Life on Snow Hill

My nephew, Braden, had his birthday party at Mom & Dad’s this evening. It was a fun family get-together. My dad somehow wound up on one of those razor scooters racing against Daniel…

We bought Braden an RC boat, and he was dying to take it out to the pond to try it out. He was pretty excited.

It’s always fun to get to spend some time together with family. It made for a relaxing evening, even though the bugs were out like crazy. Oh, and it was hot and humid.

As some of you know, Becky and I have been in Gatlinburg since Sunday.  We haven’t really done a whole lot – her mom was with us for Sunday and Monday.  We went to the Dixie Stampede on Sunday night, then on Monday we walked around downtown Gatlinburg for a few hours.  In the snow.

Yes, snow.  I’ve been glad to see it honestly, although I’m over it now.  It started snowing a little bit on Sunday night, but snowed fairly hard all day on Monday and part of Tuesday morning.  In all, we probably had about 5 inches – at least that’s what I eye-balled on the handrail outside the front window of our room.

I’m usually one to say that I’m good with one or two good snows in the Winter, then I’m ready for Spring.  Well, I’ve had my good snow – I’m ready for Spring.  I’m ready to do a garden and mow the yard.  I’m ready to cut down some more trees for next Winter’s firewood.  I’m ready to be outside without freezing.

The snow is still beautiful though.  Here’s a pic to prove it – stay tuned, I’ll try to add more pics to this gallery later on rather than keeping it at just the one.

It’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve blogged about anything. After thinking about it for nearly two weeks, I’m still not sure if it’s because I’ve been lazy, or if it’s because I haven’t had anything to write about. Honestly it’s probably a little of both.

Christmas is coming up really soon, so Becky and I (mostly Becky) have been doing as much Christmas shopping as we can. I’ve noticed that as I get older, Christmas gets here faster and faster. When I was a kid, it took forever to get here! Becky and I are also heading up the Christmas play at church this year, so that has been an added, but welcome challenge as well. We’ve really enjoyed working with the youth and hope to be able to do more with them in the future.

I guess all of the Christmas preparations are what has been keeping us busy, but we’re also having to take care of all of the normal day-to-day stuff at the same time. Last year I think I let all of that turn me into sort of a Scrooge – just ask Becky..she’ll be honest with you. I’m determined not to let that happen this year though. I’m trying to stay full of Christmas cheer. See?!

Something else that’s cool is that this entire post has been written on my iPhone. This is the best gadget I’ve ever owned, and probably the most useful as well.

Becky and I took a trip to Gatlinburg over the last few days.  We have a sort of trial timeshare with Diamond Resorts, and we decided to take advantage of it for a few days.  We plan to go again in late January to finish out our trial.

We had a good time while we were there.  We got to relax some, and were able to do a few fun things, too.  Of course, anyone that has been in or around Gatlinburg knows that the scenic views in the area can be breathtaking.  This particular photo was taken at Newfound Gap in the Smokies.

While we were there, we spent about a day and a half in Dollywood.  I don’t know if they do this all year, but we found that if you go in after 3pm on one day, you can get in the next day for free.  So we took advantage of that.  We enjoyed a couple of bluegrass bands, saw the Kingdom Heirs (We found that their piano player, Andy Stringfield, lives about a 20 minute drive from where we live), got sick on a couple of roller-coasters and shopped around a bit.

After Dollywood, we spent some time in the Great Smoky Mountains.  We drove up to Clingman’s Dome, took the .5 mile hike up to the top and enjoyed the view.  Don’t let that .5 mile fool you though – it’s steep, and pretty challenging.  Neither Becky or I are in the best shape, but we’re not in terrible shape either.  We had to take a few breaks on the way to the top.  Once we got there, the view was awesome, but the wind was chilling.  We enjoyed the view for a while, took some photos and made our way back down.  We spoke to a Marine, a Vietnam Vet, who had some interesting stories to tell.  We enjoyed talking to him for a little while, then had to move on.  On the way back down towards Gatlinburg, we stopped at Newfound Gap.  We took a few more photos, and learned a few things about the area that I’m sure most of you already know about.  There is a monument there where President FDR dedicated it and the National Park.  The Tennessee/North Carolina state line also runs right through the area where that monument was built.

