Court of Honor

McKay participated in a Scout court of honor this week. He got a lot of merit badges thanks to scout camp in July and thanks to awesome leaders. I hope he keeps the fire burning. Today his homeschooling website that he streams in to for class was down, and I had him working on merit badge stuff instead . . . . . gotta have a Plan B!!! I told him he already had a snow day! (so to speak!)

Ooops! Had trouble focusing the camera!!! Too bad sometimes you only get one chance!

Crafting it forward

My sister-in-law Lora posted this craftiness link on her blog. I read it very carefully before responding to it. I didn't see anything that said "I" would have to do a craft, just that she would do something for me. Knowing how crafty Lora is and how wonderful her projects turn out, I jumped at the chance for her to make something for me.

I came home from vacation to find a package from her! And this was what was inside. My pictures aren't that great. It is a recipe book and it is sooooo darling! My picture taking does not do it justice. Here are a few pictures of it. (click on the pictures to see more detail!) There are already recipes in the book and blank pages that I can add my own. It is so wonderful, I hardly dare use it, but I've been wanting to create something like this for a while.

THANKS LORA!!!!

Books! Books! Books!

I read 5 books while on vacation. Before I go any further, I know what you all are thinking! Is that ALL she did while she was gone? Read? . . . . . . . . . . NO!!!! Considering the 15 hour drive down to Florida, our 15 hour drive back, countless hours at the beach, waiting for husband and children on amusement park rides and 3 days at sea, I'd say I had plenty of time to read . . . . and two of the books I'd partially read before I left on the trip ;)

Anywho, all 5 books were really pretty good, which is amazing. It is really hard to find a good book these days!!!

Sorry about the images . . . . if I have more time today, maybe I'll scan in the books and get better ones . . . .

This first one "EXTREMES, How to Keep Your Virtues from Becoming Vices" was interesting. Here are some of the Chapter names: Rigid Planners and Wingers, Sprinters and Saunterers, Underachievers and Overachievers, Forever Frivolous or Joylessly Solemn, Permissive Parents and Overcontrollers . . . . . to me VERY interesting!!!
I got the next three books 80% off on Deseret Book. Always love a deal!! "Wednesday Letters" is a truly touching Love Story. Can you imagine getting letters from your husband every Wednesday for your whole married life? What a legacy to leave behind!


And by the same author, "Recovering Charles." This story is set mostly in New Orleans after Katrina. Easy read, good book.
Mary Ellen Edmonds, a popular LDS church speaker and writer puts the highlights of her many talks and experiences into this book. She is very candid about her life and how she feels about life. As the book states on the back, this is "random thoughts on life's wrinkles." I liked it!
Every few month's our stake presidency seems to be recommending a book to the men to read and this is one of them. After our bishop gave a lesson on this book, I thought . . . . . if he felt it important enough to spend an hour during church speaking on the book, I'd like to read it. And so I did. This is a self-help book, and has some interesting ideas in it. Worth taking a look at. I enjoyed the read. It wasn't a book that you needed to digest a paragraph at a time. The author tells a story while teaching his ideas, which is nice!

So there you go! I rarely have so many books in a row that I can recommend! Enjoy, or not!

Life's a Beach aka Our Vacation

We spent most of the month of August on Vacation. I took over 500 pictures and have waded through a few (actually more than a few) of them to post. We drove along I-95 in order to get to our destination in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Our first stop was in Savannah, Georgia to spend the night. I love Savannah, especially the historic district and the shops along the waterfront.


Savannah is a really colorful town. There is a book written about it called "The Garden of Good and Evil." Below is one of the vehicles that are used for "ghost tours." Lincoln and I took a ghost tour a few years back in Savannah on Halloween night. They take their ghosts very seriously . . . . I kid you not!

I've read several books that have been based on this "Historic Factor's Walk" so it was really interesting to see in person.
This is part of the "Factor's Walk." Merchants would take their products underneath these bridges and buyers would be up on the bridges bidding on the merchandise. The merchandise could be anything . . . . slaves . . . . cotton . . . . whatever came in on the ships.Here is Chancy, Lincoln and McKay standing on a stairway by the Factor's Walk.

