What’s been happening at our house …

 

Final baseball tally: They had a record of 25-9. We are already looking forward to next year!

Another bobcat sighting – this time, we have tracks. The bottom print is one of our dogs, the top is the bobcat. The kids and I went for a jog to the hunting cabin on an overcast day and on the return trip, we spotted it running ahead of us in the road. Hadden and I both saw it this time.

 

Birds, birds, and more birds. There are 7 in this picture, but this morning, there were 8 on the feeder at one time. They are eating us out of all of the sugar in the house :)

Projects:

John recently built stairs down from the deck. This was the truck with the supplies! Only in Alabama :)

I finished staining the deck – at least the top face of everything. I still need to finish the outside edges and will need scaffolding to reach it. I was on the hummingbird superhighway while working on the deck.

While John and the kids were away at church camp at Shocco Springs, I had some indoor projects to tackle. One of the reasons John finished the stairs down from the deck was so that I could work on the entryway and still get in/out of the house.

Before – plain door  and bare concrete floor.

These turned into nightmare projects for me. The first thing I did was attempt to stain the door – this picture doesn’t look that bad, but believe me, it looks awful. I really don’t like using gel stain and that is what the person at HD gave me to do the fiberglass door. I obviously am not good at it, because some spots started to dry too quickly and the finish looks uneven. I bought some stuff to take off the old and I will try again later. I also found some tips online on how to handle gel stain, so hopefully it will turn out better.

And … the floor. Oh, the floor! I actually lost sleep over this one. I was going for the nice look of mottled colored concrete that you sometimes see in restaurants. Not sure exactly what happened, but it didn’t turn out at all. Above is the intermediate – lovely, huh? Looks like smeared, dirty concrete – nothing close to what I was going for.

So, back to the paint store for a different approach. Unfortunately, I couldn’t put the new one over the old one, so I had to sand off this layer before putting on the new one. John and the kids got home somewhere in the process of sanding. :(

Here it is after the first coat of solid stain color – much better, in my opinion. I have one more coat of clear to put on and the floor will be finished. And, then, back to the doors. We have decided it would be best to take it off the hinges, so we will have to plan that carefully with the heat and weather.

So – what have you been up to?

... and they're done.

They made it to 4th place in state - way to go, boys!

Still going!!!

They are now top 4!!! Such exciting games, too. They won two games last night to advance, but tonight’s games were cancelled because of storms. We all think it is a big blessing that we get a night off to rest and recover. It’s exhausting yelling at every game :)

Hadden running from 2nd to 3rd in last night’s game. Picture courtesy of Rhonda Hindman – our amazingly awesome team Mom!

To Him be all glory!

Baseball update

Hadden's team is in the State playoff tournament - they are currently in the top 8 teams. They have had one loss in a double elimination tournament, so they need to win to keep playing. They will have 2 games tonight (if they win the first). Please pray that Hadden would just do his best and have fun. He has been playing really well in this tournament (which obviously makes it more fun :).

Some exciting times at the ballpark - and not necessarily the good kind. The level of competition has increased significantly and with that everyone is stepping up a notch.However, coach and fan tempers are also flaring up some and the police were called to the ballpark the other night and a coach was ejected! Unfortunately, he deserved it, and he cost his team a very important win. They are now out of the tournament as we dealt them their second loss. The only one to feel bad for is the boys who played a great baseball game.

Praying for just some good, old-fashioned, clean, fun baseball from here on out!

Crotalus horridus was a little too close-us

Very appropriate scientific name, don't you think?






Photo courtesy of Outdoor Alabama - by Mark Bailey.







First a little background info. About a month ago, we had spied a timber rattler several feet below us in a rock cliff by our neighbor's hunting cabin. It was very cool to observe the snake from that nice, safe distance. So, now when we go on walks out there, we routinely check to see if it might have returned to that same spot so we can see it again.

Yesterday morning when I took the dogs for a walk, I went to do a "snake-check", peered over the edge of the cliff and discovered the snake had not yet returned to that spot. I paused for just a second to enjoy the view, turned around to retrace my steps and head home when I spied crotalus horridus just a tiny few feet from me! Maybe one whole stride away, just a rattling away at me. I froze in my tracks because I didn't want to startle it any further. I did have a chance to observe that it wasn't coiled and was starting to slither away underneath a rock. Mother-may-I sized GIANT step sideways and then another and somewhere in there, my heart started beating again. Whew - what an adrenaline rush that was!

Yes, crotalus horridus was wayyy too close-us for me! I have no idea if it was the same snake, or its buddy, but I didn't stick around long enough to find out. John and I were going to walk out and try to find it this morning, but the owner of the cabin went past before we had a chance, so John called him and warned him that the snake may still be there.

Life in the country is full of all sorts of surprises!