Easter in Texas

Thea, Debbie, and Emily posed in front of the Texas Longhorn statues outside the Forth Worth Convention Center. We had a fun girl's weekend checking out Thea's new stomping grounds around Dallas and Forth Worth.

Thea invested in a Garmin GPS unit to help her navigate the way to her many new sales clients. We also used it to help us find our way around site seeing. Debbie and Emily must have drove in 3 circles one day before we figured out the street had a different name than the GPS unit. You know you've made a mistake when the GPS announces in a very exasperated voice: "Recalculating"

Debbie and Thea are showing off the delicious Tex-Mex we ate one night.

Emily is seen here at the entrance of the Forth Worth Nature Center. She and Debbie took some time on Fri morning to visit the center. Emily interviewed the nature center manager for a class in leadership in EE organizations that she has been taking at FAU this spring.

They had a small buffalo herd in a natural history display that they use to naturally maintain parts of the property.

We got to see Texas Blue Bells, the state flower, in full bloom.

Thea showed off her new Hormel food prep skills and made us a wonderful Easter dinner of Hormel pork loin, roasted potatoes,Texas style creamed corn, and Aunt Mildred's famous orange salad.

It was delicious!

We went down to the Forth Worth Stockyards and saw the cattle drive renactment. We also visited the Grassy Knoll and saw the "X's" on the road where JFK was shot in Dallas. It was a wonderful weekend getaway and a chance to soak up some of the rich U.S. history that took place in Texas.

Spring Swing

Pine Jog holds an annual fundraiser at The Harriet in City Place called Spring Swing. There is a silent auction, dinner, and live swing band. It is a lot of fun and a good excuse to get dressed up.

Most people on staff work the event. We were in charge of monitoring the silent auction upstairs and assisting the photographer corral people for photos.

After the auction was over we did get to sip a martini and take some fun photos.

Please ignore the kissing.....it was the only shot of the fun "updo" Emily got done for the event

Here are some silly shots we took out on the veranda

Emily with several of her co-workers Katie, Mo, and Kristi Katie and Corey both work as teaching staff and graduate students at Pine Jog
Soon to be Chris and Kristi Moyer (they are engaged to be married in the fall). Kristi is the land manager at Pine Jog. She coordinates most of the work that we do in exchange for housing.

The totals aren't in yet, but we typically make about $30,000 at this event. It is one of our biggest fundraisers of the year.

Pine Jog Trail Work

We do 20 hours of work a week in exchange for Emily's housing and storage for most of Jonathan's tools and materials he salvages from his job site. After the lightening storm and brush fires there was lots of trail work to be done. Here are some fun shots of us working together. Jonathan tried his hand at driving a tractor with a hydrolic blade attachment to smooth out the trails where the fire trucks tore it up.

Fun Fact: Emily learned to drive a tractor almost identical to this one long before she started driving cars.
This is the wood chipper attached to the Pine Jog work truck. Our next task was to drive the perimeter trail and chip up any dead trees along the trail that had fallen during the storm.
We had a truck load in less than an hour. Emily is leaning on the truck decked out in her chainsaw helmet and chaps.
We used rakes to spread the chips on another section where trucks had damaged the trail.
Next week we are powerwashing the pool deck and waterproofing it with a sealer to help prevent algae growth.