Happy Holidays!

Hi all! Obviously, I have taken a very long break from my blog and will continue for a while longer. Nothing is wrong. We are all doing very well (sometimes I get concerned emails if I have not posted in a while). I will be back to posting after things settle down from the holidays. We are not sending out Christmas cards this year so here is to wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

God bless,
The Godfreys




Free Comments and Graphics

The Many Faces of Brack

Brack came home to spend the night a couple of weekends ago. He was showing me all of the cool things about his new Macintosh computer. He has one feature in particular called iChat. It lets you chat on-line with other users using a build-in video on his mac. The funny thing about using the video is that you can choose to distort your face while you are talking to the other person. He and I set-up late one night playing with it (while Danny was asleep in the bedroom). It is so funny the way it distorts your face. Check out this video.

The Bridge Video

This is a great video with a powerful message!

Picking Muscadines

This past Saturday, Danny and I went muscadine picking with my cousins. My cousin Nancy and her husband, Johnny have a cabin in Dennard, AR. They invited us up to see their place and pick muscadines. We drove up there with my other cousin, Mary and her son, Shane. We had fun! Nancy and Johnny's cabin is up on a steep mountain. We had to drive up a very rough road. Here are some pictures and video clips of our adventure.


This picture is of me, Shane, Mary, Nancy and Johnny. We stopped on the way up to the cabin to check out the vista.

Danny, Shane, Johnny, Mary and Nancy are picking away.

This picture is the view that Nancy and Johnny have from the back of their cabin. Beautiful!
This is another view of the vista off of their bluff.
As we were walking around picking muscadines, we stopped by and visited Nancy and Johnny's neighbors. They had several animals. Two in particular were these pygmy nigerian goats. They were so adorable and friendly. They wanted to taste everything; our shirts, jeans and my bottled water. And of course one of them had to pooh right in front of us.
We also got a rare glipse of a bobcat that was under Nancy and Johnny's bluff eating his prey. Shane and Mary saw the bobcat first and then called for us to come to the bluff and look. Danny managed to get a picture of the bobcat. It was difficult to get a clear picture.

The first video is of Mary holding down a branch that is loaded with muscadines while the rest pick the branch clean. The second video is of us riding in the truck behind Nancy and Johnny up the mountain. Danny is being cocky about not needing to put his truck in four wheel drive (although he slipped a few times). The road was very rough so the camera is bounching around.




Thanks for inviting us up to your hideout, Nancy and Johnny. Mary & Shane - I hope you didn't get poison ivy!! Love you guys!

Goodbye Sabby

(A post by Danny....)
This past Saturday (October 4, 2008) my sister Kathy and my brother-in-law Randy were faced with a tough decision. Their beloved dog Sabby was at the end stages of kidney disease and had to be put down. The words to follow may sound corny to some people. In fact, some 5+ years ago before Melissa and I brought Boo and Chloe into our home, I probably would have felt the same way. You see...when you raise them as a pup and they spend every night in your home, sleep in your bed, beg at the dinner table, tell you when it's time to potty and alert you when company is coming to the door, they become much more than a pet. They become an extension of your family.

Raising a dog is similar to raising children with the exception being that they never outgrow you. They never lose their dependency on you for shelter, food, water, and affection. Although they do require affection they dish out more than they ever take. They are always there to meet you at the door when you come home and are always overjoyed to see you as if you have been gone for a week. They don't care that you might have had a bad day or are in a bad mood. They are always happy you are home. There is just something about their innocense and unconditional love that makes them special.

Sabby was just that kind of pet. He came into their lives a little over 12 1/2 years ago. Not long after Kathy and Randy met. Kathy had two children from a previous marriage as did Randy. They always joked that Sabby was their child together. Sabby's first treat of people food was a plain hamburger from a drive through. For 12 1/2 years Sabby watched the kids grow from elementary school, to junior high, high school and graduation. He was there to greet every trick or treater that came to the door on Halloween. For 12 1/2 years he cowered in the house hiding from the fireworks going off on the forth. For 12 1/2 years he begged for scraps from the dinner table at Thanksgiving and he was always the first to wake and get to the tree at Christmas...and believe me, he knew which gifts were his. For 12 1/2 year he de-stuffed every stuffed animal he got except his favorite which was a little Taco Bell Chihuahua named "Lizard Lizard".

This is just a snapshot of the memories that Sabby leaves behind. There are far too many more to write about in a blog. It's easy to see how painful it is when you lose something that has been such a part of your life every day for all of those years. Last Friday as Sabby refused to eat again, Kathy and Randy took Sabby to a drive through and ordered him a plain hamburger which they broke in to small pieces and fed to him. As it turns out that was his last people food as well. Sabby will be greatly missed. I'll close this by saying "Sabby you were a good boy...you were a good good boy". Danny

Sabby meets his cousin Chloe

Sabby and Boo in our backyard.

