By the way

I didn't have any grandchildren when 2000 arrived and now I have three...God is good.

End of the Decade

Hard to believe that tonight ends the decade of the zeros.

Ten years ago I didn't have a Blackberry, an Ipod, a Facebook account, a Blog...what a difference the decade has made.

Please be sure to celebrate responsibly and don't drink and drive.

May God bless you in the decade of the tens.

Still Kicking

It has been a while since I updated this blog but I am still kicking.

I have been busy this Fall and so not much blog time, just work time.

Yesterday I spent the day decorating the yard for Christmas and it is a full day's work. I have a lot of lights and a choreographed sound and light show.

No I Haven't Fallen in a Hole

Work gets really consuming this time of the year and I don't have much personal time for anything including my blog.

We are having a home cooked meal tonight including a new dish i am trying out where I took some boneless pork ribs and grilled them with salt and pepper and then came in and am simmering for now over two and a half hours in a roux I made from pineapple juice, a whole tomato diced, a whole pear diced, a tablespoon of peanut butter, and a dash of crushed red pepper.

Cheryl has Fordhooks, creamed corn, scalloped potatoes, pork and rice, stewed squash...mmmmmmmmm is supper ever going to be good.

I love creating new dishes, especially if they have either peanuts or hot pepper in them. My meat tonight has both.

Home Again

I have been so busy lately and on the road for this and that. I have been out of town for a couple weekends. It felt so good to be back teaching Sunday School this morning and being in the choir loft for Church. I have missed that the past two weeks. It seems like an eternity.

It is so nice to have a whole week with no travel on my calendar right now though that may change tomorrow with a few field days which are at hand.

I love sleeping in my own bed. I enjoy Cheryl's company and frankly love being with her. We truly have a good time together most of the time. Well, we are married you know, 23 years this November 22nd.

It will also be nice to be at choir practice this week for the first time in a month or more.

Next Sunday I will teach Sunday School and then leave and go to Conner's church to see him be baptised. What a great gift. But first comes Wednesday. Cole will be 6. Oh how hard that is to believe. His party will be Saturday and it will be a big throw down at Dream It Gymnastics. Don't watch for me on the balance beam.

Yard Work

Cheryl and I have a beautiful yard. We both worked in the yard all day yesterday. We pruned plants, dug up unwanted volunteer plants and planted them in pots so they could be put where they would be wanted, edged all the flower beds, planted bargain plants from Lowe's, and so much more. You need to drive by and see how good it looks. We have never gotten the beauty spot of the month or week or whatever it is but we sure earned it yesterday with all the work we did in the yard. Did I mention I hate to do yard work. I would like it a lot more if it happened in the winter when it is cool. Here are some pictures I took this morning before Church.

OK Hope You Didn't Give Up on Me

I know it has been a bit since my last post but work and Summer seem to be getting in the way of blogging.

I took the two eldest grandsons, Conner and Cole to the lake the Tuesday night and Wednesday before the Fourth of July and we had a blast. It was the first time I had been off like that just the three of us. It is so much fun to have them old enough that we can do it and do lake time.

We went to Walmart and bought some groceries and the movie, "King Kong," and Cole saw part of it and Conner and I were true to all three hours and eight minutes of it. We got to bed at 2 AM.

We were so late starting because we had to shoot off the fireworks we had to buy because they were not going to be there for the Fourth and so we had to have our Fourth early. I love the way little boys think. The logic is actually hard to argue with.

This past Wednesday a week ago, I went to the lake to cut the grass that night because I was going to be out of pocket a while and didn't need the yard to get to looking like a jungle. The next morning I got up and left at 5 going to Atlanta to the airport and then to a meeting in Buckhead to speak. I then left Atlanta, back by the airport and then headed out to Panama City for the Southern Peanut Growers Conference.

