There are "OUTLAWS" in this live nativity.

As my daughter, Jennifer, blogged earlier today in "Jen's Scribbles" we toured an exhibit at a local church on the Saturday after Thanksgiving that had a display of over 250 nativity scenes that are part of individual collections. Her blog has photos of five of the nativity scenes. My wife Pat and granddaughter Alex were working together and took over 75 photos of the scenes. Below are 26 of those photos. Several different individual scenes are captured in many of the photos, therefore, I suspect that the photos below could show over 50 of the different nativities.




As Jennifer mentioned in her blog, we had the opportunity to dress up as a live nativity and have our photo taken. In this photo everyone but two have "OUTLAW" blood and one of those is an "OUTLAW" by marriage. So seven of the eight are "OUTLAWS"!!!!
At the end of the tour I filled out a survey about our visit. One of the questions was, Do you have any Nativity Scenes that you would like to have included in future exhibits? I answered yes as in my blog titled "Away in a Manger" posted on December 22, 2009 I show that Pat had 38 nativity scenes and she has a few more she has added for this year. I think several of her collection merit display in an exhibit like the one we visited.

One we cherish is the wood "puzzle" made by our nephew Billy in 1995. The puzzle was painted by our friend, Jill, around 2005.
Assembled Puzzle
Puzzle displayed
Popsicle stick nativity made by our grandchildren Metal Coat Rack
Lazar wood cutGlass globe on a stand

Cross stitch

A NIMBY TREE

Everyone desires the best cell phone coverage that they can get! And how is that possible? Obviously -more cell phone towers. But that always brings out the NIMBY response " Not In My Back Yard".

Recently Pat & I was driving in our neighboring city to the west - O'Fallon. At almost the same moment we both said "I have not seen that tree before. How did that grow here so fast?"
As we got closer it was even more obvious what this tree was used for and why it appeared out of nowhere so fast.
This "tree" was a new kind of cell-phone tower. This tree which dwarfs its neighboring trees took all of two days to grow to its height of 120 feet. It is also a "money tree" for the homeowner whose backyard it stands in, $700 per month from the original provider plus an additional $300 per month for every cell-phone provider that puts a transmitter atop this mighty spruce.

Are his neighbors happy about it, read about that in this newspaper article. As the article mentions cell-phone transmitters have been placed in church steeples, towers that resemble telephone poles, street lights, observation towers, palm trees, even a mammoth cacti.

Here are two different cell-phone towers in our city of St. Peters. This one is in the back of the parking lot at the St. Peters Assembly of God church.
Another is a huge flag pole in a memorial honoring Korean and Vietnam veterans This tower was featured in my photo blog titled "Got Lemons - Make Lemonade".

Thanksgiving 2010

‎It was 38 degrees and raining in St. Peters on Wednesday, November 24 ,(2 inches since 3:00AM) when I put our 14 lb. turkey in the smoker on the deck (protected from the rain by a tarp overhead). We were promised a high of 50 with rain most of day, low of 34 that night. Predicted high of 39 Thanksgiving day falling to 30 by 4:00PM with wintry mix (for all my friends in Sugar Land, TX that is freezing rain, sleet, snow) then falling to 20 Thanksgiving night. If it were 5 degrees cooler today, we could have had over 2 ft. snow on the ground.

At 2:30 PM it was 40 degrees outside and very little rain. It had rained about 2.5 inches since 3:00AM. The turkey had now been in the smoker for over 5 hours. The internal temperature of the turkey was 156 degrees, and needed to get to at least 175. I used a Brinkman Water Smoker with an electric burner. Here is a good website with tips for smoking a turkey. The smoking chips that I used was pecan chips. I have a Smart BBQ wireless thermometer model WEC-1215 that allows me to have the sensor probe in the meat and have the remote display near me inside. My remote thermometer came from Sears but it can be found on eBay. It shows the current meat temperature and will beep when the proper temperature has been reached. You can see the thermometer in the attached photo. For the photo the remote display is siting in the sensor cradle.

At 8:30 PM, the beeping of the Smart BBQ thermometer told me that the turkey was done for a total of 11 hours in the smoker. Typically it takes 30 minutes per pound, so for a 14 pound turkey, it should have been done in just over 7 hours. But not in 38-49 degree weather. It did finally get to a high of 49 at 2:40 PM. But at 8:30 PM it was 48 degrees and falling with heavy rain again. Total of 2.7 inches since 3:00 AM. It looked like it was going to rain through the much of the night and into Thanksgiving day and change to freezing rain about 2:00 PM. Looking at radar shows continuous rain bands coming up from the southwest. I checked the rain gauge just before we turned in for the night and it measured 3 inches and was still raining. Just thankful that all this rain was liquid and not 36 inches of snow.

While I was taking care of smoking our Thanksgiving turkey and shopping and other outside errands for Pat, she was busy baking and cooking for tomorrow's Thanksgiving feast. I also drove another Senior Citizen for her last minute Thanksgiving shopping via the Independent Transportation Network of St. Charles County that Pat & I both do volunteer driving for: ITNStCharles. Pat baked two pecan pies, one chocolate pie (plus another chocolate pie Tuesday), one pumpkin pie and a pumpkin pudding (for our granddaughter who is allergic to gluten and can't eat pies with a crust). She also prepared a big batch of cornbread dressing, sweet potato casserole, two dozen deviled egg halves. Most of her cooking was finished but she still had some to do Thanksgiving day when our daughter came over early for both of them to complete the Thanksgiving Meal preparations. With our daughter, our son-in-law with the three grandchildren, our son and a young mother and her daughter from our church we had ten around the table tomorrow. We have a lot to praise God and give thanks for.

By Thanksgiving morning it was 34 degrees and had rained over 4 inches in the past 24 hours.

The turkey had been in an ice chest overnight that was kept cold by two milk jugs of ice. It was now time to carve the bird for the the Thanksgiving meal.

Pat had made a white board with things that we were all thankful for.At about noon I looked out on the deck and could see that freezing rain had began to fall. But we were warm inside. I had a good fire in the fireplace.

We all gathered at the table for a picture before we went to the kitchen for the feast that was now set out on the island counter. Seated around the table starting from the left are Mary and her daughter, Arianna (friends from our church); our granddaughters: Alex and Jessica, our son Jeff, Pat;,our son-in-law John, daughter Jennifer, grandson Jacob and me at the end of the circle on the right.

Everyone had a good time that afternoon playing board games and playing with Wii on the downstairs TV. The freezing rain had stopped by about 4:00 PM with very little accumulation. But when we watched the news we could see that it had snowed across the Missouri River to the east of us in St. Louis County. Our low temperature on Thanksgiving night was 22 degrees. We enjoyed a post from a Facebook friend that lived in the city of St. Louis, about 40 miles east of St. Peters. "Tuesday it was near 70, Wednesday it started out warm and got colder as the day went along. Today it is snowing! That's St. Louis for you! Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Yes, it was a very happy Thanksgiving.