New instructor, deliveries, Mama’s computer, shopping, New Year’s Eve

Class yesterday went well. As expected, our newest instructor had the perfect class to try out his presentation. The six participants were engaged, encouraging, and very supportive. They all knew each other well. Five of the six had worked together for many years and four of the six were launching into a new employment opportunity to join the two evaluators familiar with both the new employer and the new processes they would be taking on. They all seemed to have a good time in the class which made things somewhat less of a strain for our new instructor. I interjected a couple thoughts into the class as needed but largely I sat by and let Russell do the class as much on his own as possible. Now he knows what it is like to present the class and I am sure he will work to smooth out the rough patches he struggled through yesterday.

Mama was loathe to leave the house yesterday because her new computer was to be delivered at some point during the day. She wore herself out cleaning around the house even going so far as to thoroughly scrub the kitchen cabinets. She was hesitant to go to church last night for fear of missing her expected delivery, which, as it turned out, came just a few minutes before I left for church. Plus, she had overdone it through the day and was in considerable pain by that evening. When the UPS driver, whom we have gotten familiar with, dropped off the packages, we gave him a small bag of Mama’s fresh baked goodies. He was delighted. So, Mama stayed home last night and watched the service from the couch.

I, on the other hand had a good time at our last service for the calendar year. I pretty much had to go. Not because I am the song leader but because Mama and I had caught six chickens to be rehomed and the purchaser – a church friend – was not able to collect the hens as expected yesterday morning. She was sick and asked if we would bring the birds to church to make the exchange.  I was happy to do so. While the hens spent the entire day in the cage we had placed them in late Tuesday evening two eggs were laid. Both were smashed by the caged birds who probable fidgeted about constantly through the day in captivity, but while they waited in their cage in the bed of my truck during the service an additional two eggs were laid. Those I was able to recover since the chickens tend to limit their movements after dark. The sons of the purchaser were delighted by the bonus in their chicken delivery. I also had to deliver a padded mat bought at Sam’s when Mama and I were there Tuesday evening. Brittany Wycoff wanted Mama to get the mat for her as a gift to her mom, so that was successfully delivered in secret. Mission accomplished!

I avoided working on Mama’s new computer last night because I knew it would require more focus and emotional energy than I had to offer after I got home from church. I started that this morning and was largely complete in only a couple hours. Mama is truly excited about the computer and that is a good sign. I am impressed with the newer model of MacBook Air. Mine seems antiquated by comparison.  I admit that I was a little taken aback at the different look of several programs on the newer operating system but that will not present a problem for Mama because the new look is far less cluttered than what I am used to seeing. We will slowly add links, shortcuts and apps over the next several days if not weeks.

Mama will launch into the computer operation as soon as she is back from an emergency shopping run. Why it was an emergency remains a mystery to me, but I have to trust Mama’s instincts. She listed off the multiple stops she has planned and as much as I enjoy spending time with Mama, I was happy enough to let her make this trip on her own. I do not expect her back much before I sign out for the day…for the year.

This weekend, I need the extra day off tomorrow offers because I have a lot of freeze prep to get done before our next Arctic blast hits Saturday night. We will spend a couple nights in the teens to low twenties. Cutting in the yard hydrant at the barn is the longest project. It will require several hours to do it properly, but I should have the time and materials to complete it once started. Once complete, I hope it will last me many years.

We have no real plans for New Year’s Eve except to rest up and complete all the chores I need to have done before the temps fall through Saturday night. We will start the year off with what is for us a brutal cold snap.

Should be fun!

Nearing the end, class tomorrow, constancy

Mama and I each follow a Bible reading program that guides us through reading the Bible in one year. We have repeated that process for many years, but each year, near the ending of the calendar year, it is nice to come to the end of the guide and know we have accomplished that goal once more. Having the Bible in audio format facilitates the daily reading. It is nice, where needed, to have someone else pronounce those names that are difficult for us to sound out. Every year there are new discoveries in our daily reading and every year, though we follow our guides to repeat the process, the Bible seems fresh and new.

So, on December 31 I will read the last chapter in Revelation, and January 1 I will read the first chapter in Matthew. I will read the last chapter in Malachi on the last day of the year and read the first chapter in Genesis the first day of the New Year. Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs are read daily with the Psalms and Proverbs being repeated twice through the year.

I have been challenged several times to try a different program for my daily reading, but I have stuck with what I am used to for about fifteen years. It takes me about twenty minutes each morning because I read the assigned passages in Psalms and Proverbs in both English and Spanish. That is one of the means of keeping Spanish in front of my mind on a daily basis. It is a nice way to begin each day and over the years has become a habit. Sharing those moments in the morning with Mama, thought we are reading separately, is one of the blessings of working from home. Until that changes, we will enjoy that time together with each other and with the Lord. Soon we will have a new year to look forward as we start once more at the beginning.

I will be in class tomorrow. I will not be the designated instructor. I will be there to evaluate the presentation given by a fellow employee who will be presenting the class for the first time. I do not anticipate any issues, but it will make both my management and the presenter feel better to have me in the class as he gives it a go. This will be the last class of 2021. Next year, we start off with a full schedule beginning on January 4. Classes are scheduled out through the first quarter at the rate of two to three classes per week. I will be busy keeping that schedule and it will help to have two backup instructors qualified to present classes when I need to take time off. That was not possible this year and as a result I am carrying over almost a week of vacation which adds the complication of having even more time off to use up next year. A good challenge which I am certain Mama can help me overcome as long as I have backup instructors to fill in for classes during the time off I am assigned by Mama.

This coming weekend we are forecast to have a couple night in the teens. Daytime temperatures are predicted to be in the forties, but when we see twenty degrees and below in our area, that is a challenge for me and Mama to keep our waterlines from being damaged. I am especially concerned about the line I installed for a temporary line at the barn. It will not survive a night below twenty degrees without some extra precautions, so I have to take the time to install the yard hydrant I purchased for that purpose. Fitting that into the schedule over the next few afternoons is going to take some coordination. It is one of those chores that I should have done weeks ago, but it has not been an urgency – until now. Nothing like an emergency to get me to do what needed doing for some time already.

Having the farm to tend to lends a constancy to our lives that anchors us well. Regardless of the season, the chores continue, and the animals pass the days in our care unaware of the passage of time or the other cares of life we deal with. They know when to expect us to put feed in their feeders and they treat each feeding as though Mama and I had forgotten them even though they were fed only hours ago. It is fun to participate in the continuum, especially with Mama to share the experience with.

The calendar may change in a few days, but our lives remain fairly constant.

Last week

Since I last wrote, a week before Christmas, Mama and I have been busy. Friday the 17^th we had our Sunday School Christmas party at the church. We sat with Sam and Erin Echeveria, Paul O’Conner and Elizabeth Miller. Sam has a very quick wit and an extremely dry sense of humor. Mama and I enjoyed ourselves immensely. Saturday evening, we had a double date with the Cantrell’s. That was a very relaxed, comfortable evening out. We ate at Texas Roadhouse, had a good long visit while our food was being prepared, just enjoying each other’s company. Mama presented her Color Street nails to the waitress when the receipts were being paid and we looked over the area we were in at Christmas lights. Sunday morning, we had breakfast at the church. I was hurting badly so I did not eat anything, but Aubrey and Cheyenne loved the fare. They concentrated on the donuts and biscuits. Services afterward were great and that morning, the choir sounded amazing.

For Sunday night, pastor led a testimony service. We sang a couple hymns and then set up a mike in the front of the church to allow anyone who would to give their testimony to the congregation. All in all, fifteen or so people gave an account of their salvation experience or some other aspect of their walk with the Lord. It was a very intimate moment for the church, and it will be remembered for a long time to come. Mama even got up and shared her testimony as did I. What was most interesting was that some of the persons who chose to share were not among those I would have expected to do so. A few very timid folks let us into some of the most precious moments of their lives. I have a feeling we will repeat that order of service again.

Since Mama and I had been rescheduled for our meeting with the title company Monday, we went to Bowie and had lunch with Victoria. I had never been to the pizzeria they both talked so much about, so they were anxious to show me just how great it was. They were not wrong. It was good and Mama and I did not have to hurry through the lunch hour Victoria was sharing with us. However, we got a call from the notary shortly after lunch – about the time we were originally scheduled to meet - to see why we were not at the appointment. Fortunately, he remembered calling me Sunday afternoon to move me to a later time slot. He admitted that he had gotten confused on the many appointments he had scheduled for that day. We were able to keep our appointment at the new time so it all worked out eventually.

