busted . . .

I was on supervision this weekend, which meant I attended vespers, Sabbath School, church, the fall festival, and the church Thanksgiving banquet. Whew . . .

Band also played for church, so I supervised from the platform for some of that! We played a song from the movie Exodus that was really fun. Our Christmas concert is coming up on Dec. 5, so more practice is in store for me!

Ryan took $15 to the fall festival to cover meal and entertainment expenses. He participated in the hockey shot and basketball free throw contests and ended up winning the free throw shoot-out. His prize . . . $10. So he came home with $14, even after paying for his food. (One extra dollar was spent trying one of the contests twice.)

On e of the inflatable games the sophomores rented was this battle ring where you try to knock the other person off their perch. This picture of one of our students falling came out pretty good. Ryan and I entered the ring later and drew a pretty big crowd. A big cheer erupted when I finally knocked Ryan off. I fell off a lot.

No sooner had I gone down the zip line with Olivia (stay tuned for that video later), that two sophomore guys, Ethan and Justin, apologetically dragged me to jail. Thank you to my student worker . . . So I sat for my five-minute sentence and then was released.

A few minutes later, they grabbed me again and threw me in the stocks! What my student worker didn't think about was that my three-minute confinement gave me time to think up a plan of revenge. Muah ha ha ha . . .


My last duty for the weekend was to go supervise what Ryan called the "Church Eating Festival," more commonly known as the Thanksgiving banquet. We all gather in the elementary gym for Thanksgiving food and church members bring salads and desserts. Yum!




And you get to see all the little kids get up and try to follow the teachers kneeling in front of them mouthing out the words.

killing the leaves

These are your "before" pictures of our back yard with the leaves. Ryan took these a week before we actually mulched them up, so more were off the trees by then.

I joined Ryan in the battle for our back yard after waking up at 11:15 that day (hee hee). I kept mowing over and over the leaves until they were gone (or blown into the field the school is responsible for mowing!).

ready for our closeup & more!

Before I post all the craziness that will happen later this weekend, here's a shot of our lunch with the Patricks two Sabbaths ago, November 8.

I found some more pictures on Ryan's camera of this day. Enjoy.

Rolling down the hill below the gym. I don't know why I don't do this more often.

church directory pic

My scanner at work took away any good photographic qualities this picture once had. Sorry.

Sabbath

So, today at church we sat with the Patricks. Olivia told us part way through the sermon that she was going to sit between us, but we wouldn't let her. So she sat beside me next to the aisle. I was drawing and she wanted a page from my notebook to draw on.

This is what I got back from her. That's me on the left and her on the right. (Ryan added my ears, mouth, and hair later.)

Round 2 - This is Ryan, according to Olivia. You can see Ryan's commentary in the top left.

Ryan's rendition of our little group. I showed this to Olivia, who can't read, and she immediately knew that it was the three of us. (Btw, "Junior" is a fictional character!!!)

So then I decided to draw us to complete our portfolio. I showed this to Olivia and asked her who it was. Her response: "I don't know." . . . I'm going back to stick people.

After our lunch of pot pie, we took a walk in between the sprinkles. Most of our back yard leaves are gone now . . . well, not gone, but on the ground. We're going to mulch them up.

We walked to the ad building to use the scanner in my office for the drawings. It has been getting colder as the day has gone on.

This is where most of the leaves are now. Our walk wasn't very long. I came back home and Ryan tried to keep walking, but the rain forced him back inside within a few minutes.

life recently

Here are random pictures to show you what we've been up to in the last week since I've been back.

Ryan found a great deal on a 3-year-old riding mower while I was gone. He finished the whole yard with it in only 30 minutes the other day.

We had lots of visitors at the house on Tuesday night. First Nikie and Carson stopped by to say hi. Then Becky (milk carton) and the girls (Olivia - cat & Gabby - Oreo cookie) stopped by for some reverse trick-or-treating to give us some candy.






