New Developments

For most of our marriage, we lived on Boone Lake in a rural area several miles from the nearest store of any kind.  What we lacked in convenience, however,  was made up for in scenic beauty. When we moved to Knoxville three years ago, we had to make a quick decision on housing.  God provided a house for our family that had a perfect size and layout.  And it was so convenient it was ridiculous.

                                           
 
Our house is at the top right corner of all that green patch in the middle.  The big road you see is I-40 (so any of my friends travelling in this part of the country - trust me when I tell you I live right on the way). Knoxville's main mall and tons of shopping are a quick walk.  But the big bonus to this property was all that green stuff in our backyard.  It meant that even though the corner we live on is very busy - the local school bus and the Knoxville Area Transit (KAT) both literally stop in our front yard, and the fire station and state police headquarters are one block away - the view out the back looks like this:

It's an oasis of green that is so calming to look at.  Also, those trees to the left provide a nice barrier between us and the elementary school that you would otherwise see from our house.

Unfortunately, this property has been for sale ever since we moved here.  And this past spring, our worst fears were realized when a guy bought the property and the city approved a development of 14 houses.  The West Hills Neighborhood Association fought it as much as they could, but in the end there was nothing they could do.

Construction was supposed to start in April.  I was really bummed.  Not really because our property value was going to go down but because my great, peaceful view was going to be gone.  And in the meantime there would be all the NOISE of construction.  I asked the Lord to help me change my attitude.  After all, people are more important than grass.  The people moving into these houses could be people we could minister to, people I could get to know, friends who would enrich our lives.  But I also prayed that, if possible, this developer would get another opportunity and would just drop this idea.

This spring things have been very quiet over in the field.  Occasionally I would see a truck over there and fear that everything was about to start up.  I kept praying.  Well, I am happy to report that this week we found out some great news!  The developer decided to sell this property to two sisters who are going to be building houses way up in the top of the property (they want to look out at the field, too!). They will be keeping all the trees and all of the lush grass.  I don't know, maybe they'll make their own golf course, but at any rate our view should be safe for years to come!  I celebrated by gathering a bouquet of wildflowers over there today.  God is good!

Nathan Graduates (aka The Marbles are Gone)

A few years ago, I was trying to remind myself to cherish each moment that I had left before my kids were out of the house.  I decided to put marbles in a bottle to represent how many weekends I had left before the next child (Nathan) graduated from high school.  I put the bottle in the windowsill in the kitchen where I could see it daily.  Nathan told me he found it depressing.  What would be even more depressing, I told him, was to let those last days slip by without appreciating them fully.

Well, now the marbles are gone.  And I am a little sad.  But mostly I am glad for the wonderful time I had raising this son!  Nathan has a very tender soul.  He has always been the one most likely to say thank-you and the one most likely to notice if I was having a bad day.  Right now Nathan is heading into the nursing program at UT (that's University of Tennessee for any of my old Texas friends who read this blog).  I give him the right to change his mind (as many freshmen do) if he decides on a different career, but I must say that this path suits him.  

I sure will miss having him around, but I am excited to see what is ahead for him (and I won't miss tutoring him in Precalculus)!  Nathan didn't participate in a formal graduation ceremony, but we had two great parties.  

First, a friend of ours hosted a family cookout with seven graduating seniors:

We had plenty of food and the kids played Ultimate Frisbee.

Here is a picture of our senior, his teacher and his principal:

And here is a picture of the grad with his sister, who also graduated from college the same day!

A few days after this party, on the same day of his last-ever co-op class (his dual enrollment classes had ended the previous week), we celebrated his actual "graduation" with our immediate family.  We ate at Calhouns on the river, toured the UT campus and drove by Reese Hall where Nathan had just found out he will be rooming with his long-time friend Kevin O'Bryan, had dessert at Coolato Gelato, and then headed to World's Fair Park to watch sunset from the Sunsphere.  It was a wonderful evening!

