Throwback Thursday #4: Journey to France!

"Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living." ~Miriam Beard

So for our second day in Europe, we decided to go to France. We just went to a little town across Lake Geneva, but we really wanted to say we had been to another country! The biggest disappointment of the day: they didn't stamp our passports! Darn it!

Anyway, the first thing we did was ride the train to Lausanne, so that we could catch the boat over to France. We walked around for a while in Lausanne....
During the walking...we saw sheep! Made me feel like home.
We also saw lots of these little bakeries and bistros....here are some of the pastries in one of the bakeries.

There were beautiful flowers everywhere in Switzerland! They also do these clocks made out of flowers---so pretty!
So then it was finally time to hit up a new country.....here was the boat to France! We were excited to go.

We got there and saw some French poodles! Of course, I had to take a picture. The other two rolled their eyes.

Because we were in Evian, France (home of Evian water) we decided to stop and have some. I was SOOO thirsty and this place had ICE! Seriously, you won't believe how much you appreciate ice until you don't have it. And there is no free water anywhere in Europe. You pay for bottles of it just like anything else you might want to drink at a restaurant.

As we were walking, we saw this sign about how the people of Evian were victims of the Nazis in 1944.Then the storm clouds started to roll in from the Alps. Started to rain, so we ran for cover in a little bistro. Then we made a run for the boat.

We get on the boat and the driver and some other person had a massive fight outside the window! They were screaming and yelling and making crazy hand gestures. It was insane.

They finally worked out whatever the crazy bickering was about and we headed back across the lake.We had a great day in France. It's always great to set foot in a new country, even if they don't give you a passport stamp!

Stay tuned next week.....we went on a fantastic train ride up into the Alps to check out both a cheese and chocolate factory. One of my FAVORITE days of the whole trip!

Happy Birthday, Brother AND Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

"To the outside world, we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time." ~Clara Ortega

Today is my little brother's birthday. He claims to read the blog, and got angry a couple weeks ago. I posted something about him and my best friend Chase, and put up one more picture of Chase than I did of Denton. To remedy that, here is a montage of pictures of my brother on his birthday!

I also want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all have a wonderful time with your families and you take the time to be thankful for all the blessings that you have been given.

An Endangered Species....The Family Farm

"The farm just won't get tended if the farmer isn't there, and these amber waves of grain might just disappear." ~Merle Haggard

(All photos from my own family's farm)

I recently received an email discussing 25 things that are becoming extinct in America. Some were predictable. Landline telephones, VCRs, and cameras that use film. Okay, I thought. Makes me feel old because I certainly remember a time (not so long ago!) when I used each of these things. Some were interesting. Honeybees (apparently they have some bad disease) and analog television (don't even know what that means!).

But do you know what the number one was? The family farm.
I have so many issues with this, I dont't think it will fit in one blog. First off, how can we even feel that the family farm can be in any type of category with honeybees and VCRs? Do we not realize how important family farms are? That they are our food supply, play a major role in our national economy, and provide an incomparable way of life for so many people? Maybe the majority of Americans don't.
Today, the average American is four generations removed from the farm. FOUR GENERATIONS! That means that most people in the US don't even remember going to their grandparents' farm....much less actually growing up on one themselves. People don't know where their food comes from. They don't know what it feels like to raise animals from the time they are born, to rack your brain to decide what ram to breed your best ewe to or what bull you need to buy semen from. They don't know what it's like to get on a horse and ride across your family's land.
This disconnect between agriculture and the public is only going to get worse. Currently, the US is losing 500 family farms every week. In 1950, there were 5.3 million farms scattered across the country. By 2003, there were fewer than 2.1 million. Fewer farms mean fewer opportunities for people to experience and understand the agricultural way of life.

What is the solution to this problem? I'll tell you what I think it is....it's time for those of us in the agricultural industry to go on the offensive! It's time for us to get out there and let people know where their food comes from, how hard we work on our farms, and how expensive equiptment and seed is, especially when compared to commodity prices. For us to be able to survive, we have got to find ways to educte the public about the importance of agriculture.

