Saturday

Our Saturday started with a borrowed chain saw and finally getting rid of the dead tree in the front yard. Yahoo!! We decided we would ride the motorcycle to the Robinson football game that was to be played in Saginaw (Ft. Worth) Saturday evening at 6. We left early enough to possibly eat out or just see some things in the area. We went straight to the stadium to make sure we knew where it was and then were going to go see what was in the area. When we were driving slowly in the parking lot of the stadium, we heard a funny noise and Greg had me get off the bike and look at it. Needless to say, a big knot on the tire the size of approximately a tennis ball was NOT what I wanted to see. There were other small knots on it as well. It was very scary thinking that we had been driving interstate speeds to our destination. Greg decided that he would leave after watching the band at halftime and see how far he could get, leaving me to find a ride with someone heading back to Robinson, which I did. Thank goodness he made it back home safe and sound. And we are taking the bike tomorrow to get a new tire to replace the one that is on it. Not a good thing to have a tire that does that on a trip!!!

Football team roster.....

Morgan and friend.....

Waiting for the team.....

Go Rockets!!!

Robinson won so it was a good game.

Sweet Baby Jonathan

Percy Medicine

The camera is with me nearly all the time now so I am always looking for photo ops. This building is a few blocks from my work in downtown. I have seen it all my life but hadn't researched it until tonight.

In 1898, young Albert Percy was traveling with his family from New York to his new home in Waco, Texas. Along the way, he developed an upset stomach. The family stopped in Kentucky where his father found a doctor who offered a liquid remedy. Soon, Baby Percy was feeling much better.

After arriving in Waco, Albert's father asked a pharmacist to prepare the Kentucky recipe to help the baby with another bout of stomach upset. The results were so good that druggist W. S. Merrick asked Albert's father to join him in producing Baby Percy Medicine. The company was officially born on January 1, 1904. It continues making the elixir to this day.

Percy Medicine (re-named in 1938) is the only product produced at the factory at 8th and Webster in Waco. It is mixed and bottled by hand and contains a secret formula of bismuth Subsalicylate, alcohol, calcium hydroxide, potassium carbonate as well as rhubarb extract, sugar, cinnamon and orange flavoring.

Apples

These are the best apples!! A friend from bunko first shared them with us last fall. I was hooked. I have been looking for them at the grocery store ever since. I am an apple snob. I want a firm, crispy apple, not one of those that looks good on the outside but has a mushy flesh on the inside....you apple eaters know what I am talking about. Found them at the store on Saturday. Was told they are only available in the fall, then that is it. They are called Honeycrisp. But be prepared......I paid over $7 for three apples......maybe it is a good thing that they are only available once a year!!!! But if you see them at your local grocery, give one a try!!

5th Grade Newsletter

"Someone" volunteered me to type/organize the 5th grade newsletter for Greg's cluster of teachers. The first one was needed the next day and was just the basics. I wasn't very pleased with it. Jeremy showed me a publishing program that would help me get the effect I was looking for. The second newsletter is ready to go to print tomorrow. Click on it and it will enlarge enough so that you can read it.

Photography Class

Me and the Princess from work are taking a photography class at the local community college on Monday nights for the next couple of months. The instructor is very experienced and knowledgeable. I think he might just be able to teach us how to take some nice pictures. Our assignment for next week is to go out and take pictures the way we usually take them, ie settings, etc., and bring to class ONE picture to discuss with the group. I had the camera with me on Monday morning since I would be attending class that night and it was a strange, low lying fog when the sun came up. I took several pictures and this is the one that I like the best. But I don't think it will be the one that I take to class....

Happy Birthday Brandon!!

Not sure about this look. I think I know where Jonathan got his wrinkled brow.....
Happy 31st Birthday, dad-to-be!!

Have a great day!! We love you!!

Mom, Greg, and Morgan

Working Hard

Mr. Kelly, 5th grade teacher, getting caught up on his paper grading this weekend.....

Guess which apples in the bowl are real and which ones are Memorex...I mean, fake.......

Happy Birthday brother in law John!!

Please forgive me, John, for missing your birthday on the 6th. I have been remiss in looking at the family birthday list......hope you had a terrific day!!

The Gremlin Bell

Our motorcycle riding friends, Doris and Steve, gave us this bell one of the last times we were able to ride with the group. Legend has it that a small bell attached to your motorcycle, close to the ground, catches the evil Road Spirits. The Little Gremlins live on your motorcycle causing all kinds of mechanical problems. The cavity of the bell attracts these Evil Spirits but the constant ringing drives them insane and they lose their grip and fall to the ground (have you ever wondered where pot holes come from?)

Hmmmm....this is an interesting place....

This guy was at our corner after lunch today. Not sure what it was about but hopefully his prayers are for good things......

Ready for Fall

The weather has been wonderful the past few days. Have been able to turn off the A/C and open the windows at the house. Driving in to work with the sunroof open on the car. I love this time of year. Except for the high pollen count for ragweed in this area, which bothers many near and dear to me......

Y'IKES!!

Greg's sister called tonight. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky. She said that they were not expecting anything from Ike but a bit of rain. WRONG!! They are without electricity for probably an extended period of time. Schools are closed indefinitely and she said even the local WalMart was closed. They lost a large tree in their yard, and there were many twisted and warped trampolines around. Who would have ever thought we would prepare and get nothing and them expect nothing and get a mess??!! I hope their cleanup goes well for them and the electricity comes back on soon. But until then, they will get plenty of bonding time!!

Waiting...