I had a little entertainment on the way. A tractor trailer full of scrap paper was on fire in Harris County on I-185. Harris County probably doesn't have a really large fire budget but they did OK. I traveled 2 miles in an hour and got all my emails answered on my blackberry. I got to PC in time to meet Cheryl, Erika, and Jason for a late supper.

Mama and Daddy came over to visit while we were there and spent a couple nights on a sleeper sofa. They didn't complain. It was great seeing them.

Mama turns 80 on the eighth day of the eighth month this year. We are having a birthday party for her on the first of August and Cheryl and I will be going with Bart and Kip and Conner and Cole. We have a condo at the beach so that we don't tax the bathrooms at Mama and Daddy's house. Erika will be recuperating from back surgery to clean out a ruptured disk which is pressing on the sciatic nerve...ouch!

Well, that about has you caught up on me.

Yardwork

I love having a pretty yard but frankly I don't much care fr yardwork. I figured out why when it was already 90 when I started at 7:30 this morning and it just whips you. Can somebody invent grass and plants that grow in the winter and are dormant in the Summer?

I have been doing some yardwork now for three days and both yards look great. Still it angered me when I pulled up in the driveway a bit ago and there was already a limb down.

It's Hot Out There

It sure is getting hot out there. I do really well from about 60 to 80 degrees. Anything outside of that range and my mechanical efficiency goes down in a hurry.

Pictures of Last Weekend

Flowers in the Church

The flowers in church today were placed in memory of Brad by Inez and Erika and Jason.

They were absolutely beautiful and so many folks commented on them.

I told several people it was in remembrance that this Wednesday Brad will spend his third birthday in Heaven. Only thing is that he is not getting any older where he is so I am not sure birthdays matter much to him there.

Still I cannot bring myself to grieve for him, only for myself.

Lunch with Cole

Today I had lunch with Cole. He wanted a Krystal cheeseburger, fires, and sweet tea. He only ate about three bites of the hamburger and a few of the fries and half the glass of tea. He said the hamburger was squishy and I tried to get him to try another one that was not squishy and he then told me he was not hungry and he would get a sucker after speech class. I worried about him but he seemed to be as happy as a lark and frankly I was too. Time with family is a gift and sometimes time alone with one or two members is special time. Here is his picture. What a precious little boy he is and when he hugs you it is so tender and great. I am so blessed that my grandsons are all willing to give you a hug. I love them so much. Oh yes and their parents too.

Bart and Kip Helped

Cheryl fussed at me and rightly so, I praised Erika's Sunday School class and failed to mention Bart and Kip.

Frankly, I need to praise Linda and Roger, too. I didn't know until Friday night for sure that Roger even knew how to hold a drill, much less put up a curtain rod. And he called me Mr. Handyman. Ha! And, Linda was there doing anything she needed to do to help Erika. The last two years have been exhausting for her but she has never once complained.

Bart and Kip, well Bart was invaluable to me in helping move stuff and clean up the loose ends after everyone else had left and it was just family. Kip has the sweetest and most easy going way about her. I thanked Bart and he just said it was what family does.

As I write this I can't help but weep. I miss Brad so much and my tears are certainly only for me and not him. He is in a wonderful place. Still I have realized more and more in the past two years just how fortunate I am to have the gift of family the creator blessed me with.

And then there is Cheryl. She has watered plants, cleaned off the slab at the cemetery, helped check on stuff, and done so much to be a help in the past two years. I am thankful she is about to have time to catch her breath. I really cherish the weekend we had a couple weeks ago at the lake. We had time to just fart around, do nothing worthwhile and just enjoy each other's company, plus she got to meet the manager of Home Depot in Cordele who was disappointed with her leaving the store with nothing. She told him the mini blind that would fit the window was too expensive...about $40. He asked her what she would pay for it and she said $19 like the cheaper blind. He sold it to her for that. Man if I ever build a house I am letting her go shopping one piece at a time.

Looking at my family I really do know that God is Good.

And by the way my almost adopted son Ryan was also there. He is a fine young man.

