We have RATS!

Christmas Eve was rather calm and quiet. We did attend the Candlelight Service at our church. It was wonderful. We always look forward to this service. There must have been 1,500 people there, the down stairs was packed and almost all the balcony was full. We sang Christmas Carols, had special music and one of the ladies that plays in the orchestra played the harp and her young daughter played the flute. Mrs. Harp played before the service, then during part of the service she accompanied Little Miss Flute and they played "Jesus Did You Know". It was heavenly.

Christmas Day was another calm, quiet day. We built a big fire, had a very untraditional lunch--grilled salmon, fresh steamed asparagus and red potatoes. We just made a point to rest and relax after months of running and working non-stop, we treated outselves to the luxury of being couch potatoes for the day.

Tomorrow our family (my brother and all his kids, which are all adults) are coming. That menu will be a little more traditional--ham on the Big Green Egg, greenbeans (pickled and regular), mashed potatoes with sour cream and other side dishes that will be supplied by the others that are coming to the party. I don't have a clue what else we will have in the way of veggies.

However, I DO KNOW we are having some good desserts. My Mom has bakes pecan and pumpkin pies, I've made a chocolate cake, well the cake is just yellow cake with my grandmother chocolate frosting recipe. I poked holes in the layers of the cake so all that frosting could just settle down in the cake. Last time I made one everyone was fussing making sure they got their share of the cake. It's going to be wonderful. It is cooling on the kitchen counter and I caught the RATS picketing around the cake. Look at those little beady eyes. They just don't realize they are endangered species, just wait until tomorrow.

The Great Gate/Fence Project is DONE!!!!!

After two months of our lives being consumed by this project we have finally finished.

Our next goal is to get through Christmas, then next spring our next project will be to paint the outside of the house.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Photo right:

Looking to the left coming out the driveway.



Photo below:

Taken from across the road.

Took us three weeks to build these gates, then they were so heavy I could hardly help get them out of the workshop.

I'm posting these photos for those of you that have been here before, during and after the widening of the road. Our little country road is now a four-lane raceway. That 45 mph speed limit sign means absolutely NOTHING! People are flying through here like it's I-75. One of the contractors told me he was driving 65 mph and people were passing him. I've told one of the majors with the county police they could make a mint if they would just set up out here. The major told me they couldn't do that until the state deems the project complete. The speed limit sign is looking to the right standing in our driveway. You can see just how wide the road is now, it's sickening. We are so thankful the house is as far off the road as it is, because we still don't really know there is a road out there once we get back to the house. We do still hear the interstate, even though it is a mile away. The sound carries, especially with it being elevated. We even heard the train in Jonesboro the other day and that's four miles away.

This last photo is looking to the right coming out of the driveway.

We now know where we live. The fence has made all the difference in the world. During the project we didn't recognize our own driveway because of all the tree/brush removal from the right-of-way. Traveling east we have to pass the house, go two streets down the road and make a U-turn and head back west, or we could turn left into the subdivision around us, but those stupid "planters" down the center of the road blocks our view of oncoming traffic and it's too dangerous, so we just drive another 500 feet or so, and make the U-turn.

We have ordered some strap "fake" hinges to go on the front of the gate, hopefully they will be here this week.

We have been working on this since October, so I'm so ready to be FINISHED! I found some beautiful artificial wreaths yesterday, so I'll be working on those to get them up before Christmas.

PLAN TWO IMPLEMENTED

Well, the fence is finished all but one small space between the fence post and the gate post. We can do that in a few minutes. HOWEVER, the gates are another story. We found these beautiful gates, but in reality they are.not.working! We have spent three days working on them and we still don't have a completed frame, so we are now working on plan two.

Hubby is on his way to Home Depot to buy more materials and hopefully by the end of the week we will have plan two complete. This is really my fault since I wanted the gate with all the spindles. We just can't attach the hinges to all those spindles, so we are going to use the wide boards that match the fence.

Will we ever finish this project?