Sabby at the Christmas tree Mug Shot
Playing frisbee

Precious

I got an email yesterday that had several cute pictures. I thought this picture was adorable. HAPPY FRIDAY! Hope you have a great weekend. The weather has been awesome!

Fall is in the air! Ahhh....

It's just paint.

Danny and I have been involved in painting our living, kitchen, hall and foyer. It has been needing it for a while. It took me a looong time to pick out a color too. I brought home several Sherwin Williams samples. I taped them to the walls and looked at them all the time trying to determine which one I liked best. I kept eliminating one color after the other until I was down to just two colors. Then when I made up my mind on the color, I headed off to the paint store while Danny stayed behind to do the prep work. Once I got to Sherwin Williams, I totally changed my mind and picked a color I had not even considered (Why did I do that?!). The result...less than what I was hoping for. The color was much lighter than what I wanted. But when you spend $175 on 5 gallons of paint, you cannot easily change your mind. Besides, the color was tolerable. I picked an accent color (Latte) that I loved though. Oh well...

Longpool Falls

The day after Hurricane Ike blew through Arkansas, Danny wanted to make a run up to Longpool Falls outside of Dover, AR to see if it was flowing. So, on Sunday afternoon we took off for a quick run up to Dover. The fall was not disappointing. It was flowing just as he suspected. One thing I noticed on the way to the waterfall was all the different type of mushrooms that had sprouted up everywhere. I guess with the excess moisture we have had, it provided just the right environment for mushrooms to thrive. I took the picture below of a patch of HUGE mushrooms that were right by the parking lot area. As I was examining the mushrooms, I noticed a grand-daddy long legged spider underneath one side of the mushroom. I thought it would make a cool (but kind of creepy) picture. Check it out...

In the picture below, Danny is negotiating his shot. You can see some of his final pics. on his blog.

I took this video clip of the stream and waterfall with my camera. You can see how the water was flowing.

Itchy all over

For the past 4 weeks, I have had not one, but two of the worst cases of poison ivy rashes ever!! The first episode showed up on my right shoulder blade and down my right side. I suspect that I somehow got it from Danny because he had just gotten back from a clean-up day at his deer camp and said he had been all in the stuff (He is not allergic to it by the way!). So I lived through that horrible itchy stuff for two painful weeks then once it started clearing up, I got another bad case of poison ivy all over my stomach area. It is still a mystery how I got the second one so bad. The only logical thing I can come up with is that Danny and I had gone hiking right before the rash appeared but I have no idea how I got it so bad underneath my shirt and not on my arms which were exposed. Danny says that he is secretly rubbing ivy leaves on me at night while I sleep. If I get it again, I am going to start sleeping with one eye open and a hammer in one hand! I am scratching right now as I write this!!!

Funny Tee

I love this t-shirt!! I think I'm going to start saying this a lot to people and see how many people I can annoy!! Kidding, of course, but still love the t-shirt! Have a great weekend!

Facebook

Well, I have succumbed to peer pressure and created a Facebook page! I finally decided to see what the entire hubbub was about. At first, I did not get it. But after playing around with it and seeing what it is used for, I can kind of see why it is so popular with the younger generation and now, surprisingly, the older generation is getting on board! A few years ago I set-up a FB account so that I could spy on Brack and Mike to keep a check on them. At the time, I thought all you needed to be able to see someone’s page was to set-up an account but I later found out that you have to be accepted as one of their “friends” before you are allowed to see their FB page. So anyway, I set up this account using a bogus name and since I was trying to be sneaky, I used the name, “Peeka Boo” (ya know, as in peeka-boo, I see you!...). So okay…fast forward to a few days ago when I finally decided to officially create my own FB page. When I accepted the invitation from a couple of people to become one of their FB friends, I showed up on their page with no picture and the name Peeka Boo - oops! I had to quickly upload a photo and change my name – ha!

It really is a great and fun way to interact with friends and acquaintances. It is very socially interactive. I found out last night that you can send a friend a potted plant that virtually grows a little each day into a full bloom – cute! There are tons of different applications you can choose from to add to your page. It also baffles me of how many friends these kids can gather. Some people have amassed hundreds and hundreds of friends!! Do they literally know all those people? Today's kids are so much more socially active than we were, and in a good way I think. Maybe sites like FB and Myspace have contributed to a more open and friendlier younger generation. I still prefer blogging over Facebook though, but there is something about FB that makes it very appealing.

So when are you going to create your Facebook page? Come on….get on board! Send me a friend invite when you do!

What a week!

This picture describes what my week has been like. The cat would be me.