Saturday Fun

Happy Saturday everyone! If you have some time today and want to have some fun, come by Second Baptist Church between 9am and 12pm. We're at 609 S. Guadalupe (1/2 way between the Coliseum and the Court St. intersection). Mark and I will be there along with other church members at our first annual SBC Bazaar & BBQ.

It was a busy week as we cooked beans (Mark), brownies and lemon squares (me). Plus I am donating eight pairs of earrings I made to our rummage sale. There will be lots of things for the kids to do so hope you can make it. By the way, I am in charge of the bake sale and I understand there's going to be cakes, cupcakes and cookies on top of my two items. Come on you sweet tooth...you know you want to swing by SBC. :)

This is a lotus bloom, very symbolic in Asian culture and especially if you are Buddhist. I don't have time to go into detail. I just wanted to share its beauty with you and wish you all a wonderful weekend with family, friends or on your own if you are just chillaxing solo (that's what the kids say these days, lol). Take care.

Wesley Harper United Methodist Church

Last night Mark presented another talk on his book during the Juneteenth celebration at Wesley Harper United Methodist on Court Street. We had a very nice crowd join us and I never tire of listening to and watching Mark talk about his research. What is really nice is that everyone has really been wonderfully accepting and very interested in the book. Sometimes people ask if we have encountered any negative reactions since this IS about slavery. The answer is, we have not. It doesn't seem to matter the skin color of the reader, they just want to know about their/our history. And Seguin's history. It has been a truly wonderful to experience this whole adventure with Mark.



We also had musical performers for the evening: The Lampkin Family Gospel Group. Talk about beautiful. We first heard them during a musical program at Second Baptist Church a few years ago and we loved them! I was sooooo excited when I saw that they were on the program along with Mark as well as a young artist from Seguin, Howard Crunk (Howard displayed several beautiful pieces of his paintings and wood sculptures). If you have not heard of the Lampkins and you enjoy gospel music, then you should definitely check them out. They have two CDs out (available at Hastings) and they also brought home an award from the 2009 San Antonio Gospel Music Awards! The Seguin paper did a story back in May on the family, which you can read here. If you'd like to hear some of their music, search for their MySpace page and check out "God is Good." I love that one. :)

400th Post - Woo hoo!

I finally made it to my 400th post! I was going to post earlier this week but I wanted my 400th one to be special and not just some rush job. Work was busy this week and tiring too, so saving this for Friday made it a special treat for me.

This is a shot of part of the Goodrich House, a property owned by Second Baptist Church. It's located on Goodrich Street, behind the church, and behind the house is Walnut Creek. We use the church for celebratory events and sometimes even for a youth sleepover. It's a nice old house with wood floors and lots of windows. And this wonderful chimney. I just love the brick work and the lines you see in the chimney and siding. It's one of my favorite photos.

I love red brick. I grew up in North Carolina and brick is used a lot there for building. I went to North Carolina State University (go Wolfpack!) and on campus, there must be millions of bricks used for buildings, walls, courtyards, etc. As a matter of fact, we have a beautiful area near the main campus library that is a hub for campus life. We called it the Brickyard. I love that place.

We were leaving the Goodrich House one day after an event and I remember the day was just beautiful. Crisp, chilly day with endless blue skies. And I remember looking up and seeing how beautiful the house looked against the sky. So I took out my camera and shot a ton of photographs. That's what blogging has taught me. How to really see all the wonderful, beautiful things around me. I have learned to better appreciate many things since I started this blog and I am really happy that I am still photographing and blogging.

Thank you everyone who has visited here. And for those of you who have left comments, for those who have seen me around town or at work and talked to me...thank you for letting me know you enjoy the blog and the photos. It was what kept me going. Just when I get lazy or tired of doing this or I start to wonder if anyone cares what I post, one of you tells me in some way that you like this. And that fuels me. So thanks! :)

Hurricane Ike

I'm back! It's good to be home but what a busy, busy time it is. We had a great day at work with lots of end of the year and birthday festivities. Very fun. And it was so wonderful to see everyone! I didn't realize how much I really missed being in town and at work. Lots of hugging, socializing, celebrating and catching up. And somewhere in there, we did manage to do some work.

This church is across the street from us and I saw that they are set up to shelter some evacuees who are escaping Hurricane Ike, which is set to hit the Houston area tonight. That's about 2.5 to 3 hours from Seguin. Last night on the way home from the SA airport, we noticed a lot of traffic going west. (By the way, thanks honey for joining that traffic to pick me up!)

There's more traffic in and around town. I think after Katrina and Rita, people take evacuations much more seriously.

I'll try to post another one before I leave Sunday. One more week in California and I'm home an entire week! I am so looking forward to that!

Second Baptist Youth Celebration

Yesterday at Second Baptist, we celebrated the youth and they did us proud with a singing, dancing and their big hearts and smiles. We have some really great kids at church. Afterwards, everyone enjoyed some delicious brisket and sausage with potato salad, beans and this great cake. One of my coworker's sister made it and most of it was gone by the time we left. It was a really great day.

Ducks at Second Baptist

We were at church over the weekend and these pretty ducks kept flying by us. They come back by the church every year I am told. It's so funny because I have never seen them on land. They are either flying or they are perched on a building or tree. I'll find a close-up shot so you all can help me identify them.

These two hung out all morning Saturday. They stuck together even though there were several other ducks hanging out across the street behind the church. Walnut Creek runs behind there and it seemed the majority of the ducks were by the creek. I shot this standing on the ground, looking up at the church roof. I liked the sky a lot that day.

Kicking off the Easter weekend...

Yesterday morning, we both had the day off for Good Friday so we had a full day planned. At 7:00 a.m., we went to Second Baptist Church for the annual Easter Prayer Breaksfast. There was a great turnout and we had singing, a wonderful guest speaker, a great breakfast and a lot of fun. I helped out in the kitchen with a fun group of ladies. Here's one of them preparing one of my favorites for b-fast...grits! I had some later with sausage. Yum!

After that, we took a coworker into San Antonio for lunch at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant and so that we could get to know him. He was visiting from Australia on a work exchange program. It was really fun to learn more about him and Australia. After lunch, we headed up north of Austin to see family in Burnet. We visited for a while and still got back in time to catch the last quarter of a Spurs game. Full day, full of fun. Hope you are all enjoying the weekend as well. Today was work in the garden day so I'll post something about it tomorrow!