Happy Birthday Manda!!

Hope you party like a rock star
(or at least as hard as you're partyin' in this pic)!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROSIE!!!

Hope you had a great day!!

(This picture is from 1992 just after Olive12 was born.)

I am a regular reader of a website called Smashing Magazine.

They recently announced a photography contest. They wanted to start a gallery of texture pictures. They didn't care what the texture was but the picture submitted had to be a certain number of pixels wide, other than that, there weren't many rules. The winner of the contest was chosen at random and won a nice Canon camera. Unfortunately I didn't win the camera but one of my pictures got selected to be on the site!! (shooks has a pic published too - put her first & last name in the search box on the site and you'll find her entry!)

They said far more than 2000 pictures were submitted so I think it's pretty cool that both of us ended up getting something published! The picture they selected of mine is Nilla Wafers, check it out in the Food section.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/05/27/smashing-texture-contest-results/

I just read this news article and boy this makes me sad!! Ouch!

The five-year-old daughter of Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman was killed last night when a car apparently driven by one of her older brothers hit her in the Chapman family's driveway. In what local police are calling a "terrible accident,"

Maria Chapman was playing in the driveway when she was struck by a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by one of Chapman's teenage sons. The police did not identify the driver, according to The Tennessean.

A statement on Chapman's website says, "Maria was rushed to Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville, transported by LifeFlight, but died of her injuries there." Maria was the youngest of the Chapman's six children.

Some of the poignant lyrics Steven wrote for a friend after they lost a child are so real now for himself:

We can cry with hope
We can say goodbye with hope
'Cause we know our goodbye is not the end, oh no
And we can grieve with hope
'Cause we believe with hope
(There's a place by God's grace)
There's a place where we'll see your face again
We'll see your face again

I've seen Steven in concert several times. He's a Christian singer and writes most all of his music. I've watched his career throughout the years, keep track of what he's doing and check out his new music. I know Allison can relate, after you've seen someone perform so many times, you feel like you know them and their family.

I posted his charity on my blog in the past: http://andreasmindworks.blogspot.com/search/label/shaohannahshope.org

Please keep his family in your prayers.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BIG BROTHER!!!

Isn't he cute!

Are you looking for some cool buttons or badges? Need a fun give-away for a tradeshow or event?

Check out: http://www.prickie.com/

HAPPY 50TH-ISH BIRTHDAY BONEMAN!!!!

Hope you liked your presents!!!

Bored? Need something to do? Try TYPERACER! It's a "game" where you are given a block of text and you're timed on how fast you can type it. You can race other people out there which makes it even more fun! So far I'm up to 90 words per minute!!

http://play.typeracer.com/

!!!!!!!!!$3.95 a Gallon!!!!!!!!!

OPERATION GIFT CARDS FOR GRAMMY
MOTHER'S DAY EDITION

Just today, Grammy used the LAST of her Kroger gift cards from Christmas . Can you imagine how much that helped her to have all of her groceries paid for almost 5 months!

Well, here we are...Mother's Day, the perfect occasion to refresh her supply. I know she has to pay her property taxes this month so that's a huge chunk of money out of her limited budget.

If you were going to get her something, this might be a good idea!

Found this can, contents unknown, on the sale
table at Kroger tonight.

Would you pay .99¢ for this?

GAS IS $3.86 A GALLON IN INDY TODAY!

THIEVES!

What's the color of your personality?

Click here to find out:
http://yourtotalhealth.ivillage.com/personality-colors-test.html

The Lifecycle of a Tulip

See ya next spring!

Chatanooga, A Must See

Rich and I just got back from a short, little trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

We wanted to go someplace not too far away, somewhere we'd never been before and picked Chattanooga. Not really knowing much, other than Lookout Mountain, Ruby Falls and Rock City were there, we thought, what the heck, let's go! So we did.

We left on Sunday and came back on Wednesday. It was the perfect amount of time to get in all the attractions and have a ton of fun. We both totally recommend heading down and checking it out. I took hundreds of pictures as you can imagine.

Here's what I recommend doing. When you get there and you hit your first attraction, buy the package deal. It's about $65 dollars for each adult, but you get to go to Ruby Falls, Rock City, the Incline Railway, 2 Aquariums downtown and take in an Imax movie. So for about $130 bucks you can do everything there is to do.

