocolate chip cookies.  We don't mention "Famous Amos" by name anywhere, but for some reason there are chocolate chip cookies all over this part of the book because there's a cookie brand called "Famous Amos."  So we just sort of had fun with that.

Compared to yesterday, it was a quiet day.  We saw the Braves win tonight, and it was great to see them challenging some of these bad calls by the umpire.  Enough's enough, right?  Anyway, it was a solid win versus those Mets, the bums!

We read some more from the Discworld novel "Soul Music" tonight, continuing with the adventures of Susan Sto Helit, although I think we're going backwards a bit as we've read "Hogfather" a few times thus far, and in this book Susan is just starting to remember all her associations with her family.  Regardless, it's been fun reading about her journey until now - although she is tasked with visiting someone with a familiar name soon, and we'll have to see how that goes.  Ulp!

Okay, time for some rest.  Tomorrow Maddie's back in school.  We said our prayers, and got some sleep.

Incidents and Accidents

Pretty eventful day today.  First thing this morning, Maddie got up - and she was ready for school again.  We said our prayers, and she was off to school.  That's right, she got in the car and drove to school on her own, the first time she's done that since she received her driver's license.  As you can imagine, I was sitting there tracing her movements on the phone the whole time, fretting and praying, even though I know Maddie's a great driver.  I'm a parent though, and I guess it's my job to worry.  But she got there to school, and she had a great day.  It was fairly dull, she said, but things brightened up considerably when she saw Nate and another friend from taekwondo.  And, there's someone else in her class that's from KidPak, so that might fun to know someone else as well.  

Mom and I were at home for most of the day, unpacking and also getting a few things done for the upcoming week at KidPak.  Maddie got home as I was off to the doctor to continue talking about blood pressure and so on - I'm doing a lot better now, and that's great news.

And here's where the day got even more eventful:  Maddie went back to the college, and from there was going back to taekwondo.  Only... she didn't make it to taekwondo tonight.  On the way there, she was hit from behind by another driver.  There was a witness who saw the whole thing, the truck behind her driving too fast to stop in time, clipping Maddie as she was driving on her first day.  Then the truck went into oncoming traffic and off the road into a deep ditch.  

Maddie was obviously shaken, but Divine Providence saw to it that there was a witness who stopped to help, and then Nate's dad just happened to be driving by, so he hopped out to be there too.  The other driver was cited by the police officer, and Maddie was not to blame here at all.  But understandably, she was done driving today.  It was her first day driving on her own, and already... but as with all things, it could have been much worse.  In fact, Maddie had good spirits later on, and she'll be ready to try driving again soon enough.  Maybe not tomorrow, but soon enough!

Nate brought her home a little later on - Mom and I got the car to bring home earlier on after checking with Maddie, who was okay.  Our car is dinged up in the back, but the whole insurance thing will move forward now, and we'll get that all taken care of.

Today I spoke with some old friends from high school, and the reason for my call was part of a theme of the day:  an accident.  This one, however, was much much worse.  It happened in Atlanta, and our friend's wife is facing many surgeries in the coming days.  It was not their fault - again, it was another driver going too fast, this time through a red light and straight into the side of our friend's car.  His son was in the back seat, bruised from the seatbelt but otherwise okay.  And my friend Alan is being discharged today, desperate to spend time with his recovering wife.  It' was all a difficult conversation.  It will take a long time, but everyone will heal - although there were things removed and many, many bones broken.  We'll be praying.

Tonight we watched another umpire do spectacularly bad at the Braves game.  In fact, his poor call directly led to the Braves losing the game, just like what happened two days ago - an umpire made a bad call to score the winning run.  Crazy.  But the team is doing well, and this is just a speed bump.  

We read tonight, and we said our prayers.  We're all pretty exhausted and ready for bed!

Virtual Yellowstone

Moving right along - virtually.  This is a neat virtual march through Yellowstone, and I've had a blast going through these POV hike videos through various areas, such as Yellowstone Canyon here.  You can see another post card I got, and oh yeah, here's my new photo for this march:

The pose is a bit goofy, but we like Ranger Dave around these parts.  Knowledgeable and friendly sort of park ranger, isn't he?  When I was young, this was the job I wanted.  I'm not entirely sure why I didn't pursue this later on, except perhaps for the reason that I'd be pretty far away from the family, I suppose.  But I honestly didn't care what park or monument I worked at, so long as I could wear the uniform and lead up those talks at the campground or whatever the assignment may be.  This was all when I was in middle school, by the way.  It still seems like a great job, actually.  I'm not wearing a uniform on the treadmill, but there are plenty of online POV hikes through the park, and I'm doing the ones that coincide with the virtual path through the park.  It's been fun.

This morning we had church, and it was a good service, the yearly walk-through-the-prayer-line service where all the students and adults who work with students are prayed over for the coming year.  Maddie took her usual great pictures of service this morning, including these nice pictures of the younger students in the pre-school area.

