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Christmas Trip to KY

February 6, 2009 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

We had an awesome Christmas trip to KY this year. It was a great time away together. It was the first trip our college student had been able to take with us since Granny and PaPaw visited in April. It was good for us to have time alone together as a family.

We arrived in KY around dark and decided to go straight over to IN to the Perfect North Ski slopes so we could get our two hours of snow tubbing in before they closed. It was 11 degrees out and was supposed to get pretty warm and rain the next day. We decided it would be better to be dry and cold than wet and cold.

The ski slopes were pretty impressive; very family friendly. They made their own snow.. which was good because there wouldn’t have been any if they hadn’t. They had conveyer belts that took you up the hill after you tubbed down. The hill was great. The wind chill made our faces numb.

This was the best we could do for a family photo in the snow.. the blowers blew the snow right into our camera lens. We had several layers of clothes on. I offered everyone scarfs and after the first trip down.. they wished they had accepted. I left them in the hotel. I stayed up late the night before our trip Scotch Guarding our jeans to keep them dry. It helped a little.

After two trips down the hill, our college kid and mathematician hid out in the heated snack bar. The rest of us made it down the hill a total of six times. We thawed out and drank hot coco once and that was still all we could brave. No trips up Mt. Everest planned anytime soon.

The next day was our day to visit the Creation Museum.

We were very impressed by the museum. It took most the day to see it all. I would defiantly go back.

Everything was done with excellence … the animatronics were so real that they fooled us a couple of times.

The story of creation and the gospel were laid out very clearly.

I learned a couple of things I didn’t know… like that they have proven that all humans have the same blood line… I know I was taught something more evolutionary in school.

This is part of the walk through of Creation.

They showed some interesting things about Noah’s ark and the flood.

Had some really cool fossils.

and other exhibits.

We spent quite a while in the book store.

They had several shows including a special effects theater and a planetarium show. It was all very enjoyable. Mike said that he had wished there had been a little more details on the evidence that they had for a young earth. For example they explained that the radioactive dating that evolutionist use isn’t reliable.. but they didn’t explain why. Maybe they will add more of that in the future. They periodically have guest scientist speak there, but not on the day we were there.

They also have a petting zoo and a botanical garden that we missed because the weather was bad that day. We were lucky to get back to our hotel. The wet roads quickly froze over that night and all the traffic into Cincinnati was backed up for over 20 miles. We drove 20-30 miles per hour on the slippery 70 mile per hour freeway. We were so relieved when we made it back to our hotel we decided to just have supper there and stay in for the night.

Christmas eve the sun came back out and we explored the town, hung out at the mall, saw The Tale of Despereaux had a very nice relaxing day. On Christmas day, we drove home. We enjoyed our Christmas phone calls to our family. We were sad we couldn’t be both places at once. The drive up and back was very pleasant. The icicles on the sides of the road on the way up amazed us. The trees and hills were beautiful… made the eight hours pass by quickly.

I am so glad we got to spend Christmas together.

December Garden

February 5, 2009 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

Warning… boring post below… sorry.

This is a “Christmas Cactus” that a sweet neighbor gave me last year. It has these beautiful blooms each December. It’s very easy to care for… what’s not to love.

This is what happens to banana trees in the winter… they turn to an ugly brown mass. You have to cut them down to the ground each year. They have squishy stalks (up to 1.5′ in diameter) and smell like rotten bananas. You have to winterize them by covering them with leaves and tarps. In the spring they pop back up and gain their 6′ of height in just a couple of months. Kinda amazing. Right? Banana trees aren’t really trees at all. They are a herb… believe it or not.

This is one of our camellia bushes. Our yard guy trimmed it up and made it look more like a crape myrtle tree. It does look better than when it was an over grown bush. I like it.. Here are the rest photos I was able to get..

Much Ado About Christmas

February 5, 2009 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

We had a very nice Christmas this year.

Our new camera has a remote… so we use it on a tripod to take our family photo. We must have taken over 70 shots and I still had to photoshop two together. It’s too hard to get six people to look at the camera at the same time. I really need to live somewhere long enough to make a friend that I can ask to trade family photo taking at Christmas with me. I want someone to make us stand close together.. etc.

