PWOC Fall Retreat

What a wonderful weekend!

It was time once again for our PWOC retreat and we went up to a Mountain lodge in McCall, Idaho.

Alex Kocher and Amy nunn, great friends from Montgomery, Alabama came out to be our speaker and singer and they did a wonderful job!

Here is a picture by the Payette River on the way up to McCall.

The bad part of the weekend was having to "farewell" Tabitha. She and her family are leaving for Wyoming in a matter of hours now. In fact, as soon as I finish this I have to go over and say good-bye. So if I seem to be typing extra long and adding things that don't need to be added, I am procrastinating because I do not want to say good-bye.

The full moon in a frosty morning was very pretty.

The majority of the group is here by the lake. We had about 5 free hours Saturday afternoon so window shopping and eating lunch was the plan in town.

Out behind the conference center: Diana, Amber, DeeDee, Tabitha and myself. By late afternoon the weather was perfect! No jackets needed.
Working on our puzzle craft!

The whole group!

Here is the puzzle we made. Everyone was given one piece on Friday night and all they were told about it was to paint it. Make it personal. The next day they were given time to embellish, we had more paint, glitter, buttons, ect. And let me just say how impressed I was with the creativity. This project so far exceeded anything we ever planned for.
Our topic for the weekend was DISCOVER YOUR DESIGN. We learned a lot and had fun doing so. We took personality tests and spiritual gift tests, and discovered what we were and learned ways on how to use those things to serve our families and our church. My personality type was not a surprise, but my gift test was.
Then each lady was to write their gifts on their puzzle piece and the whole puzzle will be assembled and hung up in our PWOC room.
Here is the unfinished puzzle. We are going to add the title and pictures in the large center piece.




After the retreat was over, 7 of us continued on up into the mountains to a small old OLD town called Burgdorf. Town shut down in 1865 and all that is left standing is the old cabins (some aren't standing anymore) and the hot springs. The HOT SPRINGS!!!!

It was wonderful! VERY cold outside in the chilly air, but the water was great. 113 degrees where it came out of the earth, and 91 on the other side of the "pool." It felt so good! Except when it was time to get out and change in the cold weather again. :-)
We had to get a SNOW picture for our Alabama girls!
And that is it! It was a great weekend.

September and October were so busy, and now my November calendar is EMPTY! (for now).

Now it is time to finally potty train. She has been ready for a long time, but Mommy hasn't had any time! :-)

Hopefully this won't take to very long. We might have a few cute pictures about it.

I LOVE FALL!

Fall may be really really short here, but it truly is beautiful. Every tree is gorgeous with all the colors. I love to hear the sound of the kids walking through the yard and scrunching all the leaves. We are supposed to have our yard raked, but I don't see the point yet. The trees are still full! We will rake it all up when the trees are bare. In the meantime, we will enjoy the beauty and the sounds of fall.

(click on the picture and it will open really big)

So hard to believe this is our THIRD October here in Idaho and our third trip back to Emmett to the Candy Apple Orchard to pick apples. It was a bad year for all the trees, it has been so cold that the apples did not do well. But, despite a horrible weather forecast, the day ended up being beautiful and we did work hard and get 23 pounds of apples.

Here is Miss Kaebrie, I caught her just leaning against the tree.

Here she is last year at the orchard. What a difference a year makes!

This year Christopher wanted to carry his own picker and pail. As it got heavier and heavier I offered to carry it for him, but he wouldn't let me. An hour later he came up to me with an EMPTY pail. He had dumped them all out somewhere so he could carry the bucket.

Kaitlynn had to sample several of her apples!
Kaebrie should have been weighed when we got there. She ate so many apples that her tummy was a little..uh....upset.... for a few days.

You know Tiff is concentrating when that tongue is out!

Collin got most of his with the picker where he could reach high up into the branches.
I love doing family pictures in the orchard. Here are our neighbors, the Klawitters. Russ and Jennifer with their daughters, Naomi, Anna, Sarah and Lydia.
Other great friends, the Cates; Josh and Michelle with Emily.

In the middle of taking other families pictures, Christopher plopped down in front of me and told me to take his picture. So here is this beautiful one of him! When I asked him earlier to pose for me, he ran off in the other direction.

A lot of the girls resting in the shade with the scarecrow.
Grace and Kaitlynn and Naomi
A glimpse of part of the orchard. I just love those hills.


The Smith Clan - 2007

The Smith Clan - 2006
Half the Smith Clan - 2005. How little are they!?!?!?!?! Were they really that little when we got here? Where are the other 2? I remember, Kaebrie wasn't even walking yet so I left her and Tiff home with Daddy.
It is hard to imagine how much growing they have done until you compare pictures.

