Yello!

The family just returned from 11 days in Scotland. I think we may have found the most beautiful place on earth…but then, I just thought that until I saw the next most beautiful place…so now I’m not sure. Anyway, we did enjoy the sights of Scotland. We spent a week at Delgatie, an ancient castle associated with the Hay clan near the small town of Turriff in Aberdeenshire, northeast Scotland. We ventured away from the castle each day testing our driving skills and seeing such sights as Loch Ness, Scotland’s coast along the North Sea, the Scottish Highlands and Balmoral (the Queen’s vacation home), The Glenlivet whisky distillery, and the cities of Aberdeen and Inverness. The kids were pretty pumped that we got to see the new Simpsons movie on opening day in Aberdeen (six hours before their friends back home even!). After our week’s stay, we took in the Highland Games at Dufftown before staying one night at Fort Augustus just south of Loch Ness. We drove over to the beautiful Isle of Skye on the western coast of Scotland before heading southeast to Edinburgh. There we spent a day shopping and catching a glimpse of the imposing Edinburgh castle, the Royal Mile, and the nearby monument at Stirling in honor of Scottish hero William Wallace, as portrayed in Braveheart. A few things we learned included how many twists and turns there are on the roads in Scotland and exactly how efficient round-abouts are. We also found out that most restaurants and public toilets close at 5 pm in small Scottish towns. I loved the beautiful wild flowers, expecially the purple thistles which are a national symbol of Scotland. The people were especially friendly and we had a great time. What a trip!

When I started this blog, one of my goals was to stay positive and try looking at the bright side. But I can’t help but share my experience with Wal-mart and their photo policy. Over the years we have enjoyed photography as a hobby and have been asked by friends to photograph weddings, family reunions, and graduating seniors in addition to doing more artistic photography and landscapes. From time to time, friends have been questioned when they have taken negatives or photos on CDs to have reprints made as to whether a professional might have a copyright on the photos. We’ve taken that as a compliment as to the perceived quality of our work. But in the past year or so we have been questioned ourselves whether the photos could really be ours or if we weren’t trying to rip off someone else’s photos. I was told last night at Wal-mart that I must have a photo release (on official looking paper with a letterhead) in order to have my own photos printed! Does that make any sense? Does everyone need to have a photo release on file at that store even to get bad pictures printed? Who decides what prints can be done and what prints would need to have a signed release?

Sooo… Here is my attempt to make a photo release that satisfies them:

We are not professional photographers, but are people who like to take good photos. We have been told by Wal-mart employees that we must sign a release in order that others, whom we have photographed and given CD’s with the photos, may print those photos for their own use. We have also been told that we must sign a release in order to print our own photos! This form officially and legally releases our photographs to ourselves for our own use and to ___ whom we have given our photographs to. This release is good for the duration of eternity or until Wal-Mart closes, which ever comes first. There is no expiration date. Signed and dated__.

Stay tuned to find out if my version of the release form satisfies them or if it needs revision. Does this make any sense to you?

• *A parent’s love is measured in their child’s smile.
• *All generalizations are false, including this one.
• *The day God made dog, he just sat down and smiled!
• *How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
• *Dance as though no one is watching. Love as though you’ve never been hurt. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth. ~Souza
• *Beware: Dog can’t hold his licker.
• *If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?
• *Doesn’t expecting the unexpected make the unexpected the expected?
• *I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

Here’s a picture of my first “real quilt” that I just finished. The pattern was called Simply Hearts. It’s for Jenna from fabric she chose about 2 years ago. It didn’t take me 2 years to make it, but it probably took about 1 1/2 years to get around to it. Actually it was pretty fun and I’m kind of anxious to start on a second one – not this summer though! Even though I’d made a couple of small quilts before that were tied, this was the first that was actually quilted over the entire surface of the quilt. With extra fabric, I decided to make a pillow too.

Last week I headed off for Tucson, AZ for a four-day Family Economics Financial Education (http://www.fefe.arizona.edu/index.php) conference. I arrived on Sunday and spent the afternoon in a rental car seeing some of the sights of the city and Mount Lemon, which is just north and east of Tucson. Once the conference actually started on Monday, there really was not much time for sightseeing, although we did slip off to the mall and drove past the University campus. We stayed at the Westward Look Resort (http://www.westwardlook.com) which was a wonderful, historic place that housed all of our meetings and offered many things to do in our free time. The speakers and the program were outstanding and I learned many new things that I hope to incorporate into my classes this fall. It was the wee hours of Friday morning when I arrived back home – glad that I had gone, but equally as happy to be home!

OK…so here it is June and May just flew by. As we hurried from one event to another, I kept thinking maybe I could blog about this or that…and just never found the time to do it. Kalie graduated and we went to lots of other graduations around the state of family and friends. The school year ended and our summer routine picked up. The month was filled with lots of fun events and some challenges too. But, the weather took front and center stage last Tuesday night and the early hours of Wednesday morning when over 6 1/2 inches of rain fell here. Roads, fields, city streets and many basements in the area were filled with water! About 2:30 am Wednesday morning, our house guests who were sleeping in the basement awoke to more than 4 inches of water covering the floor. There were musical instruments, video games, and electronics to rescue along with whatever else could be gathered quickly and a rush to start up the pumps to get all that water out of the house! The next few days were spent trying to dry off and salvage what we could and taking up carpeting and the pad underneath that was acting as a very soggy sponge. We have it mostly dried out now and have most all of our remaining belongings that are to be stored in the basement in a pyramid of plastic storage containers. We love the rain, but would have appreciated not getting all 6+ inches within a few hours. It was a month of May to remember!

