In response to a fellow blogger......

When I read my friend Missy's blog today, I had a comment to post but as I typed, it got a little long and so I decided to post it on my own blog. Here ya go.......

My mom and Dad have Nate's first christmas tree in their yard. It was a live tree that we planted shortly after Christmas 1987 in our own yard. A couple of years later, after a lengthy battle - over a tree! - it was transplanted to my Mom and Dad's yard. That's another, and entirely different story. The tree is now a beautiful 40+ foot tree that is absolutely beautiful, and is home to an owl which is really cool. Owls eat mice and other creatures during the night (they're nocturnal of course), and then as they sit in the tree and digest the evening's meal, they 'drop' the undigestables to the ground below.

Bones are not so easy to digest - or so it's been noticed (and I've been told) from what's left in the 'droppings' underneath the tree. Once the droppings have been exposed to the weather for a period of time, the bones seem to lose their 'nasty' factor ('nasty' coming from the fact they've come out the OTHER end from where they went in) and the bones that remain become quite interesting - rather FASCINATING - to a 9-year old boy and his grandfather. Grandpa then comes up with an unused pill bottle, and boy brings 'former owl droppings' home in 'specimen jar'.

I wouldn't trade my boys for anything.

Things I've Noticed

I've noticed at approximately 5:30 a.m. (yes that's the morning 5:30) that as I'm riding my bike with David and Lisa, the sunrise is absolutely, positively beautiful. I'd take pictures and post them for you to see if I could find my darned digital camera.

(And if I hadn't lost the camera, you would already have seen pictures of my Dearly Beloved pulling his fishing boat behind his John Deere lawnmower. He threatened bodily harm if I took pictures, but of course he was too busy pulling it through the yard as I clicked the pictures.) I just love that man!

Lost..... and not yet found!

Where oh where are my bloooooooggin friends
Where oh where have the goooooone???????

I have searched and searched, and I've found not one…….

Where oh where are my friends????

Counting the Days................

The Sprigg family gets together every couple of years for a BIG family vacation. The picture here is several years ago (1995'ish) when 'brother' Mark had to take a shift at one of the hospitals in St. Louis during our vacation. So David and I took all of the kids and went to the zoo - what better way to keep them busy all day! The looks we got were amazing because the kids are pretty much 'stair-stepped' in age with the exception of Hanna who is 3 years younger than Nate. Some people actually asked "Are they ALL yours?" We finally got tired of trying to explain and began to say "Why Yes, they are!" which generated even stranger looks - more like looks of pity!! It was fun!

At any rate, the kids now range in age from early- to late-20's and oddly enough still want to go on vacation with the 'old folks'! We'll all converge on Dauphin Island, Alabama in a few weeks! We've heard it's a fairly quiet island, but I'm not so sure that will hold true after the Sprigg Family! They're now bringing their own families - husbands, kids of their own, girlfriends, boyfriends......... Paul and Marcia who weren't with us on the trip to St. Louis have added 2 more to their family, and we've added Caleb, so all 20 of us should have an awesome time. We're counting the days...........

Things I’ve learned.........

I’ve learned that …….

• even though I may not have had the mower in the correct gear, David is very grateful when I mow the yard unexpectedly.
• even though he knew it was going to make me late for church (which was really my own fault for not getting up earlier) David really appreciates when I fix breakfast (he normally does that!)
• refrigerated pie crusts shrink when you pre-bake them.
• you can use 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips in place of 2 squares of unsweetened chocolate for a chocolate cream pie.
• David likes - rather LOVES - chocolate cream pie SO much that he didn’t mind a bit about the ‘small’ pie-crust.
• unless you follow the recipe closely and ‘cook until very thick’, the lemon pie filling won’t get as thick as it should.
• frozen pie crusts do NOT shrink when you pre-bake them.
• my dad really appreciates lemon meringue pie even if it is a little ‘soupy’ - hey at least the crust was normal size!!
• the smoke alarm will go off when you try to make meringue 'cookies' with the left over meringue and leave them in the oven too long!
• I have a really good friend who's going to teach me how to make a good crust because no matter how hard I try they always turn out bad which is why I bought them this weekend.
• it really doesn’t take a lot of money, just a little time, effort, and love to make the men in our lives feel really special and loved!! (This of course, wasn't something I learned just this weekend.)
  
  Happy Fathers Day – to my Dad and my husband!