The fence is progressing, slowly, very slowly, but it's coming along. We are in the process of "designing" our gate. We are gazing at a photo I took of a gate on the DVD of "Story of a Patriot" about Colonial Williamsburg, trying to decide the dimensions of the lumber we need to construct said gate.

Yesterday we put up all but one small section of wire and the boards to cover the seams of the horizontal rails at the vertical posts. We only have one small section of wire to put up, then the gates.

We are trying desperately to beat the cold weather, because we are painting all the lumber before it is put up, that way all surfaces are covered and I only have to do touch up painting to cover hammer marks. We are ready to do something FUN!

I must admit we have had wonderful weather to work, mostly in the mid 60's to low 70's. I can't imagine how we would have done this in July or August or without the help of our nephew, Addison. It was good spending time with him and enjoying the nice weather. There is a silver lining to this project.

WE HAD A TAKER

All the post holes are dug, only because we had a little secret help from someone passing by, and kindly dug all but four holes with a huge auger. Our nephew, Addison, took the job to dig the last four; two right at where the utilities were marked, one by our neighbor's brick pillar and one in a clump of bushes that our secret helper couldn't reach with his big tractor.

Hubby and Addison have all the posts installed, wire up on the left side of the driveway and one row of boards over the wire. Thursday we spent the day with friends at their place on a hunting club, and when we got home we had a nice note on the front door from the CODE ENFORCEMENT man. "If you continue work on the fence there will be a citation and $1,000 fine."

A permit has to be obtained before you can put up a fence. More government intervention into our lives. It was quite easy to obtain, sorta and only cost $25, but still a pain in the rear.

BORING? NOT!

It's been a while since I last did a post. It's not that our lives are boring, but we have been so busy!

Presently, we have committed to facilitate Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University at our church, which is 17 miles away, and at a smaller church, just about four miles from us. Wednesdays we are at our church, Sunday afternoons we are at the closer church. There are about 64 students at our church (north campus) and the other church there are about 52 students. This commitment has kept us busy. It's a GREAT course. If you ever have an opportunity to take it, do so, even if you are debt free. There is so much information in that 13-week course, you can always learn something new.

Then there are always "normal" household duties, but the garden calls. I have just canned the last greenbeans out of the garden and we have pulled up all those vines. It was a bit sad. We will miss those fresh greenbeans. We still have okra and tomatoes producing. Every time I drag my canning jars and accouterments out of the basement I think that is the last time for this year, but "opportunities" keep presenting themselves to can something else.

Our next project is going to be putting the fence back up at the road. FINALLY! We think most of the activity has been completed. All four lanes are open now, the right-of-way markers have all been installed and we know exactly where we can put our fence. We have already marked jthe fence location and all the utilities have been marked as well. We can dig legally, for now, but only until October 3rd, then we have to renew the approval before September 29th. Complicated, I know, but if you don't call before you dig, and you hit one of the utilities, then you get fined. All we need are some volunteers to dig the holes for the fence posts. Do I have any takers?

ALL IN A DAY'S WORK

We found the kind of greenbeans we love at the Farmer's Market last week, so I bought a box. I actually had to do something with them, so here they are, all in cans ready to go to the basement to be stored.

Saturday we drove to North Carolina to visit friends from church for the day. They gave me a large bag of pears and apples, so yesterday after church I made pear relish and applesauce. I ended up with 16 pints of pear relish and six and one-half pints of applesauce. I suppose I'm going to hell for doing all that canning on Sunday.

My entire fireplace hearth was covered with all these items canned the past few days, so I got busy and moved them all to the basement. Well, then I had to rearrange what was already down there, so we will eat the oldest things first. Novel idea, I know. Once I got everything rearranged, I opened the freezer door--I had to face it. The freezer needs defrosting, so I turned it off to thaw.

Scarlett will worry about that tomorrow. I am pooped, so we are going to put on our pajamas and watch "Batman 3" this evening, excuse me, I've just been informed, that's "Spiderman 3".

From this to this...

