Frog and Feather

I've been toying with the idea of starting a series of blog entries on the adventures of Frog and Feather. These would simply be photos and comments of things I see while riding around in my car.

Frog and Feather is based on my dashboard mascot. Both the plastic green frog and his companion white goose feather were things that I picked up off the ground and hung on to.

Anyways, here's a couple of recent captures.

Now these are what would be called iconic Frog and Feather shots. . .because they include "Frog and Feather".
Other shots may be different, for one I may include just shots I take with my cell phone. I hardly ever have my other camera with me, so generally my candid shots are taken with my phone. Like the following:

Moon setting/rising through the fog of the early morning. It was pretty spooky.

Roadside fruit stand on Highway 60 in Plant City, advertising it's boiled peanut prices.

Basically, I just want an excuse to share my funky photos with you. . .enjoy this last pic of my friend Jule's cat Reign. . .asleep. . .with his eyes and his mouth open. . .

Forgotten moments

It seems like January is the month where I have the most time to blog.
I have more time to think about blogging.

Plus, springtime is beginning to peek around the corner everywhere I look, and it's driving me crazy.

Purple salvia with my rescued poinsettias

Azaleas. . .thinking about blooming

Sweet smelling Almond tree

The dogs even feel it.

Toby keeps finding things with sap to chew on.

Chewy, thoroughly enjoying the sunshine!

Sending warm thoughts to all my friends and family further north!
Here's a sunset picture over the grove to end with.

January Musings

I'm sitting at my computer, at church, and I found myself wanting to write a few words. I was momentarily distracted by the dog, who wanted a pic taken.

It's been a weird few weeks following Christmas. I spend so much time getting ready for the services in December, and it's always kind of a "wow, I have so LITTLE to do" once January steps in. Which is really not true, it just feels that way. For one because it's so quickly time for Ash Wednesday and Lent, and then Holy Week and Easter.  And then mission trip, Vacation Bible School, etc.

So, while I sit here with slightly less to do than normal, I'll type a few words and share a few pics.

If I haven't mentioned it already, I love my pup. Toby and all his eccentricities has totally changed my life. Yes, it comes with complications (not as complicated as those of being a parent!), but it has added a much needed variety to my days. We get up early (usually before sun-up) to take our morning walk and see amazing things like the big dipper in the sky, and sunrises behind the poor chopped up oak tree on the top of the hill (haircut courtesy of the power line crew).

I now walk with one hand holding a flashlight and Toby's leash, in the other my walking stick. I also either whistle or sing as loud as I can. There have been reports of coyotes in the area grabbing small dogs while the owner is walking them on a leash. Hopefully I'm scary enough before the coyote even thinks about getting near enough for me to bean him with my melaleuca stick.

In other news, both my brother and sister-in-law have acquired new jobs!!! :) Which gives me ample excuse to post some pics of my niece. . .ha ha ha.

Warm enough?

Scaring mama on the recliner!! :)

Mom and I have been birdwatching more lately, mainly because it's winter and all the northern ducks are hanging out all over the state.  Here's a few of my favorite pics that I took at Viera and Merritt Island.

Blue Wing Teals

Caspian Tern

Scaup pair

OH. . .AND THE BLUEBIRDS ARE BACK!!! YAAAAAAAYYYY!!! :)

2012 Christmas

So I thought I'd share a few moments from Christmas this year.
This is a painting I did several of to be given as gifts to several lucky people. I'm still working on a few more, even now in January.

Our Christmas eve services were different this year. I found a order of worship on http://www.gbod.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=nhLRJ2PMKsG&b=5455155&ct=7735769 which we tweaked a little bit.
I used a nativity set that I borrowed from Louise Branom. Here's a few of the shots.

Communion served at a second altar.

Nativity on the main altar with candles

Richard lighting the Gabriel candle.

I thought the service went really well. However, Christmas Eve was the day that the creeping crud finally got me, and I was pretty miserable through both services and at Julie's After Party. As of today, January 7th, the crud is still hanging on.

These are a few of my favorite shots from the candlelight portion of the service. Love capturing these!

Let your light shine!

Santa even made it to the service!

Reilly and Kelsey

I have to share, that even though I didn't feel good, I drove mom and dad down to Bumpa and Aunt Joyce's for Christmas morning. Being with family definitely made the day. That and getting to hear my cousin Allison retell the Christmas story to Reese, Hailey, and Colton. I'm not sure I'll be able to listen to the story again and keep a straight face. Let's just say that a shepherd named Louie made an appearance, and the three kings evidently made a stop at Denny's before making it to Mary and Joseph's house. The morning was all the better because there were plenty of Jiggers and Colton received a rubber band gun (which he wasted no time shooting Megan with!)

Hope your Christmas was joyful!

WOW. . .long time no see

So. . .yeah. . .

Been a while.

Haven't really felt like writing in the last few months.

Been pretty busy.

Well, that's not completely true.

Never did finish up the last blog about Costa Rica. Needless to say, it was a great trip.

Had another great mission trip after that to Hayesville, NC. Painted another mural.

Vacation Bible School came after that.
Great times.
Great t-shirt design if I do say so myself (I admit to a personal bias as the designer).

Couldn't have been any better.
Oh wait, yeah it could have.
I could have not fallen backwards out of a pool deck lounge chair at the City of Winter Garden pool.
Fallen backwards, down a concrete wall, onto a concrete sidewalk, on my head.

I was laughing at Matt, and the predicament above that he found himself in. In fact, the chair fell backwards at the precise moment I laughed at his girlish scream of "you're pulling my chest hair!"

