Space Shuttle Launch May 11, 2009

The other day my boss sent me these pictures of the Space Shuttle launch. We have some AlliedBarton accounts on the East Coast, on and near the Space Center. So some of our employees got some great pictures of the Space Shuttle lift off. I wanted to share them with you because it's such an awesome sight to see. Especially since they are going to discontinue the Space Shuttle Program next year. Enjoy the photos.

The space shuttle at the launch pad.
The bus with the astronauts on it's way to the shuttle launch pad.

Another shot of the bus

Military helicopter inspecting the air space surrounding the launch pad.

A different view of the shuttle on the launch pad.

Same view, wider shot.

You can see the smoke from the ignition.

Wider angle shot.

Look at all the power that smoke is signifying to get the shuttle to lift off.

This was just a cool shot with a color lense (I'm assuming)

You can actually see the shuttle lifting off the launch pad.

Lifting higher....

and higher.

What a great shot!

Another clear shot of it lifting into space.

The boosters are getting ready for separation from the shuttle.

Still not quite ready for the separation.

Just a little further.

You can just barely see the booster separating from the shuttle.

The booster falling back to earth after the separation from the Space Shuttle.

Mother's Day......my turtle adventure

As most of you know, I had to work on Mother's Day. Not a big deal really since both of my son's had to work. And then, of course, you know that Wade came by the house later and dropped the bombshell that he's getting married on Memorial Day. So that made my Mother's Day special. Well it was pretty dead here at work on Sunday. Only about 4 employees came in to work. So I just drove around in circles most of the day, making sure the parking lots were secure. Plus I had to walk the inside of the building to make sure there were no water leaks, fires, doors unlocked, stuff like that. From top to bottom of this building is a two mile walk. So it did me good to get out of the car and walk. Plus we also have to check gauges in the "Chiller Room" which has the water chillers and boilers. We have to make sure the gauges are where they are supposed to be and none of them are off the charts. So that broke up part of the monotony of the day. The most interesting part of the day was the turtle that was determined to head west.

I found him wandering down the road at the back of the building. I thought maybe he wanted into the orange groves. So I put him on the grass.
I took a drive around the whole building to check out the parking lots and when I got back around to the back, the turtle was walking down the road. He was heading for a busy street. I didn't want him to get run over so I put him in the back of the truck and drove him to the gated part of our orange grove. I had to actually open a gate and carry him into the groves. It was quite aways from the street.
Here he is riding in the back of the truck. He was none to happy to be there and even unhappier that there was no room to move around.

Of course I wanted to make sure the turtle didn't go wandering again. So I drove around the building once and drove near the grove. No turtle. I drove around the building again and low and behold the turtle was walking west again. I guess some sixth sense was telling him he needed to go that way. So I just decided to leave him alone and let nature takes it course. When I drove around the building again and came back (yes, my curiosity got the best of me), I could not see him. I never saw him again. I hope he made to wherever he needed to be. By the way, this turtle is a gopher turtle. They do bite, they jump and they can stretch their necks all the way round. I was lucky this guy liked me and didn't try to bite me. He did jump for me though.

Now on a different note I want to share this really neat story about a mom's special daughter and what she did for her mother's birthday/Mother's day.

The mom works at my work location. She was celebrating her 50th birthday on Mother's Day. Her daughter came in the Monday before Mother's day with 10 roses in a HUGE vase. She also had a note from her brother to his Mom explaining 10 reason why he loved his mom. I was to call her mom and let her know flowers were here for her but couldn't tell her who dropped them off. On Tuesday, the daughter shows up with 10 more roses to add to the first 10, this time with a note from her father telling his wife 10 things he loved about her. On Wednesday, 10 more roses with a letter from the lady's mother with 10 reasons why she is such a special daughter. Thursday, 10 more roses and another note. Not sure who this one was from. I was at lunch this time when the daughter showed up. I did get to call Mom to come down and get her roses. And of course, everyday she'd want to know who dropped off the flowers and I would have to play dumb. On Friday, the daughter comes in with 10 more roses, the final 10 to make 50 (for her 50th birthday, get it). She tells me to just call her mom down, she is going to give these to her personally. It was such an awesome thing to do. The HUGE vase was so each day the roses could be added to it. They let me take their picture as they were leaving. I think this is one of the most awesome things I have ever seen a family do. And I'm glad I got to be a small part of it.

M&M'S

Welcome to M&M's World. This FANTASTIC store is at the Florida Mall in Orlando. I went there with Wade once and had a great time. And then I took Hut and it's now one of our favorite stores. We don't just like it because we like M&Ms, we like it because it's a really fun store. You wouldn't believe all the M&M stuff. You can check out all the cool stuff they have on their website http://www.m-ms.com/us/. This was part of our anniversary trip.
Here is Hut with the "sexy" green M&M.

Blue is my favorite color, so of course I had my picture taken with the Blue M&M.
They have a replica of the M&M racecar inside the store. It's pretty cool!

Kyle Busch, who races the M&M car. Not one of my favorite drivers but hey it was a photo op.

