Hard Work Finally Pays Off!

For those who may not know, my husband's hobby is BBQ. That's a noun, not a verb and it's slow cooked meat that usually is smoked. For lots more information than you probably care to know go to KCBS for details.

We cook in several contest each year, but Shelby, NC is our favorite contest because we have many friends and family members in Shelby and they all come out to support us. I think it was the fan club's support that has helped us out so much for the past two years and this year was especially wonderful!

Yes! We won a plaque and some money! Actually we won two plaques and two checks. Our first call to go up and collect an award came in the Pork category.

Here we are accepting the handmade plaque and the check!

Then we got called to come up again to receive a plaque and a check for 5th place in brisket.

To say we were in shock is an under statement. I almost didn't recognize our name when they called it the first time and certainly not the second time!

Last year we won some money, but only the top 5 places get plaques and that didn't happen. We were thrilled to get plaques this year! The BBQ contest is sponsored by home builders, cabinet makers and contractors and the plaques are one of a kind. I was thrilled to get the plaques and the checks didn't hurt either! I think we may have actually broken even for this contest.

The best part came at the end. We found out that for the second year in a row we were fourth overall. That was fourth out of 55 teams this year and 63 teams last year.

I think cooking in very very cold temperatures may be our speciality!

Art Class Update

Warning - lots of Grandchild pictures to follow.

Today was are last day of this art school session. We'll be going again for 6 weeks after a week break.

Here we're glueing fabric on a huge fabric coat for the class.

Then we painted a picture of a jacket. If the activity includes a paint brush, Faith loves it.

Faith has her Grandma's technique for holding two pencils in one hand while drawing in her book with the other.

Faith is sewing on buttons to a piece of fabric while Grandma holds the end to keep them from falling off before we get the string tied.

The most important thing about art is that it's the process, not the product that matters and we both have loved the process!

Flower Shopping

After art class, Faith tried to get Grandma to pick some wildflowers along the parking lot (lots of high weeds) and not where Grandma wanted to venture too far. So Grandma decided to reward all of Faith's careful obedience at art school with some potted flowers. We stopped and did a little flower shopping. Faith loves to pick flowers, but after careful instructions that she could touch the flowers and smell the flowers, but not pick the flowers, she was off to find just the one she wanted.

Faith carefully smelled and touched each one and never once attempted to pick any of the blossoms.

She carefully inspected and named each color of each one she saw.

And then finally settled on the "Purple" even though Grandma was suggesting the red. Faith knew what she likes and besides the Purple smelled the best!

Note: That white on her arm is paint -- after all we just came from art class!