We are waiting to see what goes on with Ike. I know you Floridians are laughing at us Texans sweating over this hurricane when you guys deal with them all the time. But this is one of the first times in my life that I can remember one coming up through the state this close to us. The prediction keeps changing but they are saying 2-4 inches of rain with possible 40 to 50 mile an hour winds. While everyone was at football games tonight, I moved my plants to the garage, as well as the small cars. Greg put the motorcycle in the garage this morning in preparation since there is no way I can move it alone. So now we are just waiting.

This was the sunset tonight. It was a bit eerie, kinda goes with the general feeling of uneasiness.

***UPDATE***3:12 PM So far not much has happened except for a bit of wind and rain. Nothing we can't handle. Can't say as much for Galveston......

Yikes!! Here it comes!!

9/11

Poor Jonathan

Such a sad pitiful face.....but you can't help but smile when you see it. I think he is sad because his Mimi wasn't there with him......

Random Nature

Pics from our Labor Day motorcycle ride. This was the cutest little speckled goat. We decided his name should be Oreo.

Trying to be artsy. Just a log.
Yucca
Spider on web
Lichen

Dork......no, dork's wife..... :)
Little purple flower
This is one of the prettiest ones I have seen in the area. Mine are not near this pretty.

Crepe myrtle

Movin' On Up

We have been watching (or trying to watch) a 15 year old projection tv in our living area. The picture was so fuzzy and washed out that no one ever wanted to come to our house to watch. Samantha, who is very near sighted as I am, informed Brandon (who has very good vision and really can't understand what us "blind" people see) that the way our tv looked was how things look to her when she has her contacts out!! Brandon described it as trying to watch tv with vaseline over his eyes (I didn't ask how in the world he would know what THAT was like).

This is that tv.

Now, this is our new LCD HD tv that we got this weekend. The picture is so awesome!! Oh my goodness, what a difference it makes!! It is so much fun now to watch tv!!

This is just a "don't try this at school" picture from the weekend. Someone was cutting a zip tie with a pocketknife and stuck said knife into his little fingernail, splitting it in half and stabbing down to the bone. He said he realized his mistake immediately.

The finger has been peroxide-ed and antibiotic-ed and bandaged. He drew the line at my suggestion of pouring alcohol over it.....

Happy Grandparents Day!!

Have a great day, all you Nanas, Papas, Nonnies, Honeys, Pops, Mimis, Grandpas, Momos, Cocos, Grandmas, MawMaws, GGs, Omas, MeeMaws, and Wellas out there!!

Cows

Some people are shameless and have pictures of cows on their blogs to get people to visit them...... :)

Timber!!

This is what we worked on yesterday afternoon. It was now or never since football has started. If you will remember, we had done some work on it earlier in the summer, with Brandon crawling up as far as he could to tie off a rope. Yesterday Greg took as many small limbs off as he could before we got to the scary part of dropping the remaining tree/limb that was the full height of the tree.

He studied on what was the best way to handle the tree. When he commented "yeah, we can do this", I went in and got the camera. Insurance purposes, ya know? I told him it reminded me of the redneck videos where the guy says, "yeah, this will work, watch this", and the tree falls on the truck and crushes it.
The tree is larger than it looks just glancing at it from the street. Look how small Greg appears. We were dealing with trying to keep it away from the house, away from the electrical lines, and away from the existing smaller trees in its way.

Here I am ready to jump in the truck and start pulling.
Whew!! The tree is down and no one was hurt. The only damage was to the little red oak that we had just done some trimming on. The big tree caught it in the middle and broke a limb out. Hopefully it will recover and we can begin to reshape it next year.
We made lots of trips to the back to haul limbs. There is still a lot of remaining clean up to do but at least the tree is down. Will try to borrow another chain saw so that it will go quicker.
Greg and I were pretty tuckered out. No one had to rock us to sleep last night. I told him not to leave the house this morning until he made sure I could get out of the bed!!!

Summer's over.....

Labor Day

We took advantage of a last long weekend and headed out on the motorcycle early this morning. We stopped in McGregor and ate at this well known little cafe. They had a breakfast buffet and we ate WAY too much but it was delicious!!

We headed toward Moody and Mother Neff State Park, one of Greg's favorite areas. The park has had lots of problems in the last years. It has been flooded from heavy rains on several occasions and has been closed to campers off and on. It was open today. On the way, we rounded the corner and saw a huge herd of goats coming down the road. They were everywhere!! They also had two large white guard dogs with them, that were just mostly curious regarding a couple of people on a motorcycle.

We continued down the road and followed the goat "poop" on the road for at least a mile or more. When we saw no more "signs", we turned into the driveway of a rustic house (this is the nicest word I can think of right now, it was one of those places where old cars go to die) and a grizzled looking man was coming out to get on his four wheeler. Greg asked if he had goats and he said "yep", and Greg told him they were out and heading toward a main road. The man just chuckled and responded "yep, sometimes they head to Moody, sometimes to Gatesville, since it is a holiday, I don't know where they were going." He was totally unconcerned so we decided that he must let his 150+ goats out occasionally for them to forage in the road ditches along the way. Not quite sure how you get that many goats back in a pasture but Greg said he bet he had feed in the bucket that he carried with him and coaxed them to follow him.

Greg knew where there was a "cave" at the park and we walked down to it. There were Indians buried in the cave but they were moved when the state began to do some work there. I thought the dark spots on the right side of the picture was some type of plant life that was attached to the low ceiling of the cave. WRONG!!

When I took a closer look, there were THOUSANDS of what Texans call "grandaddy long legs"!! They are harmless, they are just creepy.

It was a beautiful drive through the park. The road winds around, back and forth.

It started to get warmer once we left the park at about 11 AM, so we headed home. We had work to do on this "labor" day.