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This weekend, my friend Shawna and I surprised our friend Catie for a birthday lunch and a lovely little place called the Garden Cafe at Flag Fork.  Catie had previously been, though Shawna and I had not.  We decided it would be nice to make a girl’s day of it, and we sent the boys off to fend for themselves for lunch.

Catie came over to the apartment to supposedly pick me up, so Matt and I hid Shawna and Robert (her fiance) in the bathroom.  When Catie came in, out they popped!  Since we had a bit of time to kill before our reservation  (you have to make reservations for this place, its small and very popular) we went ahead and had her open her presents prior to leaving.  Matt and I got her a gift card to download some more books on her Sony Ereader, and Robert and Shawna got her a Hello Kitty Gumball Machine (Catie is a Hello Kitty Fanatic).

We then headed to the restaurant, which was built in an old plantation house, and includes a store full of all sorts of crafty knick-knacks.  We told them we were there for our reservation, and browsed the store till our name was called.  A simple restaurant, they serve soups and sandwiches, fresh fruit and pasta salads, and a huge variety of desserts.  Shawna and I each had a simple turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread and fresh fruit, and Catie had peanut butter and strawberry jelly on white bread with seafood linguine pasta salad.  And they also have the most delicious lemonade I have ever had in my life!  Regular old lemonade, infused with spearmint YUM YUM!

The food was fantastic, the turkey sandwiches were delicious and the fruit was perfectly sweet.  Catie also ordered a bourbon chocolate cake that was served warm and melted in your mouth.

All in all, a wonderful little place, perfect for a quiet lunch or a girls day out!  Hidden in the heart of downtown Lexington, its definitely worth checking out! – Heather

Last year, Matt and I went with my parents to the Land between the Lakes in western KY to attend the annual “Eagle Weekend“. We had so much fun, that we jumped on the chance to go back again this year. So we drove down to Kentucky Lake on Friday afternoon to meet up with my parents at the cabin we rented this year. A long drive from home, but one of the most worth it trips we could take. I love nature and all forms of animal life, and getting the chance to study these magnificent creatures in their natural environment is something that I will always enjoy.

Friday night began with the orientation meeting at the Kentucky Dam Village conference center. We headed over early enough to get decent seats for the evening’s presentation. After settling down in our seats, we were surprised to find out that my Uncle Russ and Aunt Laura were also there for the weekend! The orientation presentation is mainly aimed at those who hadn’t been to Eagle Weekend before, but it is always very interesting, and worth going to for the refresher course on recognizing eagles. They explained how to recognize the American Bald Eagle, as well as how to tell the approximate age of the eagles we would be spotting. After this presentation, we made sure we had the times and locations down for the following day’s activities, and headed back to the cabin, where Matt and I taught my parents how to play Phase 10.

Saturday morning dawned bright and early, and we got ready to head out to go on the boat tour on Kentucky Lake. We picked up my aunt and uncle and headed to the marina where the boat was docked, about half an hour away (the location had been changed due to the KY Dam Village Marina still being frozen over due to the VERY cold weather we had been experiencing in KY). But the weather was nice that day, and once we got out to where we could view the eagles, we could all go out on the deck without being totally frozen. With the help of some high-powered binoculars and my new Fuji-Film S1500 camera, we saw, and took pictures of, around 50 eagles, including the nesting pair in the picture below.

Saturday afternoon, we headed out to the heart of the Land between the Lakes, to the Elk and Bison Prairie.  Here there are many bison and elk, all living in the wild, but fenced in so that we can drive along a road through the prairie and study them much closer that normally.  We saw these amazing animals in all their glory.  The bison were mainly resting, in a huge group very near each other, as seen in the picture below.  The elk, however, were not quite as cooperative as far as seeing them or taking pictures.  We only saw a small group of elk, laying in the woods together, and they were all males.  We assumed that there had to be females as well, but we unfortunately didn’t get to see any.

And here is a picture of the elk we saw.  As you can see, they were all laying down near each other, and using the trees for camouflage.

Saturday evening ended with a presentation from Raptor Rehab of Kentucky, which is a non-profit organization based in Louisville.  They brought several birds for us to see up close, including a bald eagle, a peregrine falcon, a red-tailed hawk, a great horned owl, a turkey vulture, and my personal favorite, a saw-whet owl.  Each of these animals had been injured in some way that prevented them from being able to survive in the wild, and therefore now will live out the remainder of their lives in captivity, at the Raptor Rehab facility.  However, these birds are brought along on presentations that the group does, which helps raise awareness and funds to take care of these magnificent creatures.  Below are some of my favorite pictures of the raptors from the presentation.