Nathan graduated Magna Cum Laude! We had to tell him what that was.  :) 

Nathan's new home on the campus of UT:

  Of course, Nathan will always have a home in his Mom's heart!  

Your Family in Pictures

We are a photo-taking family.  I grew up watching my Dad develop B&W pictures in his darkroom in our house.   At family events, it is not unusual to see five or six cameras going at the same time.

I have always wanted to take better photographs.  With just a few tips like (1) keep the light behind you (2) get close, and (3) put people in your scenery shots- I have managed to do a better than average with my photos.  I have learned much more watching my daughter develop her photography skills.  Also, many years of scrapbooking have led me to take pictures that tell a story - I think more like a journalist when I am taking photos of family events.

So I was delighted to get a chance to review "Your Family in Pictures" by Me Ra Koh.  I just love this book!  It is written for a person using a fully manual OR automatic camera and even has some special info about hybrid cameras like the one I use - a Panasonic Lumix G1.

This book has a lot of great information presented in a very readable way with lots of - you guessed it - PHOTOS!  The book is very well-organized and has chapters on every day life photos, holiday photos, family portraits, travel photos, etc.  Each chapter has some prescriptions to try - giving specific aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings to try in a particular set-up.  I think using these as "projects" would be an excellent way to learn take your photography to the next level.

Me Ra Koh has two other books in this same format "Your Baby in Pictures: The New Parent's Guide to Photographing Your Baby's First Year" and "Your Child in Pictures:  A Parent's Guide to Photographing Your Toddler and Child from Age One to Ten. " Based on how much I liked "Your Family in Pictures," I may start giving these books as baby shower gifts.  Good photos are such a treasure.

Besides this book, Me Ra Koh has an excellent blog (http://www.merakoh.com/) which I am going to be visiting regularly.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Easter Stories

One of my favorite memories of the holidays involve reading stories together.  For Christmas, there are so many story collections that it's hard to know where to start!  For the Easter season, there is little to nothing - especially if you are wanting something different than bunny stories.

So I was excited to review this book - Easter Stories:  Classic Tales for the Holy Season.  It is a collection of stories - some short (6 pages) and some long (50+ pages), and even a long poem.  There are 27 selections in all.

I was a little disappointed with many of the stories.  They were just not as interesting as I had hoped. There were a few gems, though.  I particularly liked "The Church of the Washing of the Feet."
And I did not care for the illustrations.  It may just be a personal bias, but black and white woodcuts just seem to signal that the upcoming material may be boring.

Each selection is in keeping with a theme of redemption and rebirth.  Stories feature springtime objects such as lilies and eggs but also feature giants, lizards, and mysterious old ladies,  Children (or adults) that love fairy tales will especially enjoy this anthology.

Except for the more lengthy selections, these stories would be great to read as part of regular Lenten devotions. However, I would have liked to have seen a few thought-provoking questions and a scripture reference at the end of each to help facilitate discussion.  As it is, you'll have to think of your own supplementary information.

On This Day in History . . .

Twenty-five years ago today, two momentous events occurred.  One, I got married!  Two, my team (the Arkansas Razorbacks) finally made it to the Final Four!  Both of these events had been somewhat elusive up until that time.  March madness took on a whole new meaning for my family that day!

When we planned the wedding, obviously the tournament teams and schedules had not been announced.  Our wedding was set for 2 pm in Fayetteville, Arkansas (home of the Razorbacks), and the final game of the Midwest Regional in Dallas was at 3 pm.  To deepen the irony, the Razorbacks were playing their long-time rival, Texas, and I had been living in Texas for the past five years.   Several of my wedding guests were Longhorn Fans.  My wedding singer was offered tickets and a plane ride to the game in Dallas but decided I might never forgive him if he didn't show up to sing.  Thanks, Jeff! 

Needless to say, with the game on TV, I had one of the shortest wedding receptions known to man!  People said hi, got their cake and cleared out.  After all, we would be married day after day for years to come, but the chance to see games like this would be few and far between.  

