Softball

This week has been really busy. Wednesday night we had our sign-ups for AWANA at our church. As of right now we have 26 little angels (k-2nd grade) signed up for the class that I teach on Wednesday nights. What a blessing to know that we have that many children, but pray that we have more adults volunteer to help! Tonight we played our first softball game. Brandon and I are playing with a group of friends that I work with. We won our game 10-8 against First State Bank. And guess what....... I HIT A HOME RUN!!! Yes, you read that correctly.. I HIT A HOME RUN!! I also caught 2 fly balls in the outfield and did not let a single ball get by me. I only had 2-3 other ones hit to me, but still I kept them in front of me. I would say that I played the best game I have played in a long time. Brandon played well also. He didn't hit as well as me, but who's counting. :) Tomorrow night is the Greenbrier-Beebe game so we'll be going to watch Spank play football. Maybe by Spring things will slow down around here! :) Oh yeah, baby Creed is doing much better. He is now breathing on his own, eating well, and should get to come home soon.

Pray for Baby Creed!

I got a phone call this morning that a friend of mine (Krystil Tester Brown) and her husband Chad had their baby Friday night. They named him Creed. He was born 8 weeks early and weighed 6 pounds, but was sent to Children's Hospital because his lungs were not fully developed. This afternoon when I talked to proud Aunt Whitney she said that they were able to take him off his oxygen and were able to feed him today, but now he's jaundice. Please pray for Baby Creed and his parents. Well it sounds like this week is going to be as busy as our weekend. AWANA starts at our church Wednesday night. Thursday night we have a softball game with the co-ed team from my work. Friday night is my brother's (Spank) first football game of the season. Saturday morning Julie and I are going to run a 5K in North Little Rock. Saturday night we are going to eat supper with my parents at the wagon races and then to hear the Culpepper Mountain Band play. Maybe on Sunday we can rest. :)

Busy Weekend

What a busy weekend... Friday night we went out to eat with Mark and Kristin. We took them to one of our favorite places, Italian Gardens in Russellville. Saturday morning I got woke up at 7:30 a.m. to help Brandon AGAIN! That's 3 Saturdays in a row! I am used to using Saturday as my house cleaning day so needless to say I am really out of routine right now. We had to take a load of junk and trash from the shop construction to the landfill. Then, we had to go to Lowe's to get some more lumber for the storage rooms in the shop. Jeremy came to help Brandon for a little while on Saturday afternoon so I got a break from being the helper. Saturday night we went back to Conway to pick up a few parts for the septic system. We are becoming preferred shoppers at Lowe's. Sunday afternoon Billy and Jeremy came over to help with the water lines. I had a meeting at church for AWANA so I got to escape from working again. :) Sunday night we went over to my parents for dinner. I tried to help my brother with his show goats. He has less than a month until county fair and those goats aren't leading too well right now. I am sure I'll have more details about the goats as the fair draws nearer.

dirt, dirt, and more dirt!

On Saturday Brandon worked all day on digging the ditches. Jeremy was planning on helping Brandon but he got sick Friday night and was unable to come. Soooooo... I got to be the helper. Late Saturday afternoon we had to take a trip to Lowe's to get parts to fix the slight water leak so that we could even take a shower. Brandon was able to fix it no problem. Sunday morning Kitty and I got up and went for a 2-mile run before church while Brandon worked on the backyard. When we got back from our run Brandon had accidentally hit another line so I had to go to Lowe's to get the parts to fix it. I am beginning to think we should have bought stock in Lowe's! Billy (Brandon's dad) came by Sunday to help Brandon get some of the work done. We now have the electrical pipe laid from the house to the shop and the water line from the house to the shop, but we still have 3 ditches running from the house to the shop, 1 ditch from the house to the water faucet in the backyard, and 1 ditch that goes from the house to the light pole on the east side of the house. Brandon is planning on working on the backyard again Saturday so hopefully the ditches will be gone this weekend. They are still working on the lake/pond in the back field. Therefore, our yard is a big dust ball. My car is covered with dust along with anything else in our yard. Tonight I went to the scrimmage game against CAC to watch my brother play football. Defense looked a little better than last year, but I am still not so sure about the offense. Mom said Spank was really excited after the game Monday night so that's a good sign. They didn't keep score since it was a scrimmage, but there were quite a few people there.

Benji running the "ditch witch". I didn't get to run it very long because I'm not very good at digging a straight line. Truth be known, I can't draw, cut, or walk a straight line so that's nothing to be concerned about. :)

Brandon holding up the broken pipe (the first time). He wasn't smiling so big the second time!

The many ditches in the backyard.

New Construction

There are a lot of things going on at our house today. Brandon has been up since about 6:00 a.m. working on digging the lines for water and electricity for the shop. Somehow about 8:00 a.m. I was recruited to be the handy assistant. Sooooo, we now have ditches all across the back yard. I have taken a few pictures of them and the shop so you can see what our backyard looks like right now. We are also getting a very large pond/lake in the field behind us. We found out yesterday that SECO (one of the gas drilling companies) now owns the land next to us. They are now in the process of digging a 400 ft. x 400 ft. pond that will be 10-12 ft. deep. They intend to use it as a "sputter" pond. This means that whenever they drill a gas well and hit water they have to have somewhere to dump the water after it's pumped out. Apparently the state won't let them just pump it into a natural stream or river. So, now they will be dumping it in the "pond" (I prefer to call it a lake) right behind our house. After they dump the water there they will re-use it whenever they need water to assist them in drilling. So for the next week and a half they will be out there in their HUGE tractors stirring up dust. I have a few pictures of the shop and pond digging that I took this morning. I will try to take some more pictures of the field this evening when they aren't out there working. Now back to the shop... We have no intentions of starting our own business. It will just be a place where Brandon can work. I like to call it Brandon's Playhouse! It's 40 ft. x 40 ft. with two storage rooms and a covered area on the side. I guess that's all the new things that are going on. We have been busy this week. It seems like every night this week we have had something to do or somewhere to go. Last night we went to the Blue and White Game at Greenbrier to watch my brother play in the scrimmage. Their actual season starts in a couple of weeks so on Friday nights I will be watching high school football from now until about November. Brandon usually goes to the games also unless they are too far away. Last year they did not do so well. They ended with a 0-10 season so let's all pray that they do better this year.

Front view of the shop. The picture was taken from the backyard.

This is a view from the east side of our house. You can get a better idea of where the shop is.

You can see the ditches in our backyard and the tractor in the field working on the pond.

Hello!

Hello from Benji and Brandon. It's a typical Saturday. Brandon's outside working and I am inside cleaning. We are really close to having the shop finished. Brandon is working on framing the storage rooms today. I'll add pictures when I get some. We are babysitting for Kristin and Mark this weekend. Kitty and Bridget are really having a good time playing together! Bridget is the one on the left and of course Kitty is on the right! :)