Discipleship Walk

I spent a long weekend - Thursday afternoon through Sunday morning - at a Women's Discipleship Walk. The nature of Discipleship Walk is that you don't talk about it outside of Discipleship Walk (yep, just like Fight Club rules) because some of the impact comes from discovery. I'm not gonna break that tradition but I was very glad I went, and even more glad I shared a room with Erin and Kim. There were only supposed to be 2 people in a room and nobody was allowed to pick their roommates, but we managed to get around that! The organizers wouldn't put us in the same "table" group, though; that's OK, I guess it helped us make new friends.  

Big Dinner for the Church's School

Our church school has a fund-raising dinner once a year. They sell tickets to a dinner, the staff and students give speeches and entertainment, and the dinner guests are asked to pledge money for the upcoming year. Most of the money for the school comes from the pledges because they have a restaurant cater the dinner, so most or all of the ticket income goes towards paying the caterer. This year they asked Randy to fix the dinner. Since it’s for the church, he did it for free - the only thing they had to pay for was the food. And since Randy shops for ingredients instead of prepared foods, it was a lot less expensive.  His menu included sliced Pork Loin with and Apple Cream Sauce, Peas, Sweet Potato Casserole, and Sweet Sensation Salad (with mandarin oranges, goat cheese, and candied pecans) (desserts were supplied by other people). He made everything from scratch, right down to the salad dressing. He spent two entire days working on this in the church kitchen. I was there most of the time trying to help, but my help in this kind of cooking is very limited. We were told to prepare for 320 people. Pork Loin for 320 people, when you want to serve generous portions, is a lot of pork loin!

People in our Life Group came in to help pull it all together, and several teenager students volunteered to serve. We couldn't have done it without them!

We had a great turnout, even with a thunderstorm in the area. The total cost of the food was less than $1,000! That means that over $2,200 from ticket sales went to the school instead of a caterer. And, of course, it was all wonderful!  People keep asking Randy for his recipes but he doesn’t give them out. 

3/20

Stinky Alaskan Fish Fertilizer better do some good

I love roses and determined that when we got a house, I would have beautiful roses. But I want roses that smell like roses and the ones in Home Depot don't. So I ordered 2 roses online. They came this week, with planting directions that include bone meal, peat moss and aged cow manure. I can hardly believe that I had to pay good money for cow manure, but I did. And for fertilizer, they strongly recommend Alaskan Fish Fertilizer. What does this look like?

Yea, it smells like that, too. But I held my breath and mixed it with water to feed the roses. One of them looks OK but my "Mr Lincoln" rose is a little skinny Groot.

Meanwhile Randy, who has more sense that I, decided we should not leave brush piled up at the canal's edge where the alligator likes to sun. It might make good nesting material, which would be a bad thing. I can't argue with that, although I did try. So he raked it all up. We were at Disney most of the day so I don't know if the gator crawled up on the bank again or not. However, a smaller cousin did show up, staying in the water, where good alligators stay.

3/15/18

Disney in the spring

We still don't know the trick to getting on the Avatar ride, but we can occasionally get on the Pandora river ride. And while waiting for that ride, we can enjoy the Pandora-like scenery.

Epcot does a Garden Event in the spring, which includes planting flowers that quickly bloom into spectacular patterns.

MK has a series of actors playing Captain Jack Sparrow. They all sound right for the part but it's hard to get the look just right. Sometimes, though,  we see a guy who looks spookily like Johnny Depp. 

My favorite think at MK is the ginormous dragon that walks in the parade. Like the 1914 steam powered roller that I love so much (in the Antique Gas and Steam Engine Museum in Vista, CA), it's looks perfect to me. And it walks!

"Doo doo doo, lookin' out my back door"

Shades of Creedence Clearwater Revival - looks what's out my back door!

We recently pulled a bunch of weeds out of the canal and instead of bagging them while they're wet, we are letting them dry first. I'm not sure if that what made this guy think about sunning himself here, but here he is, large as life!

He's mid-sized, so Randy named him "Appetizer".

I cannot say how much I love living somewhere where this happens. If Shorty or someone is hurt by an alligator, I will feel differently, of course. But whether or not we see them hanging around, we know they are here and we are always very careful when taking Shorty out or walking to the side or back of our property.  It's their home too. I hope they never disappear!  

Swimming with Manatees

As Florida weather warms, most manatees go back to the Gulf of Mexico. However, there are a couple of places where a few manatees stay year-round, and we recently took a “Swim with the Manatees” tour at one of them. The first thing we had to do was watch a short film about how to behave around manatees. Manatees are about 10 feet long, weigh between 800 and 1,200 pounds, and are shaped like a blimp. The main thing is to not bother or chase them. That's not because they are dangerous; they are not aggressive and they can’t bite. It’s just mean and stupid to bother a harmless animal, plus these are a protected species. After the film we all had to put on a full-body wet-suit - long sleeved and long legged - to keep in body heat and provide some buoyancy. Since the tour company never knows the experience or intelligence of that day's customers, they just made a rule that everyone has to wear a wetsuit. But we didn’t have to bring our own; the staff had several sizes for us to choose from.