Fortunately, we thought ahead and scheduled a "reception after the reception" at my parent's house.  We had real snack food (chips and dip, etc) instead of wedding fru-fru, and about thirty out-of-town guests and the wedding party all piled in my parent's den to watch the game.  Arkansas beat Texas 88-85 and was headed to the Final Four! And there was much rejoicing!  

Surprise Visit

As some of you know, in 2012 we moved to Knoxville and bought a basement rancher in West Hills to fix up.  You may have also heard that "the cobbler's children have no shoes." Well, the house flipper's family doesn't necessarily get their own house flipped with the speed that you see on HGTV (in fact, there are a lot of things on reality TV that aren't quite reality - I hope this is not a shock to you).  

It was a lovely old home built in 1967, and we were surprised to hear that we were only the second owners.  That means a family had lived in this house for 45 years.  I get very attached to my houses (see this post and this one), and I was sad to think of a family losing a house through foreclosure after all that time.  Because foreclosure purchases are handled through the bank after the former residents have moved, we didn't know any of the story.  Not that it's any of my business!  But I just felt a curious connection to the former residents.  Of course, arriving junk mail gave us a few clues about who had lived here.  Also by instinct, I looked at the back of the pantry door and saw names and heights chronicled on the inside door facing.  I wondered if they were mad that we had their old house.  I wondered if they would appreciate or resent the changes we were making to it.

We heard (but couldn't confirm) that the man who lived here was a lumber wholesaler who had been an Olympic diver and that there was a dog in the backyard that the whole neighborhood loved.  In fact, we found a few photos left behind.  They were all of dogs.  Here is one:

Well, SURPRISE!  Two weekends ago, a man stopped by.  He was the son of the original owners, and he helped build this house.  He loved what we were doing to the house and hung out with us for over an hour - telling us all sorts of stories.  

He told us that the kitchen and dining room got lots of use.  Him Mom was a great cook and hosted some wonderful family dinners.  He also confirmed that this was a party house (which we had already sort of figured since the wall had a built-in turntable, the sink had a built-in blender, and the house had an indoor barbeque grill!).  He told of his mother's 50th birthday party where the whole neighborhood was thrown in the pool.  He also confirmed that he had a little sister Terry's age, so it now appears entirely plausible that Terry did indeed attend a party here back in the day (he's always had a deja-vu feeling about attending a party at this house).  

His step-dad was a lumber distributor, which explains the wide variety of interesting wood in the basement bedrooms:

He told us that when his step-dad retired, he went a little crazy with paint.  Besides the green in this room, there was one room that was entirely pink including ceiling and trim:

The room that we always thought was an office was actually a "library," which was his dear mother's dream (a woman after my own heart).  The wood and bookshelves in it are all solid cherry, and he actually passed out when doing the staining in there and was taken to the ER. This is now the room that I sit in while I blog (minus the olive carpet and soon to be minus the 1960s overhead light):

Hey, and his step-dad was an Olympic diver!  He made the 1940 team (but the Olympics weren't held because of the war).  That explains the awesome diving board and DEEP deep end.  He did dive at the University of Alabama (BOO!) and was also in the Million Dollar Band there.  Maybe that's why the basement ceiling was painted red?

He told us about their dogs and about the gopher that lived under the porch (we still have a gopher under there - the kids have named it Oswald - how long do those things live anyway?).   And he told us how his Mom made some bad decisions with money as dementia set in.  She lives not far away now but doesn't have many memories of this house anymore.  

So we are having fun filling it with new memories . . . and now we can add the memory of our surprise visitor.  