You can see that Olivia sampled some of her treats herself!









Carson came to visit during rec. while Nikie and Chadd had a football game. He made himself right at home - even changed the channel a couple of times after stealing the remote. He's walking really well now

We made lasagna for lunch yesterday and actually sat at the table to eat it. We even broke out two of the goblets to drink lemonade out of and used the berry dishes we got as a gift. Felt more like Sabbath using the special stuff. See my new John Lester shirt???

We also made potato salad while we were waiting and enjoyed both for supper tonight after golfing. It's nice to have stuff to eat as leftovers and to have for lunches. Makes less evenings of trying to decide what to make.

Last night was the seniors' benefit. They had a live auction, summer cookout meal, and a variety show. I especially enjoyed Amber's aerial silks routine. She's mostly taught herself by hanging them from a tree in her back yard and watching YouTube videos.




Ryan and Aaron schemed up the idea of going golfing on this beautiful November day, so we headed to Kenny Perry's Country Creek course in Franklin, KY (about 10 miles up the road).






The fall colors here are really pretty in spots. This course had lots of pretty yellow trees. Aaron's cart is in front. He let me borrow his brother's old clubs, which I much appreciated.

I was proud of the couple shots I actually got enough backspin on with short irons to make a "good divot."











Here's us in our cart. I promise we weren't driving while I took this. :)







Ryan taking the last put of our 18 holes. We finished just in time for the new 4:52p sundown. Living in central time is weird sometimes.

high water mark of the confederacy

And now the very last destination for your 34 weary travelers

A little bit of culture shock after leaving NYC. The white barn in the background was a mile from the cannon below. The cannon could have shot to the barn. The cannons with rifling could shoot 1.5 miles.

Our tour guide showing the cannons

The trees were really pretty in Gettysburg.

View from Little Round Top

Me standing next to the Warren statue

A picture from the bus window on our way out

la manzana grande

This was at about 6:00a in Times Square. The fluorescent items are our Today Show posters. We basically took a farther away subway stop just to walk through Times Square. Then we walked several blocks back to the Rockefeller Center area.

Sign seen on a building while we were walking. In case you thought you had money . . .


Arriving at the Today Show, we went through a pretty relaxed security screening where they scanned our posters for inappropriate content. We stood outside for about 30 minutes before Meredith and Matt came out. The blue thing in this picture moves up and down so they can show or hide the crowd in the background. Meredith turned around and waved at us the first time it went down.

This is the broadcast from the plaza. I was standing pretty close to Matt, so I was on TV for a little while. I also got in a panning shot of the crowd. I got to shake Matt Lauer's hand after they were done with their segment.

I put two pictures of me feeding squirrels at Battery Park because the left one's a better one of the squirrel and the right one's a better picture of me. The little weird guy with the glasses knows all the squirrels and brings a duffel bag of nuts.

After yet another airport-style security, we boarded a ferry for Liberty and Ellis islands. Steve told me where to stand to get good pictures as we came up to the island.

Some guy with a D-SLR offered to take this picture. I always like when those kinds of people offer because I assume they know what they're doing.










What can I say . . . I was inspired.










This is me and the Wall Street bull. Pit's open!!!








Sometime after walking down Wall Street, we ate at the South Street Seaport (a mall), then took the subway to Central Park. This is our group looking from the overlook of a castle in Central Park. I don't know the significance of the castle.

Do your feet hurt yet? Well, mine did by this point in the trip. After leaving Central Park, we took the subway to Grand Central Station. Then, we walked a long way again to somewhere near 5th Ave. to go up the Empire State Building. That involved standing in a huge line to go through yet another airport-style security screening. The elevator was really fun, skipping up 10 floors at a time (on the display, not in actuality).

One of my pictures from the top of the building. The Brooklyn bridge are to the left, Verrazano (sp.) Narrows bridge to New Jersey top middle, and the Statue of Liberty at the top right. Can you see it?

This concludes New York! Now go rest your feet.