~ Silent Sunday ~

~ Thursday Thoughts ~

I realize it's late in the day but it's still Thursday!  :)  I've had such miserable allergy problems along with migraines, scratchy throat, coughing, can't sleep, you name it!  I did want to share a "touch" of fall ~ I haven't accomplished much.

 Wreath on my front door

Just another view...very similar.  Wanted to be sure you saw the glitter! :)

My neighbor has been going to local Farmers Markets and shared some goodies with me. I kinda think there's not anything much better than a fresh tomato sandwich!  :)  Just a bit of mayo, salt and lots of black pepper. Yum!  I was too quick ~ forgot to photograph the tomatoes...they were beautiful!

Are you familiar with Edie and her blog Life In Grace ?

If not, you're really missing out!  She is a Christian; awesome mom, cook, writer and many more adjectives. Her home will make you drool all over your computer!  I love her use of color and unexpected decor. A few years ago, their "perfect" home burned to the ground and they have rebuilt. Her older daughters saved the littles ~ a true miracle!  They lost everything, can you imagine that happening to you?  Edie had all the Christmas gifts purchased and wrapped ~ all gone. Her sister went out and bought all the same items and wrapped them so the kids would have Christmas, especially after all they had been through. Anyway, her book, "All The Pretty Things" ~ The Story of a Southern Girl Who Went through Fire to Find Her Way Home was published on Wednesday and is available on Amazon and other book sellers. I pre-ordered on Amazon as soon as I knew when it would be published.  Since I'm not feeling 100%, I am deeply involved in reading!  :)  I hope that you will check out her blog as well as the book. 

We're having a continuation of summer, perhaps Texas' second season!  The heat and humidity have been just awful...high 90's daily and one day the heat index was 107*. Not my cup of tea!  Cooler temps are predicted for next week but I guess we shall see.

Thanks so much for your visit!  

~ Silent Sunday ~

~ Tuesday Thoughts ~

Good advice, don't you think? 

We had a "Cousins Reunion" this past Saturday in Dallas. Most everyone was there although there are 5 that are deceased and 2 more that were unable to attend. Our parents were from a family of 9 siblings, including 1 set of twins. We really haven't been together other than for funerals for a very long time. We do have plans to do this more often!  We need to make every effort as we're all growing older and you never know what tomorrow might bring. I don't mean to be morbid here...it's just a reality for all of us!  3 of the cousins have cancer, one has an issue walking, one has diabetes, etc. Probably TMI, right? I apologize!

NOTE:  All the photos were taken with cell phones and not the best!

We were so fortunate to have our only living Aunt join us!  She's 93 ~ isn't that awesome? She's in reasonably good health...difficulty walking without her cane and difficulty hearing. This is the first year *ever* that she hasn't had a garden. That's been her lifestyle and let me tell you, the veggies she canned were superb!  At Christmas, she always gave me a large bag full of canned items. I always looked forward to it and loved it immensely.

In the above photo we were all pointing to her as our "Guest of Honor"!  She had as much fun as the rest of us. It was so wonderful to see everyone and try to catch up in the time we had. I do have to say that the 2 organizers have suggested a twice a year gathering and I really hope we can do that!

~ * ~

Just thought I'd share this article with you. It's written by a new Target employee, chronicling his first week on the job. It's a bit long but absolutely hilarious!  You will be glad you read it, I promise!  :)

~ * ~

Essie's new Fall Collection is out!  I don't think the selection is as impressive as OPI's but that's just me.

~ * ~

I realize all the Fall Home Tours are going on this week so if you took the time to stop by, I so appreciate it!  

~ Silent Sunday ~

~ A great pilot and a very brave lady! ~

Very Interesting....Never heard this story...

The anniversaries of 9/11 are difficult for many people, including me!  Being in the midst of it and knowing what our (AA) crews went through as well as the losses of UA crews, all the passengers and all those on the ground. The first responders were so brave and willing to do whatever they could to protect and save those in harm's way. In the process, so many lost their lives. So many stories of a day that forever changed our country.

Pilots often claim that the two worst things that can happen to a pilot are:

(1) Walking out to the aircraft knowing this will be your last flight or

(2) Walking out to the aircraft NOT knowing this will be your last flight.

This pilot's story adds another possibility....

The events of September 11, 2001, put two F-16 pilots into the sky with orders to bring down United Flight 93.

Late on that Tuesday morning of September 11th, Lt. Heather "Lucky" Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders, "Bring down United Airlines Flight 93."

The day's fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.

"I genuinely believed that was going to be the last time I took off," says Maj. Heather "Lucky" Penney, remembering the September 11 attacks and the initial U.S. reaction.

The one thing she didn't have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition…. or missiles…. or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft…. except her own plane. So that was the plan.

Because the surprise attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her commanding officer planned to fly their jets straight into a Boeing 757.