What are the benefits of a family farm? Why do I care so much? Do families really still even own farms? These are stories for another day....stay tuned! I'm ready to talk, I hope you're ready to listen!

Shame on You Random 1L Boys!

"Let no one every come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness." ~Mother Teresa

So I am feeling a soapbox week coming for the blog. I figure this is as good of place as any for me to get out my frustrations!

2L is a 2L (second year) in law school. She and my friend, Aggie Friend, are partners for the trial practice class. For those of you who didn't go to our law school, let me explain. You take this class, are given a case file, work for MONTHS on getting ready, then you go to the courthouse with actual judges and jurors and put on a mock trial. It's like half your grade in the class. Trial date was this last weekend. So...needless to say, things were pretty stressful!

On Friday morning, 2L's husband got very ill and had to go to the hospital. So here she is with trial prep coming out her ears, a husband in the trauma room, and three kids. Apparently she spent part of the day hunting a babysitter for her kiddos so that she would be able to go to the trial on Saturday.

Here comes the soapbox......apparently a couple of 1L boys offered to help her out, but they had all these conditions, including certain time limits AND THEY INSISTED SHE PAY THEM!! Yea. Grrrr.

I am sorry, but I just cannot even imagine. Whoever you random boys are, you better be glad I'm not at the law school anymore because I'd track you down and give you a come to Jesus lecture like you wouldn't believe. Did your mama's not raise you right? Seriously!

Where I come from, we help each other when someone is in trouble. You don't expect (much less demand) anything in return. You help because you are a good person, because it's the right thing to do, and becuase it's what you'd want someone to do for you if, God forbid, you are ever in that situation.

And you know what, our law school is supposed to be that way too. My class constantly went out of their way to help each other. People would send outlines and oral argument scheduled and class notes and bring pick-me-up gifts or cards when someone had a bad day. That's one of the best parts of that law school. This was a legacy I think my whole class worked hard to leave, and I don't apprecite people ruining it by acting like this.

So, in case this is something that needs to be said to people, please don't be a jerk when someone is in a sitution where she needs help. Put yourself aside for one minute and picture yourself in her shoes. Life is hard enough without people making it worse on each other. Remember that the next time someone needs your help!

Prayers for the Cabaniss Family

"The angels are always near to those who are grieving, to whisper to them that their loved ones are safe in the hand of God." ~The Angels' Instruction Book

My good friend and her family are laying her mom, Pam, to rest today. She passed away on Monday after a long stuggle with cancer. Please keep their family in your prayers as they go through this terrible time.

GUEST BLOG BY SARA: The Choices You Make....

"Your friends will know you better in the first minute they meet you than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years."~ Richard Bach


For today's guest blog Friday, we have my dear friend, Sara! I usually explain how I met my guest blogger, but Sara's whole blog is about that, so I'll leave that part out. I will say Sara is one of my favorite people....she's funny and beautiful and I love her to death! When our group of girls gets together, you just never know what is going to happen! We've been through a lot...good and bad.... but she's so sweet and positive and just all round great!

So.....here's Sara!

Well when Tiff asked me to do a guest blog I was very excited, but unsure of what I would write about. Now I’m not the type of person that has all this great advice to give, or is good at writing interesting stories, so this is quite a challenge for me. With that I have racked my brain all week trying to decide what to write about, and I have decided to share my first encounter with Tiff.

Tiff and I didn’t grow up together, go to high school together, and if it wouldn’t have been for my BFF’s boyfriend we would have never met. You see Tiff attended a Junior College in Kansas and I attended a Junior College in Oklahoma and somehow our paths crossed and she will be in my life forever. Since growing up, moving out of the house and going to college I realized real quick that all the choices you make are for a reason. And, in my experience it is to meet people that will change your life…

To set the background, I grew up in very small town called Copan, OK, which is an hour North of Tulsa, OK right on the Kansas border. As a young lady all I wanted to do was graduate High School and go to a College far far away from home. So, I decided to attend Eastern Oklahoma State College with my high school best friend. This school was located in another small Oklahoma town called Wilburton, which is 3 hours from Copan down by the Arkansas border. This was no great College that all the kids in the surrounding high schools dreamed of going, but it was far away from home.