Ruby Falls

Ruby Falls is a very interesting active cave. In the old days, the military used the cave for medical facilities during the war and for a long time just locals could visit it. Then, I think it was sometime in the 1920's a man from Gary, Indiana decided he wanted to open the cave to the public and charge admission. He borrowed something like $25,000 dollars and started digging a new entrance (the current entrance used today). He did this bucketful by bucketful, manually carrying out buckets of limestone. When he entered the cave from the new entry he dug, a big rush of wind hit him. He knew there was something else to see in there. So he dug and dug, crawling on his belly for 16 hours and finally discovered Ruby Falls.

Why is it named Ruby Falls, you ask? Well, Ruby was the name of this man's wife.

So today, they take you down into the cave via an elevator with a glass door, so you can see all the limestone as you're going down. You are actually as deep into the earth as the empire state building is tall! Yeeeooowza!

They take you on a guided tour through the falls, every now and then stopping for a video or audio presentation. Then you can hear it...and feel it and kind of smell it. You walk into a very dark room and all of a sudden these beautiful lights come on and there's Ruby Falls. Quite a production and it did give me chills. It was breathtaking, just like they say it is.

Rich "falling" off the steps at Ruby Falls...He called it Richie Falls all day (no that didn't get annoying at all!) :)

Deep in the caverns of Ruby Falls, you get to see all the "cave stuff". I've never been in a cave before. It was pretty cool. You stay down there about an hour or so. I thought it would be nice and cool inside the earth, but it was very humid!


DUCK! Most of the time Rich had to hunch over.
Guess the cave wasn't carved out for a guy over 6 feet tall.

My camera had a heck of a time focusing in the dark caverns of this cave. Sorry these aren't more clear. We do have a video that Rich took. He's going to load it to YouTube.

This picture gives a little better perspective of how high the falls are. Can you imagine what that guy thought when he finally got to this area and discovered these falls! Chaaaaa Ching baby!

We "accidently" ditched the group we were in touring the place, our tour guide went a little fast, so when they exited the falls area, we hung back and took our time getting back to the elevator. We ended up passing 3 or 4 new tour groups coming down (oops). The guides in those groups said, "your group is WaaaaaaaY up there!" We just said, "we know they left us!" So we had a great time wandering around in that cave before we went back to to the top of the earth. Ruby Falls was great, we totally recommend taking a trip to Chattanooga and checking out all the attractions.

I took hundreds of pictures as you can imagine.

The hotel recommended a BBQ joint in downtown Nooger - Sticky Fingers - and even gave us a coupon for some free wings at this place. So we jumped in the truck and headed downtown. The food was awesome, not many people there. After eating we drove around to see what the city had to offer. I had done a ton of research before going down so I knew what I was looking for, but Rich didn't know anything about the city.

The Tennessee River runs right through downtown, they have built a really nice riverwalk and park. On one side of the river there are all kinds of cool shops and places to eat. They've got a walking bridge across the river that connects downtown to that cool area of town on. Lots of Nooger-ites use this bridge for exercise it seems, there were lots of people out there exercising including a man that looked to be about 100 years old jogging on that bridge!

Here are some pics around the river:

Sunset on the Tennessee River

Walking Bridge over the Tennessee River

Coolidge Park, there's a very neat carousel in that building


The Art Museum on the river in downtown Nooger

Curvy sidewalk that leads down to the river from the art museum.

Condos on the river

A riverboat with lots of "red hat society" ladies on it

Cool lamp on the walking bridge

Point Park - Lookout Mountain: This is where the Battle of Chickamauga took place. I think that was the 1800's. Thousands of men died in this infamous battle between the north and the south. This State park is high on top Lookout Mountain and offers spectacular views of Chattanooga.

View of Chattanooga from the cannon's point of view

Lining up my shot, I think I can get Chattanooga from here!

Get out of the way, soldier!

After getting in the way of my cannonball,
one unfortunate soldier had to spend a little time in the pokey!

What the heck, I'll spring you from the big house, Magic Man!

Careful! It's a long way down
according to this sign, you could really hurt your butt on a rock!

Yeah, that's us! We took this using the timer on my camera.

We met 2 very nice older couples who were there together. One gal volunteered to take our picture. As she was lining up the shot, Rich & I were acting like we were falling over the cliff, didn't know she snapped that shot of us goofing around.

Here's the serious shot she took of us. Great shot! Thank you whatever your name was!