Moving Erika - God is Good

Last weekend we moved Erika and Jason in to their new house.

I went by the cemetery first and had a good cry and talk with Brad. I told him how much I miss him even though I know he is here. A heavenly body has no limits so why wouldn't he be. But we like the Disciples of 2000 years ago fail to recognize it unless their is something that opens our eyes.

After the cemetery I went to Erika's new house and met her Sunday School Class there. I am becoming quite fond of my children's generation. For her class to show up and help was amazing. By the time three hours had passed the furniture had been moved from storage and was in its place, pictures were hung, drapes had been steamed, all the dishes were washed and put away, any unpacked boxes were in their prospective room and believe me there were really very few of those boxes.

I could not ever thank those young people enough.

Their generation spends time with family, they are really pretty social beings with their own group, they take time to help others and never complain, they seem to have achieved a true balance in life.

After watching that Sunday School Class work and the spirit they demonstrated...I can tell you they live the example that "God is Good."

Oh What a Night

I am in Atlanta doing the Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining show.

Yesterday was setup and meant a lot of trips to and from the truck to unload for the exhibit.

This normally would not have been an issue but Monday morning I was coming down with an attack of gout, only my third ever and the first in many years. Red wine cause me to gt gout so after I discovered that I have sworn off of that forever. Don't know what brought this on. Meat, alcohol, and legumes (of which peanuts are) can all be culprits but for me the only causal agent ever was red wine.

I called Affinity to talk to Sheila who is my doctor's nurse. She told me they were backed up and put me through to a triage nurse. Got voice mail. Oh for the days when you could talk to your doctor who knew what made you tick. At 3:10 that afternoon I called back because I thought that had been enough time for me to be taken care of. Another triage nurse and she told me they had closed the clinic because of bad weather. Hmm I was working.

I had to go to Dothan for a meeting the next morning and go there met and then before lunch which was 1:06 in Georgia I called again. She told me my doctor had left for the day and she couldn't help me but perhaps if i could be to the walk in clinic by 1:30 they could see me before the end of the day. I was in Dothan and even the SST could not have gotten me to Tifton that quickly. That night it was getting bad enough I had to have some relief and another doctor friend called me in a prescription for some medicine that dissolves the uric acid in the joint and gets you better.

I started on that prescription right away but had a by then full blown case of the gout.

Hence the trips to the truck really hurt more and more as I went.

I went back to my room and soaked my, now twice its normal size, right bunion in hot epsom salt water. Then I put an icepack on my foot. Did I mention my trip hobbling around Walgreens?

I washed and trimmed the chicken, boiled and peeled eggs, cleaned and trimmed the celery for the next day in my kitchen in the room. At 11 I went to bed after another soak and icing. At 12:38 this morning I was hurting so bad I got up and took a shower and dressed and called the front desk to find an emergency room.

He sent me on a mystery trip because one road he told me to turn on as I can tell does not exist. Did I mention he had a funny accent from a foreign land?

I stopped at a 24 hr CVS and no one there could tell me where I was supposed to be going and I showed them the directions I had carefully written and read back to the night clerk at the hotel.

I pulled out of the parking lot of CVS which had a pharmacist who sounded a lot like the night clerk at the hotel and was going to back track to see if I had done something wrong. About 200 yards from the CVS a nice police officer pulled me over for driving without lights at sometime about 2 in the morning.

I told him it was an odd way to finally find someone who could give me directions and explained my situation. He told me the hotel had not sent me to the closest ER and told me that it was on South Cobb which was the other way on the road I was traveling.and then take a left and it would be a mile and a half on the left. I asked him if he was going to write me a ticket at that time of the night for making a U-turn and he told me only if I got hit doing so. U uied right in front of the nice officer and his directions were perfect.

At the ER it took a bit of time but they finally got all my paperwork done and I spent much of the time talking to a black lady who was from Queens originally and her mother still lives in Long Island. We talked about the city and she told me it was evident I knew my way around New York City. It passed the time and they called me back and the doctor walked in and immediately diagnosed my foot with a really bad case of the gout. He told me from now on when I had felt the onset I needed to call my family doctor. I spared him the drama of the story.

