Oak Alley

Tuesday, Edd and I took Aimee and Mattie to go see "Oak Alley" one of the neat plantation houses along the Mississippi River!

In the front of Oak Alley are Virginia Live Oak trees that were planted in the 1700's! The trees are amazing!!!

We learned some interesting things on the tour, like back in the 1800's the men were only about 5'4'' so the table and chairs were quite a bit lower to the ground! We saw a working "shoe fly" and learned what it was used for! When the boys turned 15, they had to move out of the family house, but they lived in their own little house on the family's property.

"Oak Alley" was a sugarcane plantation. Cotton doesn't grow in our area, the climate is too wet!!!! Sugarcane is a tropical crop and does well where we live! You see it growing everywhere...looks a lot like corn growing. It's nice to know something besides mosquitoes like the humid climate where we live! :)

Bethany's claim to fame

Bethany, our eldest child, is once again honing her musical skills. About a month ago, we found Bethany a classical violin teacher.

Bethany started taking fiddle lessons in first grade from our good friend, Tonya Hopkins. Fiddle lessons continued on for about 5 1/2 years. Bethany enjoyed fiddling!!!

Once middle school started, Bethany decided, with the help of her parents of course, that she should pursue her musical talent and join the Riverwood Middle School orchestra. Bethany played with the orchestra for two years and was also in the region orchestra her last year in middle school.

After the big move, Bethany tried out for the Northshore Philharmonia orchestra, one of the Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestras. The director gave recommended a lady named Lauren Miller as possible teacher for Bethany.

Well, Bethany is now a student of Lauren Miller! She is a very good teacher!!! After Bethany's first lesson, she recommended that we get Bethany a new violin...better quality=better sound. A few weeks ago, Edd took Bethany to pick out her violin. She also got to pick out a bow, they are all different, you know...we sure didn't, but are learning very quickly!!!

Bethany picked out a very old, but very nice sounding violin! If I can sneak a picture of her with it I'll post it. I'll even try to post a clip of her playing/practicing! :)

Anyway, last week I took Bethany back to the violin shop so she could pick out a few more bows to try out. Her teacher thought she needed to try a few more. While we were at the shop, a lady came in. The owner of the shop, Keith Davis, told Bethany that this lady, Joan Davis, could make her famous! Turns out she is editor for The Daily Star newspaper! She'd come to the shop to write an article about Keith Davis. She took a few shots of Bethany while she was trying out different bows.

This week when I went to pay for the bow that Bethany had picked out, Mr Davis had a surprise for me...he handed me a newspaper and it had Bethany's picture on the front page!!!

I thanked him for the paper! He had saved it for us! What a fun surprise! I put the paper in Bethany's violin case. Later that night, I asked her to make sure I had purchased the right bow. A few minutes later she came back grinning ear to ear holding the paper!!! :)

SIDE NOTE: It's kind of funny....I'd gone into Mr Keith Davis' store a few months ago to get all our violins restrung when Aimee and Mattie started their violin lessons at school. The whole time I was in the shop, I kept thinking to myself how much Keith reminded me of my dad!!!

Well, when Edd and Bethany went to pick out her violin, the came back home and said the same thing! They could be brothers!!!! They look quite a bit alike and have very similar personalities!

picture of the day

Some people like to post their picture of the day. Thomas is a little different! He likes to print a picture each day! This is the one he chose today. It only took 15 minutes and 14 google pages of hippo pictures to find this one! (RECORD TIME!!!)

Every morning after the kids leave, when I sit down at the computer to check email, Thomas runs over! He climbs up onto the desk as he asks, "Can you print me a __________?"
Once all the pictures come, Thomas carefully looks at the thumbnails of each picture. If he likes one, he says, "Make that one big!" He then inspects the BIG picture to see if it meets his critera for the day. If it doesn't, he'll say, "Nah, not that one!" and we move on. Finally, we find the lucky picture and I hear, "Print that one!"

But we're not done there, we have to copy it, paste it into word and make it as big as we can before we can print!

Usually I have to print dinosaurs, but occasionally we look at Thomas' other favorites! The trickiest thing I've had to look up is a "fire T rex!" But, I quickly learned the "fire T rex" is one of the characters from Andrew's DS game, "FOSSIL FIGHTERS!" It took me a couple of days to figure this out though.

This activity is a good nap guide: sometimes I'll doze (not on purpose) while Thomas is inspecting each of the thumbnails. When Thomas is ready to look at the next page he'll say, "OK, go to the next one!" If he has to tell me 2-3 times before I react, I know I'm tired.

The other day, I was sooo tired, that I didn't react at all!!! Then I heard Thomas say, "WAKE UP, MOMMA!!!" But I couldn't respond until he'd said it a few times!!! I should've gone right then to take a nap!!!

Thomas jumping :)

This is how we spent our Friday night! Edd took Aimee and Mattie sailing with a friend from work. B was at a football game. I was home with the boys. Thomas ended up performing for quite a while. After jumping, he did dino imitations!!! Funny kid!!! :)

I don't know what the blue guy is that he is talking about...hmmmm?????

Some October Highlights...

Nearly every morning after the big kids head off to school, Thomas wants me to play
"CARNATOR!"

We hop up onto my bed and pretend we are dinosaurs and battle each other.