Tuesday, I took my chain saw to be repaired. It was leaking fuel past the point that I could even think about using it. While I was in town, I took the car to Auto Zone to have a code read to let me know why our Check Engine light was on. It was a code dealing with a catalytic converter efficiency issue. Not surprising since the catalytic converted installed were not genuine Toyota parts. Those are currently unavailable. The error was reset but came back after a few miles of driving. Fortunately, it is something we can live with long-term. I got my repaired chainsaw back later that morning and worked on cutting up a lot of fallen branches as well as felling a dead tree behind the chicken coop. Later that evening, Mama and I packed for our overnight visit to Amarillo.

We left for Amarillo after feeding Wednesday morning. It is an easy 5-hour drive and seems to pass very quickly.  Mama and I were looking forward to our visit with Chase, Makaila, Owen and Gailyn. Any uncertainty that the grandchildren would remember or welcome us was eliminated as soon as we sat down and Gailyn crawled onto my lap to be hugged and snuggled.
Owen did the same for Mama fairly soon after we arrived. We had a wonderful, comfortable, relaxed visit over the course of Wednesday and until naptime Thursday. Mama and I were even permitted to take Owen with us to Academy Thursday morning to return some items. It was sad to say goodbye. We got home just after dark Thursday night.

Friday, Christmas eve, Mama and I went suit shopping at the outlet mall in Ft Worth. I got two sport coats versus getting any suits. The suits were too plain and drab for my tastes. Mama and I shopped around a bit before leaving the outlet malls and headed to Sam’s for some last-minute dinner items for Christmas day. On the way to Sam’s, we stopped at Rooms to Go to look for a sofa or sectional to replace the broken down one Mama is currently using and were surprised to find something both of us like very much. I had not been in favor of a chaise per se, but Chase and Makaila have a sectional with two chaises, and it was a nice arrangement. It changed my mind, much to Mama’s delight, on the efficacy of including a chaise in our shopping requirements. We may look seriously into getting the sectional we were most interested in.

Saturday, Christmas Day, was unpleasant for me as far as my gut was concerned, but we had a great Christmas morning with Victoria at the farm and virtually celebrated Christmas with several of the children and grandchildren. About noon, Mama picked up Aubrey and Cheyenne to spend the day with us since the restaurant was opening from noon to 6 pm Christmas Day. They made a couple different types of cookies; they opened the presents Mama and I had gotten for them and they helped us feed before we took them back to the restaurant a little before 6 pm. The restaurant was packed. It and Jack in the Box were the only eateries opened. Yesterday we had great services at church.

It was a fun few days.

Class, Children’s Christmas Program, guests, tomorrow

Class yesterday was a great class. I felt like I was a little off my game doing the presentation in a slightly different format for an audience sitting with me, but it turned out well. Three of the five participants were from client companies. Two were from my team at Energy WorldNet. Everyone participated throughout the class which always makes the class more fun. In these face-to-face classes that is typically the case, which is why I enjoy that format so much better than online. It had been almost eight months since I did a face-to-face class, so I was a little out of practice, but having presented the online version nearly sixty times in that space of time, it was only a matter of making sure I followed the printed book the class was referencing. I had to make sure all the activities included in that book were offered to the participants. That is something we do not offer in the online class. I enjoyed the day and the participants seemed to do so as well.

Mama had spent the day out shopping so when we both got home, we hurried through the evening feeding to allow us time to get to church almost an hour early. The Master’s Club Christmas Program was last night, and Mama and I had to get our girls to the church for the final run through. Since I had not been a participant in any of the practices Monday or Tuesday night, I needed to see the order of service so I could get things coordinated for the adult choir which had several songs to sing as a part of the program.

The program went off without a hitch. The children who had lines in the dialogue all knew and spoke their lines loudly and confidently. Cheyenne had a speaking part in the program and even she did her part as though it were a small thing. All the songs they sang were very well done. (I have found myself wishing the adult choir would always sing with that level of confidence and volume.) For the adult’s part, we had practiced the songs we contributed to the production over the past couple weeks, so we were well prepared to do our part. Pastor preached a short sermon and passed out bags of fruit and candy to all in attendance, which was a sizable crowd. Who does not like to see a children’s program? It was a fun evening at church.

Later this afternoon we will be entertaining a family that has spent the past year at BBTI. They have been faithful attendees to our church and Mama and I have wanted to have them over for dinner for months. We finally were able to coordinate our schedules and settled on this afternoon/evening to get together. They are headed to the mission field in Mozambique. In a few weeks they will go on deputation fulltime so their schedule will – hopefully – be full for months to come. The couple and their three children have never been to the farm, so they are looking froward to their visit. The youngest child, just over a year old -born to them during their sojourn at our church – is a handful so we will need to be on our toes, but we will manage.

In preparation for their visit, we have a ham on the smoker, and I will be adding corn on the cob to the grill later today. Mama is making macaroni salad, green beans and scalloped potatoes. A pumpkin pie was purchased along with a variety of vegetables and cheeses for a snack tray. It should be fun. Our Christmas meal for the year. Friday evening, we have our Sunday School Class party, but the meal will be Mexican food – not very Christmassy. So, the meal this evening will substitute for that holiday tradition.  

We will not be doing much for Christmas, but we will drive over to Amarillo to see Chase, Makaila, Owen and Gavin during that week. It will be a short trip, but at least Mama will get to see a couple of our grandchildren during the holidays – a rare tactile interaction with our progeny. As much as we tried to plan a longer trip to spent time with children and grandchildren further away, none of those plans have worked out.

I will be teaching my last class of the year tomorrow. At least that is the plan. The only other class on the schedule will be taught by a coworker as his first time to present the class. So, I have a short break before hitting the ground running in the coming year.

I will try to make the most of it.

The fifth tree, saving lights, preparations, stump removal

While I was working from home yesterday, I took time to help Mama get our fifth tree – the real Christmas tree – set up and strung with lights. To be accurate, we got together and put lights on the tree which I had set up the day before. We had to swap places for two trees so that I was not cramped in a forest of fake trees where my recliner sits in the living room. That one placement swap leaves me less crowded in my corner, but I still have to share my corner with two trees. One artificial. One real. For lighting the real Christmas tree, we mostly used lights that I bought at Lowe’s on Saturday. I had headed to church to go bus calling Saturday morning, but I started feeling too badly to go with the group, so I went to Lowe’s for a few items before I headed home. I bought four boxes of cheap lights for the tree along with the stove pipe I needed for the shop heater I was working to complete. I had been hoping that four boxes would be enough. I wish I had a picture of the tree. Mama finished decorating it pretty quickly and it looks really good.

We used three boxes of the four boxes of lights I bought along with two strands of lights we kept from last year. We also threw away four strings of lights that had been saved to be reused but we found that the old ones only partially worked when we tested them this year. I told Mama we need to either plan on buying new lights each year or stocking up on lights after Christmas each year. Saving lights for reuse from year to year has not proved a benefit to us. It is always disappointing to get out a string of lights, plug them in and only about half of them illuminate. Sometimes it is the half nearest the plug. Sometimes it is the far end that is dead. Either way, it is disappointing. Mama knows nothing frustrates me more than when things do not work as they are supposed to. So, from my point of view, new lights each year is a affordable solution to ensure that we have working sets of lights to decorate with.

The practice session I attended today went well. My coworker was very pleased with the two videos I felt comfortable sharing with him to use in his upcoming class. He is nervous about presenting the class, but he will do fine. I feel comfortable with his knowledge base and his preparation. It is also a benefit for him that the class is more or less an internal class. Those he will be presenting to are part of a company that is a subsidiary of our company. That gives us broad latitude to present the class in a more informal format. We still have to get through the information, but we can do so in a relaxed manner. It will be a great opportunity for this new instructor to test his approach to the class presentation, the information he is responsible for, and the timing required to fill the allotted schedule of the class. I will be there to help, but I do not foresee getting too involved.

This evening, I will get to see how well I was able to burn out two stumps beside driveway. I have had great success in burning out two stumps along the other side of the driveway, but these additional two stumps had been left alone. They sit only a foot or two from the edge of the concrete and since that is where Victoria usually parks her car, I have left them alone. Yesterday I decided to see how far I could get if I started the fires over the stumps during my lunch hour. I ringed the stumps with fireproof barriers to limit how much grass was burned along with the stumps and got the fires going easily. I kept the fires going all day and well into the evening.