When we were ready, we drove our car the short distance to where the charter boat was waiting docked, parked it, and walked over to the boat. In our group there were just us and one other couple. The captain took us on a 10 minute boat ride to a small cove. The cove had houses and docks on all sides, but apparently it’s quiet enough that several manatees have decided to live there all the time. The captain dropped anchor several yards away from the shore and gave each of us a long styrofoam “noodle” to tuck under our armpits, which helped keep us afloat and made it easy for him to keep track of us. He told us to swim over to a small boat house at the water’s edge and when we got there, turn left to swim into a small pond. When we got into the water I was a little behind the others because even with the wetsuit on, the water was cool enough that it took me a few moments to catch my breath. But soon, with my head down and my snorkel up, I followed the others. I saw they were stopped at the boat house and wondered why they hadn’t continued into the pond. When I got there, I discovered they were floating right in front of a mama manatee and her baby!  

It was so amazing to be close to these big animals, who calmly ignored us. We were careful not to touch either of them, but the water wasn’t very deep and when we swam over them to check the area behind them for more manatees, it was quite difficult to avoid touching them. We did it, though.

They were the only ones in this part of the cove. After a while we swam back to the boat and climbed up the short ladder to get in. The captain took us to another part of the cove where we got back in the water to look for more manatees. There weren’t any there, so we got back on the boat again and he went to the other side of the cove. From the boat we could see there were some manatees in that area; the other lady in the boat said they were playing but I’m pretty sure they were mating! However, they finished by the time we got there, so that turned out OK. The captain was able to give us directions from the boat (he never got into the water; he could watch out for us better from there) so Randy and I swam towards the large male manatee, who swam right under us, just a few inches below us! He move so effortlessly and was amazingly quick - just a flip of his tail moved him faster than we could have followed, and he was quickly out of our vision range. The female manatee was still in the area, and the captain said it would be all right to gently touch her. Her skin looked and felt like elephant skin - deeply creased and kind of rough. She put up with our presence for a while before heading out after the male. 

This one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever done!

3/7/18

Prime Rib for 8

Randy thought about going to a Disney restaurant for his birthday but the Disney restaurants have been disappointing us lately. Instead he decided to have dinner at home. Dan & Jaylene, Gary & Erin, and Rich & Kim joined us for a lovely meal that included baked potatoes, baked brie, cake and ice cream, and starred an amazing Prime Rib. 

Who gets the Oscar?

We recently went to Disney's Hollywood Studios and got our picture taken with Oscar!  They have an Academy Award statue there, waiting to be inscribed with a winner's name and awarded at the 2018 Academy Awards. I wonder who will get this one?

Supporting the School

The church supports it's school by a variety of means, including an annual fall event. The school buys and decorates Christmas trees, then puts them on display in the church sanctuary. 

Every one of these trees is for sale, fully decorated and ready to set up at home. There are trees for every taste and style, a lot of people were happy to find a tree they like, buy it, and skip the work part. And some people bought one for a second tree to put in another room.

On tables along the wall were donated items for people can bid on. Randy decided to donate a Prime Rib Dinner for 4. He was determined it would not go cheap - he knows what his food is worth, and he wanted the school to get full value. Eventually he let it go for $200.  The guy who bought it was agreeable to scheduling the meal after the holidays, so we did the dinner at his house in March. 

Randy's Prime Rib is quite simply one of the best things ever.

He served it with big, salt-rubbed baked potatoes, fresh vegetables, Sweet Sensation Salad, and for dessert, Crème Brûlée with fresh berries. 

3/3

Giraffe skulls and tigers - we must be at Animal Kingdom

A trip to Animal Kingdom is still one of my favorite, because...animals!!!  The Safari ride is always great. The Giraffes seem to be comfortable near the cars - when they find a shady spot on a sunny day, they don't even bother to get up.

Zebras, too. In fact, many of the herbivores don't mind us.

The aviary was full of nest builders overhead. In spite of the risk of standing under birds, everyone was staring up at them.

One of my new favorite things is giraffe skulls. This is so close to what a Dragon skull should look like - I want one!

Gary and Erin kept telling me that the adorable Meerkats are sort of mean. How could this cute thing possibly be mean?

Loved the bats! These big boys were just chilling; their wings are so thin and supple that they look like the little bones would poke every time they moved.

And the pièce de ré·sis·tance - two tiger cubs! They are several months old, which is old enough to be out with Mom. Today one cub was sticking close to Mom. 

The other cub was adventuring, exploring the artistically placed fountain ruins.