I looked out the window and what did I see? Tennis balls on the Tennis ball tree?!

So - we had moved into our new house (which is actually quite an old house). The previous occupant had a large dog (which apparently had fleas - but that's another long story). By where the dog was tied up was a cross between a tennis ball and a chew toy. It just seemed an odd thing and registered on my mind.

We were so busy that we were hardly even home during daylight - but I noted laying in bed one early morning that there were large green things growing on the tree outside. From a distance - they reminded me of tennis balls. Thus it became the tennis ball tree (where do you think they get the tennis balls from anyway?)

I didn't at that moment take the opportunity to actually closely inspect the tree - just noted the odd green fruit in a rather curious way.

A week or two later - things calmed down enough to investigate further. I found the most amazing fruit on the tree.

Well - admitedly on close inspection - it doesn't exactly look like a tennis ball - but what the heck is it? Further investigation was required.
Have you ever seen such a thing? I was bewildered.

By this time Julie was up and I showed it to her - she thought it extremely cool and went to the internet to figure out what it was (she is a biologist after all - though usually she deals with fish).

Less than 10 minutes later she comes to me quite excited and says "It's an orange osage tree!" I bet it's great for dying things (she also loves to use natural dyes on fabrics).

Well we both thought that was neat - because one of the absolutely coolest trees I've ever seen was an orange osage tree

(this was a picture from a year ago when my parents and I visited Harrodsburg KY)

Anyway - our orange osage tree isn't quite this special:


Still - It's only the second one I've seen.

Apparently the wood is known for being very hard and burning very hot. It was regularly used in days gone by to make hedges because it grows quickly and thickly. There are reports of people taking the fruit and mashing it up and then pouring the mash into a long trench - within 2-3 years there is a row of bushes there that barn animals can't jump out of.

There's a bit of trivia for you - maybe orange osage trees aren't your thing - but it was something a bit different that added a little fun to our lives.

Enjoy

The big little move of 2008

We had anticipated a change in venue during the Summer of 2008- a job transfer didn't work out - so we had a decision to make. We liked our house in Glasgow KY, but there were educational and cultural things that just weren't working out to stay there.

We ended up just finding a house to rent in Bowling Green while we sell our house in Glasgow and figure out what we're doing next. So far the school opportunities seem superior to Glasgow and other church activities appear to be going well. Katie and Sonora have lots of new friends. Levi is making new friends as well - but misses his friends from where we were before. Below are some of things we left behind and some of the things we moved to.

I'm still spending hours each week painting - and fixing up the Glasgow house. It makes for very long days. People ask how I like living in Bowling Green and I respond - "I really only sleep there" 11 hours of work, 2.25 hours of driving, 2 hours of work on the Glasgow house and I pretty much get home around 9:00 pm get up around 4:30 am and leave for work around 5:45 am. Hopefully the work on the Glasgow house will be behind us soon.

This is the chapel at Sulphur Well Kentucky. I enjoyed participating and serving here more than any other place I've been. Levi had really good friends here. Below is a picture of one of our Sulphur Well friends David Barlow.

Our new house has a very LARGE lawn - one of the conditions for renting is to keep it mowed and the house next door's lawn mowed too. The rent is lower for all of that. The back yard is very forested. If you go way back there is a big field - haven't been back there - too much poison ivy.
The previous tenant had a number of small children. She moved out because she didn't like the fact that coyotes lived in the back yard. We haven't seen any coyotes yet. I guess they are there. We're careful with the dog and cat just in case.

I think the previous tenant had several daughters - she put them in the Master Bedroom and painted their room in a rather interesting manner. Magenta walls with bright blue hand painted flowers. I think the best adjective for it is HORRID.

Julie refused to dwell in a room with that decor. She's picky about things like that. I primed the room. That took one Saturday. Julie decided to paint it this metallic special rustish multi application color sort of thing. When I went to buy the paint the paint people were acting too clueless - so I just left and told Julie she could buy the paint and maybe she'd have better luck. Julie decided the rustish color was too complicated so she bought what she thought was a light green color and selected a light blue color for the doors. They little paint cards matched well.

So the next Saturday I go paint the room again (we still hadn't moved in). When I get home she asks "so how does the green color look?" I respond "it was supposed to be green? looked yellow to me" (I thought it looked nice - she didn't). I commented that the light blue doors didn't match well. She came to look at it, and decided it just wouldn't do - so off to the Lowes again. She chose a darker green paint and a beige color for the doors.

This time it did come out green - however the doors ended up a light pumpkin color. I left the yellow green color in the window sills - it contrasts rather nicely. Julie didn't like the color of the doors. I told her that I'd painted them 3 times now, and they could be painted any color she wants - providing she did it. We're still pumpkin for now.


The lighting for this picture doesn't do justice - but the blue flowers are gone!The yellowish color in the window sill was supposed to be a light green.
This is what it looked like in the family room with the previous tenant, another picture will be posted that shows what it looks like now. A bit crowded - looms take a lot of space.




Sonora's room - she likes books - so since we didn't have quite the wall space as the previous house, she got a lot of the books in her room.
This is the living room (we call it the sitting room) - we're still holding room for the piano. Not shown is the computer and book shelves. In theory this is the quiet room where you can read, practice musical instruments and easily keep clean and have visitors into. Maybe it will work out that way.

So -we're still kind of moving in and straightening everything out. Every day is a new adventure trying to find stuff. I think the house will work out fine. Hopefully we'll get the piano moved over from Glasgow this week.