This year, Matt and I have pledged to each other that we will both be losing weight. We are both in need of losing some hefty pounds, and are going about this in several ways. If you watch The Biggest Loser at all, you’ll know that tonight was the season premiere. Although we haven’t actually been able to watch an entire season together so far, we plan to this season. And while watching, we are also participating! Matt and I will be working out using the Wii Fit program, Wii Fit Plus, The Biggest Loser Wii Game, and when it warms up a bit, we will be walking and jogging as well (working up to the jogging, of course!) We will also be dieting, and trying out the recipes on www.biggestloser.com as well as on the game!

While watching the season premiere of The Biggest Loser, we were also made aware of a great community outreach program, called the Pound for Pound Challenge. This is a great program where people pledge to lose weight, and for each pound they pledge, one pound of food will be donated to their local community food shelter. In our case, the God’s Pantry Food Bank in Lexington, KY!

In addition, I will also be working out at my workplace, the Curves for Women here in Richmond. We hope to start this year getting healthier, and we encourage all of our readers to do the same!

Thank you for coming to see and complete your mission. Your mission of the week is to hug a random stranger, then to post a comment about it on this post. After posting your comment, spread the word on Mystery Google! Let’s try to get 100 comments on this post by next week!

Copy and paste to post into Mystery Google:
Your mission: Find out at http://mattkendrick.com/?p=821

Time for us to post up yet another addicting flash game.  This is a game that I have been playing off and on for years.  A great game when youre bored and have plenty of time to kill or if you just have a few minutes to spare.

The pretense for this game is that you are a miner being hired to work on an alien planet by a mysterious manager (Mr. Natas).  The transport ship drops you off and you immediately need to buy gas.  Now it’s time to get to work.  You start by drilling into the alien soil in search of valuable minerals.  There are many different types of minerals from ironium which earns you the least amount of money, to aconite which affords you the most.  You can also purchase upgrades for your ship as well as dynamite, plastic explosives, nanobots that will repair your ship, extra fuel cans, and matter transporters that will take you from thousands of feet underground to the surface in a matter of seconds.

But wait! There’s more to this game than meets the eye.  As you delve further underground, you begin to recieve strange transmissions from other miners…something strange is going on here!

At around 6000 feet, all of a sudden your depth meter goes haywire.  Be wary!  If you continue to delve further, you will come across a very unpleasant character!

Since I’m trying to get you to try out this fun, addicting game, I’m going to leave the rest up to your imagination.  Suffice to say, you’ll find some very interesting twists in this game.  And the best part is, you can actually SAVE your game!  So long as you access the game from the same computer, you can fly your pod to the save module and load your game so that you don’t have to beat it all in one sitting!

So good luck, and enjoy!

Hosted by Daily Free Games

In the mood for a cute movie that will make you laugh? How about a touching love story that will move you to tears? Well you can have both in Disney/Pixar’s latest movie, Up. Matt and I, along with our friends Catie and David went to see this movie in 3D yesterday afternoon. I’m sure you’ve seen the previews, but they don’t do the movie justice. It opens with one of the famous Shorts, the best I’ve seen so far, about Storks delivering babies…but that’s all I’m saying, because I sure don’t want to spoil it for you!

Then we get to the actual movie, which opens with a scene of a little boy in an aviator’s hat and goggles watching in awe a documentary about his hero. On the way home, he meets up with a spunky little girl named Ellie, who is also enamored with this same hero. As the movie progresses we get to see how their relationship blooms.

Later on we meet a goofy, kindhearted little boy named Russell, who is a Wilderness Explorer, similar to our Boy Scouts, who is desperate to earn his final patch to make him a Senior Explorer.

We also encounter such crazy characters as Kevin, an enormous multi-colored bird, and Doug, a lovable dog whose master created a collar which allows him to talk.

Long story made slightly shorter, this movie was great! Two thumbs up (eight if you count the others that I saw the movie with)! This is a great family film or just something fun to go see. Don’t waste time, and head to the theater to see in in 3D!

I love to play this game…rarely does a day go by that I dont sit on the computer for at least an hour playing. However, I have some issues with the game and would like to suggest some additions to it.

1. It would be nice to be able to hire someone to work at your farm anytime there is something needing to be done. That way it would not always be necessary for friends to be online everytime they want to have something harvested. This should be in a permissions list like the block user list, something we have the availability to edit from time to time.

2. I also think that we should be able to earn experience by harvesting others’ fields. Even if it is only one experience point for every five fields or so, just something like that. It tends to get very frustrating that the only way to gain experience is to plow, plant, and work on our friends fields, because it takes so long to regenerate any of these things.

3. It would also be nice if there were bots in the marketplaces designed to hire lower level players to help them earn money. These bots should, of course, be programmed to have fully grown fields (large or small) every hour or so and programmed to only hire people who are say level 15 or less.

These are just suggestions that my friends and I think would help make the game even more fun, but I do hope that the programmer(s) will seriously consider these. They’ve done a wonderful job so far in programming a fun, addictive game, but I know a lot of people feel that an update should come soon.