Rumor has it the DOT will be finished with the road by the end of August. I'm not holding my breath. When you ride down the road there are still lots of things that need to be completed, like replacing the cracked apron on our driveway. The apron is the concrete part that connects that little bit of black top to the actual road. When we got stuck (refer to first photo) they cracked it when they rolled over it with that big machine (refer to second photo) that flattens the black top to pack the rock dust/crushed rock they had to pour on that mud hold (refer to first photo). So today I was out at the road with my orange marking paint, marking those cracks on the apron and I put a great big orange arrow on the finished road pointing out those cracks. I bet DOT will be so glad to get away from us. LOL! Do you see Hubby over by the bush "supervising" (refer to second photo)?

Now we are trying to decide what type of fence we want to put back up since DOT took our nice chain-link fence. :-) We could put up a nice wooden farm-type fence for almost half of what it will cost us to put a chain-link fence, but we will have to do the labor. UGH! If we go with a chain link, we have decided we want a black one and it's vinyl. That means we would have a plastic fence! I kind of like the idea of a nice farm-type wooden fence. We just don't want to invest more money in this place, because rumor has it, people are going to be knocking our door down to buy us out for commercial property, once the highway is complete. I'm not holding my breath.

IN MEMORY

We attended a memorial service today for Mitch, son of our dear friend Jane.

MASTER SERGEANT MITCHELL "MITCH" YOUNG, 39, was killed July 13 while conducting a combat reconnaissance patrol in Afghanistan, in support of combat operations while serving with the Special Forces Group (Airborne).

In May 2008, Mitch deployed in support of Operations Enduring Freedom as a member of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force--Afghanistan. This was his fourth deployment in support of the Global War on Terror and third deployment to Afghanistan. He was a Special Forces Operation Detachment-Alpha team sergeant.

Mitch, a native of our local community, volunteered for military service and entered the Army in 1991 as an infantryman. He served at Ft. Ord, CA, Ft. Campbell, KY, Germany and Ft. Bragg, NC. He earned the coveted "Green Beret" in 1999.

Mitch is survived by his wife, Robin, his mother Jane (our dear friend), his sister Cheryl and brother Brent.

The service was awesome, his childhood pastor and friends spoke along with his military friends and family to include his brother. It was a great service of honoring a man that loved his family and country and gave his life for all of us. I was okay until the military called his company roll, all his fellow soldiers answered, then when they called his name, they called it four time, each time adding to his name, Sgt. Young, no answer, Sgt. Mitchell Young, no answer, Sgt. Mitchell W. Young, no answer, SGT. MITCHELL W. YOUNG, no answer. Then they played taps. Everyone lost it. There wasn't a dry eye in the huge church that was overflowing with friends and family that came to honor him today.

He told his childhood friend he wasn't real excited about going back to Afghanistan, but his response was, "better there than here."

IS THIS A DOG OR A PONY?

This great dane belongs to my niece. He is the biggest dog I've ever seen, but he's always a big chicken (Sorry Lizzie). He thinks he's a lap dog, and is in my sister-in-law's lap, for crying in the cream. He can beat you to death with his tail and his bark is HUGE! He eats like a horse, no pun intended, but Lizzie loves him. He's the biggest fur baby in the world. However, her cats rule the roost, this dog is on the bottom of the food chain in this household. Poor baby. This is one of the kitties that makes the great dane mind. She's about eight pounds, the dog weighs 150 lbs.

THE OLD HOME PLACE

Hubby's cousin and her husband, on their way from Florida to North Carolina, visited for a couple of days. We decided to take a ride to East Point where he grew up and to check out the old home place.