I burned a lot of old firewood as I did so. Getting all the rotting pieces of wood off the ground allows me to safely mow in areas I have avoided because of the obstacles the firewood caused. Even with the four times I have repeated this process, I still have a large reserve of old firewood to get rid of.  I finally abandoned oversight of the fires about 9:30 pm. Allowing them to burn out completely through the night. I did get up once about 2:30 am and looked out on the fires to make sure everything was okay. It was.

I was not up that early because I was worried about the fires. I was up because the big toe on my left foot was hurting so badly that it woke me from a deep sleep. I spent about an hour trying to deal with the pain and get back to sleep. Some pain cream rubbed gently on the toe and a couple Extra Strength Tylenol eventually dulled the pain and allowed me to sleep until about 5:30. It was a short night.

Hopefully tonight will be better.

The party, Sunday, this week

Mama and I attended the Christmas party Saturday evening and had a good time with my fellow employees and their significant others. Charcuterie boards were the theme for the snacks served. Our host and several other helpers loaded the boards with items each of us (twenty attendees) brought to the gathering. The boards were piled to overflowing with crackers, cheeses, meats, spreads, and fruits of all sorts. There was certainly something for everyone. 

Mama and I spent the bulk of our time with a young couple who are relatively new to the area. The husband, Clinton was hired by my company about three weeks ago. He and his wife, Shelby, spent several years working as chaperones for a Kenyan Children’s Choir as those choirs toured the United States. A very interesting story to tell. Shelby still works for the organization that sponsors those youth choirs to promote community awareness for the Kenyan bush tribes those children represent. That made for a very pleasant evening as we talked about missions across the world. Mama and I left shortly after the gift exchange, so we were home before 9 pm.

Sunday, we had an evangelist preaching in both services. He and his wife have run a youth camp in West Virginia for 46 years, so Mama and I got to connect with her West Virginia roots through the couple. They were delightful. During the Sunday School hour, he gave us a lesson on things that have been shaken and things which cannot be shaken. For many, this year has shaken their faith. It has certainly shaken our culture at home and abroad, but God is still in control and His Word cannot be shaken. He will keep all His promises, both for good and for judgement. 

Bro. Taylor spoke in the morning service about what it means to be lost. No joy, no peace, no hope beyond this life. Sometimes we as saved believers forget the precarious condition of those around us who do not know the Lord. It was a good reminder of the urgency of our mission to tell the Gospel story, because those who die without Christ will wake in Hell. And Hell is as eternal as Heaven. An unchanging condition of suffering, of torment, of loss. It was a brief, but powerful sermon. I am certain that in my past I have walked away from opportunities to present the Gospel to someone the Lord ahs placed in my path. I am looking for those opportunities now. Hoping to make the most of them rather than avoid them.

This week will be busier than I had anticipated. Two of the classes that I had assumed would be cancelled are still on the schedule. We had enough registrants for each class to move them forward. So, tomorrow I will spend the day doing a mock class with a coworker who wants to begin teaching classes. Wednesday I will be presenting a class to six persons at the conference center here in Decatur and Friday, I will be presenting an online class to four of perhaps five participants. I have not had a face-to-face class in months so I will have to get my presentation ready for that format. It is all good. I feel better when I am teaching, like I am earning my paycheck. I get fidgety when I have too long a stretch without teaching classes.

I will be off Christmas week. I am taking off Monday through Wednesday. Thursday and Friday are company holidays. I will have quite a bit of vacation to carry over into next year, but there was no real opportunity to use more time off than I have requested through this year. Perhaps, as the general populous gathers their collective voice and shouts down the useless and overbearing rules imposed on us in the ongoing fearmongering, there will be more opportunity to travel and enjoy life in a les restrictive manner than that which is now afforded to us.

It is reassuring to see the Democratic Governor of Colorado end mask mandates, stating that the pandemic is long over, and emergency powers granted to public health officials -who have overstepped those powers – are rescinded. That is a huge step forward. Away from the fear porn used to control behavior of those willing to submit. Now we wait for the vaccine mandates to be rejected at the legislative level and next we will start to hear how dangerous the “vaccines” actually are; how many people have been crippled for life by the vaccine; how many people have died as a direct result of getting the shot. Small steps toward our individual freedoms being once again recognized.

I am hopeful, but not overly confident.

Shop heater, Skinny syrup rack, party

 For over thirty years I have carried about in all our relocations the parts needed to convert an empty 55-gallon drum into a shop heater. A sort of cheap potbelly stove. Last weekend Mama and I bought two barrels to attempt the conversion. Two in case I messed up on the first attempt to do the cutting needed to fit the cast iron parts onto the drum to complete the conversion. All in all, the retrofit was easy to make. I had the jigsaw blades needed and was able to fit the door, the legs, and the flue adapter onto the drum in a couple hours.

Yesterday I bought the first pieces of stovepipe to exhaust the stove outside the shop. I will, hopefully, complete that work this weekend and finally have a woodburning stove in my shop. That will help me keep up with the scraps generated in woodworking and keep the shop building warm as a bonus. I am looking forward to trying it out. I have avoided spending too much time in the shop when it is cold outside because I do not tolerate the cold as well as I used to. Maybe this will be my solution to allowing me more time in the shop during the winter.

A few months ago, I got Mama to try a Skinny syrup. The syrups are sugar free, so it was a good addition to our coffee routine without adding the calories of any sweetener. Mama has been a regular user of the syrups and as we have begun to accumulate a variety of flavors and the bottles which contain them, I thought it wise to build a shelf to house those bottles versus squeezing them into the limited space on our coffee bar. I had Mama adorn the cedar shelf prior to my putting a coat of urethane on it. She is doing some pretty amazing things with her “wood-burning” pastes and I thought it a shame not to capitalize on that craftiness for our new addition to the coffee bar. It will be several days before I hang the shelf. It takes several coats of urethane to get the proper finish, but I think the project is coming out really well.

This weekend will not be as busy as the past few weekends. I do plan on looking into my two beehives today since the temperature is supposed to get into the eighties. These two warm days are being followed by two cold days as is typical for our area. I will need to protect waterlines and faucets overnight tomorrow night because we are expecting a hard freeze. One night only, but one night of being unprepared is all it takes to cause me a lot of extra work. All the normal tasks will be done in the usual manner, but Mama will spend a few hours at Trade Days in Bowie Saturday morning just to see if there is anything new to gawk at. I will not go. It is largely a waste of time for me since there is very rarely anything I need offered at a price I am happy with, so I find the time more productively spent in bus calling with the church and working the additional hours away at the farm.

We do have a Christmas party at my manager’s house tomorrow evening. It is for our team only which has now grown to about twelve employee’s total. I am now the senior of our group by more than twenty years, but they include me, nonetheless. It will be cold overnight Saturday when the party is scheduled but the house where we meet is large enough to accommodate us through the evening’s activities. It should be fun. They are a fun group of young people. Only a few are church goers but all of them have a good moral compass and behave themselves wisely, so it is mostly comfortable to be around them. Mama and are bothered by the alcohol offered at all these get-togethers but it is a commonality of our culture. What is most concerning to Mama and I are the “Christians” who offer the alcohol and freely participate in its consumption. We are not made uncomfortable by being offered the drinks – they know better - and we always leave when the effects of that consumption begin to show. But there is always a sense of disappointment at an opportunity lost to show Christ to a lost person.

When we are just like them, we have nothing they need.

Mocha, Mama, travel concerns

Mama and I have been watching Mocha (our adopted Yorkshire Terrier) closely over the past weeks. That her health was failing was clear. How long she would last was the question. A trip to the vet early this week cost us almost $100, and the medicines prescribed for her seemed only to upset her stomach and bowels. Hence, there has been a lot of extra cleaning up after her. X-rays taken revealed a heart issue that indicated poor function on one side of her heart. Yesterday, as I taught class, Mama and I spoke on a break, and she was at the point of accepting that we had done all we can to help Mocha. So, Mama and Mocha made their last trip to the vet yesterday evening. The vet put Mocha to sleep to ease her suffering and we buried her at a special spot in the garden. Mama was very deeply affected by the loss. She is sad to see her little couch buddy go. We have housed Mocha for five or six years. I was relieved to be done with all the special foods required, the special care required, the special grooming required, the constant care required to avoid stepping on or kicking Mocha who was always underfoot. Mama is grieved and I am relieved. When it comes to attachment to our animals, that is a common outcome.

