Dontcha wish you were in my kitchen today?

MMMmmmMMM did it smell good! We are fundraising for the Africa Mission trip and are hosting a lunch at the Sheriff's Office. Part of the lunch is a bake sale. So many lovely ladies helped me with baking (THANK YOU LADIES!) and my kitchen smelled so yummie while I was wrapping goodies. On the plastic wrapping note do I ever recommend the "restaurant" style plastic wrap you can get at Sam's Club. It comes in this ginormous roll and has a slider/cutter (no more sliced fingers or stretched wrap! wooo hooo!) It was so easy to package all the goodies into individual portions.

Some of my day sure was a challenge... I got cream cheese spread instead of cream cheese, I got waay too many rice crispies (note to self... rice crispie treats for me!), the pie crust dough sure was obnoxious!.. the list could go on. I must say I got a lot accomplished. I did succeed in not having the oven empty for too long. Yee haw!

Going to sleep now. sssssnnnooorrre!

Here are some pictures... from mid-event! It was a wonderful success and a BIG THANK YOU TO ALL WHO SUPPORTED US IN ANY WAY! We could not do this mission trip without you!

Aren't National Park Service Sites Great?

My hubbie & I enjoy spending time exploring the National Park Service sites. National Parks are his favourite & his goal is to get to each one. I think, at last count, he is half way there. On this last trip to KY we hit several sites .. 7.. I think. Here is some of the evidence. The park service does such a great job maintaining & preserving history & beautiful lands. I used to work for
the NPS & I enjoyed contribuiting to the mission.














This was our favourite park. There were surprise showers there. Yay for cleanliness! We were tent camping on this trip and didn't realize the campground we stayed in had showers and not only had them they were SUPER clean! :) To say the least I was very very happy.
We did a lot of things at this park. I wrote about puppie friends and the hike we did .. I think that was my favourite.














This is in the Louis area. It was a beautiful day and a neat glimpse into family life of a historical figure. We shared a tour with only two other women so we got to get lots of questions answered by our guide :)













Here is our campsite at Mammoth Cave NP. We did not get a picture of their sign. I do not remember why. We did a cave tour here and there was a great bike trail. Check it out if you are in the area.














Our next travel will be coming up at the end of January into early Feb. We will be traveling with a group from our church to Kenya Africa. Never been to Kenya before but we are very excited to go on this mission trip. I will probably post here more about our preparations. We need to get our shots... eeek ! Not so much a fan of shots... am more of a fan of not getting sick or dead... so must get shots! :) We are going to be working in an orphanage and with churches in the area. Pray for us as we are raising the money to go. Not sure where it is all going to come from but we are believing it will come in. :) More another day. 'til then.. ta tahh! Here is a link to a map of the area we will be in :
http://www.maplandia.com/kenya/rift-valley/nyahururu/
The town is called Nyahururu and I will have to learn to say it too!
More in the future...

Wow! Where have I been?

Wow. I have been in hiding apparently. Eeeek. We did finally return from vacation. Our time away was great and here are some pics.

This picture is us in our truck on a ferry crossing the Green River. The car ferry is needed because the road is interrupted by the river or vice versa. It was cool to go on. I wonder how many times the man who runs the ferry goes across in one day!? We were in Mammoth Cave National Park, KY.

This picture is of my doggie friends. On our last day in Cumberland Gap we hiked the White Rocks Trail. At the trailhead there was a man and two dogs and he asked us did we want them. It seems these dogs have adopted him and hike with him each day. They show up a the trailhead and hike with him or whoever gives them attention. They met up with us several times on the hike. The trail was recommended by a few people and rightly so, it was great! In many places it was steep but well worth it for the views.
Yup, here is the view from the top. It was a grunt to get there but you can see forever. It was really nice. There was one other person up there and we asked him to take our picture. This way we have evidence we were really there and this was not someone else's picture.

A little baseball anyone? On our way back thru St. Louis we got to see the last two Cardinals games of the '08 season. :( They didn't go into the post season but we did enjoy the games. This was our first time to the new Busch Stadium. It is very very similar to Coors Field in Denver. Obviously there is a different view. Check out the Arch in the left side of the picture. So cool!

The view from our seats was great. It was a beautiful day in St. Louis.

On the Road

We are currently on vacation. On Tuesday we left Colorado at 4:30 am it was dark dark dark. We drove to the light.

On the way through Kansas we stopped in Topeka at the Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Site. While we were there we met a couple who were moving from Aurora, CO to Indianapolis, IN. There were very nice and we enjoyed a nice chat. They were off to Kansas City, MO to the Negro Baseball Museum and some BBQ and we were off for points East!

The traveling went well and the trip seemed really fast. We got to Bill's parent's house near St. Louis at about 21:30 .

We went to Pujols 5 Restaurant to celebrate our niece's birthday. It was a fun evening. A fun time was had by all.



We are leaving tomorrow (Fri.) for Land between the Lakes. I am looking forward to a week of camping and roughing it :) It will be fun :)