We got home and it was a relaxing day.  Mom harvested more of our lettuce and I brought home a rotisseries - we had a salad with chicken strips and home grown tomatoes, and it was just magnificent.  We had the Braves and Yankees game on, and we held on to win this one in extra innings.  Yesterday's game featured a controversial game deciding call by an errant umpire who made a terrible call.  But they've been exciting games otherwise.

One super cool thing is that BravesVision seasonal subscribers are being offered two free tickets to a Braves game.  So Mom and I got our tickets for an upcoming game, and yes, that'll be only the second time we've been to Truist Park.  We'll go again, maybe this season too.

Tonight's feature was "The Thunderbolts," which was better to watch the second time around.  It's actually a pretty good movie with a great underlying theme and story there.  And after that... it was time for some sleep.  We read first, of course, learning about Susan and her slow realization that she has a very famous - or infamous - grandfather, the kind that ONLY SPEAKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

We said our prayers after that, and then it was time for sleep.  Tomorrow's a big day!

Stripers and Jumbo Shrimp

 

Today we had another double header with the Gwinnett Stripers, and no, this one wasn't planned either.  Yesterday's game was postponed because of rain, so even though we didn't have tickets for yesterday's game, we were invited to get there early today so we could enjoy that one and the one we already had tickets to.  On top of that all, it was a Chris Sale Bobblehead giveaway today, so we really wanted to get there early to get ours.

Which we did!  Mom and I got there as the gates were opening an hour early, and were there for the bobbleheads along with a lot of other people.  But we got ours and then returned to the Wicked Weed to have a seat in the air conditioning and order a plate of wings to share.  That's becoming a nice little date there.  

Soon it was game time.  We love these seats - it's on the shade side, and it's at the back where you can still see just fine, but the bonus is a breeze that comes through up top, one that naturally cools you off a bit while you enjoy the game.  As you can see above, the theme to the first game was "Crayola Night," so the players were wearing these special jerseys that looked fun, and on top of that, Chopper (the mascot) and his cohorts were also dressed with that theme.  Fun!

It was also public servants night - honoring military, police and firefighters.  Instead of a bat boy - or girl - there was a bat dog that went out during some innings to retrieve the bats from ball players as they went to bases!  Each retrieval got a big cheer from the crowd!

Here's a short video clip from the second game:  Sandy Leon got a home run in the second game, adding more to the Stripers' total.  

Carlos Santana brings in a few RBIs with a triple.  It was a fun day today - the Stripers lost the first game, but JR Ritchie came out for the second game and we hadn't got to see this rookie pitch yet, but he did really good, holding the other team to just one run.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the other team.  One of the reasons we chose to come tonight was to see the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp!  The logo is amazing, and of course there was a lot of chatter about the rain-out yesterday, given that both team mascots are fish and shrimp.  But anyway, the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp won handily in the first game, dominating the Stripers with eight runs.  We did some catching up late in the game, adding four runs, but other than that there wasn't much to cheer for with the home team.

It's a good thing Chopper was there!  We were seated right at the spot where he comes up from the field each time, and that was pretty fun!

Rowdy Tellez was on first for both games, getting some solid hits in each of the games, producing RBIs for the Stripers.  The team wore the Crayola jerseys in the first game, and then switched to standard Stripers jerseys for the next.

The fishing gear races across the field - Barb won this race today!  All the little games in between innings are fun, of course, with kids racing to collect items, or cheering for something on the big screen.

Brewer Hicklen beats out a throw to get to first base safely!  He did well today, and it was pretty fun to see him play for the Braves a few weeks ago.  

It was a fun night.  We got ourselves a few of these bobbleheads, and had our Cracker Jacks, along with a new tradition:  a frozen Minute Maid lemonade.  These are cool, refreshing, and they cool the body down on a hot day - but they're also pretty tasty!  

Just towards the end of the game, Mom and I decided it was time to head home.  And crazy enough, we were on our way out when the rain came!  We didn't see it coming, not did anyone else, but we were sure glad to be already on the way to the car.  We got out of there just in time, staying dry and staying safe on the way home.  The Stripers were ahead at the time, and it was looking like they were going to hang on for the win.  In fact, they won the second game, so that split the double header.  But it was fun just hanging out there.

The rest of the day was quiet - I dropped Maddie off at Team Edge this morning, and didn't see her until later on tonight after the game.  She and Nate opted not to go to the game, but they had a good day together.

We read a little tonight, and then we said our prayers - it was time to get some sleep as we have a big service tomorrow at church!

Our Own Pepper!

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Maddie had tacos tonight, but in that third bowl is something fun:  our very own pepper!  This was a mammoth pepper that we grew in the back yard.  We picked it, and Mom sliced it up for Maddie to add as a topping.  It wasn't super spicy, and maybe a hint more flavor than a bell pepper.  But it was good.