With Mocha not laid to rest, our attention is on Samson. There are indications that he too might be near his end. For weeks now Mama has been doctoring Sam with pain meds to help him with the hip dysplasia that keeps him closer to home than in past years. Gemma has borne the burden of running off varmints for several months now. She will streak out of the yard or around the shop with Sam lumbering slowly behind. That will not continue much longer and Sam, unlike Mocha will have to be replaced. I am holding off on making that replacement until the final moments of Sam’ service here at the farm. I am hesitating because if Mama and I were required to sell and vacate the farm, it is uncertain what we would be able to do with our working dogs – our guardians. This has been a perfect setting for them to thrive in, doing what they are bred to do. I can think of no better place for them and would be loathe to uproot them from that service. We have no plans to sell, but life has made some surprising turns for us and we know nothing this side of Heaven is certain – least of all where we will stay for the remaining years of our natural lives. So, for now, I wait.

Mama and Kimberlyn are out today for the final disbursement of toys and gifts for the military folks in the units Kenny and Kimberlyn minister to. I believe this will finish the effort for this year, which has been significant on their parts. One obligation met. I suppose it is a part of the season we are in and is a great reminder that true giving takes time and effort to accomplish. In this particular case, it is a small act of gratitude for the commitment to service being honored by those deployed for our safekeeping. Too often these service members are “out of sight, out of mind” as they carry out their duties, so, it is nice to get to help in remembering them – even in this small way. 

Class went well yesterday. There was a lot of great feedback. I have one more class to teach for the year and an additional class to monitor and provide aid in. Other than that, I will be finished for 2021. As the schedule gets filled out for 2022, we will see how that pans out, but it looks like a very busy year. We are making progress on getting the series of videos together to modify the class I present most often. It is a bit challenging to get the presentation right, to ensure everything is said correctly, to keep the video to a usable length, but I will get multiple chances to make the presentations for the videographers.  When I have permission, I will share one or more of the videos, but for the moment, they are not ready to be released. Mama has seen several that have been shared with me as they are being developed, but other than that, they have been kept internally. 

In our current situation nationally and globally, it does not look like we will be going to Honduras next year. Mama and I are still praying about the trip but travel back into the country remains so much in flux, that almost anything can happen -none of it good. I enjoy Honduras and the people in the church there as much as spending time with Nate, Cori and the grandkids, but the airlines are getting extremely demanding with covid protocols and mask wearing, making the flights a function of endurance versus an enjoyable experience. Reentry is the biggest question and whether a vaccine passport will be required to get back home. I put no hope in the current government, either Republican or Democrat to belay that option and I have no confidence in the current administration to ease travel restriction. So, for now, we will watch and wait to see if our annual trip is feasible. 

A small but endurable disappointment should we not go. 

Class, catching up, crazy times, following His lead

Last week was a busy week. We had church service Monday and Tuesday night. We missed the service Tuesday night because Victoria flew back from Honduras that evening. After hemming and hawing about going with Mama versus going to the service, I decided that the DFW area is not  a place I should have Mama go alone at night when I am available to accompany her. Wednesday through Friday I had OSHA classes. In order to make it to church Wednesday night I went to class dressed for church and drove straight there after class. Traffic being what it was, I got to the church at about 6:45. Thursday and Friday, I got home just before 7 pm. It was a long week. A productive week, but a lot of late evenings.

The OSHA class was a good one. By the afternoon of the second day, it was becoming obvious that the majority of the ten attendees in our class were churched people, as was the instructor. When that came to light the class took on a different air, an openness, a willingness to share as we discussed the content of the course, a participation level that is rare in such class settings. Not only was there a commonality of religious views but a commonality of political views. It was a fun class which made the late dismissal every evening a bit less painful. The certification is good for four years – far longer than I will require. At least, that is how I see it from this vantage point.

Mama and Kimberlyn are traveling to Dallas today to finalize to collections that have been gatherer for care packages for the troops Kenny and Kimberlyn serve as chaplains to. So far, the donations collected from Dollar Tree and Dollar General have been enough to fill my truck with boxes filled with those donations. I believe the gifts will be given to the family members of the enlisted members in service away from home, many of whom are on a foreign field. It is a lot of running, gathering, organizing into care packages followed by more running to distribute those packages to get this done. It is all for a very good cause. Mama and I are always glad to help with this ministry when we can.

Meanwhile, I am hurrying to catch up to those things that did not get done while I was in class last week. Mama and I are trying to keep ahead of the requests for documentation required in our work with a lender and that is proving a challenge, but we at least have a functioning printer at the house now. That is a huge help, because without that printer, I had to go to the office to get documents printed and scanned. I will still need to go to Pack-N-Mail to get those printed, signed documents faxed to the lender, but they are ready to be sent. Hopefully, I can catch up today because I have classes scheduled to teach both tomorrow and Friday. That will limit the access I have to those persons who can only be reached during business hours.

At home, boxes are being packed with Christmas presents for the children and grandchildren. Those will be sent out this week to allow for the long delays some areas are seeing in the delivery of mail. What time Mama is not spending getting the work done for the Boots and Badges ministry she is splitting between Color Street, crafting and getting our Christmas presents packaged and sent. My time is being split between work and home and farm. It is a happily busy time with Christmas just around the corner. Special events at church. Parties each weekend. Redoing Joanne’s nails each weekend. Bouncing back and forth between preparing for a freeze and undoing those protective coverings and line warming wires once the danger has passed. From twenty-seven degrees one morning to ninety degrees a few afternoons later. A crazy time.

Still, all things considered, Mama and I are encouraged. We are taking things one day at a time, but overall, we have a hopeful outlook. God is fully and totally in control – of our lives, of our nation, of our world. What He allows may not be to our choosing, but He is always looking to do good to us so that we can glorify and honor Him. Those things that may not look like good right now will certainly produce the outcomes HE has set for them to produce. In His love for us, we can be assured that every one of these trials will eventually bring Him glory and produce some good thing in our lives.

I got to see that in a microcosm last week during the OSHA class. When God shows up, great things happen. We just need to invite Him into our lives and follow His lead.

Victoria home, insights, classes and early dark

Belated relaying one of the things Mama and I enjoyed during the Thanksgiving holiday was having a fire in the opening in our back patio that we use as a burn pit. The night was quiet, and the wind was still when Mama and I took time to sit by the fire. It was a bit chilly, but we had wraps and blankets to cover up as needed when the heat from the fire was not enough to warm us sufficiently. We had the house to ourselves. Victoria was in Honduras and the Thomason’s had gone home. It is always relaxing to watch a “campfire” burn and we were able to make the most of it that night. Soon, we will repeat the activity as I try to burn through the last of the rotting firewood pile we are cleaning up.

Mama and I missed the service last night because Victoria’s flight was due to arrive at DFW at about 8 pm. Mama had offered, albeit halfheartedly, to make the run by herself so that I could go to the special service. However, with her difficulty and discomfort driving after dark, I knew it would be best for me to do the driving. We made the most of the appointment stopping enroute at Costco to look around and wait out the hour or so we had to spare. We did not purchase much but we did renew our membership for the coming year, so the stop still cost us almost one hundred dollars. From there it is a short trip to the airport, and we were parking just as Victoria texted that her plane had landed. Mama stayed in the vehicle as I went in to greet Victoria – mostly because Mama did not want to put on a mask. I did not wear a mask as I waited during the time it took for Victoria to come through the security doors and as we waited together a long time for her luggage to be spit out onto the carousel. We were home a little after 9:30 pm.

I was happy to be there to greet Victoria, but I regret missing the last service where Bro. Harding was preaching. The insights he had given in his sermons were both encouraging and instructional. One thing he shared was that among the members of Congress if they receive ten phone calls speaking to an opinion or concern about a bill being considered, they will either reevaluate or reconfirm their position on that bill based just on those ten calls. Our communication to them is monumental and we need to be proactive is making those calls to make our voice heard. With that information, I am getting together a list of our representatives and their contact information so I can be one of those ten callers when the opportunity arises. In light of the upsetting things happening in our government right now, we need to remind our representatives that they work for us. They serve at our pleasure and their appointment is not for personal gain or political power but to hear and respond to our interests. Sadly, we have lost that perspective. It is time to regain our authority in our government and making a few calls is a good starting point.

