Yard crashers

While I was on vacation, Adam did a tow for friends of ours, didn't charge them and lent them my car so he could get to work before he had a chance to work on his car. He is a horticulturist at a local college. They just had a plant sale that the students had planted. As a thank you, they brought enough plants for a 20 square foot area and planted them for us...the brought fertilizer, amendment and mulch. We got our very own mini yard crashers. The area they worked on has never looked so good...and the pansies and cabbage will continue to grow all winter providing us with color. So cool! I like that kind of thank you. I tried to help but she kept telling me to just let them do the work. They brought yellow pansies, red pansies, ornamental cabbage and snapdragons.

They brought all four of their kids and they made fast work of it.

They even watered everything and swept up.

We have great friends. And we are still planning on doing an overnight backpacking trip next month. Hopefully it's not too cold.

A visit cut short

Adam told me he was going to be out for a while on a tow so I took the opportunity to go visit a couple people I had been meaning to visit. One is a neighbor that wasn't doing too well the last time I saw her and the other was Grandma Sutton. I took them some banana chocolate chip bread. The one neighbor wasn't home so I left the bread with her husband and Grandma Sutton wasn't feeling very well and wasn't really feeling up to visiting so I didn't stay long. Since I had more time than I anticipated after my visits, I decided to take some pictures before I went and did some grocery shopping.

Her garden is producing all kinds of yummy looking stuff.

And her lowers are amazing!

Her house is on the back side of the stables and in front of her garden is the pasture the arena they use for the horses. This is the view from her porch.

Walking around the other side of the stables, there is the original office building. It looks like it hasn't been used in years but the flowers were gorgeous there...I think it must be Grandma Sutton's doing.

I had never been inside the stables before. The stable probably has about 30-40 stalls but it is dying and only has about 5 horses being boarded there now. This beauty was scared by me.

At one point, this stables was bustling with activity. I remember when I first moved down here, we always had people riding their horses through the neighborhood since the stables is right outside the entrance. The ribbons, silver plates and flowers were from the 80's, as far as I could read, but even some of them were faded into white.

Grandma Sutton sent me away with 4 more cucumbers. Another neighbor gave me some cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes and peaches from her garden on Sunday. We truly are blessed with sharing friends.

To celebrate my day in the "country", I made a country dinner. Country fried pork, mashed potatoes, country gravy and some of our fresh produce. Good dinner...and one of Adam's favorites.

Meeting Grandma Sutton

We have this horse boarding barn just outside our subdivision. That's where I was able to gather pecans in October. e mentioned that his mom lived behind the stables but I had never been back there. I keep seeing her garden (a small corner of it) when I bike by so I finally pulled down the dirt driveway to get a good look at it. She was working in the garden and I felt like I was snooping so I was going to sneak back to my bike but I thought her garden was beautiful and I wanted to tell her so, so I walked over to her. I startled her and when she spoke, it sounded exactly like my own grandma's voice. I have never thought that anyone sounded like my grandma before so for a second, I was startled too.

I told her I loved her garden and she began telling me about it and telling me about how life used to be on the farm there. She has 4 of her children still living on the original farm, though that land has been split by a major highway that didn't used to be there.

She was very proud of the water fountain that her husband made for her not too long before he passed away, late last year. She pointed it out to me and told me I should look at it. It was nice.

Half of her garden is volunteer. She throws her kitchen scraps on the ground, buries them in the winter and veggies come up...and when she is thinning her flower garden, she has a separate place to put those trimmings and lots of stuff grows there as well.

She invited me to come back anytime I felt like it. I think she was a bit lonely, even though her kids live right there. I really enjoyed my time with her in her garden. I will have to go back and visit soon. I got her name before I left. She said her name was Stella but that everyone calls her Grandma Sutton. Seems fitting to me. She gave me a mega cucumber for helping her weed. That was from the volunteer part of her garden.

A very enjoyable visit indeed!

Meeting Familyonbikes

I visit a website called www.crazyguyonabike.com. It's a website where you can post your bicycle tour journal for everyone else to read. It's a very active community. I happened upon an already completed journal of a family of four who had done a 9,300 mile tour over the course of one year (the twins 3rd grade year). I saw that they were from Boise and we already knew we were moving to Boise so I emailed her.

I found out through the emails that they were planning another trip. This time they would be biking from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska (the farthest point North) to Ushuia, Argentina (the Southern most point). Once they reached the end, their boys would be in the Guniess Book of World Records as the youngest people to bike the Pan American Highway. They would be leaving a few months before we were to move out there...but they were possibly going to come through Utah as they made their way to Mexico. We talked and she agreed that I could ride with them for a few days. I was super excited about it. But, my bike accident made sure that didn't happen.

Since I was living in Boise, I was thinking I would meet them when they finally got home. Well, we didn't stay long enough. They finally got home 2 months ago. It took them nearly three years to complete the journey. They boys are now 13.

The first 500 miles of the trip is on the Dalton Highway, an unpaved road that has one gas station. So they had to carry all their food for those 500 miles.

I followed along on their blog www.familyonbikes.org. It is a great read and makes me wish that I could take a similar trip!

Here they are at the end of the road...they finally made it!

Since coming home, they've been to several conferences and one of them was here in Atlanta. Tonight, they were at Stone Mountain for an impromptu presentation. I left straight from work because I HAD to meet them, but Nancy especially.

She and John are both very friendly and it was a lot of fun visiting with them after the presentation. It felt like I was visiting old friends...but then I have been reading about their daily lives for years so in a way, I was.

The woman taking the camera took a long time to snap the pic and I just started talkng to her so not a fan of the pic of me, but oh well.

Each of the 4 of them took turns talking about life on the road.

The boys introduced the 4 family members and discussed each person's roles.