The hummingbirds are loving our feeder on the back deck.  We've been watching them flit in and out, along with the other birds as well.  

It's been raining a lot here, and that's good news.  It all evens out - we started the year out with a pretty serious drought, but the rain has been so heavy as of late that the National Weather Service people officially announced the drought over with yesterday.  Lake Lanier is not quite full pool, but it's looking a whole lot better than it was in the spring, that much is certain.

Maddie drove us to taekwondo tonight, and even in the rain drove us back.  She'll be driving to college next week, and of course that makes a parent nervous.  Not that she's not a good driver - she's actually doing very well with that.  There are a few things to learn from experience and so forth, but on the whole she's very alert and careful.  It's just a job of parents to worry a bit, that's all.

Taekwondo was good though, and when we got home there was the Braves and Yankees game.  It went to extra innings with the Yankees taking this first game, but given that the Braves had a rain delay game yesterday and an arrival at 4am this morning, and meanwhile the Yankees were pretty well-rested with a day off at a home game, I think it's okay.  It was still a bad way to lose at the end there, but they've won the last eight games straight, so it'll be okay.

Tonight we read, of course, still reading "Soul Music."  We said our prayers, and then got some sleep!

From Santa Suite to Goat Landing

Formal portrait of a cow.

Formal portrait of a cow and his friends.

Mom and Maddie pose with Tinsel, an elf helper this morning at the Inn.

Our view from our balcony at the Inn this morning.

Visitors at our balcony!  There were some nesting in the ceiling above us, which you could hear pretty clearly as we were sitting there!

It was time to go home today.  We had our big breakfast once more at the Inn, the wonderful buffet they have set up there - it was a bit more crowded, but we got a table out there.  I got one more omelette - that's one thing Maddie and I have been enjoying all week:  the omelette station there.  

We packed up things and one fun thing that happened is our visit to the Santa Suite.  There's this ultimate room there, dead center at the top floor.  It's a bigger room, and the maids were cleaning it up, so I asked if we could look around in there.  They said yes, so Maddie, Mom and I got to walk around to look around the Santa Suite.

After that, we made our way out of the Inn at Christmas Place one more time.  We made a few stops along the way home, firstly the Christmas Shop across the way.  Mom wanted to stop there and look around, so the three of us walked around the ornaments, nutcrackers, villages, and carolers - it's kind of funny how we started this little mini-trip out with a visit to a Christmas store and here we are closing out with a visit to one.

Okay, so this is a decoration with a mirrored effect and lights, and so Maddie and I thought it might be interesting to take close-up shots of the insides of this snowman... bear with me...

This place is big.  You can lose your sense of direction easily here.

Big Christmas village area!

Elvis handing out gifts!

Semiquincentennial Nutcrackers!

The Alice?

A little train goes along the ceiling area above us, crossing this bridge.

Santa takes off, as the small train rolls by below.

I like the decorations on this reindeer!

Ah, the obligatory red pick-up!  

After this, we had a smooth drive over the mountains, which were extra smoky today with the humidity and rain.  No animals seen though - not even the elk.  That just made our trip up more special, getting to see elk and bears and cubs like that was really cool.

After that, through Cherokee and over the mountain and through Franklin... and that's when we made a stop at a visitor center there just south of Franklin, North Carolina.  

We hadn't been here before, and it was kind of cool!  There were some unique sodas there - I got a strawberry rhubarb and Mom got a lemon lavender flavor.  Maddie got an old-school Dr. Pepper bottle, and then we were on our way.  

But then we stopped at Goat Landing, a place that was formerly Goats on a Roof, and it was a fun stop.  There were plenty of unique furniture items and other really random things for sale inside, including the food to feed the goats outside.  It's a really unique stop along the road, and the exterior is pretty fantastic.  

Some of these birdhouses - and even that front tower - are very reminiscent of a place we visited near Blairsville, something called Whimsical Fairy Garden.  From what I remember, this place was taken by the government because eminent domain and widening roads.  Which is a tragedy, of course.  I'm glad we picked up a birdhouse from that location, one in the style you see above.  We keep it inside the house, a really nice piece.  And it is good to see some more of these houses here too.

And it's nice to see the goats are still here too, ready to get some food from visitors and tourists.  Goat Landing is a fun destination!

After we left there, moments later... we were at the Blue Ridge Honey Company picking up some jellies and honey.  We got some local honey, and Maddie got to try some habanero flavored honey.  We got some chai flavored honey too, something we've picked up before.

But then finally it was time to get home.  We arrived around 4pm, a little delayed because we were stuck in high school traffic there nearby.  But we got home, unpacked... and then promptly got a visit from Nana and Ye-Ye!  They dropped off some souvenirs from Alaska and were talking with us about their remarkable vacation up there recently.  It sounded like fun!

We watched the Braves game tonight - even with the rain delay - and got to bed after that.  It's been a fun day.