I will begin an OSHA class this afternoon. It is a 20-hour class with four hours happening today and full days of instruction on Thursday and Friday. Where I am sitting for those classes is a little over an hour away so I will have a few late evenings and a couple early mornings, but it should pass quickly enough. Successfully completing this course will extend my trainer certificate for four more years. Probably well past the time it will be an actual benefit to me or my company, but that is how the time is calculated. There is some angst at my employer because a class scheduled for Friday was cancelled to free me to participate in a company-wide get-together and now I will miss that event for a totally different reason. I will find a way to absorb the sorrow at being unavailable to participate. Not! But it is a little saddening for those who sought to ensure I was free to do so. I appreciate their thoughtfulness, but that foresight cleared my schedule to attend the class I am required to take for my trainer certification. So, it all works out well – mostly.

Because darkness comes so early now, I will not be able to get anything done on the farm – at least any outside chores – through the remainder of the week. In fact, in an attempt to make it to church this evening I will shave, shower and dress for church to attend the 4-hour class this afternoon. Since I will be between Dallas and Ft Worth for the class, I will have to go through the evening traffic when I am dismissed from class at 5 pm. If I want to go to church, I have to go straight from class and hope to make it to Decatur before 7 pm.

We will see how that works out, but I am going to give it a sporting try.   

Early start for Thanksgiving, Friday spending, Saturday surprise

All of us got an early start to our Thanksgiving. I was up at 2 am, dressed and ready to take Victoria to the airport. I got her up a few minutes after I was ready, and we left the farm at 2:20. The roads were pretty clear that time of day, so we made exceptionally good time in our drive to the airport. Once we parked and offloaded the suitcases, we went into the terminal to find that there was no one at the counter and all the kiosks were inactive. I waited for a short time with Victoria as other passengers began to gather to begin the check-in process, but I left before the kiosks were turned on. Victoria tells me that happened at 3:30. Her flight was to begin boarding at 5 am so she had plenty of time to complete the process, get through security and get to her gate. Even with a three-hour layover in Houston, she arrived in Honduras before we sat down to dinner.

Once I got back home, I fired up the grill and put a huge turkey (24 pounds) on to smoke. That was about 5 am. I tried to lay down and sleep an hour or so but was not able to relax, so I got up and started getting things ready for the day. Mama was up soon after and we spent the entire morning and well into the afternoon baking, cooking and setting up the living room for Thanksgiving dinner. I worried over the turkey some but concentrated on helping Mama get all her backing done. Ultimately, I should have worried over the turkey more because when I took it off the smoker and began to carve it, it was not quite done. It was put in the oven for some high temperature cooking, and we focused on the appetizers, macaroni salad, and tamales. We were all careful to not eat too much because the mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing, sweet potatoes, corn, cranberries and other thanksgiving staples were being kept warm for the additional hour we cooked the turkey.

An hour in the oven at 350 degrees was all it took to finish the turkey. It turned out quite well – smokey and very tender. We elected to save the ham I was given by my work for a later meal since it was just us and Trace, Krystal and the boys. Mama’s pumpkin pies and a Sam’s pecan pie made up the finishing touches for the meal. Since there were copious amounts of leftovers, we sent the Thomason’s home with a large portion of the total. Mama and I have since eaten our way through the leftovers we kept but I am not wishing for any more right away. Mama tired new recipes for this Thanksgiving for her pumpkin pies and cranberry sauce. Both turned out to be great recipes. Hopefully we will remember them next year, but that is a longshot.

We did participate Black Friday spending but that was somewhat disappointing overall. Most, if not all, of the items we were looking for were not on sale. We did buy some winter clothing at Sam’s and some insulated coveralls at Academy but most of my attention was focused on getting a printer. While Mama looked at Target and Michael’s, I compared printers at Best Buy finally deciding on a mid-level HP Envy 6455e. It had all the features I needed and the cheapest ink. Once we got all our shopping done and got back home, I tried to set up the printer.

For all the effort I put into that chore over the succeeding three hours I was unsuccessful. I struggled to find and clear a persistent error with the printer. Several online tutorials led me to the path of discovery in troubleshooting the error but did not solve the issue. Finally, I began going screen by screen through the printer tutorials and eventually saw that the sensor for the color ink cartridge was not showing the printer that the cartridge had been installed. That was the holdup, and it was not going to be something I could set right. The printer would need to be returned and exchanged. So, after Mama and I met with Red and Joanne to reapply her nail sets for the coming weekend, we headed back to Best Buy to make the exchange, which was surprisingly easy to accomplish. The next attempt to get the printer working was successful. Praise the Lord!

Saturday morning as Mama was getting the coops opened up, she discovered a huge opossum in one of the nesting boxes. I had to improvise a way to extract the brute from the nesting box and dispatch it without the aid of any lethal means to do so, but I quickly got that figured out. Fortunately, as fatal as opossums are to our flock, they are not overly aggressive, but this fat beast did not play dead, baring his teeth and hissing at me the whole time I struggled with it. The methods I used to get rid of the opossum were probably not lethal, but it will not be too quick to approach the coop again. That makes the second opossum I have had to remove from our coop. The first one will never return. The second one is not a sure bet, but I am confident it will stay away for a long time.

We are enjoying a series of services at church right now with Chuck Harding, a missionary to Congress. Sunday services and last night’s service were a great encouragement to me and Mama. A firm reassurance that all things do really work together for good for those who love the Lord. God is still in control. It is reassuring to hear this message from someone who walks the halls of Congress and has remarkable insight to the inner workings of the Lord in that dark place. His take on the recent stolen election is that we may have been saved from a far worse fate than what we are currently enduring and that there is a clear path forward to take back our government in the next election.

We will see how this plays out, but his message is uplifting and confident in the Lord.

Video debut, dinner at church, Thanksgiving morning

In a pleasant interruption to my daily work routine, I was asked to do some short video presentations to be added to the course I teach most often – over 100 times this year. I was scheduled to present three specific topics during the first attempt to capture the videos, so I spent hours pouring over information to ensure I was ready to speak to each specific topic. We tried staging the video shoot is several spots in the office building and finally decided on a spot virtually in the center of the building. Fortunately, there were only a handful of employees in the office. Other than the manageable background noises of onlookers watching the process and listening to the stories I was telling; it was quiet and comfortable. Other than the two new EWN employees capturing the videos, my officemates have heard the stories I was telling multiple times over the years, but they still gathered in the background to hear them again.

Once a train went by on the tracks just across the two-lane road fronting our office building. That noise halted production for a few minutes. In a little over an hour the videographers had captured about forty minutes of video. Two longer segments. One shorter one. No retakes. They were satisfied with my presentations on the first round. We will go back at some point and improve the sessions, but for now they have a “proof of concept” for the time and effort it will take to create all the vignettes I have suggested being added to the class as other instructors begin to present the class. It was fun to do. I do not mind being recorded, especially on something I have spoken about so many times. The videographers were impressed by my stories and the way they were able to capture the video so easily. For my part, I feel I could have done better, but it came off well.

Fairly late in the evening, about an hour before we needed to leave for church the missionary mom who had spent the evening with Mama on Monday came over to look at the books Mama had been reading to her boys that evening. Her boys were so captivated by the stories and Mama’s expressive reading of those stories that she wanted to note the authors and titles. Once I had showered and dressed for church, I began to get the final items ready to be transported to church. As I passed through the kitchen, I looked into the living room and see the mom with her head laid back in one of our recliners, eyes closed listening to Mama read a story to her boys. Mama has a wonderful gift for that. It mesmerizes all who get to fall under the sound of her voice as she reads out loud. It is hard to tell just how many children that gift has touched, but I am sure one day she will get to find out.

We had our church Thanksgiving dinner and mid-week service last night, so there will not be a service tonight. The dinner was attended by about seventy people. I do not know if that was the largest attendance we have had, but it was certainly one of the best attended dinners we have ever had. I was not feeling well. I have struggled with gut pain for several days now, but I enjoyed the evening. I was among the last to get in line to get some food. There was still plenty which was good because all the ladies who were serving the food had not yet eaten either. I did not get much, but I ate all of the little I did get. I got a very small serving of two desserts and made do with that.

We shared our table with the Fields family whose baby delighted Mama throughout the evening. Also, our little adopted Miller boy, Joshua, sat with us and chattered happily to me and Mama. He is six or seven and makes no secret that Mama is his favorite person in the whole church. I told him he had very good taste. Mama was my favorite person as well. He, along with his family, sang a few songs after the meal was concluded and before the sermon was to be delivered. I wish we could have heard better because Joshua did two solo parts on one song. The youngest four boys performed the song in a sort of round joining together on the chorus; “Thank God for the preachers and the Sunday School teachers and a mamma and daddy that prayed…” They did a good job, but the microphones were not picking them up very well. As the evening was concluded, help was given in cleaning up the fellowship hall, Mama worked through her extended goodbyes, we loaded our leftovers into the Sequoia and headed home. That was a little after 9:30. Not too bad.

