Saturday Photo Scavenger Hunt---PURPLE

This week's theme is purple. I thought of this picture right off! I am sure there are many more purple photos in my past. I was in the Flag Corps in high school, part of the marching band. These were our purple outfits we wore during the football games.
Our colors were purple and gold----and I still love that combination! :-)

Check out more photo hunters' submissions by checking out TNChick's website and looking in her comments section.

Next week's theme will be OPEN. That's a word with many possibilities!

Palo Duro trip---part 2

We spent the first night in Abilene. WooHoo! Larry and J had just left there the day before. Didn't know that town was such a happening place? I've even got plans to go back the first weekend in August. :-) These girls are hanging out in the lobby while we check in. The highlight of this evening? Swimming in the pool. Lis has the pictures of them jumping in that I'd like. I took my knitting ot the pool. It was "Knitting in Public Week." (I saw it on Facebook, I'm sure it was true.)

That night a terrible storm blew in. It rained very hard, and we all took turns at the window, watching the wind blow the waves of rain across the parking lot to the gas station. I did not sleep well! I was aware of a time that the power went out, and it was really dark.

After breakfast in the hotel, we went north towards Lubbock. This was the first time I'd seen wind energy farms up close. It's hard to tell how large these windmills are, but they are HUGE. There are a lot of them between Interstate 20 and Lubbock. (B took this picture through the car window.)

We ate lunch in Lubbock and picked up a scout who'd been staying at her grandmother's house there. We ate at Rosa's Cafe, which we have right in our own town, so nothing new. It was very crowded.

This picture is pne of the first looks we had of the canyon. I didn't get a good picture of the road winding down into the floor of the canyon, and I should have---it's pretty awesome. The CCC built it in 1933-1934. This state park opened in 1934.

We set up out camp, first thing. This tent was my home for 3 nights. :-)

And this is the view from our camp, looking at a canyon wall. It was awe-inspiring, actually. I kept thinking it was like Niagara Falls, in that you cannot do it justice with photos, and you can't imagine how big it is unless you're there in it.

So that's the next 5 pictures from our trip!! I will keep sharing 5 until I finish.

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I will go to "Music Americana" tonight to see J sing and dance. He has parts in "Codfish Ball," "Walking on Sunshine," and Chatanooga Choo Choo.

Have a good evening!

Palo Duro Trip---Part 1

I'm going to do our Girl Scout trip a few pictures at a time. We planned this 5 day trip for a long while and we saw so many cool things!
First stop---the DrPepper museum in Dublin, TX.

They gave us each of us a small bottle of DrPepper at the start of the tour. I'm holding 4 of them for the girls who are going to wait and have it later. B loves DrPepper!! In Dubin, they make DrPepper with the original formula---with Imperial Pure Cane Sugar. No corn syrup in these batches. They have a couple of rooms of DrPepper memorabilia that was a lot of fun to look at.

The guide told us about the machine they use for the rebottling. This is at the end of the process. The bottles are filled with syrup and then carbonated water. The bottles need to turn in a full circle 3 times to mix it, a process they used to have people do by hand, but now the machine will do. This lady was very gracious and helpful!!

One wonderful thing that happened was that we were offered the back room to eat our lunch in. We were planing on our picnic lunch in a park, but they had a room in the back with booths and bathrooms nearby. We ate while we waited for our tour time to begin.

Here we are at the end, posing by the statue outside. We are only beginning our journey, and we hadn't picked up the last scout yet. Lots of adventures still to come for our scouts!

Saturday Photo Scavenger Hunt---SIX

I missed last week, I only realized today! Anyway, today's theme is SIX. I've been camping this week in Palo Duro Canyon State Park with the Girl Scouts. I'm going to just show three of my pictures from the trip.

This is the rock formation everyone wants to see when they go to Palo Duro Canyon. It was named the Lighthouse by the Spanish explorers. The Native Americans who were here before them didn't call it that (they were not sailors like the Spaniards), but they did build signal fires on top. One of the Park Rangers told me that!

If you look closely, this is the lighthouse from another angle. They were right on top of it! There are 6 people in the photo, and it is a 6 mile round trip hike to make it here. That was quite an accomplishment for our scouts! I am sort of kicking myself now that I didn't do the longer hike---I volunteered to do the 3 mile hike and take back the ones who were not going to make it.

This is where I was when I started back. You can see the Lighthouse just over my right shoulder. It was still a long way away! It was already pretty hot by then, even though we got going as fast as we could that morning. My 3 mile hike was just under 2 hours and the longer 6 mile hike was just over 4 hours.

It was a great trip to end our year, and I'll be blogging about it more this week. You can see more Six photos over at TNChick's site. Next week's Photo Hunter's theme is Purple. I bet I have lots of that---it was my high school's color.

Please leave me a comment and have a great week. :-)

Home Alone

I'm home alone. And I've wasted a lot of time today on the computer.

