Cotton ball sky

SKY WATCH FRIDAY time! Welcome all sky fans!!! I truly appreciate your visit and comments. I might not have time to respond to you, but I will try my best to visit!!!

Our hosts: Klaus Sandy Sylvia Wren Louise Fishing Guy

Thanks, also,to Dot and Tom, who were instrumental in the success of this blogging event. You should definitely come fly with us!

Greetings from south Georgia. I have been promising Thanksgiving pics from our wonderful family Thanksgiving festivities, and I plan to do that today, but first, allow me to share with you, one of my more memorable skies. We have had several days of blanketed skies full of altocumulus clouds. An altocumulus sky resembles a bed of cotton balls in the sky. This one is especially memorable because it is from our wonderful sunset/sunrise trip, the one that occurred while tornado warnings were blaring back home for an "actually seen tornado", which turned out to be a microburst. Regardless of the missed chasetunity, it was a wonderfully romantic trip that my amazingly wonderful groom (gtb at the time) planned for me as a surprise. You can read more about that here. Oh, and here is my opinion about the missed storm. Anyhow, that's my sky shot for today. The Altocumulus sky made for an amazing sunset that evening.I'll briefly touch on yesterday's weather since there were watches and actual warnings throughout the day yesterday. The line of storms that passed through here lost much of their intensity just before arrival and then, ramped back up to produce significant rotation just beyond here... are we surprised??? I think not. Generally, the big story in this storm was the flooding rain and ferocious wind. One tornado was reported in the panhandle, but generally... that's all folks. Now, onto our Thanksgiving, which was wonderful in every way. We had much of my wonderful groom's family over to partake in our feast consisting of 2 big birds and all the fixin's! It was my wonderful groom's first time frying a turkey, but we are all SO GLAD he took the time to do it. It was scrumdiddlyumptious in all its juicy yumminess! He brined the turkey for many many hours while it thawed, and the men rigged up an Alton Brown-style lowering system for the bird, involving a ladder and some coat hook contraption. One hour later, voila! Here are some pics to capture the essense of our day.Incidentally, the tree behind the men in the picture above was struck by lightning the same day I caught this shot.Yeppers, same tree... :DI hope each of your Thanksgivings were blessed!

Have a great day!
~Dewdrop

A Thanksgiving wish

With the Thanksgiving holiday fast approaching, I want to take a moment and thank all of the folks out there who take time to read my blog. I've been lacking in weather lately, which is supposed to be the meat of my weather blog, but when you have none to talk about, it leaves people like me to get creative.Our family will be arriving tomorrow to share in a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with us. The kids will have a wonderful time playing together. We have an all out feast planned, capturing everyone's traditions, as best we can. I am expecting to have lots of great pics, as we will roast one turkey with my wonderful Pampered Chef roaster (hosting parties rocks!) and my wonderful groom will be frying another. The brining process is being combined with the thawing to speed things along. Aside from two turkeys, we will also have dressing and stuffing. Me being a Yankee, it is important that I have stuffing, you know stuffed in the bird and baked to yummy perfection (yes, we have a thermometer!), but my very southern family is not going to slip by without some of mom's yummy dressing. Of course, while talking about mom's yummy stuff, I should mention that she will also be preparing 2 sweet potato casseroles. One will have a crunchy savory nutty crust, and the other will be smothered in a bed of sweet marshmallowy decadence. We'll have gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, peas, corn, green bean casserole... my dear sister-in-law's famous pea casserole... my wonderful groom's famous roasted butternut squash soup.Mom's yeast rolls, flaky crescent rolls... my wonderful groom's mouth-watering fudge... mom's pumpkin pie, a new recipe pecan pie, my family's traditional chocolate and banana cream pies and since Mini-Dew doesn't like any of those, apple pie. In my opinion, you can never have too many desserts. Of course, for drinking, we'll have everything from apple cider, to sweet tea, to soda... I expect about 20-22 of us to gather in our home and share thankfulness for the love of our wonderful family. I would love to hear what your family traditions are, to hear how you're celebrating Thanksgiving. Feel free to share. In the meantime, from our home to yours, we wish you all the blessings of a safe and happy Thanksgiving. May God bless you.~Dewdrop

P.S. A little isolated supercell would make Thanksgiving extra nice...

It's the hap, happiest time of the year!!!

Ahhh... Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday. What a wonderful and fulfilling Thanksgiving we shared with family and friends! As people have asked about it, I have described it as the kind of Thanksgiving you see in movies, where everyone is laughing and smiling and helping to prepare a wonderful feast, spending beautiful time together, just loving one another. It was the best!! It truly was the best!