That evening, we went to the Dixie Stampede.  This makes about the 3rd time we’ve gone, I believe.  It is expensive, but it’s always a fun show to watch, and the food is always very, very good.  I finally saw a mess-up for the first time in the show.  The girl that rides standing up on two horses fell off when she was trying to get them to bow at the end of her act.  She wasn’t hurt at all – she just had to jump off before she completely lost her balance.  Again, though, the show was a lot of fun as always.

We packed up and headed home Wednesday morning.  We had a lot of fun, but it’s always good to get back home.

If you’d like to see, here are a few more photos from the trip.

Hello again, loyal readers.  I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything in so long – the last date I put anything up was the 4th of August.  I don’t have much excuse for the rest of that week, but all of last week I’ve been gone on vacation.  This will be a long post, so hang on!

Becky and I went up to Ohio to see my sister and her husband, and then on to Michigan to see her grandparents.  On our way back south, we stopped back in Ohio to visit some more and then went to a Reds game.

When we first got to Ohio, it had already been a hard day at work.  I had to work on Saturday the 9th for maintenance – that’s a time when we can do work on servers that can’t be done during regular hours.  My job was simple that day – cable up the new storage to the SAN, and update the patches on our VMware hosts.  We ran into a small issue with the SAN, but it took us a while to fix it.  The VMware stuff went just fine.  But I didn’t get out of the office until about 2:00 in the afternoon, and it was too late to make it to Ohio for the main purpose of our trip in the first place.  My sister’s husband was being ordained as the assistant pastor at First Baptist Church in West Union, Ohio.  We made it to their house around 8:30 that evening I believe.  We went to church with them and several other family members on Sunday.  My sister’s father-in-law preached both services.  We all stayed with them again on Monday night, and went to the Creation Museum near Cincinnati the next morning.  I’ll blog about that trip in a different post since there is so much to tell.  After that, Becky and I headed straight up to Michigan.

Becky’s grandparents live in Lexington, MI.  It’s a small town right on Lake Huron.  This photo to the left is from the ‘Rock Wall’ that extends out into the lake in this small harbor.

We stayed with them for three nights and had a great time overall.  We were also able to visit with some of Becky’s other family members – cousins, aunts and uncles.

While we were there we also drove down to Port Huron to see the sights there.  Becky’s grandma (Oma) wanted so bad to take us ‘across the bridge’ into Canada.  I honestly hadn’t been crazy about the idea at all from the start, and then one of Becky’s aunts told us about how she was detained one day when her name/age/description was flagged as someone they were looking for.  That was enough for me – I didn’t want to spend any extra time with the authorities than I had to.  Going through customs was going to be bad enough for me – I hate subjecting myself to searches, etc.  Not that I have anything to hide, just that it violates my sense of privacy.  Anyway, we did go to the river and look across at Canada.  In the photo here, you can see two land masses – the one of the left is Canada, and the right is the good ole’ USA.

Lastly, on our way back home on Thursday, we stopped back by my sister’s house.  We got there around 8:30 again I believe.  They made home made chocolate ice cream for my birthday and we watched a movie.  Well, we tried anyway – we were all really tired.  We got up the next morning and headed to the Cincinnati area.  Our main intent was to go see the Reds play, but we did a little bit of shopping before game time.  At the game, we started out in the very top of the nosebleed section behind home plate.  I’m serious – when we looked behind us, we were looking at the outside of the stadium.  After a few innings, we headed down to the right field corner where they had a mostly empty ‘family’ section where alcohol wasn’t allowed.

The entire trip was a lot of fun, but there was a lot of driving involved so that was a bit tiresome.  We really enjoyed getting away, but we were glad to get back home at the same time.  Now it’s back to the daily grind of the job, and taking care of things around the house.

Over the past several weeks, my dad has gotten into honeybees. He’s bought a few books, built a few hives and learned as much as he can about them. They’re actually very amazing creatures! From how they pick a queen and take care of her, to how they do a dance to show the worker bees where the flowers are, and how far away they are, they’re truly something.

Dad found a swarm in a tree where they’ve been making honey. He cut the tree above where most of their comb is, and put a hive on top of that. He also bought another hive with a swarm already in it.