Will we be here for another Idaho October? It is starting to look that way. I think Sam and I both are getting that "moving itch." I mean, we have now been married for 15 years, and this was our 7th move together. That does average out to about 2 years per place! We do really like it here, but we moved here with the idea that it would be for 3 years. Last year the Air Force changed it to a 4 year assignment. We have never been anywhere for FOUR YEARS!

We are talking ever so slightly about moving off base if we are going to be here for 2 more years. Getting a MUCH bigger house in town! I am going to start looking at what is available to rent, I do NOT want to have to sell a house here. But watch me keep looking for two years and never do anything about it! The neighbors and the proximity to everything is probably to good to give up!

I guess we can look forward to more Orchard pictures in 2008!

A new way to spend a weekend....

Our next-door neighbors were able to go away for the weekend and celebrate their anniversary after we offered to keep the kids for the weekend. They are great kids! Very easy to have as guests.

I wasn't worried about the boys, they will watch and play football and computer games all day long, but I did wonder how the girls would do. Morgan is 3 years older then Kaitlynn, but they did GREAT!

I bought a new little thingy called a KNIFTY KNITTER a few weeks ago, because Kaitlynn has been begging to learn. We finally opened it up, read the directions, and away they went! That is all they did!! They made the hats for themselves and they were so PROUD!

Collin was jealous and even wanted to learn too!

They made Kaebrie a hat while she napped! It was a bit to small, so hers looks more like a beanie. :-)

But she loved it and wore it with pride.

(For a few minutes anyway. It kept rolling up and falling off.)
So Kaebrie decided the hat should be for Dixie.
Dixie, is obviously not to happy about that! :-)

Fall Focus Conference, El Paso, Texas

PWOC is our chapel ministry for women. Protestant Women of the Chapel. Once a year all the groups from all the Air Force and Army bases meet. This year, the meeting was held in El Paso , Texas. EARLY Wednesday morning, I left with Tabitha, Kathleen and Jen and off we flew to the WARM south. :-)

Here is our hotel, the El Camino Real. We were on the 5th floor, but from the 10th floor (where the pool was) you could see the border crossing. I liked the sun and the clouds and the lighting in this picture.

We left Boise and flew to Denver. We had a 4 hour layover there. Then flew on to El Paso. By the time we got checked in we were hungry! So off we went to find a place to eat dinner. Nobody told us that EVERYTHING closed at 5:00. There was no place to eat. So we ended up in the expensive hotel restaurant. Below is a silly picture we took while searching for food!

The next day, we took the "border jumper" trolley into Juarez, Mexico for sight seeing and shopping.
Riding the trolley was fun, and getting INTO Mexico was a breeze.
Here is the center of the bridge, the boundary lines between the countries is in between the flags.

We did a lot of walking and shopping for about 5 hours. Here is one of the trolley stops that I liked.

We found a NICE restaurant. So nice, that when we ordered guacamole, they made it fresh right in front of you! We finally found a waiter who spoke a BIT of English and we did need some help, as all of the menu was in Spanish. My Spanish teacher would be so disappointed in me, I have forgotten 98% of it.
No Diet Coke here. It is all Coca Cola Light.
We ended up at the large 2 story market at our last stop. The poverty and the begging and the "accosting" of obvious visitors took awhile to get used to. This is a PERSISTENT culture! Everywhere you go, men and women are shouting at you to COME SHOP HERE! "Aqui, senorita!" Here, they were begging each of us for a dollar to play their musical instruments.

I bought a large jar of vanilla (yes, the cooking kind, so many people said how much stronger and tastier it was to cook with), and a lot of Christmas presents!

The ride back over the bridge took 2 hours. And that was on a weekday. Our guide said it would be twice as long on a weekend. They swarmed the cars and buses. Begging to wash windows and selling everything that could be carried. Meanwhile, the foot traffic was unbelievable. Hundreds of people pulling rolling suitcases just walking over the bridge towards the USA. Once we reached the boundary line, the selling and swarming ended. But we did have to exit the trolley and go inside, present ID's and go through customs while the dogs searched the trolley.
Kathleen asked security if all these other people were working in the states, the guard said they had a BC card (bridge crossing) to go and shop. She asked what kept them from staying? He just shook his head. For one thing, EVERYTHING was cheaper in Mexico, so it didn't make sense that they would want to shop and spend more money. All this political talk and debates about illegal immigration and building walls and fences, and they are just allowed to walk over pulling suitcases? Did not make a lot of sense to us.
Everything in El Paso was in Spanish as well. Need gum? The labels are in Spanish. Need help? Everyone speaks Spanish. It felt like we were in a foreign country in our OWN country!