The next week, nothing happened.
The week after that, nothing happened.
The week after that, Youth Week, lots happened. And it ended with me playing Putt Putt Golf.
Second hole, tripped, lost my balance, and snapped my left pinky at the knuckle.

I don't have a picture of the event. This pic was taken right before my turn. The aftermath is all a blur, I know that I fainted, I know that they called an ambulance. I also know that they had to take me out on a sitting stretcher, because I could not walk without fainting again.

Did I receive a simple cast and get sent on my way?
No.
I got three nights in the hospital, lots of pain killers, and oh yeah. . .
SURGERY. . .A PLATE AND FIVE SCREWS!

 

That happened in August. The second week of August. It is now October 31st, and I still can't straighten out my finger. I'm still on pain meds.

Oh. . .I almost forgot. . .

Russ, Lana, and Leya got to come down to see us twice within the past five months! YAAAAYYY!
The first time was a birthday surprise for mom.

The second was for Leya's first birthday.

 

I also got a dog. . .Toby. . .so. . . .

Everything's great!

Costa Rica-Pura Vida 2012

Ok, so I promised that I'd give you a run down of my mission trip to Costa Rica. Oh, and share some pics.
Seeing as how my only registered followers are already friends on my facebook, I'll try to share a few here that they haven't seen.

We left on Sunday (our flight was at 10:00a, so we were at the airport at 8:00a.) No real problems at either airport, our flight was great. There was one bag from the Ocala group that got ripped (BADLY) and we ended up having to find her a replacement bag while we were in San Jose.

At OIA waiting to get on the tram

 Last year, we worked at a larger church on the outskirts of Alajuela, in Tuetal.  Our work this year was at a church in the midst of San Jose. Iglesia Evangelica Metodista "Monte de los Olivos" is a much smaller church but possesses no less passion. The church building itself is over 90 years old, and has recently suffered significant structural damage from an earthquake. Needless to say, our work was definitely not lacking. Unfortunately, the permit to repair the roof did not come through in time for us to be able to work on that. So, we switched gears and worked on the interior and exterior walls.

I had told Danny to inform Pastor Gustavo that I could paint a mural for him if he liked. So, I packed in my suitcase a painting kit that I had recently been able to purchase through a generous birthday gift from a neighbor. I was actually a bit worried that the kit would be confiscated out of my checked bag. However, God prevailed, and the paint made it to San Jose.

The first day in San Jose (Sunday) we checked into our hotel, Hotel Villa Tournon, and then dressed for Sunday evening Church service. The congregation at Monte de los Olivos had changed their Sunday morning worship schedule so that they could welcome us on Sunday evening.

The Praise Team

Jr. and the lyrics

William translated

We realized that Sunday evening while doing a walk through of the church campus, that there was more work than we could ever possibly hope to finish. So the prayer is that God will bring more mission teams behind us. We determined that our main focus would be scraping the walls, plastering them, and painting them. We would also work on replacing some over head lighting, purchase beams for the sanctuary roof, put in a dividing wall for the Sunday School room/kitchen, paint the outside fence and gate, and if God saw it possible-paint a mural in the Sunday School room.

The awesome thing about mission trips is that they always teach you the wonder of patience. Whether its because you have to sit around and wait at the hardware store, realize you're missing scrapers, realize that you got the wrong type of paint, realize there is only one jenky ladder, that the overhead lights you want to buy are extremely expensive, that the walls are crumbling and will require several layers of plaster, that there's a hurricane coming through over your heads and you won't be able to plaster the outside walls, or that you have no power saw and are going to have to cut all the 2x4's for the wall with a hand saw. Oh and you have to get everything done in four days and most of you don't speak Spanish.

Monica and her "scraper"

Matt and his "ladder"

Either you spend your spare time laughing or waste it crying. We mainly laughed. And sang.

I'm going to make this a double post. So I'll finish the story tomorrow.

Lots to do. . .

So, I'm turning 30 in 21 days. Depressing.

Been working on lots of projects for the past month. The envelope project took up a lot of my time, but the rest has been filled with updating the inside of my parents house.

I haven't taken any pictures of it yet. I'll post some when it's all done, hopefully.

I've painted the walls of mom's room, and set her up with some new bookcases. All in the name of making her life easier. I've been really frustrated with the fact that there's nothing available in terms of practical furniture for people in wheelchairs. What you do find ends up costing ridiculous amounts of money. So in the end, you have to be really creative with what you can find at places like IKEA.

I love IKEA. We found two bookcases, some wall shelves, a bedside table, storage boxes, and blinds for mom's room the other day. Great stuff. Great fun for me and mom. . .not so much when I had to go through the self-check out, but oh well.

We really should go buy some stock in LOWES, seeing as how much we've been frequenting them lately. The only excuse is that mom and dad have lived in this house for twenty years and never done anything to update since it was built back in 1991. Add to that the fact that mom's wheelchair is really rough on the cabinets and door frames, and well this refreshing was way over due.

The hope is that we'll get all of this work done before the big family birthday party in June. Which is interesting, because all of our birthdays are in May. Today is actually my grandfather's birthday. Russ's is next Thursday. Mine is the next Thursday. Dad's is the next Wednesday, and mom's is the next Thursday. So, we decided that the first weekend of June would be appropriate enough, lol.

AND. . .I'm going to Costa Rica the second weekend of June. . .I can't wait. . .this will be my second trip there. . .last year I went to Alajuela in mission with our young adult group at church. This year the same group is going, but we're going to San Jose to work on a different church.

So, be looking forward to pictures of all the work at the house and of the tropical lushness of Costa Rica.

I'll leave you with this entertaining video from the Muppets new movie.

Vaya Con Dios!