Wils admires a Worm

Garden Fresh Pizza

The grandbabies are getting the last of Autumn's harvest in. Laurel snips parsley.

Final product: Fresh, delicious garden pizza!!

Yum! Yum!

Sisters and their Children

My lovely daughter-in-law Wendy and her sweet sister Trisha are out with their children hiking. Notice the babies in the baby joggers- these things go on almost any terrain.

Mamaw's Angel Baby

Our little Trilby is such a doll baby! She is so curious and alert! She has those big ole Evans' Brown eyes!

Jess' Special Day!

Troy's girlfriend, Jessica, celebrated her birthday this week. Troy Dustin bought her a new puppy for her birthday. Meet Summit, a Great Pyrenees pup. This is a huge breed of dog that can get up to 120 pounds. This breed of dog originated in parts of the region in and around the Pyrenees Mountains of southern France and northern Spain.[ Those of you who have met Djaro- Chris and Wendy's massive dog- then you have met a Pyr. They are beautiful animals who are loyal and faithful. They are guard dogs who are very protective over their families. SO..... it looks as if we have TWO of these beasties in our family now!

Summit is only 4 months old and look how huge the pup is!!!

Happy Birthday Jess- we love you very much!!

October

October gave a party;

The leaves by the hundreds came.

The chestnuts, oaks, and maples,

and leaves of every name.

The Sunshine spread a carpet,

and everything was grand,

Miss Weather led the dancing,

Professor Wind the band.

George Cooper

Laurel's Latest Project

Chris and Wendy have a very musical home. Wendy plays the viola professionally, participating in classical symphonies and often being hired for events and weddings. Chris plays his Kentucky bluegrass banjo. The kids have been introduced to music since they could toddle around. Laurel has been practicing the violin (or fiddle as us mountaineers say) since she was two. With the addition of the piano to their home a few weeks ago they are all in 7th heaven. Laurel has decided she wants to compose her own music so that is exactly what she set about doing. We will see how that turns out!


Drawing staves:

Laurel's music:

The composer at work:

Trilby's Discovery

Are those my toes????Those are mine too?

Ha!-I caught it!!

My I'm good!!

Battle Reenactment

The grandbabies went down to Fort Massac, by Metropolis, this weekend for the battle reenactment and Buckskinners encampment Here they are watching the Highland Brigade enter the battlefield. Lovely Laurel in her coonskin cap!

Little Daniel Boone!

Learning about spinning wheels...

Tipping Dysfunctional

I recently read this article on tipping. Here is an excert:

"It's disappointing to receive anything less than 20 percent of the total bill. Most waiters at today's better restaurants expect that much for average service, and even more if they do it with a smile. So unless you're planning never to go to the same restaurant twice, the days of 10 percent tips--and even 15 percent tips--are long gone."

I am a tipper. I appreciate good service and I appreciate how hard service workers have it. I do not, however, appreicate a culture- such as ours- which has forced a full expectancy of tipping irregardless of the caliber of service. I have had surly waitresses, rude waiters, and slow service when the restaurant was less than half full. The servers were giggling at the counter while we waited patiently for a refill. Still I tipped, it felt uncouth not to do so. I have heard the stories of how some restaurants just take up all the tips and divide the total among their employees AND THEN DEDUCT THAT AMOUNT FROM THEIR SALARY. Excuse me- if that is true then I am not paying a multi-billionaire's companies workers. Tips should be good service AND to help out our fellowman who is working long hard hours to make ends meet. And then I always wonder just what to tip???? Is 20 % really the magic number now? And who do you tip??? (I end up tipping everybody because I am afraid to leave someone out??) What is your take on this?

Church Quest

A few years ago my friend Margie and I decided we wanted to go on a church quest to learn about our church's heritage. We first contacted Sunny who put us in touch with the official historian for the Church of God organization, Dr. Roebuck. Dr. Roebuck wrote us and gave us information and directions to sites that were of significance to our denomination. We then took a trip to get back in touch with our roots. It was wonderful!

Well Sunny is now attending the Church of God Theological Seminary there in Cleveland, Tennessee and guess who happens to be her professor this semester- yep, Dr. Roebuck. Dr. Roebuck announced to his class that he was taking them all on a trip to visit the historical sites of the Church of God and he would be lecturing on these sites. When Sunny called to tell me about her field trip- I was green with envy. She said she would ask Dr. Roebuck if I could come in and accompany her class on the trip. I immediately contacted my comrade Margie who was as excited as I was when Sunny informed us that we could attend.

Margie and I drove through to Cleveland after work on Friday and were up bright and early with Sunny to catch the bus for our trip. All I can say is it was phenomenal! Dr. Roebuck is a gifted teacher, and as the premier authority on Church of God history, his lectures were informative, inspiring, and moving. At each site he told personal stories that had been collected concerning the events that transpired there, he shared about the vision the people had and the battles they faced when embracing this faith. He always had prayer at each site and often led us in worshipful songs pertinent to the happenings that occured there.

