Veteran's Day *repost*

With deepest gratitude to those who have willingly stood in service to this country and to those who have willingly stood beside them.

A Day Off

It's been a beautiful day in Texas. Sunny, in the 70's and windy. Reminded me of growing up in Southern California and the Santa Ana winds coming up in the afternoons. Today was my first day off in a long time. I started the day connecting with some of my loved ones. It was a sweet time of chatting about nothing and that feeling of belonging. The rest of the day has been spent with the husband. We popped in on his Dad just to say, "Hello". Funny how we live next to each other and I barely see these people more than when we lived 7 hours away. They actually had to come through my line at Hobby Lobby just to get some face time! We almost finished up our Christmas shopping, had lunch together at the Olive Garden and walked the back 40 together. As we were walking along the back fence, we came upon our neighbor. Funny that we had to go all the way back there to meet her. She was friendly and telling us tales of how she was checking the fence because one of her cows, who is actually her friend's cow, freed itself from the pasture and was roaming the neighborhood when she came upon him on her way home from work. My husband's barn is coming along so nicely, although not as fast as the framing. It's a much slower job working on your own. It's a beautiful place to me (and I hope to my husband as well). He is now officially retired from the Air Force and stays home full-time handling the main portion of the household duties and the child-rearing. He's a good, good man. We are preparing to receive our first pension payment; that in addition to my part time pay at Hobby Lobby is somehow going to sustain us and build the big house. I see through my bookkeeper glasses that we may not have our home built any time in the near future and I am truly okay with that. We have all that we need, and the rest will come in its due time. We have managed to set aside enough money to go up and celebrate our Grandson's second birthday with him the first week of January and we are just ecstatic about that! As I write, dinner that my husband lovingly prepared is cooking in the crazy 1950s oven that never has the right temperature. The little artificial Christmas tree is shining and we are blessed to have gifts underneath it. The laundry is going and I even have time to put some thoughts down on cyber-paper. I still have lots and lots to do on my 'day-off-to-do-list' and I have this assurance: If I do not get to it today, it will still be there on my next day off.

I will leave you with the view out my front door this very minute...




Blessings on your day my friends,

A Poll And A Pic *updated for clarification*

Well, we've sold our house. We've moved all our contents to storage. We've begun the process of building our new "estate". We've permanently moved part of our family to Texas while the rest continue to travel back and forth between Texas and Louisiana (Except for our darling oldest daughter who has settled ~at least for now~ in another state). So, the first order of business....*(Here comes the poll)*
Does North Central Texas still count as the South? Cause if not, I have to rename my blog.*(Here ends the poll)*

Okay and here is a picture of the beautiful pages of one of the beautiful new books I bought. (Hopefully more on that later)



Blessings on your day,

Oh No! Frozen Pipes! *Epic*

Been rather cold here in the South this winter. Freakishly cold in fact. So cold that one of the outdoor faucets froze solid the other day causing half of the house to be without cold water.

"A HARD FREEZE in Southwest LOUISIANA?? You are making that up S4J!"

I kid you not. Here is proof:






See that it was already insulated with foam? And see the pile of pinestraw? I guess it had fallen away from the pipe and that was all she wrote. I piled it back up and added more to it. (Cause it's free and plentiful at our house.) Mercifully, last night we discovered that the pipe had finally thawed and we could run the dishwasher.

While loading up for church this morning, we first heard; then saw THIS:




Yes. That is a really expensive ice creation broken pipe spewing its contents for about 10 feet. Not knowing what to do about this, (I grew up in Southern California and have lived in Southern LA for almost 8 years now people! Give me some slack!) but knowing that someone at church would know what to do, we loaded back up into the car and off to church we went.

During Sunday School and then second service, we got advice about how to handle the situation and several offers of help.

When we finished church, we came home and the efforts began in earnest. People said, there is probably a separate shutoff for that water source since it is back at the barn. So I set out to find said shutoff and, well, shut it off. I checked all of the pipes/faucets on the back of the house. Nope. Then I tried here:



And I successfully BROKE.THE.HANDLE turning it to the opposite of what it was set on.


Nope.

Then I went to the stinking gushing lame excuse for a faucet leaking faucet to see if I could spy a valve there. However, if you check the second picture, you will see that these pipes are cleverly disguised inside a wooden box. (which, you would think, would have protected those bad boys from freezing. Not so my friends. Not so.) The box ~ well-built by my awesome, handy, and very thorough husband ~ had no intention of going quietly into the night or peacefully giving up its contents other than the water it freely allowed to pass out of it in extreme fashion. So, I pounded the top off. Then found that I had to pound the front to convince it to open. While I was doing that, the strangest thing happened. One of the 2 faucets attached to the pipe was no longer attached to the pipe, but instead, flying through the air at a high rate of speed until the garden hose which it was still attached to wrestled it to the ground. I am sorry dear faucet.