We started playing
"CARNATOR" hmmm....maybe a year ago??? It's been so long, I can't remember!!! I know we used to play it at the old house all the time, so it has been awhile!

Playing "CARNATOR" came about one day when Thomas was at the stage in his life when he was transitioning from trains to dinosaurs.

One day, Thomas watched Disney's "DINOSAUR" movie. He was hooked!!! He watched that movie over and over and over and over and over again!!!
His favorite part of the movie is at the end when Aladar fights the carnator and the carnator falls off the cliff!

So one day, Thomas wanted to play "CARNATOR." We have been playing ever since! :)

Occasionally, we add a few variations. Thomas will be a T-rex, like in this picture above or he will be an egg, like in the picture below. Today he was a triceratops and he stabbed me in the guts with his horns and killed me...I was a carnator.

What a cute dinosaur you might think, but when he hatches, he's usually a mean t-rex ready to attack!

One morning he was a baby longneck and he rode on my back...I was Momma longneck.

Most of the time Thomas hatches out as a t-rex, which is his favorite dinosaur right now!






A week ago, Friday, we had a little predicament...Bella was up on our roof!!! The kids called me out to come see.

Sure enough, she was sitting on the peek just above the front door, right on the point!

Just imagine a black kitty sitting on the point above the door and you'll get the picture! :)

I told the kids that Bella would be fine and she'd be able to get down since she got up...at least that's what I thought!

The kids were not convinced and Andrew proceeded to pull out the ladder and put it by the window, by the door. He climbed up, but couldn't reach her since he was on our 6 foot ladder and Bella was up about 12 feet.

I was trying to make dinner and told everyone that if Bella was still on the roof when Edd got home we'd send him up with the big ladder.

Well, a short time ladder I took this picture...
When Edd got home, the kids swarmed him and they all told him their version of the problem, all at once of course!

Edd thought that Bella would be able to get down by herself, but the kids insisted that she couldn't and that she was scared because she kept meowing.

So Edd got the big extension ladder and up he went. Sure enough, Bella was one scared kitty!!! Edd scooted up the steep roof and grabbed Bella! Yeah!!!
She was rescued, almost..................................

PROBLEM!!!

How do you climb down a ladder one handed with a scared kitty???

SOLUTION ~

You climb down two handed! After tossing scared kitty down into the blanket anxiously awaiting below, which was being held by all of us to help break her fall.

Well, it sounded great!!! But the execution wasn't so great. Bella's fall was broken sure enough, but not by the blanket.

Instead, she broke her fall on my head!!! I was standing right below the corner that stuck out, which is where Edd tossed Bella down from. Only problem was that it was dark outside and I couldn't see the scared BLACK kitty falling right towards my face!!!

Luckily the damage was minimal...I had a split, fat lip and a cut on my shoulder where a claw got me and Bella had a crushed ego. She was really sweet, almost timid the rest of the night!


The next morning the kids had fun outside for a little while~they were trying to teach Mattie how to roller blade.

It was one of our first cool mornings, but the kids thought it was FREEZING!!! The raided the coat closet and went back outside!

It was only about 53 outside!

In a few weeks, the kids will think 53 is warm and will be playing outside without jackets!

Later that night, Edd and I ventured into New Orleans for a company dinner. I hadn't thought it was THAT cold, so I didn't take a sweater or a jacket with me.

When we got into New Orleans, the wind was blowing some and everyone was all bundled up!!! I had a few second thoughts, but I was fine...it really wasn't cold, just cool...it felt nice! :)

Edd and I had dinner at Brennan's! One of the guys working at the refinery was having his farewell dinner. He and his family are heading to Canada for their next assignment.

Edd and I got to New Orleans a little early so we had a chance to walk around. It was pretty fun! We saw a couple who had just gotten married just before they went and marched in their "second line parade!" I think that's what it's called. We were about a block away from their parade, but could see the umbrellas! We also looked in some windows at a few different art shops...pretty amazing stuff! :)

As we walked up to Brennan's, we saw the same guy playing the trombone, who we'd seen on the 4th of July!!! I think he was even in the same spot!!!

Once we were in Brennan's, I over heard a cute old couple speaking FRENCH! I thought that was pretty cool!!! That was the first time I'd heard anyone down here speak French!


A week ago Sunday, was FREEZING COLD!!!! It was 42 outside and in my book that is COLD!!! In fact, out of all the places where we have family living, we were the coldest!!! The crazy thing was that SLC and Boulder, CO were the warmest that morning!!!

When we got home from church, Mattie took my picture! If you look closely, you can see the red line on my lip from Bella! Just below my left front tooth.
After we ate, we all put on warmer clothes and went for a Sunday drive.

Edd was hoping to find a really cool, typical Louisiana landscape for us to get a family picture.

We saw a lot of beautiful areas, some very typical...swamp area with big oak with tons of Spanish moss...but the lighting wasn't quite right.

When we got back to Madisonville, we went over to the Tchefuncte River and tried to get some pictures there.

It is so tricky to get 5 kids to cooperate all at the very same time!!! Thomas ended up being quite the clown! If you haven't seen Edd's picture of the kids from last Sunday, you should go check it out on his blog at http://www.eddzphotojournal.blogspot.com/ (look at entry Family Picture - Outtake #237 ) we were all laughing pretty hard after that one!!! It was totally a Thomas moment!