We opened presents on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas.. so we could enjoy our gifts on our trip. We did have a couple of surprises this year. If we hadn’t traded names with my sisters. we probably wouldn’t have had a gift each.. it was fun having actual gifts this year and not just checks.

I got to put one gift under the tree that no one knew who it was for or what it was. Princess J rapped her gift the minute before we opened them… she didn’t bother to use tape.

I took photos of our decorations because we move so much that it’s hard to remember where the decorations go in the new house.

Most of our decorations went in the music room because it was the only room we could squeeze them in.

I have a collection of little trees now. The one on the piano was a gift from Suzanne.

The one on the dresser above I got at a garage sale for 25 cents last Christmas.. it was our only tree last year.

This one Nancy gave us when we went to Thailand so we could have a tree there.

The white nativity set I got at Good Will last year. I keep it up all year.

Our FL house had two front doors… So I put one of my wreaths on my sunroom door.

We’ve had this nativity set for many years… I love it’s ruggedness.

Here is the wreath I kept for my one front door this year.

Mom made us this advent calendar years ago. The kids still enjoy moving the star across the days each December.

A homeschool friend in SA made this cute snowman quilt for me.

Suzanne sent me this little tricycle potter for my birthday.. I thought the poinsettias looked perfect in there.

I was so glad to have a tree again after no tree last year. I was smiling all of December. A friend in FL learned a cool decorating trick from a magazine article last year that I tried out this year. Instead of stringing the lights round and round your tree you section your tree into little pyramids and do one section at a time. It was much easier than going round and round but I ran out of lights… I went to 7 different stores to try to find blue and white lights to finish my tree. I ended up having to buy a strand of white and a strand of blue. The last strand of blue didn’t flash… I still thought it looked great and it was easy to take the lights down.

Photographing the tree was difficult.

I was sorry there wasn’t room for our tree near the fire, but it was still fun to sit and enjoy the lights for a little while before bed each night and it was the first time we had had a tree in a front window since before Princess J was born.

Chewacla State Park

February 4, 2009 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

Mike’s first day off for Christmas vacation we drove to Auburn to go to Shakey’s Pizza and Chewacla State Park. Buffet for Mike, state park for me. I can’t eat pizza, but luckily the cooks were thinking turkey dinner and had some things I could eat on the buffet.

Mike was especially looking forward to eating mojo’s (called by ro-jo’s in SA). There were none on the buffet but when I told them we had driven an hour just so we could eat mojo’s and they brought us some out special. I can’t eat them either but I enjoyed seeing everyone enjoy them.

Mojo- Rojos

Pizza, too.

Two days before I touched a corn dog (didn’t eat it just touched it and immediately washed my hands after) .. rash was a little better.

Our family comes prepared with it’s own game room. My programmer has tons of games on his ipod.

Phones make a handy game room, too.

Shakey’s salute to the old.

This Shakeys is less than a year old.

On the trail again.

It was just a little steep.

Water fall through the trees.

I am getting that “Why do you have to take my photo look again.”

Down stream.

The falls.

Boulders.

It was supposed to rain that day and started to as we were going into Shakeys but cleared up for our walk.

High adventure.

Great pose for princes J.

I am glad the kids still enjoy going to the parks.

Up, up and away.

We found an interesting sign and heard some weird noises.

Beautiful rocks everywhere.

Once we climbed back up the hill we saw what the sign was all about.. there was a rock quarry next door.

Smokey Mountains

February 4, 2009 / Jennifer Coleman / 2 Comments

We had a wonderful trip to TN in October!

We stopped at one of our new favorite restaurants called the Santa Fe Cattle Co. It’s half-way between here and there and made the perfect rest/gas stop for our trip. They have really good TX – Mex food.. Nothing near as good at home.

I wanted a photo with the truck out front because it reminded me of my Granddad.

A nice sparrow patiently posed in the truck window for me to remind me of how much God cares for us.

The trip up was amazing. The hills, the trees, and the weather were all wonderful.

The colors were ripe and beautiful. Amazing! I felt like I was seeing color for the first time. I can’t imagine how wonderful the colors in heaven must be.