Tomorrow will start early as I take Victoria to the airport to catch a 5 am flight to Houston to begin her trip to Honduras. If all goes well, she will be in the vehicle with Nate, Cori and the kids before we sit down to eat our dinner.

We live in an amazing world.

The little things, overnight cooking, church dinner

Yesterday passed by uneventfully until later in the afternoon. The wife of one of our visiting missionary families asked if she could come to the farm to do some laundry. The answer was, of course, yes. Laundry is one of those household chores that are difficult to accomplish when you do not have a house to use for those chores. So, as Mama and I were out feeding, the family arrived at the farm. They have four boys ranging from four years old to eight years old and an infant daughter. The four-month-old baby girl is the real attraction to both Mama and Victoria.

The boys ran around outside for a bit but as darkness quickly dimmed the skies they wandered inside and rummaged about in the supply of toys Mama has available. To their delight, they discovered our huge collection of Lego’s. The Lego’s and the matchbox cars provided enough to keep them occupied for the remaining hours of their visit. While their mama washed, dried and folded cloths, they played – mostly peacefully. They are, after all, brothers. Since, in their travels, the family is housed in hotels for the most part, everyone enjoyed the large open space of our living room. The four boys were not abashed about using all the available space for the city they were building.

Meanwhile, in preparation for the Thanksgiving meal and service tonight, our Pastor was firing up a large smoker he has on which he was going to smoke two briskets and four turkeys. Anyone who was interested in spending time with him as he worked was invited to do so. So, the missionary dad and I headed to the Pastor’s house about 6:30 pm. It was well after dark by that time and was much colder than I had anticipated. I wore the insulated vest I had worn when Mama and I were doing the evening feeding, but I was a little colder than comfortable as we exited the truck and met the pastor at the smoker. Fortunately, Pastor had a fire going in a metal fire pit and we stoked it sufficiently to warm us. It was one of those evenings where you spent your time crowding closer to the fire as the night progressed.

We sent a couple hours with the pastor and on my way home, I dropped the missionary off at their hotel in town. Turns out, I should have called Mama to see if the rest of the family was at the hotel or at the farm. I failed to do so and only realized my oversight when I got back to the farm. I got to the house about 9 pm and the boys were still at their Lego structures, the mom was still working on the laundry and the baby was being cuddled by Victoria.

I was pretty worn out, so I laid down on the bed as the activities continued. From the bedroom, I listened to the chatter, to Mama reading books to the youngest boys and to the baby happily babbling to Victoria’s encouragements. It was not until a little before 10 pm that things were gathered up and carried out to the vehicle to head back to the hotel to join their dad. I had fallen asleep during that time and was awakened by Mama to help get the heavier items out to the vehicle. The boys were sorely disappointed to be leaving. That is typically the case when children come to visit Mama.

This morning Mama got a very sweet note from the mom of the clan thanking her for the freedom the boys felt to play, the pleasure they had in hearing her read books to them and for being so hospitable in watching over her children while she caught up on not only laundry but several other little things that needed her attention while she had to opportunity to focus on those things. From Mama’s point of view, it was a pleasure. It is nice to have something to share. So little of our lives get shared with others. Mama and I enjoy every chance we get to add a benefit, an encouragement, a respite to the lives of those we are able to touch in that way. This setting, our farm, our house, our flocks and herds, our isolation, is especially suited to sharing our lives in that way.

Tonight, we will have our Thanksgiving dinner and mid-week service. While I have specific work assignments to complete, Mama will be preparing the dishes and desserts we will be adding to the fares of this evening’s meal. This get together is one of the highlights of our year. Having suffered through the isolation and separation and fear of the past two years of Covid-mongering, it will be nice to spend time together in this type of setting.

Everyone is looking forward to it – me and Mama included.

Goats away, Mrs. Claus’s nails, watching the fire, packing and planning

Friday afternoon, our two goats were picked up and taken to their new home. At the birthday party that evening the little goats were a huge hit with the two-year-old birthday girl and well as with all in attendance. I was going to ask for an update yesterday at church, but I totally forgot. My mind was occupied with other things, but Mama and I are confident that the little goats will ingratiate themselves to their new family in short order. Since the tow will become a breeding pair, there are some challenges to be overcome by their new owners, but that will all sort itself out quickly – otherwise they will have kids in their little goat yard well before they planned to do so.

Later that evening Mama and I met up with Red and Joanna so that Mama could apply the nails Joanne had bought from Mama. The nail sets were chosen to match the theme of each coming weekend’s Santa appearances, so this will be a regular Friday evening occurrence until after Christmas. We met at Dairy Queen in Decatur. Red and Joanna are always pleasant to be around, so we know it would be an enjoyable get together. We had a quick meal before Mama got started. I am not enamored with Dairy Queen food, but we made the best of it. Mama was hoping there would be a general interest in what was happening during the time she applied the nails to Mrs. Claus’s hands, but there was not – at least, there was not at that application. We still have four or five more times to do so. Joanna was certainly willing to be gawked upon for the application. She is a good sport and loves the Color Street appliques.

Saturday evening, we had our second of the two schedules Open House events. Only two ladies and one youngster showed up, but we had a great time. I reflected with Mama after everyone had left that it might have been better that we had limited participation for the two nights so that we could get used to what it took to be prepared and so that we could give individual attention to all involved in the application process. Of course, we were praying for a larger audience, but I am not convinced we were ready for that.  Saturday evening, all the ladies put on the Thanksgiving nails sets and Mama was supposed to get a picture of the completed applications, but she forgot. Likewise on Sunday, we forgot, so the event went undocumented. Mama made some nice sales from the two Open House events, but mostly this was a test and I think we profited from trying the idea out. Where we will go from here is still in question.

I started a fire in the burn pit on the patio just before the Open House started Satu evening and it was burning well by the time our guests arrived. I spent the evening sitting on the patio enjoying the fire. The night was cool, and the fire was warm. A wonderful combination. I am planning on repeating the process Thursday evening after we finish our Thanksgiving celebration. I was thinking we would have a crowd for dinner that day, but all our potential invitees have made other plans. Trace and Krystal and the kids will be with us, so we will have a busy houseful, but it will be more manageable and more intimate than originally planned. It should be a good downtime for everyone. A bonfire is always a good centerpiece to relax around, and the evening is forecast to be cold. A fire will be nice.

Thanksgiving morning, I will be dropping Victoria off at the airport. Her flight is scheduled to leave DFW at 5 am, so she will need to be at the airport by 3 am or very nearly so. Destination Honduras. The packing has been happening in earnest as she tries to stuff all the items shipped to us for the trip into the suitcases she is allowed while not exceeding the weight limit of each. Truly a challenge. Cori uses these visits to Honduras as a means of delivery of needed books, difficult clothing items, unavailable supplies and generally available goods from the US to her family and friends in Honduras. It is a good opportunity to get the goods in short order and we go not mind. However, it can be a chore to get everything to her with limited means to do so. With that as our goal, we are packing, weighing, repacking and reweighing suitcases to meet the requirements. What does not make the trip with Victoria will go with me and Mama when we go in February. Lord willing!

We are still working on getting to New Jersey over Christmas. So, our Honduras trip is on the back burner for the moment. Hopefully, we can get both trips sorted out soon.  

Our first Open House, freeze prep

It took most of the day to do the requisite cleaning to satisfy Mama that the house was ready for entertaining, but with Victoria’s help Mama was pleased with the overall effort by late in the afternoon. I did little things as we progressed in setting up the living room for guests, but largely kept working at my desk in the bedroom. Once I signed out for the day, I worked through the evening feeding while Mama made some dips for our expected guests. We were fairly certain that we were overpreparing but hope springs eternal. Vegetables were sliced and made ready for that tray. Meats and cheeses were sliced and made ready for that tray.  All the prepared food items were repackaged and set in the refrigerator to be set out when, or if, anyone showed up. When the prep was done, we waited.

