A Day in the Field

Today, I am in Lake Charles for a project trip. Four other project team members and I flow down today for a two day trip to gather information for a tank project. We arrived mid-day (just in time for lunch) then we headed to the terminal for a one hour safety training course. After that, we headed to the field. There had been a lot of discussion about where to locate the tank because we are putting it in the same dike area as another tank and according to NFPA there are certain spacing requires. The surveyors had been out earlier and had marked the final location of the tank and the civil contractor had probed for buried lines. Mark, the mechanical designer, and I went and measured where everything is so we can develop the plot plans. The current plot plans are fairly out of date. Then, Larry, the project manager, gave us a tour of the terminal. I have worked on several projects for this terminal, but this is the first time I had visited the terminal, so it was pretty cool the see some of the things I had worked.


Once we were finished for the day, we headed back to the same restaurant for dinner: Steamboat Bill’s – a Cajun crawfish, seafood restaurant. My project manager loves seafood! I am not a huge fan of seafood, but I don’t hate it either and I always say don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. So, I had shrimp etoufee for lunch (which I had never heard of before) and boiled shrimp. Etoufee was like Cajun gravy served over rice with shrimp. It was pretty good, as with most seafood; I think it’s gross when it’s cold.

For dinner, Larry ordered a few pounds of crawfish for an appetizer (pictured on the left). The picture to the right is the portion I eat. Crawfish aren't that bad, but it sure is alot of work.

Spring Is Here!

Last fall, I planted about 100 tulips in our front flower bed. When I plant bulbs I am always afraid that I will plant them upside down or too deep and then they won't come up. In our fast paced world it is so hard to complete a task for which you can't see the results for several months. For several days now, every where I go I have noticed that spring flower bulbs have started pushing through the dirt. Today, I finally check my own flower beds to see if there was any green pushing through. Below is what I saw. Yah!!!

Eva Rose

Here are some new pictures of Eva Rose, Chris and Lori's baby (Lori's my sister). These were when Eva was 4 month's old which were taken a few weeks ago.

ABC 1 . . .2 . . . that's right 3!

Yesterday evening, we held a triple baby shower for three mom's in my SS class who were all having their second baby. Of the three mom's was my sister, Dani who is expecting Baby Girl #2 in March. The evening was filled with conversation as about 30 women showed up to encourage and "shower" these moms with essentials for their second baby. Here are the three expecting Mom's (from front to back: Dani Jackson (my sis), Darcie Niels and Jen Smoliak. Darcie is having another boy and Jenny is having boy (her first is a girl).

Day One

Our first day of skiing was really awesome. We had really great weather. The temperatue was about 20 - 30 F with a really light wind and clear sky. Here is a picture of Robert (my cousin) after he successfully snowboarded down the mountain without falling and the other is a picture of him carving his way down the mountain. This only the second time Robert has ever snowboarded and he has really caught on quickly.

Motivation

Need ideas for motivating your AWANA clubbers? Give this a try! Bec is an LIT (leader in training) at our church. She helps with the 5th & 6th T&T girls club and she is helping me as a T&T Bible Quiz coach. Noticing that some of the girls were no longer motivated to finish their books, Bec gave them a little incentive. The first girl to finish their book would get to pour a bucket of water on Bec. As you can tell from the picture, this definitely got the girls motivated. Now Bec brings a bucket with her each week to club and who ever (in her group) has finished their book gets to pour the water on.

Useful Tool

Have you ever planned a large party and tried keeping track of all the RSVPs? Evite is the perfect way to eliminate all those hassles. I have used evite for several occassions including baby showers, birthday parties and most recently a Super Bowl party. Evite is really neat in that you can have guests not only indicate whether or not they can attend, but they can also sign up to bring something, like chips and dip or soda.

I started using this for invitations after trying to keep track of over 60 attendees for my sisters baby shower. Sorry this sounds like a commercial for evite, but this is a really great site. I am currently planning a triple shower for my sister and two other mothers in my Sunday school class who are all having their second child.