One of the first sites we visited was Barney Creek. This is where RG Spurling first began to pray and seek God for a closer walk and a renewed spirit within the church. At this time he belonged to a Baptist church. He didn't intend to began a whole new denomination in this isolated mountainous area but instead he prayed to get back to the roots that John Wesley had once taught. Spurling had seen a lot of division in the body of Christ and sought to unite these believers. As he, and some like-minded friends, begin to seek God over this the "Christian Union" was born. This name signified their desire to unite the children of God. Later when this group of believers united with a group of Methodists who also had became disenchanted with the proceedings of their own church and longed to get back to a true walk with God through Holiness, a new name emerged- The Holiness Church. Only later did we become The Church of God. This heritage trip was wonderful and I came away with a renewed determination to regain the vision that these dedicated saints had. I pray for this spirit to engulf our own church at Oppy and we shed form and fashion and embrace true spiritual worship.

Gymnastics Class

Laurel loves her gymnastics classes! She goes every Wednesday and she tells me she has a blast!

Forks anyone???

Ok, How many of you have read the Twilight series of books? Yep, those vampire ones! Not a vampire fan? Well absolutely I wasn't either until I read these novels. I know they are teenybopper romances, I know vampires are silly, I know I am a grown adult woman and a college English teacher to boot, but you know you will fall in love with this story (and with Edward). But hey- there are other people out there like me- I ran into a Twilightmoms site! So there~~~ Anyways, the movie will be released next month and you know me and my literary quests- I would love to go to Forks, Washington and visit all the sites mentioned in the book. Just a wee little weekend trip- fly into Seattle perhaps?? See the Pacific northwest- see where Edward and Bella met?? (ok- I am getting out of control here!) But wouldn't that be cool??? Are there any takers?

‘Twilight’ takes over the world
Entertainment Weekly is planning yet another cover devoted to the movie “Twilight,” beating out James Bond and other heavyweights in the holiday movie preview.
Meanwhile, tickets sold out so fast for a screening of a 15-minute clip at the Rome International Film Festival later this month that another screening was added.
And now star Robert Pattinson ranks higher on IMDB’s Star Meter than Brad Pitt or Will Smith.
“Twilight,” opening Nov. 21.

TWILIGHT has quickly become a huge worldwide phenomenon, developing a strong core base of dedicated fans who are drawn to the story of a Romeo & Juliet- style romance between a mortal (Bella) and a vampire (Edward).

Home School Group Field Trip

My granddaughter Laurel is home-schooled. Well actually she has never started organinzed lessons, she just turned 6 and they are taking a casual approach to her education. Before you begin to worry- she can read on a 6 grade level, does all the math for adjusting recipes, knows more geography then I do (her family is very well traveled), and we won't even go into the scientific aspect of her education- with two biologist parents you can probably imagine the level of her education in this field! (I know, I know- I sound like a proud Mamaw- cut me some slack here!) Laurel belongs to a home school group which does activities with the children in the group. Among these are organized field trips. Laurel wrote me a letter today telling me about the recent field trip she went on last week:



Dear Mamaw,



I want to tell you about my trip to the one-room schoolhouse. It was very fun. We drew pictures of an owl and wrote stories about the school. We learned a song about the continents and tried to guess which ones were countries and which ones were continents. We learned to write with a quill pen and I still have the piece of paper that I wrote on. I wrote my name on it with the quill pen. We did some math but it was mostly learning. We memorized a poem about an owl and recited it. It went "A wise old owl sat in an oak. The more he saw the less he spoke. The less he spoke the more he heard; now we can't we be like that wise old bird?" There were very old pictures on the walls including one of George Washington. There were three rows of desks. I sat in one of the front desks because I was with the first-graders. All of the desks except the first-graders' desks had curled iron or some kind of metal on the sides. The first-graders' desks were just flat metal on the sides. My desk was wooden on top and it still had the hole where they used to have the ink bottle! The American flag was very old and tattered but I really liked it. It had small lengths of golden string hanging from it, and I liked to look at them. I passed out small paper booklets in my row. In the back was the story of the owl. There was another small booklet where we wrote our story about it. One of the things I liked most was trying to read cursive. One of the older girls listened to us read in the coatroom while the teacher was doing things with the other children. I read the first grade book out loud at the recitation bench but it was too easy. In the second grade book only the cursive was hard.The only thing I didn't like about the day was when we had to go home. I hope we will meet again soon! I miss you!



Love,

Laurel

Laurel's New Smile...

Just a Peck on the Cheek...

Like Father, like son...

Wils likes to dress up in camo like his dad. He looks like he is ready to go hunting!

Big Smooch

"What in the world is my big sis doing to me??" Laurel & Trilby

More on Laurel's Six Birthday

Laurel enjoyed a lemon fluff cake, that she helped her mom make, for her sixth birthday! Yummy, yummy! Cake in my tummy~

Happy Birthday Baby Girl

Little Miss Laurel Janneke Evans turned 6 years old today. My how she has grown. It seems like yesterday that she was a little baby and now she is a big girl of 6! She loves her church activities, her gymnastics class, her family, her pets, and reading! She reads voraciously! Some of her favorite books are the Little House on the Praire series. Happy Birthday Sweetie, we love you so much!

Book Review

I just finished reading The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, it is really a Junior Fiction book but since I had saw previews of the movie I wanted to read the book. It is an easy read, in one rainy afternoon you can finish the whole novel, but it is a moving book. It is told through the eyes of a child and as it is meant for younger readers it is heavily censored. Still the history and horror of the Holocaust will haunt you.