Thanksgiving Day

For Thanksgiving this year, we didn't exactly follow tradition. Instead of a big turkey dinner, we went out to brunch with my family. So, while we missed out on turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy, we also missed out on peeling dozens of potatoes and scrubbing pots and pans.

Besides, isn't the whole point of Thanksgiving being with the ones you love and counting your blessings?? Yep.

I have lots and lots of blessings. . .

After brunch, we still managed to do all the "normal" Thanksgiving stuff . . . like napping. . .

. . . looking at Black Friday ads. . .

. . . playing dress up. . .

. . . playing with cousins. . .



. . . watching football. . .

. . . laughing. . .

. . . playing games. . .

. . . and fighting with cousins over who's turn it is to use the binoculars.

The bonus at the end of the day was missing out on the turkey hangover. For that I'm very thankful!!!

Thankful Thursday

Counting my many blessings. . .



Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Pond Scum Revisited

We did it!! We cultured colonies of bacteria!! The book warned us that the smell would be pretty potent when we opened up the jars and they were right. Ewww. . .

Zach carefully opened the first jar and put two drops of the culture onto a slide. . .

He adjusted the microscope for the best view. . .

Believe it or not, I was actually pretty excited to see what the results would be. . . When it was finally my turn to look, this is what I saw:

This is from the jar with the soil. I'm still not sure what the different sources of nutrients had to do with the outcome of the experiment, but each slide looked a bit different from the others. I was actually able to take an interesting video. Well, interesting to me, anyway. . . The colony with the soil grew the largest bacteria:


The jar with the egg was, obviously, the smelliest:

The bacteria in this colony were tiny but active:

The third jar contained the dried grass:

There weren't quite as many in this colony so I'm assuming the dried grass had very little nutrients??????

I was surprised at how interesting these little guys were to look at. I kept trying to give them names like Hubert but Zach didn't think that was necessary.

Gloria loves getting in on Zach's science experiments.

Last, but not least, was the jar with the rice:

These little guys were similar to the egg-fed bacteria so I'm thinking all of this has something to do with how nutritious the environment is, but I don't really know. I guess I could read the book. . .

Or, I could just let Zach explain it all to me next week. . .


For not being a science-y person, I found this experiment to be fascinating. Zach was actually a little bored with it and was expecting something a little more exciting to happen. He went on to look at a variety of other things under the microscope like sprite and salt. . . I had no idea that salt looked like little squares and rectangles close up. . . I think this just might be the year that I start to enjoy science. Maybe.

Tattoo Anyone??

Uncle Tony was kind enough to let Gloria "enhance" his tattoos! Let's hope she sticks with markers and leaves the needles to the professionals. . .

Early Thanksgiving

On Sunday we spent an enjoyable day with Rob's family celebrating an early Thanksgiving. As always, Jeanie went all out with table decorations and more than enough turkey, dressing and mashed potatoes for everyone.

It was a fun and relaxing day with family. . .










We even all pitched in and gave Jeanie a jump start on Christmas. . .

I'm very thankful for this family that I married into!!!

A Whole Lot. . .

In February of '07, we acquired another building that we fully intended to use as office space and additional storage for our growing audio division. . . (sounds so professional when I put it that way. . . ). Unfortunately, we were so busy growing our audio division that the new space became a glorified (and expensive) storage unit. When the opportunity came up to rent it out to someone else, we jumped at the chance. From about January of '08 to October of '08, we had a small space in the back to store a few things but someone else paid most of the rent. Around the middle of September, due to circumstances completely out of my control, we regained possession of the entire building (and all of it's expenses). So, we're back to plan A. Only this time, we have a little extra time AND we have Kurt. The guys have been working on turning the front end of the building into a "showroom" complete with a separate conference room where we can actually meet with clients at our own location. We still have a long way to go, but things are gradually shaping up. In order to furnish and finish the new space on a very small budget, we have spent parts of the last four Saturdays at the Main Auction. I enjoy going to the auction. I can admit it. It's pretty cheap entertainment and every once in awhile you can find a great treasure! We needed a couple of desks for the new space so we bought a "lot" of these:
Seriously, at the auction you get a better deal when you buy things by the "lot". We have about 10 of these for sale if anyone is interested. . .

We also bought a lot of these:

There were a lot in this lot:

We've been tossing around the idea of having a screen and projector in our new conference room to show potential clients how much potential we have. So, when a lot of screens came up for bid, Rob jumped at the chance to get one of these:

It was just a bonus that he ended up getting about 70 of these:

It was such a good deal that as soon as he won the bid, someone bought just 4 of the screens which paid for the entire lot! Most of the screens are in really nice shape, so if anyone needs one (or 10) of these, I know where you can find one:

We've also been keeping an eye out for a good chunk of carpet that will cover the front end of the building. We finally found enough remnants in the same color and design that we (Rob) couldn't pass it up. We may actually follow through with Plan A this winter!!!

Even more fun than the auction, however, was getting to spend time with Kurt's family on Saturday!! It was an unexpected surprise and it made my whole day!!!

So, even though shows have been few and far between lately, we are staying busy, I'm not too worried about stuff and I'm enjoying a little down time before the craziness of the busy season kicks in again.