We drove up to where you hike up .5 miles to the highest point in the Smokies, Clingman’s Dome. It’s the third highest point in the East. The drive was beautiful. Our ears popped. I don’t know how Mike was able to keep his eyes on the road with so much beauty to stare at.

I got some individual photos while we were there.

We stopped at the bathrooms before we made the hike and something about them seemed familiar. Mom told me we visited the park when I was 15.

The air was thin, the trail steep and I was more out of shape than the rest of the crew. I had to stop and rest and take pictures a good hand full of times on the way up.

A sweet elderly lady encouraged me that I could make it. She was on her way back down. I am not sure if I was more encouraged or embarrassed that I looked like I needed the encouragement.

Once you get to the top you have to climb higher up to the observation tower to see over the trees. I think that if someone else had had the camera I would have waited till they came down to see the photos.

They got a little chilly up there waiting for me in the wind.

I handed the camera to a stranger who had her own really fancy camera and she took a photo for us.

We passed by this trail on our way down. We were too wimpy to actually hike it. I liked the sign.

Orange.

Cool roads.

We did find another trail that wasn’t as steep.

The kids were done having their photos taken.

We walked along this stream most of the way.

My programmer took the camera from me so I would stop taking his picture.

He took some interesting photos of fungi and ferns and things.

The stream even sounded beautiful.

These two explored both sides of the river.

Back across the river to sneak up and scare Mom.

Car stops along the way down.

Gatlinburg dressed up for October.

We spent a few nights in Gatlinburg at the bottom of the Smokey Mountains.

It’s very touristy and I didn’t think I would like it but I really did. It was fun.

One morning Princess J and I woke up and the boys were all sleeping and instead of being bored and stuck in the hotel we were able to walk down the street and have breakfast together and do a bunch of shopping before they even knew we were gone.. Everything is in walking distance there.

It was very beautiful. There were a lot of shops with all kinds of artistic kinds of stuff.

This is a hibiscus. I always get excited when I know the name of a flower.

There were several Ripley’s Musems. The little “Herbie” opens his hood and moves. It’s fun to watch the people jump in surprise.

This is one of many mini wedding chapels in town. They had all kinds.

Too much sun for the photo I wanted.

Before we left the mountains Mike stopped at this park that had several pioneer cabins, a mill and other cool museum/buildings to see.

My programmers strategy to get me to stop making him pose for photos is not to smile.

He is missing up my photos. Any suggestions?

Why do you think this church has two doors.. one for the women one for the men? My camera battery died after this photo. Maybe a better strategy would be to hide my battery charger.

We had a wonderful time. We are thinking about going back every year. Want to come?

Happy Birthday to Me

January 10, 2009 / Jennifer Coleman / 3 Comments

Moving this past year caused me to discover all kinds of stuff about myself.. for instance when I looked back at my FL house and saw all the different colors I used to paint it I realized that I am a very colorful person.

Once we settled in a little, I started worrying that I was going to have a very lonely birthday. I was turning 40 and had to choose between keeping it a secret so that I wouldn’t have to share it with well meaning strangers and arranging something so I could celebrate it big with people I know and love.. who lived very far away.

My birthday is in mid-September.. and although I think it’s the perfect time of year and love that I was born on my Dad’s birthday, it’s turned out to be a bad time of year for celebrating…

In Mike’s field of work, fiscal close out is Oct. 1 which often means from mid-September on he is working long hours trying to spend millions of dollars so that his budget doesn’t get cut the following year. He is usually not a lot of fun during that time of year .

The very first year he was able to work it out to take me for a date on my birthday was the year the twin towers were hit by terrorist.. ever since then the week of my birthday has been a national week of mourning the anniversary of 9/11.

So this year when Mike agreed to take me to see the cherry blossoms for his birthday I decided that I needed more time than just a night or a weekend to celebrate my birthday and that I would celebrate all year. So every trip we took, every time we went on a date, in my heart we were celebrating my birthday.

One night, in July, we drove the kids to a concert near Birmingham and went into Birmingham for dinner. I shared with Mike my silly idea of celebrating my birthday all year. And guess what was waiting for me in the bushes out side the restaurant? This birthday balloon. I took it as a sign that my Heavenly Father was celebrating with me.