Our main objective at the M&M store was to get a bag of M&Ms with 17 different colors. Just so you know, there are actually 22 different colors of M&Ms.Here's Hut sealing the bag of M&Ms that he filled.And here is what a $50 bag of M&Ms looks like. Yep I said $50. We had no idea that M&Ms cost $11.99 a pound, but we do now, lol. At the store, for every $30 that you spend, you get a free pound of M&Ms. Since our total came to $72 (Hut got an M&M shirt, too), the cashier asked if we wanted to other 2 pound of M&Ms or did we want to take the 2 pounds off our total. Of course we took the 2 lbs off. So our bill was only $48,lol. It was worth it though. Now we just have to find someone to help us eat them.

They had a section in the store where you could see what your M&M color mood was. Hut was getting upset because all these little kids were getting in front of him. He said, "Don't they know adults want to play too?" So he finally got to check out his mood and it was silver. It said he as a calm person. Boy did they get that wrong, lol. All in all it was a very fun day.

Gatorland

For our 17th anniversary we really didn't have a clue what to do, so we just went with the flow. We ended up at Gatorland Zoo which I would say is the 1st Orlando Tourist Attraction. It was opened in 1949 as a Snake Show by the late Owen Godwin. Snakes didn't really excited people, so the man who owned it decided gators would be a better fit. He even had a huge alligator that he took all the way up the eastern coast to drum up business. Gatorland Zoo is still owned by the Godwin family.
This is Hut standing inside the World Famous Gator Jaws. Gatorland had a HUGE fire in 2006 that destroyed most of the main buildings that this was attached to. Thank God for the quick thinking of firefighters to save this historical monument.
Here I am. No one was around at the time that could take a picture of us together. Oh well, we knew we were there together, lol.
This cute little guy greeted us when we first got there. Trust me they don't stay that cute for long. And his teeth still will put a hurting on you.

Look at all these guys waiting for something to eat. You could buy some turkey hot dogs to feed the gators. I had some pictures of gator wrestling but everytime I would go to post it, they would delete. Since I'm at work, I have no way to retrieve them, so when I get home I will add some pictures to this post. So come on back and check those out.

This is a WHITE alligator. Not an albino. This alligator doesn't have pink eyes. There is another term for this alligator, but I don't remember it. There are only 12 of these gators in existence.
Four of them reside at Gator Land. They are all male. Gator Land believes they have some females that carry the gene for this color of gator, so in a few months they are doing to try to breed them. I also had some pictures of the gator jumping show that I want to share, but once again the computer didn't cooperate. So I will add those too when I get home. The biggest alligators they have at the Zoo are used for this show and they are HUGE! One looked like the gator from the movie "Lake Placid".
Finally got the pictures to upload right. Here is the gator wrestling. Joey is pulling a gator out of the pond.

Here is Joey being brave. All of a gator's strenght is in snapping his jaws shut. Once they are shut, you can hold them shut with just your hands. They have no strength to open them.Joey demonstrates how week gators are when it comes to opening their mouths, but holding this gator's mouth shut with just his chin.

They have a gator Jump A Roo show where they get gators to jump out of the water. They use raw chicken for this. Although this picture is blurring, it shows how fast the gator will go to get the chicken. There were probably a dozen or so gators in this gator pond. These are the biggest alligators they have on property.

This final photo shows you just how BIG those gators are. You can see how big the gator's head is compared to the man's hand. I couldn't believe they were brave enough to hold the chicken in their hands.

17

As you know, Hut and I celebrated our 17th anniversary on Saturday. We had no idea how we wanted to celebrate it. Saturday morning arrived and Hut said let's just get on Highway 17, drive 17 miles, count yard sale signs and stop at the 17th yard sale. So that's what we headed out to do. I decided to take it one step further and take pictures of anything with a 17. That was harder than I thought it would be.Believe it or not, this is our odometer reading before we left...starts with a 17.

Less than a mile from the house we picked up highway 17. This is great picture because I'm from the north, Hut's from the south.

Heading towards Haines City highways 17 and 92 come together. We've been married 17 years. If you do the math, we got married in '92. How cool is that?!

A road in Haines City that took us to the 17th yard sale, lol.

This was the 17th yard sale, that just happened to be 17.5 miles from the house. We messed up, though. Hut ended up spending $18. I think he should have put something back.

We had to stop for gas on our way to Orlando. Pump 17 just happened to be free, so that's where we pumped our gas.Once again, believe it or not, this is how much gas the tank held. We were almost on E and filled it up.

Driving to Orlando, we drive through downtown Kissimmee. This was the business door number as we sat at a traffic light.

This is Highways 17 and 92 heading into Orlando (and you thought Orlando was a big city). We decided to stop at Gatorland Zoo. Hut hadn't been there in almost 40 years and it had been 30 since I had been there. But that's a blog for another day. After that we went to the Florida Mall, to the M&M store, by far our favorite store in the mall. That, too, is a blog for another day. I will tell you though, that at the M&M store Hut got a bag full of M&M's with 17 different colors.

Wade, Diana and Layla

Sweet Layla

I just wanted to share some photos of Wade and the loves of his life. Beautiful Diana (where you can actually see her face) and the cutest little redhead you'll ever set eyes on, Layla.

Wade and Layla......giggle time.

Layla....ain't I cool?!

Hey, can I have a sip?

Layla riding a wooden rocking horse at our house.

Beautiful Diana.

Trying to be a badass......not gonna happen.