April is nearly gone, so I decided maybe I should post something before May rolls around. There have been lots of things happening – some things good and some things not so good – some things mundane and some things unique! Here’s some of the highlights:

• ***A couple of weeks ago Jesse drove up from Lincoln with an author who was in town interviewing him for a book he is writing about what he called “relos” – people who relocate often because of their jobs. He chose Jesse to interview because he is finishing up a master’s and will soon have to decide whether to move away someplace for a job or stay close to home. He also wanted to visit Jesse’s hometown and meet his parents, so that was the reason for the trip up to our house. We had quite an interesting conversation over dinner and will be anxious to see the book when it is published. The writer had worked at the New York Times for thirty years before retiring to pursue a career as an author.
• ***As the title of this entry indicates, we have had lots and lots of rain lately which is a good thing in the spring on a farm. Soon we’ll be planting corn and soybeans when the ground dries out.
• ***Prom, track meets, music contests and other spring events have kept us busy at school. Graduation is just around the corner!

Happy St. Patricks Day! We celebrated by wearing green, eating sesame chicken, and going to see a movie. OK…so that doesn’t sound like so much of an “Irish” thing to do, but we had fun.

We saw the movie “Premonition” with Sandra Bullock. The previews looked interesting and the movie did not disappoint as it was suspenseful to the point that the ending surprised me. It was one of those movies that involved going back in time a bit and reminded me of some of my favorite movies like Frequency and Butterfly Effect. I guess some of my other all-time favorite movies like Field of Dreams, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure , and Back to the Future all involve time travel. Another new movie that I saw last week-end in Lincoln was “Wild Hogs” with Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, and John Travolta. It was a cute movie with some funny moments. Hey, any movie with motorcycles on the open road has to be at least sort of good!

What a week we have had! On Thursday, the girls and I headed off to Lincoln (along with about 1300 St. Edward-related fans) ready to spend the next three days watching our boys basketball team compete in the state tournament. Francis came down later in the day in time to watch the first-round game that evening between St. Edward and S-E-M (a school that consolidates Sumner, Eddyville and Miller). It was fun to see Kalie and the dance team performing at halftime and nearly every player we had in uniform that night in the game. We won easily that first night (89-52) and proceeded to the semifinals on Friday against Wallace. That game was closer (54-43), but we made it to the final championship game on Saturday morning against state tournament regular Spencer-Naper. An exciting game came to a 46-42 conclusion with the Beavers coming out on top! Yay for the Beavers! They are not only talented athletes, they are also great kids. And cudos to first-year Coach Martin. What a great time it was for the players, student-body and our whole town! If you’d like to check out some stories about our players and the state tournaments, a couple of links for you to copy and paste are http://www.theindependent.com/stories/031107/opi_ayoub11.shtml and http://www.columbustelegram.com/articles/2007/03/11/sports/sports1stedward.txt

In addition, we were excited to watch Kalie receive recognition for the NSAA Believer’s and Achiever’s award during the halftime of the State Class B Boys Basketball championship. She was honored, along with other high school seniors from two Omaha schools, North Platte, and Gretna, for her high school activities and accomplishments. Here’s a picture!

One nice surprise following the award ceremony at the basketball game came as we were returning to our seats. One of my college roommates whom I had lost contact with over the years was in the crowd, recognized our name and came to find me! It was great to see Denise again and, hopefully, we can stay in touch!

When we weren’t watching basketball, we were either shopping or hanging out with Jesse at his Haymarket apartment. Thanks Jesse! It was definitely a memorable three days!

I know it’s been few and far between for blog postings lately…I guess it’s been busy! So I’ll borrow a technique from Jesse and update you all on the past month or so with a bulleted summary:

• *Late January found us at funerals in Bonesteel, SD (Earl Whidden – age 100) and Oshkosh, NE (Margaret Clark – late 80s) for wonderful people who each were first cousins of our parents.
• *January and February is the calving season on the farm – we’ve been blessed with several newborn calves, many that have been born in the middle of the night in temperatures below zero!
• *Daughter #1 surprised us all with a diamond engagement ring on Valentine’s day… or I should say her boyfriend surprised HER with the ring. So wedding plans are being made for late summer… so much to do, so little time! 🙂
• *Daughter #2 has been busy with work, speech meets, scholarship applications and dance team. Here’s a picture of the dance team at the basketball game tonight doing a new move called the worm!
• *#1 son and I made a trip out to Rapid City this past week-end. Among other things, we found time to venture on to Terry Peak Sunday afternoon where the kids went skiing while I graded papers in the lodge. It was warm so the snow was kind of melting and slippery, but they had a lot of fun. We were pleasantly surprised by the amount of ski runs and and size of the hill.
• *We’re still continuing to enjoy the high school basketball season as our first subdistrict game was tonight. The Beavers won easily by a 30+ point margin and will advance to the subdistrict championship round on Thursday with a 20-1 record. It’s been a fun season to watch a very talented group of players.
• *The hubby is sporting a shiner which has led to lots of jokes and accusations that I had something to do with it! In reality, it had to do with feeding his cattle on a cold, wintry day last week when a chunk of frozen silage fell on his head and caused him to slam into the loader. A bump the size of an egg immediately swelled up on the side of his forehead. Since then the bruise has just sort of moved down a bit each day morphing into a tremendously black eye and, now, a black and blue cheek. He claims that it never really hurt although he looks like a tough guy who got the worst end of a fight! I guess the frozen hunk of silage won. Actually, he feels fortunate that he wasn’t knocked out.