I will have to keep it in a scrapbook to remind me of His tender love for me.

My generous mom and mil sent me money for my birthday and I bought myself these candle pillars to light when it’s too warm to light the fire place. We enjoy the atmosphere. I looked all over town and on line for candle pillars and couldn’t find any… until I heard the Lord tell me to wait one more week and found that the next week Hobby Lobby had hundreds of candle pillars on sale 50% off.

They turned out even more beautiful than I imagined.

I found this leather jacket at Kohl’s. It was a little more money than I wanted to spend so Mike took me all over town to see if we could find a better deal. None of them were as nice as this one. I waited to see if it would be cheeper on Black Friday.. it wasn’t and they had run out of my size. I looked for it on line on the following Monday and discovered they were having 15% off everything Cyber Monday. I forgot all about Cyber Monday.

I also got to buy several winter tops on sale. I didn’t have many after all those years in FL. I bought three for less than $10 with tax at one sale.

God planned a birthday surprise for me on my actual birthday weekend. A friend from Huntsville invited me to go on a field trip with her. We got to go on a tour of the Capital building with a man that was a member of Martin Luther King’s church and actually marched in the Bloody Sunday march from Selma to Montgomery. He is considered the AL Historian and has his masters in history. He was fascinating to listen to.

We got to look at some beautiful art. I love art.

Here is my friend Lee Ann and her son with our docent, Aroine Irby.

Here our our kids hanging outside the governors mansion.

Isn’t this charming?

And I love this arrangement with the angel.

This is a prayer garden in the back yard of the mansion. It’s cool to know that they have a place to pray.

This is a sculpture of Jesus that was donated to the Department of Archives and History. I love it. It looks very much like my visions of Jesus.

So the other thing that I learned about myself is that I am big on birthdays and think that they should be celebrated big. I was so blessed by all the trips I got to take this year to celebrate my birthday, for the great sales I found, and for the time I got to spend with my friend Lee Ann and her son.

Biology

December 27, 2008 / Jennifer Coleman / 2 Comments

I still haven’t gotten my family photos printed or my Christmas cards sent out. I planned to work on them this morning but my teens did something to my computer and I can’t get my new photos to upload.

These photos are from a few months back. I was so excited when Mike brought home this hummingbird feeder for me.

Months went by and no hummingbirds came to visit; my princess suggested that maybe hummingbirds don’t live here.

The general reasoning was that if they had feeders for sale here they must have hummingbirds. I wasn’t too sure about that. Obviously ‘some’ people would buy them not knowing if or not they had hummingbirds here. So I looked in my trusty bird guide book… no hummingbirds were listed for our part of the country. Then I googled them… still couldn’t find any.

Months later during our biology lab one appeared at my feeder.. I googled again and found that there were several types of hummingbirds in our area.. Hurray!

It was a couple of weeks before I actually got a picture of her. I think she is a ruby-throated hummingbird.

A few weeks later I went to visit a friend who had 5-6 feeders and over 20 hummingbirds buzzing around them. So much fun.

The three youngest and I are doing Apologia Biology together this year. The vocabulary words in the first module were pretty rough.. but we’re getting the hang of it.

We found these mushrooms/funguses in our yard the day we needed them. Isn’t God good?

Most of the time I love seeing stuff in the microscope. Recently we looked at some banana cells. They were so beautiful!

Seven or eight years ago when we first got our microscope we looked at some leaves from a tomato plant we had growing in the back yard and found tiny little spiders and things living on our tomatoes. That tomato plant didn’t live much longer and I’ve never tried to grow anything else to eat. I haven’t admitted it out loud but some were deep inside I believe pesticides are good.

🙂

Tears of Joy and Sadness

November 11, 2008 / Jennifer Coleman / 2 Comments

It’s such a historic moment that I didn’t feel like I could leave it out of my blog. I am hoping to turn my blog into our family scrapbook in a few weeks and would like to preserve the history for my grandchildren.

The pre-election campaign was closely watched for the first time this year by my kids. They are growing up and it’s a lot of fun to hear their thoughts on things. We read about and excitedly talked over the issues for months.

