Muscle Cars

Rich has a '67 Camaro that he and Joe were working on today in the garage. Since it IS a muscle car, Lily and Joe struck a few "muscle-y" photos for me. :o)

Blessing of the Animals

Today we had the blessing of the animals after Mass. Everyone went home and came back with their critters they love so dearly. Most were dogs...there had to be more than 20 of them there....but there was also a rabbit and two turtles. Evidently Our Lady of Peace Roman Catholic Community doesn't have a lot of cat people! :o) Fr. Jose brought his weiner dog, Cigar as well. St. Francis of Assisi showed his love and kindness for all of God's creation, down to all creatures great and small. Scriptures were read, prayers prayed and the animals were given a blessing and sprinkled with Holy Water. Kona even got a St. Francis of Assisi medallion to wear on her dog collar! She thought it was quite fun to get gifts, sprinkled with water and meet a whole bunch of other dogs!

A few random October pictures....

This is the tail end of Tim's shiner he earned while scrimmaging on the basketball court last week. The only other freshman taller than him went up for the same rebound and his elbow landed in Tim's eye. Wasn't the first....certainly won't be the last.

We have sooooo many spiders here in Nebraska! There are webs EVERYWHERE! No need to buy fake cotton webs for Halloween; the spiders will do it for you for no charge at all! If you look closely, you'll see thousands of spider web lines criss-crossing our yard. I heard on the radio once that the average person swallows 10 spiders a year in their sleep. (was it a year or a lifetime? Blech, either way!) We just up'd our anti living in Nebraska!

Rich's future

Rich had his class drop night on October 7th, 2010. This was a gathering to announce which squadrons all the students would be going to upon graduating in early December. There was a lot of beer flowing that afternoon (hopefully in celebration) and three of the Omaha Night Hawk cheerleaders were there to add to the festivities. Each person was called and had to draw from a hat as to what task they had to do in order to get their assignment. They had four choices - a hair cut by the cheerleaders (not recommended after seeing the outcome, but Rich was relatively safe considering his hair is about 2 mm long), bobbing for apples (Lily thought this was really strange), karaoke (anyone that has ever heard Rich sing would have him avoid this at all costs) and a dance off with the cheerleaders. Rich was one of the lucky few that got to go in a group of three officers....and got to dance. This was still quite a sight....quite a sight indeed. Think of Elaine off of that one Seinfeld episode. I love him dearly, but the man can't dance. Anyhow, Lily and joined the gang to watch and were very happy for Rich when it was announced that he would be going to the 45th Reconnaissance Squadron here at Offutt AFB, NE upon graduation. He'll most likely be flying the Cobra Ball and Combat Sent. He'll be deployed quite a bit and several will be very short-notice TDY's....however, it will get him back to our old home on Okinawa for several months a year to fly in the Pacific. He's excited to get back into the cockpit and to start this new chapter in his flying career flying the RC-135s and RC-135u. Congrats Rich! Love the new patch!

Lily is officially a Girl Scout!

Lily's Daisy Scout troop had their dedication ceremony on October 5th, 2010. Each child had a flower of a different color and a part to say. Lily got one of her favorite colors (which was easy because she has 5 favorite colors). Her flower was purple. Her part to say was, "Purple is the color of nobility. It reminds me that I should do my best to respect myself and others." They received their blue star and some other Girl Scout regalia to wear on her uniform. In this ceremony, the older girls were rededicating themselves to Girl Scouts and the new girls were dedicating themselves to Girl Scouting. Cute cermony with fun, colorful cupcakes afterwards!