I like textures, and there are plenty of them on the Waterfront. We had to drive on cobblestones. What a rough ride!
The sidewalks are sometimes made of oyster shells.
In the candy shop, this guy was making some peanut butter flavored taffy. He threw some out to us when he got it packaged. Pretty nifty machine!
Another thing that I love about Savannah is their majestic live-oak trees with the swingy-hangy spanish moss that drips off of them. It's hard to capture it in a picture!

Savannah sunset . . . .
I really wanted to eat at Lady & Son's Restaurant (Paula Deen's place) but we ate on the waterfront which was nice also. I was happy when we just happened to drive by it. I made Lincoln drive by it twice so I could get a picture.
Here is part of the resort we stayed at on Cocoa Beach. The resort was right on the beach and was fun. I guess paying for that time share isn't such a bad thing :)


McKay with his boogie board on the beach. The beach was great for boogie boards because it was shallow for quite a ways out into the ocean and he could ride and ride the waves really easily. I'll have to post a video of him doing that.As soon as I saw this road sign I knew it was another spot I was going to make Lincoln stop and take a picture. "I Dream of Jeannie Lane!" I loved that show when I was little. I found myself humming the theme song quite a bit while we were in Cocoa Beach. . . . I Didn't realize how racy the show was until I was older . . . . This sign was a lot bigger than I thought it'd be.
We fully intended on going to Disney World and taking advantage of their really GREAT deal they were offering to military members that had been deployed. The kids just didn't have a desire to go to Disney though. (They ARE getting older) We went to Patrick Air Force Base to see what other tickets they had that we might like and Lincoln kind of off-handidly said, "I wish Universal had a deal like Disney World." And guess what? They had a BETTER deal!!! 7 days of free passes for Lincoln and $89 for 7 days for the rest of us! That included both parks. The boys were really excited and so were we. Thank you Universal!
Here are the boys planning their day at Universal.

It goes without saying what they like about Universal . . . .
This ride had one of the longest waits in the park . . . . . I know, because I waited outside for them and fell asleep while waiting.
I was sooooo excited to see that the Blue Man group was at Universal also. The tickets were extra, but thanks again to the military discount, we paid almost half price to get in. A HUGE savings!! The Blue Man group is indescribable. Wacky, funny, weird, musical, off-the-wall and very entertaining.
At the pool at the resort . . . . . I didn't even bring my hair straightener on the trip. I knew that in the humidity, I'd never beat the curl!
Volleyball was a favorite.
See the girl behind McKay? Her name is Patty and she is from Tennessee. Why do I know this? Chancy made it his business to know, and could be found at the pool just as often as she could. It didn't take long to figure that one out!
Chancy thought he was such a big man that we couldn't get him to put on sun-screen. He paid for it big time. Blistered shoulders resulted from this pool activity!
Lincoln and I walked the beach in the morning at a brisk pace almost all of the 7 days we were there. It was fun looking for shells. I even found a star fish.

Sunrise . . . .
And the cruise . . . . . Port Canaveral, Florida! 7 more days of paradise!

Here we are just after boarding the ship.
First stop . . . . Bahamas!


We went on a Kayak/snorkeling excursion. We didn't know the snorkeling was included (a bonus!) I'm glad it was, because my thumbs were getting blisters rowing that danged Kayak. It was cool that the Kayaks were clear, so you could see through them to the fish. This water was so warm and sooooo blue! The picture just doesn't do it justice.Right before I headed into the water to snorkel I snapped a few pictures of Lincoln and the kids. I didn't realize until later that I had snapped pictures of other people! Oooops!!! At least I got ONE of one of us. The fish were pretty neat. You could see them a lot better snorkeling than in the Kayaks.
After snorkeling.