The house still looks the same, except for the color. It was always white. The swing is still in the backyard, as is the garage. Hubby went to the door with a hand full of old photos and the young man LET US IN to look around. All the carpet has been taken up to expose the beautiful hardwood floors. The kitchen has new cabinets, in fact, down two wall, the door to the sleeping porch has been closed up, but for the most part the house is the same. Hubby pointed out the closet in the bedroom that he set on fire with sparklers. He wanted to see them before dark. His mother was an absolute HERO when she grabbed all the burning clothes and threw them out the window and his brother poured the dog's water on them. He did get a spanking for that stunt! All the rooms were small. I don't recall them being that small. Funny how things change in our minds. This is the place Hubby lived from the time he was five years old until we married. It was certainly a walk down memory lane. The young man couldn't believe we had photos, in fact, there was one of Hubby sitting in front of the TV in the corner of the living room. Would you believe the screen on the TV was round! That was probably about 1953.

Now on our home front--the road project continues. Last night at 8:00 p.m. the paving crew starts in front of the house. We were told they were working until 5:00 a.m. this morning. The noise and vibration of all the equipment drives me crazy. I've had to put rubber bands across the shelves of the shelf in the den so the items don't "dance" off into the floor. We will be SO GLAD when all this construction is finished. It's been almost three years since this project started, so we have about had it with the Georgia DOT. We are looking forward to getting our fence and gate back up. We are so sad that we have lost our once country road. We did manage to keep our driveway entrance where it has always been. Now that is a REAL victory. We have been fighting with the state about that issue since the project started.

ANNE FRANK

Hubby went with a friend to the old Decatur courthouse to look at a Confederate Army uniform coat. When he came home he was excited, not about the uniform coat, but about the Anne Frank exhibit that was on display.

We went back on Tuesday. It was an amazing exhibit! There was a 28 minute video, in addition to an art exhibit from some local schools. Some of those art exhibits just ripped out my heart. There was one in particular, a wooden Star of David with barbed wire around it and all kind of baby items that was extremely sad, and then there was the scrapbook of two Holocaust survivors. Photos weren't allowed in the exhibit. I have placed "The Diary of Anne Frank" on my must read list.

We have no idea what the Jewish people experienced during the Holocaust. We must pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Caught in the middle

This is not a tattoo, it's the result of getting caught between my cat, Oscar Snuggles, King of Tidewater, attempting to go outside and our neighbor's d.o.g. trying to come inside. Oscar was only protecting his territory, but I was the one injured. I think Mud Flap, the d.o.g. got smacked, because she let out a yelp. Actually, the d.o.g.'s name is Muffin, but we call her Mud Flap, because she is covered in red mud from our red Georgia clay. Our neighbor's son, who has been away three weeks attending a special camp for gifted children, came to visit and he brought Mud Flap with him. We saw him approaching the back door so I went to answer to door, but Oscar thought I was going to open the door to let him outside, only to come face to face with a d.o.g. It wasn't fun, believe me.

REAL CATFISH

This post is just for Celia, my friend in England, that laughed when I mentioned feeding MY CAT, Oscar Snuggles, King of Tidewater, catfish. We bought some frozen catfish because they were processed in the US, rather than in China or some other third world country. We had seen several news items on how bad the processing conditions are in some countries when they process fish. Soooo, we got the bright idea of trying catfish. I HATE CATFISH! The very thought of eating something that is a scavenger just does not appeal to me at all. We bought the fish, tried them ONCE and I decided Oscar would enjoy them must more than we would, so we cooked him the catfish. He loved them.

My neighbor when fishing last weekend and caught these catfish and I took photos just for Celia over at http://george-online.blogspot.com.

There really are catfish. I didn't make that up. Oh, they will stick you with those whisker looking fins they have and it HURTS! They are also very hard to clean, you have to pull that dark skin off with a pair of pliers, because they don't have scales.

Look what happened on the way to the lake.

We were off to Stone Mountain, our favorite place to fish. We were going up the interstate and all of a sudden, we heard, thump, thump, thump, thump. Hubby said, "oh no, we have a flat." Sure enough one of the tires on the boat trailer blew out. There are TWO holes in the side of that tire. A nice young man stopped to help us. I was really glad, I didn't have to help change the tire. I did help take the spare off the tongue of the trailer. That was easy.