Oddly enough, this did not stop the water from spewing. Not only did it not STOP the water from spewing, it seemed to encourage a much heavier flow of spewing.

And P.S. - there was no valve hidden in the box. Sorry honey.

So, okay - only thing left to do, shut it off at the main. *slightly defeated exhale of breath*
I went in the barn and grabbed some tools that I thought could possibly help me to man-handle the water valve to the entire house into the off position.



Have I mentioned that I was still in my Sunday best? Except for Hubby's boots which I changed into from my church shoes. So now you can use your mind's eye to picture me in my Sunday finery crouched in the middle of the front yard for the entire world to see (except you because no one took a picture) trying to convince the main water valve to shut off. While talking nicely to it, eh hem, I heard a car stereo. Then I heard a car door. Well, truck to be exact. In my driveway; and out climbs a big guy, and his little guy. This is the husband of one of the people at church I told about the fun we had this morning.

"I heard you were having a little trouble."
Thank you nice man for not saying, "I saw you crouching like a lunatic into a hole in your front yard and decided to stop and laugh up-close."

So, I walked him back to the spewing barn. Showed him all the places I tried to stop the water and he agreed that the thing to do now was to shut off the main. So we trekked back up there and he man-handled the water valve to the off position.




Then we returned to the scene of the crime. He grabbed the remaining faucet, and it came off in his hand. *HEY - it wasn't me this time Honey!*

He said many man things; "This is an easy fix. Need some pvc pipe. Cut it. Cap it off. Grunt grunt." etc. From a search of the barn, we determined that we did not have the needed supplies on hand. I asked him if this was something I could do myself and he said I certainly could. He graciously cut the pipe down for me with the hacksaw and instructed me on exactly what supplies I needed and what to do with them once I brought them home.



"Call if you need any further help. Goodbye." Thankyouverymuch!!. You have now joined the distinguished, "Heroes among us" alumni. God bless you and have a nice day.

I went to the local DIY/Hardware store and picked up a 1/2" pvc cap and some pvc cement.




I dried the pipe. Slathered it and the cap with the cement and placed it, followed by heavy tapping, onto the severed pipe. Not the most attractive work, but done is beautiful. Then I made my way back up to the water valve to man-handle it back into the on position. While putting the cover back on, a fierce red ant crawled up my sleeve and bit my wrist. OUCH! During the long walk back to the barn, I prayed that should the work not have been successful on the first try that I would not lose heart, or any now frozen appendages.

It worked!!! All spewing is gone!! Thank You Jesus!!


I re-wrapped the remaining pipe with foam insulation



and later, piled it high with pinestraw.

Here is the graveyard:



Unfortunately for my husband, when he returns home from war he will have to rebuild the faucets for use. I am resigned to not having a hose at the barn until then and also not having a live ice sculpture exhibit at the barn either.

The irony is that the ice that was formed during this fiasco was really quite beautiful. Sadly I was only able to snap pictures of it after I had finished my work and it had long since started melting.








After all that drama, I rewarded my hard work with an oven-baked sandwich from Domino's. Well done S4J and great friend from church! Well done.

Evicted!

Hubby discovered this on our tomato plant.

He let me take pictures of it and then he evicted it. And its little yellow friend there.
How crazy is the hair from the tomato vine??

Ten On The Tenth - S4J Joins In

School starts on Friday.(Don't ask)
Praise God for mandatory education!
In honor of the closing of Summer, here are

Ten pictures I took throughout the season.


1.

2.

3.

4.
5.
6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Where In The World Is S4J? - Day 2 Continued

11:57am Heading South from here to the airport...



1:19pm Arrived at my destination! You guys are way too hip to me. You had me figured out right away!




1:29pm Picked up these...

HisGirl and Jtothe2nd

1:57pm Arrived at their swanky hotel and I spent some time taking pictures of the lovely lobby while they worked out the details of checking in...



3:10pm Time to eat and shop. Lunch at Rainforest Cafe...

3:15pm and because you people are harassing me about faces...



4:33pm After lunch we went around the Grapevine Mills Mall. We stopped in here...



Can you SEE the prices of these items? Jtothe2nd really loved that bowl sink AND those sunglasses.

5:09pm A little more fun back at the hotel before I had to be on my way home...


5:40pm I didn't get a picture of this because I was literally standing at the door when we heard a key in it. It was my Chica Wen who had just arrived from California!! I got to say, "Hello" and hug her before heading out for the 6 1/2 hour drive home.

8:19pm YAHOO! J-in-the-B for dinner!!
Arrived home around 12:30am

More later on the reason for the quick turn around.....