I had to take a picture of McKay's lunch plate . . . . . you know sometimes how kids are. It looks good, but probably not very nutritious! He practically lived off of soda and ice cream while on the ship.
Awwww, my sweet little boy . . . . . (I can't believe he's 13!!!, he kept getting handed the kids- meal menu which was NOT a happy thing for him) Did you notice he got his hair cut part way through the trip???
Here is a Bahama picture. Oprah Winfrey and Nicholas Cage among other's own homes on this little Island. Even Elvis Presley had a house there. It was quite modest compared to the modern stuff around it today. Look at this water!!!!
The famous resort "Atlantis."
At our formal dinner. Our boys loved the formal dinners which surprised me a little because they had to dress up for them.
On the cruise we were having to worry about hurricanes Ana and Bill. At first the captain of the ship totally cancelled our 2nd two destinations which were St. Thomas and St. Maartin. We were told we were going to go to Cozumel instead. Later they said "no" to Cozumel and that we were going to go to Half Moon Cay and The Grand Turk. ?????? Then as the hurricanes changed course they decided that we could go to our original destinations. We actually DID get to go to St. Thomas . . . . . . . and that is where we saw Blackbeard's Castle!
McKay had fun with the Pirate Statues.
Kind-a looks like Captain Jack Sparrow, doesn't he? Not Mckay . . . . the Statue!
Arghhhh Matey!
A St. Thomas view
A view of our ship The Carnival Glory. St. Thomas relies almost solely upon the cruise ships for their economy. They don't even open up their shops on days when the ships don't come into Port. They almost missed having us come, but there were two ships in port. Our ship had 3500 people on it. The town that I say I'm from "Delta" has only about 2000 people in it. (not really from there but that's what I say . . . because my town was much smaller) So it's like two small towns converging on the Island for a day . . . . if ya know what I mean.
I thought this palm tree looked cool! Is it a palm tree? Looks more like a fan.
Some more flora . . .

and fauna (an ingauna) ooooooooo, it ryhmes!!!!
This is a wall of fossilized tree sap. These stones, called Amber, are considered semi-precious stones. There was a museum full of them, and of course, a gift shop full of it also! Very pretty. Some of the stones had fossilized insects in them, mosquitoes, cocroaches, and spiders, Oh My!
At a beach in St. Thomas.
See the guys looking down? We didn't realize it at first but we were swimming with school's and school's of fish. They were small, silver, translucent looking fish. One of my favorite sports is people watching. It was fun to see the people realize that they were swimming with a BUNCH of fish and freak-out and run out of the water. Sometimes, what you don't know doesn't hurt or scare you . . . . . they'd been swimming with the fish most of the day already!
Here is a view of the beach that we had just been swimming in. We had a CRAZY drive up this little mountain. Firstly, they were driving on the WRONG side of the road (tee hee) which was kind of freaky and secondly, the speed limit was 10 miles an hour and the driver had to be going at least 5 times that fast, on narrow, windey roads. (how do you spell windey, windy?, doesn't make sense!!!) The drivers in St. Thomas use their horns in the vehicles liberally!
Another view, with us blocking the view :)
We left St. Thomas and arrived at St. Maartin the morning after. The ship pulled into port, and then had to back out! The port was closed due to the swells the hurricanes were causing. DARN! No St. Maartin. It was a bummer to have the Island in your sights, even have the ship docking and be turned away . . . . so we got to go to . . . . . . . .

Grand Turk . . . . which is the capitol of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Carnival cruise lines bought a chunk of it for a cool 60 million bucks. It is pretty much a party beach (which is what cruising is all about) and has tourist shops on it. Since we didn't plan on going to Grand Turk, all of the excursions were sold-out. I was kind of bummed until I saw people passing us by with arms full of conch shells. There were hundreds of conch shells on the beach. McKay and I went and found several of them, but I'd only let him bring one home. In the picture, our ship is on the left.
We brought our snorkle gear and Justin and Lincoln got use of it. The beach was really hard on the feet because of the coral. (good thing we had our water shoes!)
Each night as we went to bed there was chocolate and a new form of towel sculpture to surprise us. McKay took a class on how to fold an elephant out of towels. He really shocked me on how willing he was to participate in the activities of his age group. He'd just say, goodbye, and we wouldn't see him for hours. Where could he go to get lost? The ship is only so big!
Can't forget the yummy food . . . . . .
My poor (new) camera!!! I tried my best to keep it away from the sun and sand and water! It'll probably never be the same. This was our last night, and it was sprinkling and this was the best picture we could get. The camera lense was either fogged up, or being sprinkled on most of the time. I had to treat it with tender loving care . . . . and now need to figure out how to clean it!
I can't believe it is all over. What a FUN time we had! I'm still feeling the rock of the boat and it's been 4 days since we got off of it. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get my "land legs" back!!!