Alissa and Aliza, true to their word, were the first to arrive. While I busied myself with getting the snack trays set out, Mama began entertaining. A few minutes later two of my coworkers arrived. Claude and Alyse are both employed at Energy Worldnet, Alyse works in the Education department with me and Claude is one of the managers in the Compliance Department. They have two children, Cadence (a teenager), and Bear (nine, maybe ten, years old). Both Alyse and Cadence were very interested in Color Street but neither had ever bought or tried to apply the nail sets. So, last night they got their chance – with Mama’s help. Alissa had also never tried the nail sets, so this was her first time as well to apply the appliques. Alyse and Alissa both bought several sets to take home with them. Cadence was truly excited about the nails. Aliza, at the ripe old age of eight, has been Mama’s little Color Street champion for months but this was her first time to apply the nails by herself. She was mostly pleased with her first effort, but definitely saw some room for improvement.

Claude, Bear and I spent the evening visiting, looking at the improvements made in the shop since Claude helped me relocate the fence on the East side of the shop. That was a couple years ago. He was impressed by the progress and the setup of the shop especially since he is now working on a shop of his own. We talked a variety of subjects, mostly hunting. Bear was a chatterbox. He alone covered a range of topics from dinosaurs and Komodo dragons to spiders and flies, to the feeding habits of coyotes which we heard howling in the distance. He managed to keep both his father and me on our toes for two solid hours as he tested one hypothesis after another. It was fun. It has been a long time since I was around a nine-year-old that was that chatty. It brought back a wealth of good memories.

All in all, I consider the evening a success. It at least proved to me that once a person gets a chance to see the product Color Street offers, there is an immediate recognition of the value, the quality, and the ease of use of this product. The abundance of variety in the color and design of the nail strips is almost too much to take in, but it is obvious that there is something available for everyone who has any desire to have their nails adorned. Now we just have to expose more people to the personal potential for this product to impact their lives. It was a good start.

Over the course of the afternoon, mostly during my lunch break, I took the time to cover and wrap the waterline at the corral. I have several lengths of heat tape to apply to exposed lines to prevent freezing. It just takes a bit of time to get the wrapping done. It did freeze overnight, so the labor was not in vain and while I was working on prepping the line, our neighbor came over to check on the heifers he has on our property. We chatted a bit and I asked how long he was wanting to leave the heifers with us. He had no definite date so we agreed that they would spend the winter on our small pasture. It will be good for them to have the added protection of the barn through the winter. We enjoy having them and they help us ensure we meet the ag exemption requirements. A win-win all around. Our neighbor is also looking for a calf for me and Mama to feed out along with his two heifers. That would be a blessing.

Today is the calm before our next Open House Saturday night. We purposely scheduled two so that there would be more options for those who had interest in coming. We all laed busy lives, so options are a necessity. We already have one family committed to coming Saturday and I hope several more from my office will come as well. Time will tell. At any rate, we are ready - or we will be in short order.

The work in preparing for yesterday evening will ensure we are well prepared for Saturday's soiree.

Freeze prep, Mama’s ornaments, goat sales, measuring failure

This afternoon, along with the preparations for our Open House, I will need to prep our waterlines for an overnight freeze. This will be the first one of the season and is forecast to only be for this one night, so I will not have to make lengthy investments of time. I will need only to remove hoses from the yard hydrants, cover the spigots at the house and wrap the waterline at the corral. The line at the corral is the one I am most concerned about. Because of limited funds when I had to put that line together it is my most vulnerable waterline. It is comprised of all plastic parts – none of which will survive even a relatively light freeze. Fortunately, I have the means of getting that line through this freeze and because we now have the money available to do so, I can replace the plastic line above ground with a yard hydrant that will be far more tolerant of cold weather. It is a disappointment that for the first of our two Open House get togethers it will be that cold. I was hoping to have a fire in the burn pit on the patio, but it may be too cold for that. Saturday night should be great for a fire.

Mama got a text from the young lady who puts together the monthly boxes for her subscribers. In that text  was a picture of the contents of the boxes going out for November. Among the items included in those boxes are the ornaments Mama made for that occasion. Everyone was thrilled with how well the ornaments turned out. Me included, but I have to keep reminding Mama that it is far easier and more profitable to sell Color Street nails than to sell crafts. Mama loves the crafting, and it is more a labor of love than a business venture, but as a practical matter of producing income and being able to share a business with others, Color Street is the way to go. Nonetheless, Mama was well pleased to have been able to participate in the creation of those sixty ornaments.

Speaking of crafting, we were able to clear out all Mama’s craft supplies from the living room over the course of the day yesterday. Everything was packed in totes and staged in various locations around the house, mostly in the garage. I have a strong suspicion that most, if not all, of those items will eventually work their way back out into the open between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but for now we have a usable table in the living room. That will definitely help tonight. Though we do not know how many to expect, we know that several are planning to come. Some of those will be exposed to Color Street for the first time.

Last night at church Mama received a check for the sale of two of our goats to a family that is buying the little ones as a birthday gift for their granddaughter. Last year the same family bought two mini-Highland cows as a birthday gift for the same grandchild. It did not take long to realize that the tiny heifer and bull would not fit in the category of pets long-term. A year later and they are both quite large – especially for a mini breed. So, the family decided that goats might make a more enduring pet for their granddaughter. With that in mind, Mama sold them a little girl and a little buckling to raise and eventually breed to produce their own offspring.

I am certain, they will have more fun out of the goats than the cattle. The two little ones will be picked up tomorrow afternoon and presented to the birthday girl at a party tomorrow night. It will be fun to keep up with the experience over the next years. I am also hoping that they toy with the idea of selling us the Highland cattle in the years to come. Mama and I would love to have some on the farm, but they are far too pricey for us to justify the cost at this time. However, we would happily provide a home to some that were being moved off a property where they were no longer desired.

So, Mama and I have a busy afternoon and hopefully a busy evening. I told Mama last night we will keep trying different ways to communicate the Color Street opportunity to people around us. Obviously, we are destined to more failures than successes, but we will eventually find out what makes sense for us and what connects with those in our area. It is too often true that we give up too quickly on opportunities for growth because failure is difficult to take, but every failure can direct us toward eventual success. Learning what does not work is the way to discover what does work in any given circumstance. So, we will keep trying and use every failure to move this business along. Tonight, we will see if our Open House produces attendees/contacts or not.

One step closer to getting this right.

Respite, business, packing, shopping

Yesterday was the last class I have to teach until after Thanksgiving. It will be good to have a respite in my teaching schedule. As we near the end of this year and look forward to the first quarter of next year we, as a group, are looking back on 2021 to gauge the interest in our class offerings for the coming year. I began this year to record classes that were cancelled or classes in which we had low attendance. Taking those classes off the monthly offering list will lighten my schedule next year and allow for the even spacing of the class I am required to teach most often. That still does not alleviate the need for onboarding an additional trainer to take the load should I retire after next year.

As I was talking with my management Monday, we reflected on the fact that we have been very blessed this year in that I have been healthy – only missing two of my scheduled classes of the almost one hundred I have taught to date. That is a blessing, and I am glad we all realize the significance of it. However, the panic is beginning to build in the conscience of my management that my time with the company is growing short and one year is a limited time in which to train someone to assume my duties in full. Nevertheless, this two-week break will be a benefit to me in allowing me to concentrate my emotional energies on Mama and the Thanksgiving season.

Even with the lighter work schedule, Mama and I will be busy this week. Tomorrow and Saturday evenings we are hosting an Open House for Mama’s Color Street business. I have extended the invitation to all my co-laborers at work and Mama has extended the invitation to all her contacts as well as our church family. We are not sure how many to plan for, but it is going to be set up for a casual come and go sort of event during which Mama will apply and teach others to apply the nail appliques. We will have snacks, drinks, games, and door prizes. I am hoping my manager brings his wife and daughters on one of those evenings. I have certainly made the special invitation to him to do so. His wife is a teacher in a local Middle school and Mama and I have a special interest in getting teachers involved with this great company. With that on the schedule we have a lot of little things to do around the house to be ready for visitors and Mama is in a spin over those preparations.

Most of the work involves packing up and finding places to store the enormous amount of crafting supplies she has accumulated. The cedar wardrobe I outfitted to help is completely full. The chest we moved into the spare bedroom is completely full. Twelve totes are completely full and yet still more storage space is needed. A lot more. It would not be presumptuous to assume we have amassed over $1000 of items that were purchased for less than $5 each. Now we have to hide all of them. Such is life with Mama.