We had so much fun fishing. We ran out of bait. We only had 50 crickets, but when we left we only had two left. Every time we threw our hook into the water we got a bit. Now that's the fun way to fish. I can't stand it when you have to sit and wait for something to bite. Notice the purple cloth I use to handle those fish. I can't stand to get that smell on my hands. As for the crickets, if you will cut up an orange and put it in the cricket box, they smell like orange when you put them on your hook. Is that TMI (too much information)?

We saw a fawn, well there were two of them, in the edge of the woods. I was only able to get a photo of one of them.

The turtle was in our carport. I don't have a clue why he would be there, because there is no grass. I'll take a turtle any day over a snake. I'll even take a lizard.

Oh, Oscar is the feature photo over at George-online. Check it out at http://george-online.blotspot.com. Lizzie, you'll love it'

Unfortunately, all the photos are at the top of the page and I have no control over where they are placed on the page. When they come up, it looks like Russian. I don't know what's going on with this blog site.

We Met the Cow

Truett's Grill was build in celebration of Truett Cathy's 75th birthday--that was ten years ago. For those of you that don't know, Truett Cathy established Chick-fil-A back in 1946 in a little town near us, Hapeville, GA. It is now a billion, yes billion dollar corporation.

Truett's is one of our favorite places to eat. When we were working we ate there twice a day. We know ALL the personnel and they all know us. Yesterday was customer appreciation day and the cow was there greeting all the customers. WE GOT TO MEET THE COW!

Why would adults get excited about someone dressed up in a COW suit? When we drive up, I said, "OH, THERE'S THE COW!!!!!" It was so fun. So, here we are with the Chick-fil-A Cow.

THE LOVE OF MY LIFE

This post is a brag fest on the love of my life--my husband. We have been married almost 42 years (will be in September) and I LOVE HIM!

I received a comment from June over at Bye Bye, Pie! about the bird feeder Hubby made, so I thought I would just put up photos of all the stuff he has made for our home.

I only have a couple of the bow back Windsor chairs he made, but we have ten (10), yes ten of them scattered about the house. Does anyone want to buy four of them? Four are around our kitchen table, so I'll keep those. He's working on a comb back chair now, but I have no idea where we are going to put it.

He has made four tables in our den--two end tables at the sofa, the TV table and the coffee table, oh yes, we have another little table at the top of the steps he made. Three blanket chests, two wall shelves, three Shaker stools, our kitchen island, a set of twin headboards, a tall case clock, a Chipendale mirror, a stage for our theater screen, and the Americana bird house, and the tin sconse, lantern and oil can.

Needless to say, I think he's wonderful, not because he builds all this neat stuff, but because he is a Godly man that loves God with all his heart and he loves me more than anyone else on this earth. And I love him more than anyone else on earth as well.

BIRDS EAT IN STYLE

My sweet husband just "whipped" this bird feeder out. The old one was, should we say, a bit worn. It looks just like our house. What do you think? It's so cute, I'm not sure I want it exposed to the elements outside.

OAMEAL STORAGE

Never ever store an opened oatmeal box horizontally, especially if you have run out of room in your pantry and moved a few things to your linen closet. The oatmeal box was too tall to store vertically, so I was so smart just putting in horizontal. It was a good idea until I started to pick it up and half the oatmeal went every where.

Drip System Gardening

Well, another adventure at gardening. Last year it was too much fertilizer while under an outdoor watering ban.

This year Hubby decided to do a drip irrigation garden. This system is used all over Israel. The dessert is literally blooming as a result of this system. So, we thought perhaps it might work well for us. The process is slow, but we think it will be well worth the effort.

The drip pipe (plastic tubing) has to be put down first, it's on the far right row uncovered. Then the drip tube is covered with the black mesh held down with long metal stables pushed into the ground. The planting process is more difficult, because the mesh has to be cut, then you dig the holes for the plants. The greenbean planting was different. We punched holes in the mesh, then dropped the seed into the hole.

We are looking forward to eating all the delicious, fresh veggies. I can't wait for that first tomato sandwich! Better than steak! We might even buy a pound of bacon for BLT's. You really don't need the B for a great sandwich just the T.