It started on our way up on Tuesday. We drove in moderate (meaning, not SO bad) traffic, stopping along the way for some fast food. We arrived in time to watch "Dancing with the Stars -- THE RESULTS SHOW, FINALE" as a large group at my wonderful gtb's incredible hostess sister's house. We had a great time!!! We awoke Wednesday and prepared several of the side dishes for Thursday and then took a hike with g'ma in the (then dry) creek-bed that runs behind the house and under the road there. It was a thrilling adventure. The colors of the leaves there were absolutely stunning, yellows, reds, oranges... wow! It was a lot of fun voyaging with the kids through all that. G'ma bailed early and we continued on under the road and on to the playground where the kids had a great time, climbing and jumping and swinging and sliding. My wonderful gtb (oh, recently, several people have asked what "gtb" stands for, it stands for "groom to be" big grin) and I prepared a lovely dinner at the other fabulous hostess sister's house, while everyone was watching her son's taekwondo class, except for the girls who were invited to join in (FUN!). I hate that I wasn't there for pictures. We had a scrumptious meal and then sat around on her brand new super-sized couch watching a show featuring the top ten places to pig out... just what we all needed to watch before stuffing our faces the following day. We left there and picked up some last minute items for our Thanksgiving feast and headed back to the house to allow gtb to do his magic on the bird. I woke up Thanksgiving morning to the magnificent aroma of rosemary and butter roasted turkey... YUM! Cinnamon rolls and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. A house full of love! I am so blessed! We were fortunate to have the use of the neighbor's double oven for dinner preparation. We had food in all 3 ovens... gtb's kind-hearted aunt and uncle arrived from NC. We finished preparing a feast fit for a king. We ate and ate and ate and ate... then, rested, took a nice calorie-burning walk and then we ate some more! Yummy. We had a wonderful time playing cards together and finally fell into bed at the end of a long and wonderful day. I awoke my sweet, patient and loving gtb at 4:00 AM to hit the stores in the Black Friday madness. He would never say it, but I think he actually enjoyed it. We returned to nap while everyone else went walking by the Chattahoochee River, which the kids really enjoyed for the wildlife they experienced along the way. Of course, me snoozing... no pics. UGH! That night, we had a lovely dinner with my dear Winder friend and her family and played a really fun game with the kids at their house. When we returned, unfortunately, we learned that gtb's dad was brought to the hospital and admitted for a high fever he had resulting from a bad infection he developed after a test earlier that week. Fortunately, they were able to quickly treat him and release him, and he is doing well now. On Saturday, we visited with my family and had a decent meal at the house of pancakes, but wonderful company and conversation. We left there and visited with Mini-Dew's aunt and cousin and had some truly lovely conversation there. We left there for our second Thanksgiving feast with my dear CNN friend and her family. Needless to say, we are stuffed. I left yesterday with Mini-Dew and battled the most horrendous travel day of the year, which I wouldn't recommend. My kind gtb stayed to take his parents home today to make sure his dad did ok. Isn't he a sweetheart?!

We got rain up where we were over the weekend, so now the creek-bed is very full... but back here in south Georgia, I came back to a rain gauge full of 4 1/2 inches of rain and flood warnings, and listened to reports of tornadoes that occurred in Florida over the weekend. I hear the weather was actually pretty rough down in south Georgia. The dewvoid in action!

Anyways... that's our Thanksgiving in a nutshell... a big one. lol Did I mention that I tried a chestnut? Yummy.

Have a wonderful time preparing your heart for Christmas!
~Dewdrop

What I'm thankful for....

First, I want to share my sky from yesterday with you... what a splendid display of cirrocumulus, including some incredible mare's tail-shaped cirrus clouds, which were well presented (and followed by a cirrocumulus mackerel sky means that we can expect strong westerlies at the surface in the near future)... so, here is the summary in pictures...How great is our God?!

Aside from that, the Thanksgiving holiday is breathing hard down our necks. The grocery stores all packed to the brim with some less than pleasant shoppers, counting each others carted items in the express line, ready to brawl if there are 21 items. The roads are covered in bumper to bumper traffic, full of frustrated drivers, holding tight to their steering wheel and their position, unwilling to merge and allow yet another vehicle into the over-crowded, gridlocked mix. Everyone's headed to Grandma's, Mom's, Great Aunt Matilda's... yet, in all the mayhem and grief, the table starts to turn and our senses come to life, as we remember grandma's creamy mashed potatoes and juicy gravy, Mom's exceptionally yummy sweet potato casserole, gtb's really incredibly awesome roasted butternut squash soup. Ahh, the fragrant aroma of a cinnamon rolls for breakfast, the mouthwatering oversized, overstuffed turkey baking in the oven... the various bands presenting themselves in the highest honor, Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, as you wait for your favorite float, the sound of men shouting over the wins and losses of their favorite teams... family, friends sitting around the table in a gesture of love, sharing what they have to be most thankful for... what God has done... what God is currently doing... what God will do in each of our lives... all the many blessings. I hope that you have a truly blessed Thanksgiving! Feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you're thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving!
~Dewdrop