days in the life of a
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September 2009
click here to read older September 2009 posts....
September 26, 2009
PASSEL OF PRETTY PLUMP PUMPKINS
The pumpkins are ready!
Last weekend, Kim picked the church pumpkin patch.
Each year, the church Gardening Ministry plants a pumpkin patch in anticipation of the annual Fall Festival.
Kyler, who helped Kim with the Gardening Ministry all summer long, happened to be home from college for the day and got to see the fruits (are pumpkins fruits???) of his labor.
With the festival still a couple of weeks away, Emily and Zach helped spread them out so they wouldn't rot.
The little patch was productive! Kim picked 150 pumpkins of all shapes, colors, and sizes to give away at the Fall Festival.
My peeps Kyler, Zach, Emily, and Kim...
...with a passel of pretty plump pumpkins!
September 27, 2009
THIS LITTLE PIGGY
The ONLY good thing about Kristoffer, Dana, and Karter living so far away from us is that when they visit, they spend the night...
Which means we get to start our day like this!
When he first wakes up, Karter is so happy and smiley, soft, snuggly, and cuddly in his jammies...
...the perfect time for a game with Grandpa.
"This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home..."
"...this little piggy had roast beef (?), and this little piggy had none...."
(Have you ever really thought about the words to nursery rhymes? Weird people came up with them, I think. Why would a piggy have roast beef??? Not like they were desperate for something to rhyme...Oh, well, I digress...)
"...and this little piggy cried 'Wee! wee! wee! wee!..."
"...all the way home!" (Karter likes that part!)
Which is, of course, followed by a tickle and giggle session...
...before it starts all over again! Don't you love the anticipation in Karter's eyes?!
After starting the morning off like this, it is pert'near impossible for Grandpa to have a bad day!
September 28, 2009
PEDDLING PRODUCE
Our busy little honeybees produced a bumper honey crop for us this year, about 30 gallons of the delicious sweetness.
So, in the hopes of selling some of it, Kim and I set up a table at the End of Season Celebration at the L-P Greenhouse, owned by good friends of ours.
Dave's parents started and operated the greenhouse for nearly 30 years before Dave gave up his law practice to take over the business just over a year ago.
Dave and his wife Kathy are dear church friends of ours...who also happen to be totally immersed in the grandparent role! Little Hunter is just a couple of months younger than our Karter.
Besides selling honey, Kim also brought some of the nice potatoes he grew...
...as well as English walnuts from his nut trees.
It's a charming family business out in the country. The weather was cool and damp, but the customers steadily came to buy fall mums and other gardening items.
Just a few random scenes from the greenhouse.
Before we left, I had to buy this darling little honeybee garden stake. Our table was set up directly across from it (a strategic move by Dave, I think, because he knew I couldn't resist it) and all day long I toyed with whether to buy it or not. But in the end, the bee (and Dave!) won out.
And someday, when I get my log cabin, I'm going to have a whole slew of quaint little rocking chairs just like these on my porch.
All in all, a nice day at a country greenhouse peddling produce and chit-chatting with people we've not seen for awhile.
As you make your gardening plans for next year, be sure to check out L-P Greenhouse at their website, www.lp-greenhouse.com!
September 29, 2009
INSTRUMENTS OF TORTURE
What could be more fun that a roomful of giant, bright, bouncy balls?
Don't let this photo fool you!
These seemingly innocent balls are really instruments of torture!
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, my friend Brenda and I go to the local YMCA for an hour-long fitness class.
Your mind cannot even contemplate the unending ways these balls are used to create pain and suffering in the hands of our instructors, Christy and Rebecca.
Class begins with 5 or 10 minutes of warm-up, then 30 minutes or so on these steps.
Depending on our ability and/or motivation, they can be used flat on the floor or with 1 or 2 or even 3 purple risers to make them higher. (These steps are upside down for storage, in case you were wondering how in the world....)
Most of us stick with a safe 1-riser height, but we have been known to attempt to sabotage our instructors by making theirs 3 or 4 risers tall. The theory is to tire them out quickly and maybe they'll go easy on us, but somehow they always catch on.
Yesterday we tried diversionary tactics, capitalizing on Christy's love for college football and attempting to divert her attention to rehashing Saturday's games. She fell for it only a few minutes, then regained her focus and began to terrorize us once again.
Actually, I like the step (using "like" in relative terms...it's a whole lot better than some of the torture that follows). We do choreographed pattern combinations to music, successfully designed to get our heart rate up, a good aerobic workout.
It's really an enjoyable way to exercise, most of the time...until Christy or Rebecca decide to throw 100 or so jumping jacks smack dab into the middle of our fun!
When the step section is over, the next 15 minutes are determined by how our instructor chooses to make us miserable and sore that particular day.
She may choose weights.
Or the dreaded balls may come into play here. (But believe me, it is NOT play!)
If she's feeling particularly sadistic, she may have us get these stretchy resistance bands and do crazy things with them that create pain in places we didn't even know we had.
You'd be surprised at the cruelly creative ways a simple piece of rubber tubing can be used!
