Operation Christmas Child 2009

The Boxes

It has been quite a while since I wrote a Blog. I just need to share about Operation Christmas Child. Today we finalized collecting shoeboxes at work. Once again I have been blown away by the generosity of my co-workers. Filling a shoebox for a child in a foreign country. These shoeboxes filled with small gifts may be the only thing that the children get this year. Each box is filled with small toys, candy, personal hygiene supplies, school supplies and small articles of clothing like underwear and t-shirts. The most important thing that each child will receive is a booklet that tells of the love of Jesus, the best gift we can ever receive.

For more information on how you can participate click here: Samaitan's Purse website

Our finishing Department

Our Production Department

Everybody

Pat and I

Do you Remember the Pineapple ??

Well the day has come to harvest our pineapple. Here is Pat holding his BIG crop.

We have been growing the pineapple plant for about three years.
This past January we learned what you have to do to get the plant to produce fruit. We followed all of the instructions and to our suprise a baby pineapple appeared. We have been watching it grow for several months. (refer back to earlier blogs about the pineapple) At some point the fruit stopped growing but the top kept getting bigger and bigger. As you can see in the picture the top is about four times larger than the bottom.

Pat cut it up today at work.

We made sure that we had a piece for all of our co-workers. Everyone has been watching it grow for several months.

The fruit was delicous. The plant has sent out another shoot on the side, we are hoping to be able to harvest another pineapple next year.

We have had fun with this project and the fruit was definetly worth the wait.

Happy Anniversary Kelly and Will

Today is Kelly and Will's Anniversary October 14, 2000

Nine years ago today our daughter Kelly got married. After dating for four years she and Will tied the knot. It was a beautiful fall day, actually quite warm. The ceremony was held at our home church West End Baptist. The reception was held at Cherokee National Golf Course. Their honeymoon was spent at Disneyworld.

Nine years later they have been blessed with three children (Clara, Lindy and Charlie) and number four on the way.

Kelly is a stay at home mom and Will teaches English in our local school district. Kelly and Will are both very active at their church. Kelly also leads a Brownie Girl Scout Troop. Pat and I are very proud of the Hawkins family. We pray that God continues to Bless them with many more happy years of marriage.

Remember 9 / 11

Eight years ago, I was at work listening to the radio. The announcer made a comment about a plane flying into the World Trade Center, at first I thought it was a little sightseeing type plane. As more information came over the airwaves it was apparent that it was a large plane, but why did it hit the tower? Then a few minutes later another plane hit the other tower, then later a plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, then a plane crashed into the pentagon. What was happening? and where or what would be hit next? I remember being so aggravated when I heard of the first plane and I could not get Pat off of the phone, he was on a conference call with the owners of our company.

We saw our country go to a new patriotic high, being in the American flag industry, we saw a huge increase in flag sales, everyone wanted to show their patriotism. Glenn Beck has a project called 9 12 project, he wants everyone to remember how they felt on 9/12/01. If we all remembered how we felt that day America might be a better place. I love my country, but I am afraid for the road we are going down.

Pray for our country, May God Bless America !

Pirate party

I forgot to post these earlier in the week like I promised. The party was a lot of fun and the kids had a great time on their treasure hunt. They are all dressed up in their pirate costume and ready to search for the treasure.
I wonder what we will do next year to top this party?

Happy Birthday Henry !!!

Happy Birthday Henry !!!

Three years ago today our oldest Daughter gave birth to our first grandson.

Henry is the first boy to be born to our family. He has a special place in our heart.

We will be celebrating his birthday on Monday when the our family gets together for a picnic on Labor Day. Henry loves sharks and pirates, so we will be having a cake with pirates and sharks on it, (picture to follow on Monday), a treasure hunt and pirate food to eat.

Henry is a sweet boy and he is funny too. Sarah takes a lot of pictures of him, and does a great job making little videos, she has a great video on her blog if you would like to see it.

This is a picture of Pat and I holding Henry, 5 days old.

This picture is from Easter of this year.

New picture from Sarah's Alphabet Book.

Love You, Happy Birthday Henry !!!

Our Weekend in Edisto

This is where we stayed this time, This part of the resort is called the village. We were on the second floor unit.We had to climb two flights of stairs, I got my exercise in!
We shopped at the only grocery in town, "the Pig"

We cooked someting new, Blintzes, they were absolutely delicous, I will write another Blog about them later.

We went for a ride to Botiny Bay Plantation, drove down this dirt road lined with live oaks and spanish moss.

We went to the beach, we found a few shells (LOL)

We saw a few squadrons of Pelicans fly overhead, there was 19 in this group.

Watched the sunset, and looked for Dolphins.

Another sunset, just beautiful !!!!

The happy couple after a few days of rest and relaxation!!

We had a great time. We just hung out by the pool and the beach, drove around a little, discovered a few new things. Tried a couple of new restaurants, tried a new recipe.

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

Have you ever been craving a piece of Chocolate cake, but there is none to be found? You don't have time to bake a cake, and you don't want to drive to the grocery store. Well here is a quick dessert you can make in 5 minutes. I got this recipe from one of the ladies in my Esther Bible study, we all shared a favorite recipe, this is the one that Heather shared.