While there I met my best friend for life and through her ultimately I met Tiff. You see my BFF and I decided to go back to Straford, which was the town my BFF is from, for the weekend. You may ask why any college kid would want to go home for the weekend and they would tell their parents it’s because they miss them, but we went home so we could meet up with my BFF’s boyfriend at a hotel in once again another small town called Pauls Valley.

You see my BFF never dated anyone from Eastern and was known for her long distant boyfriends. Well this one defiantly fell into that category. The boyfriend went to a small junior college in Kansas. And the reason we were able to meet him at a hotel was because he was on his way to a college livestock judging contest. You may be asking how he was able to convince his judging coach to stay at this hotel and I to this day still don’t know…

Well, once at the Hotel my BFF and I get escorted to a room full of livestock judgers. My BFF and I get introduced to everyone, and then I got left in the room alone with all these strangers. If you find yourself asking what happened to my BFF and the Boyfriend I have no idea… All I know is that I was in a room full of complete strangers. In the room was the livestock judging coach, a very loud and opinionated girl from Canada, Tiff and some other random boy from Kansas. Needless to say Tiff and I hit it off and became close friends.

Tiff was a life saver that night and has become one of my all time closest friends. If I had chosen to go to just some junior college close to home I would have never met my BFF, and would have never went to some random hotel in Pauls Valley with her to meet a random livestock judging team were I met Tiff. So, like I said in the beginning of this story the choices you make are for a reason.

Throwback Thursday #3: Fete Nationale Suisse!

"He who does not travel does not know the value of men." ~Moorish proverb

As I've previously mentioned, our first day in Switzerland was Swiss National Day (aka Fete Nationale Suisse!) which would be similar to our Fourth of July. Sean's little village had a great festival going on. There were great food (and wine!) vendors, yodlers, horn players, a carousel....

There was also a village-wide boat cruise. This created some interesting drama. Cousin Swiss Mister doesn't speak much French. Sure, he can order wine and filet de perch, and can probably drop a few inappropriate lines on a cute girl.....but he's not great at the language! Anyway, he didn't realize that you had to get tickets for this boat cruise. So there are tons of people from the surrounding villages in town (I think like 4 villages shared a boat) and everyone seemed to have tickets but us. We learn that you have to get them from the cop. Then we learn Cousin Swiss Mister has some history with this cop....something about illegally parking his car. I was ready to give up the boat cruise and just hang out in the village, but he came through and got the tickets. He was so proud. Here he is holding them.

So the time came and we loaded up on the boat with the rest of the villagers. We went on a cruise all over Lake Geneva---we went first what I imagine was east along the shore to Vevey and Montreux. Then we headed back west to Lausanne, and finally back to Cully. Here's the awesome boat and a picture of the beautiful Swiss countryside from the cruise.

It was a beautiful day for being out on the water---some sailboats were taking advantage as well.

As we went towards Montreux, we got closer to the Alps and you could see snow on the mountains. In August!

There was lots of entertainment on the boat as well. Here, you see the Swiss drinking out of shot glasses. But what was crazy is they were drinking wine from the shot glasses. Apparently that's normal there. At the dinner and fireworks later, all the wine was served not with goblets, but with shot glasses. Made for a cool souvineer!

There was also a full band on the boat that played the whole cruise. They were cool, but I would have enjoyed them having the yodlers come along....it was just beyond amazing to me to be listening to yodlers in Switzerland!

Then the Swiss Air Force did a flyover of the boat. Also pretty impressive!

Here we are enjoying our time on the boat cruise!

And then the sun set on our lovely cruise. However, the night was still young and the fun continued! They had great music playing and fireworks back on the shore in Cully. They also had some great wine and food for everyone.....pictures of food will come in a later blog all about food in Europe, but there was an interesting type of hot dog you'll have to see! Oh, and I didn't get a picture because I inhaled it, but there was the BEST crepe I ever had full of Nutella....sigh. It's amazing I didn't gain 30 pounds! It was all the walking....

Stay tuned next week for Day 2 of our European Vacation.....which includes Lausanne, France, and a fight amongst our water taxi drivers!