This is Daryl.

This is Davy.

John talked about the challenges they faced. And Nancy wrapped things up by talking about the lessons those challenges taught them. She summed it up by saying that we should all find what we are passionate about and to live life the way that we think is right for us, even when it is against the norm.

I really enjoyed listening to them talk and seeing their pictures, even though I've seen them on their web. They are definitely an example of what can happen when you consistently take small steps toward a goal.

Finally, I got to meet them! Who knows, maybe someday we'll live in the same town again (at the same time) and I'll even get to take a ride with them after all.

2 showers

Part of my running around last week was due to two showers, a baby shower and a wedding shower.

The baby shower was for my sister in law. A friend of hers, who lives near her, was going to throw it for her. But it turned out her brother was graduating the same day and couldn't do it after all, so with just a week before the shower, it fell on Katie to do her own shower. I asked her if she wanted me to bring food, or anything at all...she said that just coming early would be everything she needed from me. So I left straight from work and got to her house 2 hours later. Without traffic, it's a one hour drive from home, about 40 minutes from my office. Oh well. Anyway, I got busy slicing fruit and arranging platters of food.

Katie invited a Herindi (I think that's how it's spelled) to do a henna tattoo on her belly to celebrate the arrival of her baby. A few other people also got henna tattoos. While it's not my thing, I think the artist did a really good job.

One of the games (who another friend took over when the first friend backed out) was that Katie had to guess which candy bar was in the diaper. They had been melted and it looked WAY TOO realistic! I mean, I'm not one to back away from chocolate but I didn't want anything to do with this stuff.

I love this picture...the expression of the girl's face (in the upper corner) is priceless! Yes, it was that bad!

There were 4 of these diapers... this one brought out the best expression from her. ;o)

She had so many guests that there wasn't enough seating, even with a few people sitting on other people's laps. She opened her gifts and got a bunch of cute clothes, and some other things she wanted for the baby. She's due on the 24th but I don't think he'll wait that long. We'll see. I left at a little after 10. It was a LONG day but fun.

The wedding shower was for the daughter of a family friend. We have a regular group of families that meet at a pizza place once a month. Her family is in that group. I don't know Annie, the woman getting married, but her Mom is so super nice and friendly so I went anyway.

This has nothing to do with the shower but I finally learned how to do a fishtail braid and did it for the first time on the drive over. I hitched a ride with Lanette so I wasn't driving. I''m pretty pleased with it. It's really easy.

One of the ladies cooked dinner for everyone. We ate and socialized before Annie started opening her presents. This shower was just for the Stevie B's group (the group of us that meet at the pizza place) so none of her friends were there, except for the daughters of the other Stevie B's people.

They played a couple of games, trying to embarrass her but she took it all rather well. Another fun night.

I was the only one to bring a camera to both showers so it's a good thing I did.

backpacking test run

Olympia wants to do more hiking, camping, rafting and any other more adventurous stuff. We tried for an overnight backpacking thing last fall but it didn't work out. This year, we plan on hiking on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia for a weekend. Someone in the ward is a thru hiker and is really excited so has offered us a ride so we can hike thru instead of out and back. That won't be until the fall but we are practicing now to make sure we can make it 8 miles a day with loaded packs on. We didn't do 8 miles today since we went after I got off work but we did 3 miles with loaded bags in 2 hours. I think we'll be fine. We have one more practice run left. We'll be going to stone mountain and hiking up and back down with the packs. It's pretty steep in spots and we've been told that that is what it'll be like.

There's a park nearby that has an equestrian trail, hiking trails and biking trails (all seperate). The trails were very nicely groomed. We had to walk the bike trail until we got to the turnoff for the hiking trail. The turnoff is hard to miss as it's a large arbor with flowering vines covering it. It smelled great.

We went down a lot of stairs and knew it meant trouble later on. At the bottom was a stream where we took a break.

100 years ago, these woods used to be a meadow pasture. You can see how quickly things get overgrown out here. There are a few original trees scattered around. We found one. It was huge! It could have fit at least three of me holding hands around it.

Once we crossed the river, we started back uphill.

It really had our calves burning.

Honeysuckle is one of my favorite flowers. It smells so good! It fills my lungs and makes me smile. I found out Olympia had never tasted it so I corrected that. It's too bad there's not much nectar in each one.

We took a wrong turn and ended up on a different trail which meant we didn't get to see the ravine overlook. I was looking forward to that. We came out on a different part of the bike trail and a guy passing by stopped and took our picture for us.

Instead of heading straight back to the car, we took the long way around, past the meadow they are restoring.

The bike trail was lined with these little trees that were covered in these little purple flowers. The flowers smelled good but it was their deep purple centers that I really liked. Olympia took some home to her horticulturist husband to identify them.

We were expecting a thunder storm tonight so we were hoping we wouldn't be stuck in a downpour. We made it back to the car before any rain fell. It was a nice evening.

Temple trip

On Saturday, Adam and I wen on a double date with an old coworker and his wife. We went out to eat, then to the temple open house. The grounds look very different, though the temple itself (on the outside) looks the same. The inside is amazing! It used to be quite plain but no more!

The sun was setting so we walked around the grounds before taking the tour which turned out a good thing since the sun was long gone by the time we got out.

She had been to an open house before, in St. Louis, and was very impressed that time. But she didn't know that she was going to another one. She thought she was going to an Amish temple, which she wasn't so thrilled with because she had never heard anything of one. Plus, she was confused because Adam drives and worked with electronics which wasn't fitting of an Amish man. She was impressed with this one as well.

I was also really impressed. You can see why it was closed for almost 2 years. It really made me happy to have the knowledge of the gospel that I do have and motivated to do better to not take it for granted.