After Thanksgiving, we took a fun hike to a natural cave near Rolla Missouri with Matt, Trent and Garrett. Nice little hike. Julie took lots of pictures.

Sushi

Julie and the girls love sushi. They've taken to making home made Sushi. Doesn't it look good?

Sonora's concert

Sonora is part of the Bowling Green Youth String Orchestra. They had a concert, and needed someone to accompany them on the piano - so I volunteered. Wish I could say it went flaelessly, but it didn't. We're proud of Sonora she does very well practicing musical instruments.

Visiting the Gassaways

We met the Gassaways about 9 or 10 years ago in Paducah. Experiences at church had our families interacting quite a bit. Levi used to enjoy organizing lego parties with Craig, Sean and Tom. Katie and Sonora were young but enjoyed playing with Chelsea and Haley. McKenzie, was born while we lived there.

Mike and Ayesha became good friends with Julie and I. We spent a lot of time serving together in various capacities and had lots of experiences together.

The Gassaaways moved to Ohio, and we got to see them three times in the past 7 years. Now they are moving to Arizona, so we decided to pay them a short visit before they left.

An interesting occurrence, while we were there, they got a call. Someone needed help moving in - so Levi, Brian, Mike, Sean and Tom all went over to help. It seemed appropriate to have our goodbye meeting involve service since that's what we almost always did together in Paducah. Good family - good memories.

Tom and Levi playing pool

Gassaways and Schucks

Katie and Sonora learning how to roller blade

The girls: Chelsea, Katie, Sonora, Haley, McKenzie and Howdy.

The boys Sean, Tom and Levi.

Gledhill's come to visit

We had the Gledhill's over for supper after Stake Conference. It was good to see the whole family again.

Scary Sonora

Sonora's cousin Garrett - introducing this wonderful collection of pictures of Sonora.

Special pictures of Sonora.

Katie's costume rabbit

Katie likes to make costumes - here's some pictures of a rabbit costume she made.

Mammoth Cave hike - Fall 2008

One of our favorite activities is hiking in Mammoth Cave National Park - particularly when it's Fall and the leaves are changing. Due to really dry weather, the annual change of colors in the leaves has been less spectacular this year. Still - very pretty

I helped take the Scouts on this hike. We did a little over 6 miles. The Sal Hollow trail to the Turnhole Bend trail to the Good Luck Church Springs Trail.



Here's the whole group - not the most flattering picture


Caves like this one are very common. This is a tiny cave - no idea how far in it goes.

Tennis balls - pros and cons

In the last post I wrote about how cool it was to have a tennis ball tree in the back yard. Fall has taken on a new meaning this year. During the Fall - leaves are supposed to drop. They do - but Tennis Ball trees also lose their fruit. Green - straight off the tree tennis balls weigh about 2 pounds. We've had lots of tennis balls fall off the tree. It's starting to get a little old.


Now having a yard full of ankle twisting - rotting tennis balls - isn't so bad, if you never go out there. But.. there is another downside to the tennis ball issue. A LOT of branches are over the roof. When one falls down it sounds like someone has thrown a basket ball on the roof.

Most of them fall at night.. On the roof over the master bedroom. Picture if you will... Brian and Julie slumbering soundly after a long days work - around 1 am, 2 lb tennis ball drops on roof - jerking Brian and Julie awake. They listen to a rolling sound along the roof, the tangling of the ball in the gutter and then a "Clack" when it hits the ground. At this point the dog starts to bark hysterically. Julie and Brian sigh....

They are still cool looking trees - but as in everything in life, there are pros and cons to everything.


Tennis Ball tree AKA Orange Osage Tree.

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