Lego 2014

If you're wondering why Lego gets its own post on my blog, then you don't know my kids very well. In fact, since I haven't posted anything about Lego since 2012, I really have two years to catch up on. In 2012, all the boys entered the Tennessee Valley Fair, and Nathan and Noah won big.  You can read about it here. They became local Lego celebrities, and started being asked to give programs at the public library.  Here they are at one of these library visits:

In 2013, they entered again, but I knew it was going to be hard to top their previous performance. There was nowhere to go but down!  Plus all their library visits generated lots of new entries at the fair.  But they did some really cool builds.

Noah made a mall scene.  It was huge with lots of tiny detail.

Notice that between the library visit and the fair entry, Noah got a much-needed haircut.  But I digress.  

Nathan built a castle with removable parts and working portcullis for his entry.

Let's just say that second place is not much fun after first place, apparently.  Besides the individual competition, the boys entered the team build (where you build for an hour with random pieces that you are given).  I can't even remember how they placed, but it was 2nd or 3rd (if it had been first, I would have remembered that!).  Their build was inspired by the TV show, Psych.

So on to 2014.  Early in the year, we experienced a Lego-lover's dream when one of the guys that worked for Terry was getting ready to trash all of his son's outgrown Lego (and some of his own) and gave it to us instead.  It took several days just to sort it somewhat.  It was at least 50 lbs of Lego.

We ended up with about 15 Indiana Jones minifigures.  We need to make a stop-action movie where Indiana Jones is cloned, I guess!

At this year's fair competition, Noah entered a beach/boardwalk scene, Nathan entered a complex spaceship.  

Caleb never finished the jumbo mini-figure he was building, so he just entered the head as a "Lego candy dish."  Guess who won this year?  Perhaps this was payback for the travesty he suffered at a Lego competition that his dear old Mom organized several years back.  

The most fun thing at the fair this year was that the boys got some of their friends involved in the team building competition.  After winning the qualifying round with this ice cream sundae

  They went on to win 4th place overall for their Lego paint set and easel:

But wait, there's more!  One of the most exciting things is that our boys were asked to participate in the founding of the Knoxville Lego Users Group.  There are quite a few of these across the country (mostly in big cities), and they are called "LUGS."  There is not another LUG in Tennessee.  Our group currently has a big project underway sponsored by the Children's Hospital, the Tennessee Valley Fair and in cooperation with the University of Tennessee.  They are building a 6-ft. "Power T"  sculpture that will go on display at the 2015 fair.  Here is a drawing they are working from:

This was the end of my original post.  Then I remembered more Lego news!  Last year, Noah competed in the First Lego League.  Terry and I coached the team of six boys (aka "Brainstorm") that met at our house each week.  They competed in a qualifying tournament here in Knoxville and then at the Tenn. Eastern Regional Tournament at Tennessee Tech.  The boys vastly improved their robot score between the two tournaments and ended up winning 2nd place overall for their presentation - a skit about a product called "Float Your Bum."

2014 Camping Trip

We had another simple vacation this year - five days at one of our favorite spots on earth - Little Oak Campground on South Holston Lake near Bristol, Tennessee.  This year there were a few new features to our trip.  The first was that Kevin O'Bryan joined us for a few days - now this isn't totally new since Kevin (and his brother, Chris) have both camped with us before.

Also, Rebecca bought a hammock right before the trip and slept outside several nights.  I really enjoyed sleeping and reading in the hammock, too.  We'll definitely take it with us from now on.

Campfire treats this year included two new additions - roasted Starburst (much better than you think), and these dough boys.  Caleb made the wooden dough boy sticks for us before we left.  We cooked crescent roll dough around them and filled them with chocolate, marshmallow, heath bits, etc.  Delicious!

This year we were also able to coax Jingle onto a tube.  She really does not like the water, but she loves being in the boat with us.

I am conscious every time we take a trip now that my kids are growing up and this might be the last time we are all camping together like this.  Make memories while you can!

The trip was so much fun that the boys decided to commemorate it with tattoos:

Well, the tattoos were temporary, but the pictures last forever!

And, of course, we ended the trip with a flat tire on the interstate because that's the way we roll.