He gave me a steroid shot and an anti-inflammatory shot...actually it was a nurse who did that. And, two hydrocodone pain pills to take when I got back to my room. Now I don't know what those shots were exactly but I can tell you this...the pain was already easing and the swelling going down by the time I went back by the CVS to get the three prescriptions he had given me filled and got to my hotel. I took the two pain pills and got in bed at 4:30 to arise again at 6:45 to get to the show. If I was rich I would have paid a million dollars a piece for those two shots.

I did the show today virtually pain free and that was on my feet all day long.

I think I will go to bed when I get my shower and catch up on my sleep before the show opens tomorrow.

Easter Fun

Watching Jason and his cousin Peyton hunt Easter Eggs was such fun and a fond reminder of the tradition we had at my Grandpa Holk's house on the river...running around the yard looking for the brightly colored plastic eggs with prizes hidden inside. It was usually either plain M&M's, M&M peanuts, or a well placed shiny new dime we found inside.

Easter is a special time for me. In 2007 it was the last holiday we had with Brad. This was our second Easter with him living in Heaven...somehow there are times I can sense his presence so Heaven must not be that far away.

Because of the empty tomb on that Easter so long ago I have all assurance that Brad is in Heaven and we will see each other again. Praise be to the God of Grace and Mercy.

At the Lake

I had a leadership group in and a meeting at the State Park in Cordele this week so I came up Saturday night and hosted farmers from Texas, Alabama, and Florida at the lake for a cookout Sunday and then we had the classes and the meeting. I finished Wednesday afternoon with perhaps the best round off Golf I have ever had. I shot 102, only lost one ball, had a birdie, three pars, five bogies in the process. Bart taught me to just play my slice and it is working.

I wish Bart and I had more time to play golf together. He has a natural talent and if he played more often he would be an awesome golfer. He is already more than 20 strokes better than me and our last outing he broke 80.

I decided after the chaos of the past couple of months I needed a break so I took yesterday and today off and did some things I needed to here at the lake.

I haven't worked that hard and really not that steady but have finished my tasks. Installed a new drain in the shower, cleaned out and sealed a crack where some roof debris from the new roof had sifted through and have done a better cleaning than I have in a while. I also am taking home mostly clean clothes.

I was sitting outside just a few minutes ago and it was entertaining to listen to the owls talking to each other. I was watching the squirrels today and they are so cute here. I hate them at home because city squirrels are so destructive but these just scavenge and sit there and mind their own business. Everything is so much more laid back at the lake.

I can't wait for Summer to get here so I can bring Conner and Cole and have some guy time with my grandsons.

Snapshots of My Life as of Recent

Has my life ever been hard lately.

January 9th I received a call from the Georgia Department of Agriculture warning me that the Minnesota Department of Health would be holding a press conference an hour later tying peanut butter produced in a factory in Georgia to a nationwide outbreak.

Since then this has been a never ending story. It has pretty much been 24/7 on call and 15 to 19 hour days.

I finally got to take a bit of time off this weekend and though I have been working in the yard and at the lake house it has been good therapy to work my body more and my mind less.

I got a bonus in all of this. While at the lake I heard a noise and looked over to the bottom limb on a tree. What I saw was most exciting for a guy who loves the quiet splendor of nature. A pair of hawks was mating there just about a hundred feet away. If I had only had a camera but it is a memory which I will have for a lifetime. Hawks are not terribly social animals and for me to see this was a once in a lifetime experience for most of us.

In the evening, I was outside as the wind calmed and I could hear the owls talking to one another around the lake. It is amazing how in the hustle and bustle of all that was going on God still reminded me of his greatness.

Geese Flying North

Cheryl and I went for a walk this afternoon after work and what a sight...the geese are headed north.

