This is the time of year in Robertson County when tourists stop and say, "Hey, your barn is on fire!" We have not had that happen in a few years because they have not used the tobacco barn that is near our house in quite a while. Just about everywhere you look though you see barns with smoke rolling out of them. The smell of this smoke is the thing I always missed when I was away at college.
HOLD YOUR EARS. Nate has discovered a new sound and he loves to try it out. It happens to be an ear piercing screech. We've never heard a sound like that come out of such a little fellow but he seems to enjoy making it.
I DIDN"T REALIZE IT STARTED SO EARLY. On Wednesday night Jenna, Nate and I rode to church together. As I was getting Nate and myself ready to go Jenna went to the back hall. She called to me and said, "Daddy, which of these shoes should I wear?"
I replied, "I can't see what you've got. You'll have to come in here with them."
A moment later she walked into the bedroom where Nate and I were. She had a white sandal on one foot and a brown sandal on the other. It was my opinion that the white sandal looked better with the clothes she had on. With that she said, "No, I think I like the brown one better." Then she turned and walked away.
My, "Why did you even bother to ask me for?" comment was met with a little giggle. With that I looked at Nate and said, "Nate, there's a woman somewhere down inside that little girl."
NEW CLOTHES. The other day Vicki found Ben an outfit on sale. It consisted of a shirt, pants with suspenders, a sweater and necktie. When she had Ben try the clothes he danced around and said, "I pwetty, I pwetty," and scampered off to the bathroom to look at himself in the full length mirror. Ben obviously did not inherit my lack of appreciation for dressy clothes.
TIPPING THE SCALES. You'll remember that I reported to you that we started Nate on rice cereal two weekends ago. Just a few days before that he had gone in for a checkup for an ear infection in both ears. He weighed 19 lb. at that visit. Vicki took Nate back to the doctor on Monday to check his ears again. This time he weighed in at 21 lb. and had healthy ears.
GOODNESS, GRACIOUS, GREAT BALL OF FIRE. We (including Mom) went to the Hot Air Affair last night. This was a fund raiser for the Bill Wilkerson Center at the Vanderbilt Medical Center. I counted over 25 hot air balloons there. Jenna and Ben chose to call them fire balloons. About 10 balloons took off for a race right after we got there, about 8 balloons were giving tethered rides, and about 12 were inflated to do balloon glows after dark. The line was too long for us to take balloon rides but there were plenty of activities for kids. It was a lot of fun. The emcee said the common thing was for one to spend $40 for their first balloon ride and $15,000 for their next (due to purchasing a balloon). Even though the tethered rides were $5 I guess its just as well that I stayed on the ground.
AN UPDATE. Since May I have found a few errors and learned a few new things to warrant writing an addendum to The Call of the Whistle book. I will be posting it as a PDF file on my web site (link now defunct) sometime in the next few days.
Joe
