What Better Way to Learn to Slide?

At practice one day, the coaches decided to get some sliding practice in. It was hot that day so the girls thought that was a great idea.

The fun you can have with a water hose and a tarp.

More from West Virginia

I took a lot of pictures in West Virginia this year. We had such a great time and I have lots of stories to tell as well. It's always fun to spend time with your family but it's REALLY fun to go somewhere with them when no one has anywhere they need to go, there's no rushing, no ball games, and no parties. Just two full days of spending time together. We didn't even get cell phone service so we didn't have to look at cell phones attached to the kids' thumbs. You get to know each other so much better when you spend days on end together. You learn each others' sense of humor, fears, likes, dislikes, etc.

Like this fearless one. He climbed up this rock like a mountain goat. It took him no time at all to get to the top, look over, and remember his total fear of heights.

You can't help but look at this beauty and wonder about its creation. Of course we know the Creator, but if it's this beautiful now, wonder what it looked like before the flood destroyed it all? Were these rocks jutting up like this along the top of this ridge then? Was this ridge even here then or is it all a product of the wrath brought on by humans? If this is a destroyed earth can you imagine the beauty before?

On the trail, we saw a tree that had toppled. It had a huge rock in the bottom of it with the roots wrapped completely around the rock. Would you believe that someone in our group (I won't mention any names cuz I can't remember who it was) asked about the rock "growing into the tree roots?" Hmm, I guess it started out as a pebble? Then grew so big that it upended the tree? Really? Or MAYBE, the tree roots just grew around it and when the tree fell the rock came up with it? LOL! I hope no one heard this conversation.

At the top of the ridge was this fire tower. It was a small square building with a narrow walkway all the way around it. There were several men with binoculars there, and chairs, and log books. Man, I was thinking, they take their fire watching very seriously. They were looking through binoculars, calling out coordinates, and discussing "seeing one out the ridge a ways." What? A fire? My curiosity was definitely getting the best of me because I didn't see a fire. I didn't even see smoke. Finally, we had to ask, "WHAT are you looking at?" Their response? Birds. They were bird watchers. For some reason, when I hear "bird watchers" I think of watching pretty, rare, colorful birds. What were they watching? Hawks and buzzards. They were counting them. They were checking wind speed and direction. Logging it in books. So, I guess that makes us bird watchers, too. At the barn at my dad's we watch the hawks all right, we "watch" them trying to kill and steal the chickens. They're not glorified, beautiful birds worthy of watching. And buzzards? We see them often enough picking through roadkill. We definitely don't have to hike up a mountain to a fire tower and use binoculars.

As we were standing up there, appreciating the beauty, and trying to figure out which direction particular towns were, we were told we should come back in three weeks for the "peak". Oh, yeah, I bet the peak of fall is beautiful. This would be a great place to take in the beautiful fall colors. Since my mom and dad are planning a trip back to West Virginia with some friends in a couple of weeks we were really appreciative to have that bit of "peak" information. This kind gentleman followed this with, "Yeah, there should be 500 flying through at a time." Oh, birds again. There is a peak bird watching season? Luckily, through that whole conversation, the nice bird watchers never figured out that we were talking about two different subjects, us the leaves, them the birds. And they never realized that we thought watching buzzards and hawks was "for the birds."

It seems like I find myself in these confusing conversations very often lately.

The United States' Best Kept Secret

Over Labor Day weekend my family always goes to West Virginia to visit friends, enjoy their great little cabin on Indian Creek, and do a little sightseeing. Every time I go to West Virginia I think, "Why do more people not live here?" It's the best kept secret in the United States. It should be declared a state sized National Park. They have wonderful weather with beautiful summers, just enough snow in the winter, and these mountains. Oh my, these mountains. There are some beautiful, well kept old farms. There are beautiful, well kept new farms. As a general rule, all of the homes in West Virginia are well kept - you see very few of the dumpy places we have polluting our countryside. There are deer and turkey in almost every field. As a matter of fact, you have to be a cautious driver cause the deer use the roads, too.

This is a beautiful pond at the restaurant/buffalo farm we ate lunch at one day.

On the way back from lunch, we hiked about a mile to this firetower. The views from the top were amazing! The left side of this ridge is West Virginia and the right side is Virginia.

The scenery behind my dad in this picture reminds me of the book, Follow the River by James Alexander Thom. If you've not read it, you need to. It's a very good book that takes place in the early settling of our country. A lady, Mary Draper, gets captured by indians, is forced to live with them for several years, and I won't tell you the rest cuz you need to read it... Oh, and it takes place on the New River in West Virginia, which by the way I found out that Indian Creek flows into the New River, which flows into the Kanawha River, which flows into the Ohio, then to the Mississippi, then to the Gulf of Mexico. (That bit of information was free.)

Anyway, if you've never been to West Virginia, it's well worth the trip. And possibly the move.

Fight LIke a Girl

Four years ago, my mom and dad walked into my office here at home and told me something that rocked my world. Something that changed our family. She had found out that she had breast cancer. What? Breast cancer? She can't have breast cancer. It doesn't run in our family. She has annual mammograms. We found out then that breast cancer doesn't care if it runs in your family. It doesn't care if you don't want it. It doesn't care if you have had annual mammograms and it certainly doesn't respect anything you have done to prevent it. It's nondiscriminatory. She fought through the next 1-1/2 years with faith and prayer as her weapons of choice along with some super physicians with a lot of God given knowledge. And their own arsenal of weapons. Four years later, it's all good.

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Last week Tony's mother found out she has breast cancer. We are arming up again with the Great Physician as well as great physicians... Thanks in advance for your prayers!

They've Come a Long Way!

In Alex's second year of softball (when she was 7), she was on a team with Abby. We didn't know Abby at the time but we knew who she was. We knew who she was because I had gone to high school with her dad, Chris, and because my brother goes to church where her dad is the preacher. Over time, we began going to church there, too. When it came time for them to move up a league into kid pitch, we were able to keep them on the same team and added Hannah. And Chris was the coach - preacher/coach/clipboard thrower/clipboard breaker. He is one of Alex's all-time favorite coaches but she can never, ever, under any circumstance let him know that. Sometimes she slips and says it out loud but lucky for her he has not been around to hear it. Over the years these girls have played with and against each other in basketball and softball so I have lots of these pictures. Unfortunately, these are the only ones I can find right now. They all three made the all-county basketball team, they played all-star softball together, and now they are playing softball against each other at their middle schools. And Chris is coaching Hannah and Abby - not Alex :'( - but we still got the picture!

I hope I can keep adding to this collection of pictures with these three sweet girls. And Chris.