Then finally, when we can hardly move any longer, she will tell us to get down on our mats.
We anticipate the wonderful feeling of relaxing and breathing and stretching...
...unless she decides we've got a couple of extra minutes to do some dreaded push-ups or planks or BOTH! (Never done a plank? You don't know what you're missing!)
But, alas, the clock is eventually our friend and finally we stretch out, having survived another class.
We moan and groan and slowly get up, put our things away, thank our instructor (thank her?!?!?!), and head home.
Only to come back for more of the same a couple of days later.
Guess we are just gluttons for punishment, masochists enjoying the suffering.
But I suppose having a healthy body is worth the momentary pain.
There's no doubt about it...staying sexy and beautiful (?) is hard, torturous work!
September 30, 2009
RANDOM SEPTEMBER STUFF
Can you believe this is the last day of September already???
Where did the days go?
Fall chill is in the air, alright. We turned on our heat last night when the thermostat said 68 degrees. I don't like to be cold...guess I better get used to it for the next several months!
Thought I'd share a few random things from the fleeting month of September...
My laptop is sick. The symptoms (it was acting retarded...literally, SLOW!) started back in the summer and progressively got worse.
Yesterday I took it to the computer doctor for diagnosis and treatment.
It seems my computer has apparently been attacked by the Trojan virus.
Ah, our old nemesis, the dreaded Trojan...never did like a Trojan, no where, no how!
Thankfully, I have a desktop PC to fall back on. Don't know what I'd do without my internet...
As a tennis player, I've gotten attached to my racquets. It took me awhile to find one I really liked, and I love this Prince O3 SpeedPort.
I loved it so much that I got a second one. The second one was a demo model that Shawn, the club pro and my tennis instructor, had and when Prince discontinued the model he sold it to me at a very cheap price.
So I have two of the same racquet. Why do I need two? Just on the outside chance that a string might break at an inopportune time, I'd have a back-up. (In 7 years of playing tennis, that's never happened to me but it could at any moment!)
Anyway, did I tell you how much I love my racquet?
So a couple of weeks ago, I had finished a match at the Anderson University courts and accidentally left it beside the court. The next morning, when I realized I had lost it, I called the AU tennis coach and she said they had found it and one of her tennis girls had turned it in to the Wellness Center's Lost and Found.
I went in to get it and the student working at the Lost and Found desk said someone had taken it to his supervisor's office, so I checked with her. A very nice professor at AU, she said she had never seen it and checked around. No racquet. She asked for my name and number and said she'd do some investigating.
A couple of days passed and still no racquet. I had come to terms with the probability that I would never see it again, and it couldn't be replaced since they don't make that model any more.
Then, just as I'd about given up hope, she called. Apparently she'd put the word out that whoever took the racquet was going to be in deep trouble whenever she found out and mysteriously the racquet appeared on her desk the next morning.
Amazing the power that a little threat can have!
You'd think at a Christian university, students would have a little higher moral character than that.
But again...kids are kids, people are people, no matter where they are Christian or not.
I'm just happy to have my racquet back. And hopefully I learned my lesson!
Something new has come to our local Kroger store.
We have arrived in the 21st century.
Redbox!
You know, as in $1 per movie rental Redbox!
My children use them all the time and showed us how easy they are, but until now we've not had a convenient one for us.
Maybe now Kim and I will watch a few more movies instead of his weirdo, creepy sci-fi TV selections.
Think I'll check it out this weekend...
This bullfrog and several others like him live in our ponds.
But Kim noticed something very strange this summer...no frog eggs.
No eggs. No tadpoles. No pollywogs.
Does that mean we only have male frogs? Seems unlikely, since we've got lots of them and have always had a gazillion tadpoles in all the ponds every other year.
Maybe the fish ate them as fast as they laid their eggs? Highly unlikely that they would eat them all. Again, it's never happened before.
So...what???
Maybe the weather was weird and messed them up?
Strange, very strange...
In the past two weeks, I've seen two different blimps.
For no apparent reason. Not like they're going to a big ballgame or the Indy 500 or something like that...at least none that we can think of.
This one I spotted during the middle of the week, just over some farmfields nearby.
I can't see a blimp without thinking of Mama. She had a close call with a blimp once and she hasn't liked them since.
Very odd sight out here in rural Indiana...
While Dana and Karter were here, we went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum.
It was plumb filled with loud, rowdy, rough upper-elementary age schoolkids who were running up and down the ramps as their harried adult chaperones tried to keep them under control.
The chaperones were not smiling.
I had forgotten how much "fun" chaperoning field trips can be.
In the restroom, I was amused to find this vending machine.
Ibuprofen. Tylenol. Excedrin (talk about an Excedrin headache!).
How appropriate!
Without a doubt, the highlight of our month was the visit from our darling 15-month-old little grandson.
Have you ever seen a child more adorably precious than him?!
Grandma loves and misses you, Tunkin!!!
Okay, I'm ready...fall leaves, cool days, lots of family birthdays, trip to Kansas City, pumpkins, trick-or-treaters...
Bring on OCTOBER!!!