I’ve tasted some of the honey myself, and it is really sweet and tasty. I know, honey is honey. But this was as fresh as it comes.

I spent a few minutes yesterday taking some pictures of the hive, and Dad started playing with the bees while I was down there, so you’ll see a picture with one of them getting honey off his finger. Enjoy!

My mom has started a blog – her first.  I’m sure she’ll be writing about all kinds of things going on with her and my dad, their church life, and of course their grandkids.  Go on over and take a read!

I’ve never heard of Free Range Kids until just a few minutes ago.  Growing up as a kid, I pretty much fit the criteria of what a free range kid is, because I was allowed to ride my bike pretty much wherever I wanted, or play in the woods any time I wanted.  Of course, I grew up in an area where the traffic on my road consisted of a tractor, and maybe a handful of cars every day – including the mailman.

This post talks about how to deal with people who basically raise their kids in fear – not letting them out of their sight.  Ever.  While I also think that is a bit extreme, I’m not sure I’d be as extreme as some parents are either as far as letting a kid ride the subway alone or something like that.  The poster said she quotes stats such as kids being 40 times more likely to die in a car crash than to be abducted.  That may be the case, but my argument would be that a lot of criminals commit crimes of opportunity.  If a kid isn’t out on the street alone to be abducted, he won’t be abducted.  If he is, there is always the chance.  I’m not saying never let that kid out of your sight necessarily, but use some common sense.  If there are more kids out on the streets alone, there are more opportunities for kidnappers to abduct them.

Aside from that type of argument by ‘free rangers’, I totally agree with the idea of letting a kid be a kid, experiencing things (within reason – don’t let them start getting into trouble like getting into gangs or some such garbage) and learning as they go.  I did a lot of that myself growing up, and I survived just fine.

As for common sense, here’s some for you.  If a criminal/thug believes he is alone (i.e., won’t get caught) and sees an opportunity to satisfy whatever impulse he might have, be it stealing something, or kidnapping a little girl, he’ll do it.  I own a motorcycle, and had it sitting at the end of my house in plain sight, just as I had done for a couple of years.  My wife and I were gone for the evening, and upon our return found the motorcycle missing.  If the opportunity presents itself as easy prey, a criminal will take advantage of it in a heartbeat.  So again, while I’m all for not hovering over your kid 24/7, use some common sense, people!

3 years ago today, April 16, 2008, is when Becky and I were married.

It was a good, but sort of a hectic day.  Well, it was for Becky anyway.  She got up early and was off doing all the things a woman does to make herself pretty.  (I’m so glad I’m not a woman)  She did a really good job, too, by the way.

I honestly don’t remember what I did when I first woke up.  I do, however, remember that when I got myself ready to go, I had plenty of time to spare before I needed to be at the church, so I dozed on the couch for a few minutes to relax and calm my nerves.

Once everybody was at the church, things started getting a little more hectic for me.  Everybody was running around doing last minute arrangements, getting pictures done and getting things ready for the reception.  I personally tried to hide as much as I could.

There weren’t really any big mishaps for the day.  Well, Becky’s mom forgot to bring her wedding dress.  But no big deal.  It wasn’t really that important.  Of course, I’m being completely sarcastic.  Her mom was freaking out and thought she’d ruined the whole day – but there was plenty of time for her to go back and get it, so it really was no big deal.  That was about the time that I realized that I forgot to bring the tux for one of my groomsmen.  Becky’s mom picked that up while she was out as well.  Other than that, and something about somebody not being able to find some flowers, things went smoothly.  It was a great day.

So now for 3 years, Becky and I have been growing closer to each other.  We’re still learning about all the little quirks that the other has (does that ever end?) and figuring out how to deal with them.  But that’s ok – she wanted a Wii for our anniversary this year so she could kick my tail in that boxing game.  She got me a very nice watch, which has been much needed for a few months now.

All joking aside, I couldn’t have picked a better lady to spend the rest of my life with.

Kristan and family were able to make it up to Mom & Dad’s for our regular Sunday dinner, even with Zechariah (ZZ) being only 3 days old. That kid has a LOT of hair on his head. We were all a little surprised at how much he has. So here is a picture of that as well…