Larry and J are at the TNT youth conference. I know they're having fun, because they are tweeting and updating their statuses on Facebook. The group will perform tonight. They did this show back in the spring, and have re-vamped it for this conference---cutting down from 40 cast members to 18. There were a lot of songs re-cast, but J gets to keep his song where he is wearing a dress and singing in falsetto. I think he was excited about getting attention at the conference for such a role. I wish the guys luck!! There are a lot of props for this show, and I hope it goes as smoothly as it did this past weekend when they practiced it before and audience twice.

B is on her own adventure tonight---staying over at Girl Scout camp. They have Day Camp this week, but B gets to spend one night with her age group. This is complicated by the almost 5 inches of rain we got yesterday. There is still a chance of afternoon showers, and if they get heavy, the camping overnight might get cancelled. They had to cancel camp completely yesterday because of the rain. B was so disappointed. I woke yesterday morning with thunder rolling and the rain coming down hard already, enough so that the satellite dish was flipping on and off. Usually that means it's thick clouds overhead. When I checked the radar on the computer, it just looked like it would keep on training over our area all day. The girls had already endured some rain the day before---they pulled out their trash-sack-ponchos. So B was telling me that we should drive over there and see if it was on. I was thinking we should wait until it stopped thundering. About that time we got the call from her leader telling her to stay home. Very sad.

This very well may be my fault. Last week they were predicting the temps to be about 95 to 100, and high humidity so it was going to feel like 110 degrees. I was praying it would cool off for these Girl Scouts! I got my prayer answered, but it involved rain. OOoops!

I think I am going to take my sister's advice and watch a sappy movie and shop for some shorts, which I need. I need to figure out what I want to do for dinner all by myself, though!

Saturday Photo Scavenger Hunt 6-5-10

Today's theme is Sparkles. We have a son and a daughter, but our daughter isn't a girly girl, so I don't have a lot of stuff of hers to pull from. But she did do dance when she was 5, so here's a sparkly outfit she wore.

I just put this picture on a post from Monday---and it's very sparkly.

Our son is into theater, and they just had their awards ceremony last Sunday. These are the awards he won. He has been doing this outside of school since he was in Kindergarten, and has really found something he loves to do. He has two shows today, in fact. I listed his various awards in the other post, so scroll down if you're interested.

Thank you for stopping by! Please leave a comment if you stopped, and I'll visit your site as well.

Next week's theme is Bubbles. Go by TnChick to see who else had a sparkly picture to share.

food and fun

I finished my knitting and I kinda want to give it to my sister. It's red, white and blue, and her birthday is close to Independence Day. I guess I better get a picture. I am still thinking of doing a dish towel to match.

It has been RAINING! and I love it. Our high today was in the 70s I think. I sure wish it would be this cool for poor little Girl Scouts at Camp Howdy next week! They will be out (in the shade, mostly) from 8 to 3 every day, and it will be a scorching kind of day for them. Our girls will be in the cool Campcraft, which means they will spend the night there one night! Very exciting.

The very next week is our troop's trip and we'll camp out 3 nights. We are so brave.

I went to yoga today!! After having tight shoulders all day yesterday, I was very glad to go stretch out. Whew! I feel better. I walked the neighborhood the day before with Jamie. I plan on walking again tomorrow. I am going to get more fit this summer!

I thought I'd tell about all our dinners we're having lately.

I'll go back a bit and forward.
Sunday---out to lunch (Casa Ole) and then Ovies (we made stuffed mushrooms and mini cupcakes)
Monday---We had a potluck lunch with friends and I made a pasta salad and more of those cupcakes.
Tuesday---Steaks, salad (thanks, Dad, for the Omaha Steaks!)
Wednesday---B's meal: bowtie and shell pasta, corn on the cob and garlic bread. She is not a fan of meat.
Thursday--- breakfast tacos (bacon and egg). Salsa on the side! I used reduced-salt bacon and didn't sat the eggs.
Friday---B's turn again: Betty Crocker Julienne Potatoes with Savory Garlic Pork chops (the recipe she found on the box of potatoes!) I think this will turn out very yummy.
Saturday---TROUPE is doing dinner and a show for $15. I think Hamburgers and chips are on the menu. Larry will be doing some grilling for this event.
Sunday---I have a gift card for Papa Perez we may use (thank you Medina family!)
Monday---The last night we're all together for a while!! I will cook a chicken in a crock pot and we'll have either mashed potatoes or rice, and Mediterranean veggies (carrots, califlower, Italian green beans, zucchini)
Tuesday--my guys will be gone to Dallas!! They will go see Wicked with the TROUPE peeps and then onto Abilene for the Texas Nonprofit Theaters youth conference.
B and I may have chicken tortilla soup.

We have a very busy week, and we will be split up as a family for almost two weeks straight. Boys go together to Abilene the first week, Girls go with scouts to Palo Duro Canyon (stopping one night in Abilene) the next week.

I'm trying to de-clutter and orgaize again. I hope next week when B is gone I can work alone (and not play on Facebook all day!).

Have a good week everyone!