I was told today that we are in a La Nina weather pattern and so that means a warmer and dryer than normal Spring. Do the geese know this? Who told them?

It is amazing seeing them work in harmony. The lead goose drops back to let another take the lead, all in the name of aerodynamics.

We could take a lesson from the geese.

Good News

In the face of all that has been happening in my life in the peanut industry I have a bit of really good news to report in our personal lives.

My Mother-in-law had surgery yesterday to fix a paralyzed vocal cord. It was such a pleasure to hear her cough. For three years she has not had that ability which is a natural mechanism to help keep us from breathing in germs which can rob us of our health. Even better was to hear her speak and it to be more than the air-ish whisper she has had for three years.

For so long she was told there was nothing which could be done for her and now all of a sudden a voice doctor at Emory University Hospital has restored her voice box to a working organ. What a great happening.

A Busy Saturday

Today was really a busy Saturday. We moved Erika and Jason's things from the house she is selling to the storage facility. In May we will get to do it all over again.

She took us on a tour of her new house which is basically floors and walls at this juncture. It is really going to be very nice. Very open and in a nice subdivision that is out of town just a little bit.

I know this is all hard for her but she seems so stoic.

She and Brad started their life together in the house she is moving out of so it has a lot of memories. Brad always told me that was not where they would stay. He would love the location of the new house. I am so proud for Erika and Jason.

Speaking of Jason he is so cute and gave me a hug, high five and let em push him around on the hand truck.

Washington This Week

It has been a busy and interesting week. My normal schedule is to be in bed by 10 and up about 5 but not this week. Late nights and don't set an alarm.

We attended the Georgia Society Ball on Monday night and the Agricultural Gala on Tuesday night. Tuesday during the day we hosted (with rice and cotton) a parade viewing room with a great view of the parade route from the JW Marriott. It was a great event but a lot of folks in a hotel room. There was a lot of togetherness.

Crowds have been everywhere but we have managed very well. The subway was packed the other day...wall to wall people.

Last night we had dinner with Congressman Bishop's staff and today we do lunch with Congressman Kingston and his staff.

Tomorrow we head home. I am ready.

It has been cold but the new coat Cheryl bought me for Christmas has been so toasty.


The Subway Cheryl on the Subway

The President in his Limo

Wow I Am Sure Tired

Home at last, I would love to get some rest but that is not in the works it doesn't seem.

Today made twelve days in a row without a day off. They were hard days, too. Tuesday week I had a meeting out of town and that Wednesday I had to go out of town to do a TV Show. Then that Thursday after lunch Mark that works with me and I struck out for San Antonio with an exhibit and peanuts for American Farm Bureau. San Antonio is a long way from Tifton GA. Monday we exhibited until 3:00 PM and broke things down and headed east. At 3:3o am Tuesday we stopped on the edge of Pensacola Bay to get a few hours sleep. At 8 we headed out for the rest of our trip back so we could unload the truck and then re-load for our board meeting and setup for the 33rd annual GA Peanut Farm Show in Albany on Wednesday morning. I got back from Albany today about 4 PM.

I have always heard no rest for the weary but next week Cheryl and I accompany my Chairman and his wife to Washington for the Inauguration and meetings with some of our Congressmen and folks at USDA who deal with food aid.

Remember to give peanut butter to your local food bank.

The Alamo

Here is the picture I mentioned in my last post....the Alamo with a full moon overhead

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Remember the Alamo

What a trip out. The number one job in Louisiana is being a State Trooper and we saw at least 50 of them on our four hour trip through that state.

We got the exhibit setup and went to tour the Alamo yesterday and have had Tex Mex food to the heart's desire.

Tomorrow we tear down and head home after the 3 pm close of the show.

Last night I got a beautiful picture of the Alamo with a full moon over head.

Back to Work

It is hard to believe that the Christmas vacation is over and Monday it will be back to work. I will be traveling a lot in January so I really will be happy to be rested so I can hit the ground running.