It's a Baskin Robbins anniversary!

Who are those very young people?Hard to believe that is Carl and me. Today we have been married for Thirty Onederful Years. I am ready for at least 31 more years!

PCA

The PCA general assembly is meeting this week. This article talks about what the assembly will be discussing this week. We all need to be praying for them.

World Cup

Where were you June 17- July 17 1994 or May 31 - June 30 2002? I am sure you were all watching the World Cup. In 1994 we watched the World Cup on our beach vacation and Andrew got World Cup cards. In 2002 the World Cup was in South Korea and Japan. That meant that when I got up in the morning I never knew who would be sitting on my sofa watching TV with Andrew because the games were telecast EARLY (some games started at 4:00AM) in the morning.

This year, my friend, Cara asked to borrow a TV so she could watch the World Cup. Carl suggested that she just move in with us so she can watch the games. She did and we have so enjoyed it. She is very passionate about her teams and it is fun to watch it with her.

Here is Cara with her excited face on!

We went to one of our favorite local restaurants and enjoyed the World Cup with them too.
All my children, that live at my house, made shirts to support their teams. All the soccer teams have nicknames. Below is Kaitlin with her Brazil shirt. Their nickname is the Little Canaries. Andrew is pulling for The Netherlands, John- Germany, Robert- Italy, Marisa- France and Cara- Spain.
Here is me and Cara. We are getting ready to watch a game.I love sports, I love watching sports, I love watching sports with folks I love who also love sports. That means we are having a great time here!

Ella Ella Ella

What are you making?

Andree Seu has a wonderful article on Psalm 40:4 Talk about being deliberate!

Six Months til our next wedding!

No, you are not losing your mind, the picture is blurry. Robert, Marisa's brother, has decided to 'take charge' of this wedding! He thinks he needs to be the wedding planner, the wedding photography and walk Marisa down the aisle. The below photo was him practicing, as we were moving, so he can see how he is going to walk Marisa down the aisle and capture the moment in pictures too.

Don't let Robert know, but he'll do well with his ONE job of walking Marisa down the aisle.

Things are arriving at our house all the time. We have Kaitlin's shoes, Bri has her shoes, a beautiful veil is here and now the hair clasp that will hold the veil in place. It arrived yesterday and is in the box below.
Marisa registered at a local store called The Full Moon. I love that store. Marisa registered for a bowl almost like the one below except hers has two birds. I think it is the cutest little bowl ever! Kaitlin and Marisa went right to the bowl because they realized that those are Marisa's wedding colors. How cool is that!
Marisa is a planner. She has her time line and is getting things done. I have to get my list of wedding addresses to her by July 18th. Her wedding invitations have been designed by Ross and they are amazing. Here is a picture of John and Marisa picking out their wedding bands. Wow! six months from today! I need to start on my to-do list too. I wonder if six months is long enough to clean up my house? Nah, I must remember that you are coming to visit and laugh! I can do that.

Business in the front, Party in the back

Here is my stack of books. I finished The Girl Who Chased the Moon.

The book was set in Bodoni, a typeface designed by Giambattista Bondoni. He originally based his letter forms on those of the Frenchman Fournier and created his type to have beautiful contrasts between light and dark. About six months ago the above wouldn't have meant much to me but since Kaitlin has ventured into Graphic Design, it does.

Anyhoo, the book was wonderful like all that authors are.

Today I will be out of our room, sitting in a lobby somewhere until Carl is finished with his meeting. I plan to finish 100 Cupboards and get back into So Brave, Young and Handsome.

The grounds all around are beautiful

The carpet in my room has a 3-d look
Here are the culprits, I mean the folks that every day at 4 shoot off a canon. They march all around the place with the drums and the flag. I so appreciate the notice to run and hide so that the canon doesn't make me jump ten feet in the air like it did the first day.
One of my college friends, Sheila, dropped by after work to see us.
We ate supper near Orange Beach. We saw lots of buses full of folks cleaning up the oil. Folks at Carl's meetings had trouble getting rental cars because BP has most of them.
More things set up to clean up the Gulf
Beautiful evening. Carl took this beside the restaurant where we ate supper.Some of Carl's colleagues wanted to go to the FloraBama mullet toss after supper, but, oh well, we had to get back. Those pictures would have been fun!

Alabama the Beautiful

I am on a business trip with Carl. He is in meetings all day and I am left to my own devices.

Here is a picture of the fruit I had today. It was very good.

This was lunch today. Wonderful chicken salad and a pot of decaf hot tea. I sweeten the tea and pour it over ice and drink it the rest of the day.
The maid cleaned the bathroom and organized all our toiletries. I felt a little like we were at WDW.
I sat on a swing for about an hour today with this as my view.
Carl getting ready to go to his meeting.
The desk with my handwork. I work here awhile, then read ( I meant to get a picture of the books I brought) then get on my computer. The only down side is 'they' fire off a canon every afternoon at 4. I jumped a foot yesterday. Today I plan to get under the covers and pillows!
Lunch yesterday. That was the best hamburger I have ever had!
The sunset on Sunday night.We are on the coast of AL. No oil but there are three sets of booms to keep the oil away from the land. I love being in Alabama. I love hearing southern accents and seeing cars with AUBURN tags. I really enjoy how friendly the folks are here. Feels like home.

Carl, I'd like to bring the whole family here sometime!

How do you get ready for VBS?

Wow! Read this and then pray for our VBS. Ours is June 21-25. Thank you

A book plus...

If you need to give a gift and want it to be a book and something else here is a very clever list for you to use.

National Spelling Bee!

Onomatopoeia, schadenfreude, pffeffernuss

Get your morning chores done and grab the remote the Spelling Bee is on ESPN this morning at 9AM til 12:00 and again tonight on ABC at 7. I can't wait to hear Dr Bailly pronounce all the words.

Spelling Bee Info

Even more Spelling Bee Info

What's in a name?

Do you ever wonder where nicknames come from? I thought this was fascinating

What's in your closet?

Kaitlin cleaned out the pantry one day last week. She found lots of interesting things like 10,000 bags of stale chips, well ok, maybe just 10 bags.




I think I need to do some baking, some fudge maybe.

There is a show on the Food Network called Chopped. The contestants are given a basket with some random ingredients. They have to cook a certain course of a meal with said ingredients. With all our random pantry stuff we joked that we should give the guys in our house a certain set of ingredients and see what they would come up with to eat!


I think Kaitlin did a wonderful job!

I've been to Kansas

Marisa and Robert added their pins to our US map. We each have our pin color and we put our pins in the states we have visited.
Papa has been to the most. He has been to the 48 contiguous states.
Thanks Aunt Marian for starting this wonderful tradition for us.