Ingredients:
4 tbsp flour
4 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp cocoa
1 egg
3 tbsp milk
3 tbsp oil
3 tbsp choc. chips
splash of vanilla
1 large coffee mug

Directions :
Mix dry ingredients in Mug, add egg, mix well, add oil and milk mix well. Add choc chips and vanilla, mix again. Put mug in microwave, cook 3 minutes, the cake will rise above the top of the mug do not be alarmed. Allow to cool slightly, dump out on plate, serve with vanilla ice cream.

We enjoyed it, and thought it was a good quick dessert and it was fun to make. One cake is plenty for two.

Woman of Joy

I am looking forward to next years Woman of Joy conference. This will be the fifth year that I have gone. The first year that I went was in 2006, I went with Sarah and her church, I enjoyed it so much that I organized the women from my church to go the following year. We will be having a get together on September 11 to determine the location and date that we want to plan for next spring. The conference is held by Phil Waldrep Ministries, I think there was 6,000 ladies at the conference this past May. Below is a picture of our group. I wish we would have gotten a better group shot than this one, but this was really the only time that we were all together at the same time. I invited everyone over to the condo that I had reserved for my daughters and I to stay at. I made dinner for everyone, it was a great time of fellowship. If we go back to Sevierville, TN next year I will reserve a large cabin for all of us to stay in for the whole weekend, the fellowship will be wonderful !

I am really hoping more ladies will attend in 2010, it is a weekend that you will remember for a long time.

Linda

Happy Birthday Will

Friday August 14 is our son in law Will's birthday.

Soon after we moved to Gaffney Kelly and Will began dating.

I guess it was love at first sight. They were married in 2000.

I'm not sure how old this photo is but it was taken a while ago.

Will has a good sense of humor, here he is holding up the hot air balloon. He and Pat get along very well, always joking together. Will is a teacher, this year his duty is changing, he has been promoted from seventh grade to tenth. Please pray for him as he learns how to respond to older students.
One of Will's favorite things is Bamboo. He and Kelly have a forest of Bamboo behind their house. Will is constantly building things out of it. This picture was taken at our July 4 BBQ cookoff, he has a bamboo windchime as well as a table built out of bamboo ( you can see just a corner of it in the picture).

Will has written a book, we are waiting to hear about that right now. He also likes to play cards, light bonfires, he likes superheros and pirates. He loves the Lord and his family, Will is a great husband and father. I am proud to call him Son. Happy Birthday !

Happy Anniversary Becky and Jeff

Happy Anniversary Becky and Jeff !

August 11, 2007

August 11, 2009

2 years

Have fun on your anniversary trip, enjoy the time by yourselves.

We love you !!!

It is hard to believe how much the boys have grown up since this picture was taken.

Happy Birthday Katie

Today is Katie's birthday. I can't tell you how old she is because she doesn't like this age, but it is somewhere between 26 and 28. Katie is the only daughter that kept me up all night in labor.
She was such a good baby ! She loved her older sisters and would just laugh and laugh at them as they entertained her.

Here are a few pictures from a variety of ages.

Katie has always been very social and loved parties, this is a shot of a Tea Party that she hosted one time.

There is about 11 years difference in these two pictures.

The Katie that we love now.

Katie is a great daughter, wife, and probably the favorite aunt to all of our grandchildren, She is known as Toot Toot to them and she spoils them all.

Happy Birthday!

We love you!

Please don't send the birthday cake picture to cakewrecks.

A few random thoughts

First of all for those of you that look at my blog occasionally you know that I have been so excited about my pineapple plant. I am not so excited about it anymore, it just isn't growing. The fruit is staying small but the leaves on top of it are getting bigger and bigger, I feel like I failed pineapple growing. I think I need to go to Maui and get first hand instructions, anyone want to come along?

Secondly, I attended a Girl Scout training on Saturday, I had a lot of fun. I left Pat at home with a house with most of the rooms turned upside down. I was afraid that he would try to help and clean, which always scares me because I can never find anything when he does that. Well he didn't help me clean, but he did add to the mess ! He has been wanting to paint the hallway and I have been wanting him to paint the bathroom door so the work began. First he pulled up the carpet in the hallway. One thing that he needed to do in preperation was empty the bottom of the hall closet, that is now on the kitchen floor. Look at my beautiful linoleum:















That needs to go quickly ! can you believe he actually taped it so that he did not get any paint on it?


Before he paints he felt that he needed to level the house, so the past two nights he has been under it trying to level it up. Last night it got close enough, I can now actually close the door to one of our extra bedrooms that I use for an office.










Now before he paints he needs to fix a couple of giant cracks that developed after leveling the floor. Quite a few nails popped on the hall wall also. Pat is an excellent sheetrock taper so I know that you will not be able to see any flaws at all when he is done. One more thing that I have asked him to do is to take down the panelling in the hallway also, he will do that in the next few nights. We are hoping that the hardwood floor under the linoleum is in okay condition, just a quick sanding and it will be beautiful.



Third, Saturday night Pat and I went for dinner with some very old friends that were in town,

Kevin and Polly Childs and three of their children, Josiah, Judson and Ian. We went to a local BBQ restaurant, Lisa's Hawg and Dawg. We all enjoyed a good meal and good conversation. Kevin was the Pastor of our church when we first moved here. Now he is the Pastor at the Rock in Conway, South Carolina. Josiah is in the Army, he was home on a short leave before going to San Antonio.