Looks like we'll have to watch out for thieves out here. Somebody broke into our minivan and ripped out our XM radio receiver - breaking the antenna. The receiver was obsolete 2 years ago when we bought it for $14. We called XM -canceled that receiver, they're sending us a new one for $9.99. Why would someone steal something as worthless as an XM receiver??

For all the coyotes and forests, we're still remarkably in the middle of town. 2 miles from the University, 2 miles from church, 1/2 mile from the grocery store, 1/2 mile from the highschool and middle school. This will end up being an interesting adventure.

Fresco class 2008

This was a bonzai tree done a while ago, there's a post showing how Julie made it in her 3D design class - now onto the Frescos!
Sonora with her Fresco
Katie with her Fresco
One of Julie's first Frescos
A little hard to see - after the Fresco class - they had an art exhibition - The Budha in the center was selected for exhibition here
This one of Julie's earlier works - it turned out really well. So well in fact that an art teacher offered to buy it off her. Before she could make a decision on selling - the University President saw it and offered to buy it - he's evidently having a new house built and wants it for part of the decor. One of the ironies of all of this is that Julie didn't have the pre-requisites to actually register for the class, but the professor liked her work so much in the drawing class she took from him last year that he invited to just kind of attend anyway.
This is a 2'x4' large Fresco. It's kind of self portrait of Julie spinning fiber into yarn. It's hard to see from this picture but she's made herself look a bit oriental too. Only four students from the class had their large piece shown in the exhibit.

After the class concluded, Julie continued to go back and paint. This is a buffalo she did.

Julie has also experimented with doing portraits of Sonora and Katie.


Julie enjoys the Fresco medium - yesterday she drove off 100 miles to buy a special kind of lime (100 lbs worth) . I have a feeling we're not done with frescos quite yet.

Katie and her hair

Katie enjoys self expression through different hair styles and colors. The rest of us are kind of boring. Katie does her best to spice the family up.


In the picture above she ended up dying these bleached spots bright red (see below), right before her first day of high school. She got a favorable reaction to it. Several people have asked Julie if she could dye their hair the same way

The one below is Sonora, they watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and just had to have the goggles. Katie sometimes wears hers on her hat

The great summer vacation of 2008

Julie started the vacation a week early. She and Sonora visited Boise and Nyssa. Here is Sonora with her cousins Isaac and Aidan.
Here are a number of cousins: Reagan, Sonora, Sailor, Eva, Casey, Britain, Jacob and Aidan. Below is Aunt Eileen, her children are Aidan and Isaac.

We went white water river rafting in Jackson Hole Wyoming. Even around the 4th of July, the water is so cold you need wet suits. Not the most flattering picture we've ever had.


This is around 9000 feet elevation - still some snow in July

The family in a rather scenic post

Allene and Brian ran a 5k on the 4th of July in Rexburg ID. I always turn purple when I engage in aerobic activity. Allene did really well. I kind of tuckered out after mile 2 - I finished, just not how I wanted to. High elevation, not working out much in the month previous and several pounds overweight didn't help any.
We had several other activities during the vacation - just no pictures.
Julie and Sonora went to visit cousins in Boise/Nyssa the week before. Levi went on a week long backpacking trip in Missouri with Uncle Matt and cousin Trent. Katie went to EFY (Especially for Youth) at BYU. Julie visited Lisa and Craig Johnson - Katie and I did too - just a week later. Julie and I met through Lisa and Craig as room mates in college. Katie and I also visited Clark and Jo Schaffer. Jo took us out to a Hare Krishna temple that was kind of cool. Katie got a cool Indian outfit. Eventually we all ended up in Rexburg Idaho for the grand reunion with about 27 of us and where most of the pictures were taken.

This was a bit of a difficult vacation in that we knew the second we got back all our activities would be around moving and Julie taking her art class. We were VERY tired by the end of the activities. Still wonderful to do so many things and see so many people.

Elvis

Julie's mother really liked Elvis, when her sisters arrived for a visit, they wanted to spend time visiting Memphis and seeing the various Elvis paraphanelia




After visiting the museum - they went to the Rendezvous - a rather famous place that serves ribs in downtown Memphis, the ambience is interesting, the waiters kind of try to be stand offish, and they serve the food on paper plates. If you want a drink of something, it comes out in a pitcher - you can pour your own. If it's not on the 1 page menu - you won't get it. They really enjoyed their food and brought home some of their special spices and sauces.

Julie's graduation

After a lot of very hard work, Julie graduated with her Masters Degree in Biology from Western Kentucky University. This happened last December, so a bit late on the posting. Her research was on hearing regeneration in zebrafish. She also worked as the lab manager for the Smith lab. She excelled in her research and greatly enjoyed interacting with the other students. She's here with her professor Michael Smith.

Julie was always very interested in brain function, particularly hearing - as she contemplated going back to school she considered whether she wanted to do further work in psychology. She hadn't taken many science classes before, but the ones she did take once we got to Kentucky she did exceptionally well in. She was also considering getting a degree in Audiology. The university had hired a new professor in the Biology department (Michael) who was specializing in neurology and hearing of fish. Julie approached him and got on doing some research. Later she agreed to pursue a masters degree. We later learned that Michael had attended BYU overlapping some of the time I was there. Julie isn't presently doing research in Biology - she's exploring art now. We still see Michael with some frequency - he's involved with the youth groups at church.

Julie's sisters - Sheila and Jennifer came to visit for the graduation. It was their first trip to Kentucky. There will be another post about their visit to Graceland.