Fortunately, we have the open house scheduled for the evening so, it will be dark before anyone arrives. That limits the amount of effort we are required to put into fixing up the outside of the house and the farm for visitors. I am sure some will want to see the goats and look into the back yard, but we will not need to beautify things too awfully much for those kinds of remote inspections. Sidewalks will be swept and the driveway will be blown clear of the leaves that are quickly accumulation on that surface. Most of the activity will happen inside the house and we can have it presentable in short order. At least that is my expectation.

Amid all that preparation, I need to spend some time shopping for a printer to replace our now defunct unit. The issue is that there are not very many models available in the price range I have set that are compatible with the MacBook I typically print from. The MacBook has the most recent operating system available from Apple and that operating system is not compatible with very many printers. So, I have to read through the list of compatible systems for each printer I look at for purchase and if that operating system is not specifically listed, I have to assume it is not going to work with my MacBook. It has become a frustrating challenge to overcome especially since I have limited time to spend in that shopping endeavor – either online or in store. We will prevail, but it may take more time than I had anticipated.

Somewhere along the line Mama and I will rest a bit, but that will not happen this week. 

Mama’s weekend, my weekend, praising Him

Mama left Friday morning with one of her fellow Color Street marketers. The two of them were to pick up an additional passenger in Ft Worth, but that stylist had to cancel at the last minute. So, Melinda and Mama traveled to Austin in a pleasant, non-hurried fashion. They took the Sequoia because the expectation was that a larger vehicle would be needed to transport the team from the hotel to the conference. That was certainly the case since there were seven in the group attending together. It all worked out well Friday and Saturday as they listened together, ate together, and spent long evenings together.

Sunday was the exception. On Sunday morning I got a frantic call from Mama that something was wrong with the Sequoia. When she demonstrated the issue for me, I could see why she was so frantic. When the vehicle was started, it let off a loud bang, like a small explosion and then continued to rumble loudly – very loudly. After searching among her companions and their friends, a mechanic was found who easily diagnosed the problem. Over Saturday night, someone had stolen the catalytic converter from the Sequoia. As it turns out, Toyota’s and Honda’s have been targeted for such theft. The tow truck driver originally responding to Mama’s call to Triple A, told Mama that it was the fifth call he had had in one week for the same cause. There was much discussion and eventually the mechanic who diagnosed the problem gave Mama a solution and a price to repair the Sequoia and it was towed to his shop.

Meanwhile, Mama and her traveling companion – who is incidentally her upline in Color Street – spent an additional night in Austin. Fortunately, one in the team members above both of them in rank had planned for an extra night stay and invited the two to share her very large room in that hotel. This morning, the mechanic let Mama know that repair was more problematic than he had first thought. Not only did the thieves take the catalytic converter, but they also took the two oxygen sensors that are in the piping with the converter. Thought the mechanic was confident he could get a generic catalytic converter; he is less confident of finding the O2 sensors. We await the answer while Mama and Melinda, who refused to leave Mama on her own, spend still more time stranded in Austin. Please pray for her as the Lord works out this inconvenient situation. That this is the result of thievery leaves a very sour taste in our mouths. Although, the frustrating situation is made a bit sweeter by the comfort and companionship of friends as well as the multitude of prayer support Mama is receiving. I will say again, Color Street and the individuals who are building this network are marvelous individuals and Mama is part of a great team in Color Street.  

My weekend was far less interesting. I did go to the auction that Mama was interested in, but it was a bust. As I looked over the diverse items to be auctioned off, there were only a few I was really interested in. Fortunately, those items were among the first to be sold. Unfortunately, all of them sold for far more than I was willing to pay. Oddly enough, not everything sold high. Some things were practically given away but none of those interested me in any way. I stayed only about an hour but watched as five or more of the things for sale were passed over by the entire crowd of about sixty bidders. The house and three acres sold for about ninety thousand dollars than I would have been willing to pay, but I am not sure if it was too high for the market in our area. It certainly gave me reason to hope that the appraisal done on our property will come out somewhat higher than Mama and I have anticipated, but things do not seem to work out that way for us. Nevertheless, God is always good to us.

I worked the hives, cleaned up in the garage and the shop, cleaned out the console in the truck and generally stayed busy through the late morning and early afternoon. About 2:30 the Wycoff clan came over with two trailers to load up firewood. I thought they might be disappointed with what I had to offer but they took everything down to the three-year-old firewood laying in the pile. They virtually cleaned up the entire stack of wood. I was very pleased.

Mama was concerned that we have some firewood available to us, but I have a large stack of firewood in the barn lot that we can pull from as needed. Plus, we have three dead trees that must be cut down this winter, so we will have plenty of firewood should we be able to get our fireplace restored to service.

So, that is a short summary of our eventful and expensive weekend. I am curious to see how all this works out for our good so that we can glorify our Lord in it. He promised that it would in Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” He is always looking for our good and we are always looking for His Glory.

Time will well, but we will continue to praise Him through it all.

Dinner and Color Street, Mama’s travel, the weekend

Mama and I spent the evening with Red and Joanne yesterday. Red is a former colleague, now retired. He and his wife are delightful people. Red is a professional Santa Clause. A part for which he is certainly type-cast. He has the beard, the belly, and the laugh to be very convincing. Anyway, we were invited to dinner partly to just visit and catch up, but also so that Mama could apply one of the new Christmas nail sets from Color Street to Joanna’s nails. Since she will be accompanying Red to a couple Santa gigs this weekend as Mrs. Clause, she wanted to look the part down to the manicure. Mama even donated a pair of Christmas earrings to the cause. Both of them enjoy the Santa moments in various homes through this season, but Red enjoys it significantly more than Joanne. While she enjoys Christmas, he enjoys the performance. So much so that he stays in character all year long. He even has business cards that he passes out to little ones who stare at him with that wonder of recognition. The card has a picture of Santa Clause and simply says, “Yes, I am.” to answer their unspoken question. We had a fun, relaxing evening and Mama made a great sale to Joanne. Hopefully, we will get some follow-up as Joanne wears the appliques to the appointments Santa has over the weekend.  

We squeezed the evening into a very busy schedule for me and Mama. Busy for Mama more so than for me. Mama is meeting up with several of her upline in Color Street this morning to travel as a group to Austin. Mama’s second consecutive weekend in Austin. They will be attending a marketing seminar. I believe all but two of her Color Street team will be attending as a group. Some of the ladies are traveling from Idaho and Colorado as well as Michigan to meet each other face-to-face and participate together in the motivational session. It will not be cheap, but the costs are being shared among the team, so we are getting off pretty easy on this weekend-long training.

Mama will be driving the North Texas part of the team down in our vehicle, so we had to take the time before our evening with Red and Joanne to get the Sequoia washed and vacuumed. Mama has been softly complaining about the state of the exterior of the vehicle for a few days now, so she was greatly relieved to have a clean vehicle to provide to her group, several of whom are millionaires from their individual Color Street businesses. Obviously, Mama is a little intimidated to cruise around with her wealthy upline, but they all love Mama, and this will be a great chance to adsorb the strength and confidence these ladies have to share as they converse and interact through the weekend. I am curious to know how much they live out their business without thinking about the way they interact with people around them. How they create interest. How they collect contact information. How they sell themselves as well as Color Street.

I am prayerfully confident that this is a business in which Mama can succeed. I am convinced of the worth of pursuing a successful business with Color Street. The operating philosophy, the largely Christian focus and the attentiveness to the stylists actually working the frontline for the company are all indicators of a great company. They routinely give to worthy causes (several million dollars this year alone) and have a heart for those in need. I am impressed by the leadership in Color Street and want to help Mama succeed. At present, she is beginning to see her part in making that success happen and the Lord is blessing her continued efforts to help others make money through Color Street. Presenting this company, this product, and this opportunity to others so they can join in the success is the foundational principle of the overall business model offered. An innovative product in a virtually untapped market. Now is the time to get busy and grow with this young company.

I have some chores lined out for tomorrow, not the least of which is to attend an estate auction in Bridgeport. I am not sure why, but Mama is very concerned that I attend. There are some items I could identify from the pictures posted on Facebook that would be of interest to me, but we do not really have the money to buy “stuff” that I mostly already have. But I will go as promised and see if anything grabs my attention and is bid below the price I set for the item. Other than that, I will continue to work through a small projects list I have for the farm. Since the little bucklings are going to be in the pig building for a time, I will place the glass door we have over the walkthrough entry and put up a wind block over the animal passage into the building in the hope of limiting the wind blowing through the small enclosure.

Working the hives and cleaning the goat areas will round out the remaining hours of daylight I have available tomorrow. I do love this life., especially sharing it with Mama.