We took a crash course in Government at the beginning of this year and then in American History we have been studying the Enlightenment period, everything that led to the revolution, and up to the constitution. On the day of election we just happened to be assigned to read the part in the constitution about the executive branch of the government. Kinda cool right? All of this study has helped us to see how important self government is and how far our country has gone off track from the intentions of our founding fathers. I’d like to study more about the cycles of government in history and get a better idea of where we are headed. In World History we recently learned how greed and thirst for violent entertainment led to the fall of Rome.

We had two that we were privileged to take early Tuesday morning for their first time to vote in a presidential election. Our oldest felt very strongly about the views of the Constitution Party and voted for their candidate, Chuck Baldwin, which I think is great. Our second oldest voted pro-life and for cutting back on our national government, which I also think is great. I am very proud of both of them for prayerfully thinking over the issues and choosing a candidate and making their voice heard.

Throughout the election campaign and the recent growing economic crisis I spent a lot of time praying for our country. I wanted to see Roe vs. Wade over turned; I wanted to see John McCain stand up to the terrorist who hate us and take a hatchet to government spending; I wanted to see my Christian values upheld, marriage protected, and adopted children and a down syndrome child grow up in the White House. But some how seeing the African American children moving into the White House moved me to tears of joy.

I am moved to pray even harder for our government leaders. Praying that they will seek wisdom from God, that they will personally experience revival and that the fact that an “African American/American Indian/etc.” was elected as president will help bring healing to our nation. The American History course that we are taking and the fact that we have moved to Alabama has taken us to the heart of that wound. I hope we can be a part of the healing.

I am also moved to pray harder for our nation; I pray especially for the youth of our nation. So many lies have been legislated into law, into being taught at our schools and are effecting their thinking. Evolution is being taught to millions of children, reducing them to animals and taking away their reason to live. Young women are aborting their children thinking that if it’s legal it must be O.K. without comprehending the mental, emotional and spiritual consequences. And now our children are being taught that it’s natural for people to have feelings for the same sex and perfectly healthy to act on those feelings, leaving them open to try out those feeling for themselves. All these lies and many others our culture has adopted are destroying our nation and I am praying for a repentance and a revival to change the direction and redeem the youth of our nation.

Mo Baptism

November 10, 2008 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

We saved the best for last.

On our last day at Mo Ranch the kids canoed Paw Pa over to the rapids…

and he baptized two of my nephews.

I think it’s so cool that I could be there to witness that.

I am looking forward to seeing what kind of men they will grow up to be.

Mo Horse

November 9, 2008 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

It’s dawned on me this past year that I come from a family of city folks; I am city folk.

How did I get to be this old and just now realize that?

You see, my dad grew up on a farm, but then moved to the city and married a city girl (who knew how to garden and from time to time had one going). I spent a few summers with grandparents and great grandparents gardening and such, so I guess I had a illusion that I came from a family of country folk and would some day have a garden of my own. Then I married this city boy who never visited grandparents on a farm or a ranch, who never gardened. Every house, every move I’ve thought, “I grow a garden in this back yard.”

I’ve tried a couple of gardens. Our first house in San Antonio had a garden when we moved in; it was a pretty big garden for a city yard; I forgot to water it; it didn’t survive. We planted tomatoes at our second house in San Antonio. Then we got a microscope for the kids for homeschool. When I saw the creatures crawling all over the tomatoes under our microscope, I wished I hadn’t, and those plants died. In Florida, we spent many hours in the yard pulling up or cutting back vines. Who thought living in the jungle was a good idea?

The first couple of months here I looked on line to see what kind of things grow well here; looked to see if I could adopt a country friend to teach me how to grow things then I realized maybe I won’t have a garden at this house. A few months ago in history we learned how during the Great Depression everyone knew how to grow food and most had a garden that they lived on in the hard times; I realized that if it ever gets that bad we are going to starve.

We have worked in a couple of other people’s gardens. At the San Antonio Botanical Gardens they have a program for the poor city kids to teach them how to garden that we participated in a few seasons. Then in FL we had a good friend that hired the kids to work in her mother’s garden. So I am hoping that maybe they know something about how to survive.

Just a few more Mo Ranch photos…