When we ere leaving the Boise airport, we had some extra time so we wandered the gift shops. We came across these t-shirts and decided to wear them opening night for ROLL CALL. Each group from every base and post had to stand up and sing, or chant, or do whatever creative thing they could do to introduce themselves. Balking at the "tea-party" mentality, we decided to be a bit rebellious, and showed up with our

"WHEN POTATOES GO BAD"

black t-shirts. We sure did stand out from all the other sweater vests and nicely dressed ladies. :-)

(but that was the point).

We had a lot of meals we were responsible for, here is lunch at a local Mexican restaurant. NOWHERE, we tried 5 places was I ever able to find my queso cheese dip. Guess I will have to wait until the next time we get to visit Alabama and Mississippi.

Well, if you really gotta go.......... you really must need to go!

The last night was the formal gathering. We were requested to wear semi-formal all white.

And a LOT of ladies did. But from the beginning I was like ABSOLUTELY not. I refuse to go out and spend a lot of money on something I will never wear again, and WHITE! Klutzy people do NOT wear all white! So we all settled on white and BLACK. black PANTS!!!!!!!
We received our princess crowns at the end of the evening. We are royalty!! We belong to the family of Christ!
The flower arrangements were so different and SO beautiful!
I am glad we went. There were a lot of things I didn't agree with and things they need to change. I felt like I wrote a book on my evaluation form! But leaving home for 5 days, seeing new places, bonding more with my friends, and getting spiritually encouraged was so worth it.

Amazing Grace (x150)

Probably one of the best things about the conference was the actual music itself. Kathi Norman, our praise and worship leader, not only has an amazing testimony, but her voice is unbelievable!

This was the formal night on Saturday, where everyone was asked to wear white. You can see how gorgeous the ballroom is, but it is a bit dark to see the people clearly. You can though, HEAR the voices of 150 women singing praises, so turn up your volume and be blessed!

60th Anniversary Air Force Ball

Happy Birthday to the Air Force!

In honor of the 60 years, a ball was held in one of the jet hangers. A formal, sit down dinner for hundreds, open bar, live band, toasts, and more toasts, and MORE toasts, and a speaker as well.

The only decorations were the ENORMOUS American flag you see hanging, and some table decorations. The ladies and their um, interesting and um, colorful choices of dresses provided the rest of the decorating. :-)

Below, we are with Sam's boss, our Wing Chaplain, Vic Toney and his wife Pam.

This is our next door neighbors, Gunner and ReNaye Conrow, whom we rode over with. We also ended up sitting at their table for most of dinner. It is always assigned seats and they just don't ever seem to know where to stick the chapel staff. We ended up in the back corner table with the AADD. Yes, I had to ask what that was as well. It is the Airmen Against Drunk Drivers. Basically, they were the young, single, designated drivers. Guess they figured that a chaplain was a good choice to sit with the non-drinking airmen. Guess they need to be educated about PCA chaplains. :-)

We ran out of things to talk about by the time we were done with our salads. Everyone else gets seated with their squadrons, and there just happened to be an empty pair of seats with ReNaye and Gunner, so we became the Hillmans for the rest of the night! :-) And thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the evening with the great table!

A beautiful close up of the Toneys.

What is that he is holding, you might be thinking. Well, we kind of wondered the same thing. Believe it or not, in a state famous for its potatoes, that is a stack....pile.....mound.....molded, decorated cold, hard inedible mashed potatoes.

You could almost put a hook in them and save them for this years Christmas tree. :-)

Here is Tabitha and Fred. She has her new beautiful "braces free"!!!!!!!! smile on high voltage!

Here is Carolyn being escorted by Eric, her son. Her husband, Hans, is gone for 6 months.

I wondered if one day, that might be me and Collin.

I wonder if he would go for that?!?! :-)

________________________________________________

Well, on Wednesday I am off to a PWOC conference in El Paso, Texas for 5 days with 3 other lady friends and NO CHILDREN. Thursday I will be officially out of the country as we take a shuttle into Mexico for some wandering, bartering and maybe some shopping. Of coarse, there will be picture taking!

Will blog some pics upon my return next week. I am looking forward to being in the 90 degree weather and leaving Idaho this week where highs will be in the FIFTIES!

I am just not ready yet for the 7 - 8 months of winter.