"We wouldn't be shooting it down. We'd be ramming the aircraft," Penney recalls of her charge that day. "I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot."

For years, Penney, one of the first generation of female combat pilots in the country, gave no interviews about her experiences on September 11 (which included, eventually, escorting Air Force One back into Washington's suddenly highly restricted airspace).

But 14 years later, she is reflecting on one of the lesser-told tales of that endlessly examined morning: How the first counter punch the U.S. Military prepared to throw at the attackers was effectively a suicide mission. "We had to protect the airspace any way we could," she said last week in her office at Lockheed Martin, where she is a director in the F-35 program.

Penney, now a major but is still a petite blonde with a Colgate grin, is no longer a combat flier. She flew two tours in Iraq and she serves as a part-time National Guard pilot, mostly hauling VIPs around in a military Gulfstream. She takes the stick of her own vintage 1941 Taylor craft tail-dragger whenever she can.

But none of her thousands of hours in the air quite compare with the urgent rush of launching on what was supposed to be a one-way flight to a midair collision. First of her kind!

She was a rookie in the autumn of 2001, the first female F-16 pilot they'd ever had at the 121st Fighter Squadron of the D.C. Air National Guard. She had grown up smelling jet fuel. Her father flew jets in Vietnam and still races them. Penney got her pilot's license when she was a literature major at Purdue. She planned to be a teacher. But during a graduate program in American studies, Congress opened up combat aviation to women and Penney was nearly first in line. "I signed up immediately," she says. "I wanted to be a fighter pilot like my dad."

On that Tuesday, they had just finished two weeks of air combat training in Nevada. They were sitting around a briefing table when someone looked in to say a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York. When it happened once, they assumed it was some yahoo in a Cessna. When it happened again, they knew it was war.

But the surprise was complete. In the monumental confusion of those first hours, it was impossible to get clear orders. Nothing was ready. The jets were still equipped with dummy bullets from the training mission. As remarkable as it seems now, there were no armed aircraft standing by and no system in place to scramble them over Washington. Before that morning, all eyes were looking outward, still scanning the old Cold War threat paths for planes and missiles coming over the polar ice cap.

"There was no perceived threat at the time, especially one coming from the homeland like that," says Col. George Degnon, vice commander of the 113th Wing at Andrews. "It was a little bit of a helpless feeling, but we did everything humanly possible to get the aircraft armed and in the air. It was amazing to see people react."

Things are different today, Degnon says. At least two "hot-cocked" planes are ready at all times, their pilots never more than yards from the cockpit.

A third plane hit the Pentagon, and almost at once came word that a fourth plane could be on the way, maybe more. The jets would be armed within an hour, but somebody had to fly now, weapons or no weapons.

"Lucky, you're coming with me," barked Col. Marc

Sasseville. They were gearing up in the pre-flight life-support area when Sasseville, struggling into his flight suit, met her eye. "I'm going to go for the cockpit," Sasseville said.

She replied without hesitating, "I'll take the tail." It was a plan ….. and a pact. 'Let's go!'

Normally the pre-flight is a half-hour or so of methodical checks. She automatically started going down the list. "Lucky, what are you doing? Get your butt up there and let's go!" Sasseville shouted.

She climbed in, rushed to power up the engine, screamed for her ground crew to pull the chocks. The crew chief still had his headphones plugged into the fuselage as she nudged the throttle forward. He ran along pulling safety pins from the jet as it moved forward. She muttered a fighter pilot's prayer - "God, don't let me [expletive] up"- and followed Sasseville into the sky.

They screamed over the smoldering Pentagon, heading northwest at more than 400 mph, flying low and scanning the clear horizon. Her commander had time to think about the best place to hit the enemy. "We don't train to bring down airliners," said Sasseville, now stationed at the Pentagon. "If you just hit the engine, it could still glide and you could guide it to a target. My thought was the cockpit or the wing."

He also thought about his ejection seat. Would there be an instant just before impact? "I was hoping to do both at the same time," he says. "It probably wasn't going to work, but that's what I was hoping."

Penney worried about missing the target if she tried to bail out. "If you eject and your jet soars through without impact..." she trails off, the thought of failing more dreadful than the thought of dying.

But she didn't have to die. She didn't have to knock down an airliner full of kids and salesmen and girlfriends. They did that themselves. It would be hours before Penney and Sasseville learned that United 93 had already gone down in Pennsylvania, an insurrection by hostages willing to do just what the two Guard pilots had been willing to do: Anything, and everything.

"The real heroes are the passengers on Flight 93 who were willing to sacrifice themselves, "Penney says. "I was just an accidental witness to history."

She and Sasseville flew the rest of the day, clearing the airspace, escorting the president, looking down onto a city that would soon be sending them to war.

She's a single mom of two girls now. She still loves to fly. And she still thinks often of that extraordinary ride down the runway a decade ago.

"I genuinely believed that was going to be the last time I took off," she says.

~ Silent Sunday ~