Happy New Year Y'all!
I trust your Christmas and New Year were totally awesome! We had awesome days at our crib for sure! My very favorite thing about my employer is that we shut down for a week after Christmas, so you take a few more days off and you have 2 weeks or close to that off.
It is wonderful!!
However, you think you will get 1,000 things done and it normally doesn't happen. That's OK too, as we had a great time!
I got a hold of a miserable cold before Christmas, so I rushed to the doctor (ain't no one got time for this at Christmas, right?!) I pretty much told him that and said please make it go away! So he loaded me up on meds and sent me away. I was better for Christmas, praise God! However, we go home to KY for a week after Christmas where I encounter the perfect storm.....it is much colder there than here in NC.....my Daddy is sick.....I am exhausted from being on the go non-stop. THEN....come home to NC where we can be blessed with all 4 seasons in 1 day and BAM! I have another worse horrible cold, whatever this mess is. Back to the doctor I go, cause still, ain't no one got time for this! Plus, it is really affecting my singing career!! More meds and sent away. And so, the last week of sleep has been like this.....either I am waking up in a crazy coughing fit or I am burning up and throwing covers off.....you know this getting old crap is not for the weak.....freezing before I go to bed under my warm electric blanket, a few hours later, ready to turn the AC on! I am also so dang hot after getting ready in the mornings, that I can't wait to walk outside into the cold temps and cool off! I won't be wearing a winter coat for the next 15+ years! Better buckle my seat belt for this ride!
Christmas was a bit different this year.....but still awesome! Neither of our kids "believe" anymore, so we asked them.....do you want all presents under the tree or do you still want Santa to come on Christmas morning? They said all under the tree! This meant much more wrapping for me *gah* and everyone but me slept later on Christmas morning. We also opened everything Christmas Eve Night, so we didn't feel rushed Christmas morning to get that done and get ready to go out for our next new adventure. Mother in Law secured us dinner out at a sweet restaurant for Christmas dinner. While I am always open for a new adventure, the males in this castle were NOT happy, as they love them some Christmas dinner left-overs. I did fix them a big dinner Christmas Eve so we could have our left-overs. :) It was nice, great food, beautiful place, great fellowship, but I felt so guilty cause these folks were working on Christmas Day! I just kept chatting with them and thanking them. I felt so bad for them. :(
So - the day after Christmas mini-me and I packed up Pearl and headed for our week-long adventure in KY! How wonderful to spent time with my family that we don't get to see nearly enough. Prolly my favorite thing was just to sit there in the evening and chat and watch tv with my parents, or having coffee with them in the morning, chatting before they headed off to work. Just being in their space makes me happy! We had dinners out, dinners in, spent 2 days with my BFF, just shopping and hanging out.....it is so wonderful to have people in your life that you can talk or not talk , go out or sit still and have a wonderful time doing either!
I took this picture of us in front of the church that I grew up in and was baptized in. I love it very much! So cool to have all of that history in the picture with us! I intended to get us in front of all the houses we lived in growing up, but I wasn't able to make that happen this trip. Friday was the most wonderful experience.....we went to the Ark!!! More on that below. All of my parents children were under the same roof on Saturday, all day....this is a very rare event, and it was great! The Ark Encounter - There are NO words that I can say to express to you the awesomeness, the magnificence, the jaw dropping wonder of The Ark!!! Our Papa did all this.....He gave Noah and his family very precise instructions for building and loading The Ark for everything they would need to take! The Bible gives only a little detail on how the Ark was to be built and how to store it and such, so much of what they put into The Ark, was just a brilliant guess/assumption, for lack of better words. The size of it from the outside is enormous, so gorgeous, I told my Aunt and Uncle who went with us, it is like seeing the ocean for the first time! I was thankful to have my Aunt and Uncle go with us, they had been 4 times already and made sure that we didn't miss anything. Plus, she gets as excited and pure giddy as I do about our Father and the wonderful things He does! I don't know why, but I had always pictured the inside of The Ark as a hot mess, disorganized, smelly, dark, kinda miserable really. This visit changed my thoughts. They were going to be on there for a long long time, so it stands to reason that they needed to be very organized. All of the animals had their place, tons of clay pots for water, grain storage areas, a place where they grew veggies and herbs. Sections for wood working and metal working. Living quarters, which I never even thought they would have. They described what each of Noah's sons and daughter in-laws would have done....this one was good at making clothes, this one growing veggies, this one was the nurse type person. Of course it is all speculation, but someone had to do these things. I really loved how they also gave the history of man, from creation, Adam and Eve being in the garden, being tempted, and sin entering the world. Showing the reason that God brought this flood to destroy everything! All the while I am thinking in my head.....the earth deserves a flood right now! Though Papa promised He would never do that again, we certainly deserve it! There is an area called "Pre-Flood" world....it is hard to see and think about, and it is much like our world today. Genesis 6:11 - Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. The detail that they put into everything was so amazing, they really thought of everything! Even the animals! The recreating of the animals was magnificent and they had them labeled "Deer Kind" each by their Kind.....Kinds this girl hasn't ever heard of. The Bible says in Genesis 6: 20 - Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. Clearly, I can not tell you enough about The Ark Encounter....an Encounter it is! It is located in Williamstown, KY, right off of I75. Go - Go - Go!!! It was so cool to walk through the parking lot and see the license plates from soooo many other states! Ken Ham and The Answers in Genesis folks did it up right! I can't stand how either WordPress or likely this user can't make the pictures upload correctly! gggrrr! I do hope all of these appear properly for you! Enjoy!
Comments