Freezing Temperature????

I was so excited that it is starting to feel like Spring....well my excitement disappear because of low temperatures here. From the 70's to the 30's. I covered all my beautiful tulips and other plants that are starting to bloom.....and hope they will be protected.

Sweet Home Alabama!!

We drove to Alabama for a baptism and visit our friend on March 29. Their daughter was baptized on her birthday. We had lunch and cake at their house.

After the baptism....hmm JA is very tall

A beautiful Lemon Cake with Raspberries

Leaning Tower of Florence

Spring Has Sprung

I love flowers blooming in my yard and trees full of blooms and leaves. With this lovely season is the dreadful allergies.


It is also TORNADO season.

And it's soccer time.... JP is a soccer referee and earning some $$.

More downhill after 40

What is your worst fear?

One of mine is a couple of hours at the dentist office. I gag extremely easily and even the simply act of having x-rays taken of my teeth usually causes me to dry vomit because of this reflex. Over the years I have avoided going to the dentist.

Last week, this caught up with me in a big way. Starting Friday, one of my teeth became incapacitatingly painful. Unfortunately, my dentist office was closed on Friday, and Tylenol and ibuprofen did little to dull the pain. Orajel did provide some relief. I kept thinking of the scene in Tom Hank's Castaway where he uses the old skate to remove his tooth and contemplated this option. I resolved not to eat again because every time I did, it would be an hour before I could do anything else but crawl up in a ball. (I finally found that pudding was a better option.) Oddly, by Sunday the pain started to be bearable.

Early Monday morning, I saw my dentist and he confirmed that I needed a root canal, but told me I would have to wait until Wednesday morning so that the antibiotics he prescribed had some time to work.

Early Wednesday morning, I submitted myself to the torture chamber. I had come down with a cold Tuesday, so the advice to "breath through my nose" was tragicomical. I must say that the dentist did an admirable job of putting up with my struggles, and because they used this little screen device to isolate the work area from the rest of my mouth, it was actually less of a struggle to avoid drowning in my own saliva than usual. But there were two times when for whatever reason, a large amount of fluid came streaming over the screen and the technician didn't suction this out before I gagged on it. At one point in time, my mouth actually began to shiver out of control for some reason. But finally, about an hour and a half later, they were finished. And we were quite a bit poorer.

The only upside of this rather painful episode is that I'm down to 217 lbs because of the lack of eating for the past week! Pudding diet anyone?

Windy City!!!

JP and I (AM) went to Evanston and Chicago, Illinois for the Science trip during Spring Break, March 17 - 20. JP was one of twelve local kids chosen for all expense paid trip. As you can see on the picture, Southwest Airlines provided for the free round trip. I celebrated my birthday in the Windy City. El train and lots of walking were our main transportation in Chicago. We were able to have campus tour of Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Chicago and Northwestern University.

Leaving for the Windy City

Arrived in Midway Airport

Illinois Institute of Technology.....we saw a lot of this recycling container all over campus

University of Chicago

Millenium Park



Northwestern University

Engineering Lab

Deep Dish Pizza

MYX Performance Juggling Group at Evanston Ecology Center

Juggling Group consisted of families that are Filipinos

Northwestern University Library

Catching the el train to Midway Airport...heading back home

On Top of Ole Smoky

While AM and JP went to the Windy City, ME, SD, and JA went to the Smokies to visit Aunt and Uncle RS2. Aunt Bee picked up the girls Monday and then I drove down Wednesday morning. They had rented a cabin near Pigeon Forge overlooking the National Park. (I mean literally overlooking, we were way high up on a mountain side.) I opened all the shutters at night so that I awakened to a beautiful sunrise of mountains sticky out of the clouds (where the smokies get their name.)

Some highlights:
Wednesday:





Laurel Falls hike. This is a popular day hike on a paved trail to these falls. It was way too crowded for my taste, but the falls were okay, and climbing down below the falls allowed us to get away from the crowds a little bit. I can't imagine being here in the summer time.




Chimney Tops Picnic Area. This is a great little place with an awesome river view and massive boulders to climb on.

Wednesday ended with a Billards Tournament finally won by SD and Aunt Bee after Uncle RS and JA had trouble keeping the 8 ball out of the pockets.

Thursday:

Roaring River Auto Tour-excellent sight seeing, way better than Cades Cove for scenery (but no bears.)

Stop 1 for us was Ogle's Place. This was an awesome little nature trail on the old farmland of Mr. Ogle. Why anyone would choose to farm here is beyond me, but as a summer cabin, the place would be second to none. The bouldering was excellent as well, with Uncle RS pioneering the straight up the face route.

Stop 2 was Grotto Falls.





Grotto Falls-this is a beautiful family hike, (which could be continued into a really advanced backpacking trip by continuing on to the top of Mt. LeConte). Moss covered rocks everywhere, nice uphill climb next to a river most of the way, and the falls area is spectacular. JP and I will definitely want to use this as an awesome descent from Mt. LeConte after ascending from the Rainbow Falls side. ME and I took it very slow, which was good because JA started out really whiny but once she got ahead and didn't have a parent to complain to, she really started to enjoy it. The falls has a bit of a grotto behind it, and really is a series of falls that were just really cool. Because it took ME and I so long to get there, everyone else was ready to go once we arrived, but we still got to do a little playing around the falls. It started to rain as we were descending and we made it back to the parking lot just as it started to pour.

Thursday night finished off with some March Madness.