A Fun And Easy Meme

Good morning all!
Something fun this morning.

Alexandra had this on her blog, Happy Hearts at Home, and I thought I'd do it, too. :)
What a neat way to get to know someone a little better!

A Fun and Easy Meme
Highlight the things you've done in your life. Mine are in bold.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea (from the beach)
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

I added a few more. :)

100. Lived without electricity or indoor plumbing
101. Held a crawdad
102. Delivered Meals on Wheels
103. Been to Carlsbad Caverns
104. Caught a butterfly
105. Eaten road-kill
106. Smelled a rose
107. Been to Panama
108. Rode a horse
109. Canned your own food
110. Plucked a chicken


More blogs with this Meme:
Happy Hearts at Home
The Berry Patch
You Did What?
His Mercy is New
God Seekers Academy
Streams of Living Water


It's your turn. :)

Winter Is Here

Brrrrrrr, it's cold here in the Pawpaw Holler this morning...18 degrees.
And our water froze.
Now I get to use all the buckets and jugs of water that are sitting in my bathtub!
Hopefully it will warm up later and I won't have to use the blow dryer to thaw the pipes out.

It's kind of funny, all summer we've had a water shortage and our spring finally started running good again, just before the first freeze. Now we have plenty of water but if it gets too cold we have to leave a faucet running, or the pipes, and sometimes the whole tank, will freeze and if we run the faucet more than a trickle, the tank doesn't fill up fast enough and we run it dry.

Aaaaghhh!

So, I just keep my jugs and buckets full.
At least the 1000 gallon tank isn't frozen solid...yet. :)

Thank You Lord For The Rain

Praise God, it finally rained! We have been in an extreme drought and our water tables are so low, springs are drying up and wells are going dry.

We get our water from a spring, yesterday we had 300 gallons left in our tanks. That's better than last year, by June we were completely dry.

In light of our water situation, we conserve it all we can and here are some of the ways we do.

We don't flush our toilet each time we use it.

I dump dish water outside.

We don't take a bath every day. When my husband was growing up, they had a weekly bath.

We wear our clothes more than once before washing.

We turn the water off while bathing and washing up until it's needed for rinsing.

We catch rain water from off the roof of our house and use it for watering our animals (and plants, if needed).

I put straw or mulch in my garden and around my herbs and flowers, it keeps the ground cool and moist and the plants didn't have to have any extra water this year.

We don't wash our vehicles.

Some of these things may sound a little extreme, but they're really not if you think about how people have lived in the past. We still have it better than they did and better than most people in the rest of the world, at least we don't have to walk five miles a day for water, not yet anyways.

I just checked our tank and it's filling up! As my husband says,"Ya gotta have faith". :)

Monarch Butterfly Monitoring Results

Tuesday we participated in the Monarch butterfly monitoring program of the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont. We met at the entrance to Cades Cove at 10:00AM, 22 of us plus Mr. Nathan and Miss Kim from Tremont (15 of us were homeschoolers :)).

After filling out the required waver of liability (there's always one of those, isn't there?) and getting aquainted a little, we proceeded to our destination, a field across the Cove on the way out. We got to the field and...it had been mowed! No problem, we just had to walk a little farther to find the butterflies (good exercise!).


We were there about 3 hours and caught 10 Monarchs. That doesn't seem like many but they only caught 4 last week. When a Monarch was caught, it was identified, recorded, and tagged.


The tags are small, round, lightweight, stickers, each of them with a number and our state abbreviation. This information is written down, along with the name of the person who caught the butterfly and whether the Monarch is a male or female. Did you know that a male Monarch butterfly has a black spot on each of it's lower wings, and the female doesn't ?


The Monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico where they overwinter. The Monarchs are monitored in Mexico, also, and we will be notified if they catch the one with our tag!

We caught several other kinds of butterflies and caterpillers while we were in the Cove and we saw a deer and some turkeys. Everybody had a super time and it was educational, too! Needless to say, we will be doing this again.

Here are some pictures from our outing. Unfortunately, I didn't get any butterfly pictures. :(

At the entrance to Cades Cove.

A Deer

Some of the children

Abby

Woolyworms

Daniel

For more information on the Monarch monitoring program please see this post, Monarch Butterfly Monitoring and Website.

Where's The Flashlight?

Me(talking to my children): Where is the flashlight? Is it on one of your desks?

Abby: No. I don't think so. I'm not sure.

Daniel: I found the flashlight, it was on Abby's desk.

:)

Braving The World Today

Dawn In The Holler

We're braving the world today, haven't been out of the holler since Sunday. :) Sometimes we get to stay home for two whole weeks! So, it's off to the library, post office, bank and grocery store this afternoon. It's also "treat day" for my children, we can't forget that! They'll be bouncin' off the walls by the time we get home!