May Day Trip - Butterflies of the Caribbean & Buca di Beppo

Today, we enjoyed a fantastically beautiful day in so many ways! Bright sunny, great people, beautiful butterflies & plants, and awesome surroundings. To top the day we had a very nice Italian meal at Buca di Beppo. Our group was relatively small with only 17 of us; but that makes everything more manageable.

We arrived with perfect timing, thanks to our driver, Andrew. This allowed us to be a few minutes early with the best parking and time for a short break. Of course, we were early enough to beat the crowds, too.

As I always say, you can click on an image to see a larger version

There are also some nice surroundings at the Krohn's Conservatory. These include the river (not shown), a Water Tower (also known as the Stand Pipe) and a floral clock. The conservatory is located in Eden Park along with the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Elsinor Arch Castle, a pavilion and gazebo. There is a lot more to do here than we did. It takes younger legs than ours to traipse round this park!

As the photo above on the left illustrates, we had a great parking place just outside the entrance to the conservatory!

We entered the butterfly exhibit through a controlled environment to give the butterflies a climate similar to the Caribbean and also keep them contained in that environment. The nice thing about this is that they were flying all around us and frequently landed on us. They gave us something to allow the butterflies to climb on and give us a closer look or shot for photography. Unfortunately that beautiful blue ones never seemed to land with their wings spread and the color disappeared leaving them a dull gray/brown color.

Yup! That's Marie photobombing this young lady!

Some of the ladies became friendly with the butterflies
I assume the guys weren't fond of BUGS!

There were also some nice flowers and plants in the conservatory.

Some of our people were contented to relax for a bit, too!

After seeing the butterflies and plants, we drove over to Buca di Beppo for a nice lunch of Chicken Parmesan, Ravioli, 2 kinds of salad followed with a raspberry cheesecake.

I guess this was the Pope's table!

All in all, this was a very enjoyable trip, with great companions, good scenery and very tasty food! I recommend this venue for anyone!

May Luncheon Program with "Resounding Joy"

We enjoyed another very good musical program! Our May program featured the "Resounding Joy" ensemble from Dayton Christian High School. The group is led by Tracy Miller. Before the program, they spent time going through some of their school material. I thought that was a great way to take care of a bit of their downtime and accomplish their school objectives.

There were 10 students with us but I think there are more. Some were were busy with their other end of the school year material and couldn't be with us.

After their arrival they did the set up of their sound equipment, did some school work; then had a bit of warm-up practice time prior to "suiting up" for our performance. I took this shot as they were doing their warm-up for a couple of songs they used with us for the first time. That was pretty nice of them to do something special just for us.

Today, our prelude time was a Piano and Organ Duet by Grace Averitt and Nancy Jensen. Listen to that one here:

http://www.whbc.org/media/audio/20160510_Grace-Nancy.mp3

After I did the early part of our program with Welcome, Groaner Jokes, introducing Birthdays and Anniversaries plus our upcoming Day Trips, I introduced Tracy and the students, now all decked out in their finest performance clothes.

Wow, what a transformation! They look stunning in their red formal dresses and black suits. Of course, they sounded just as good as they looked. 

They sang and introduced themselves and told what churches they attended. This year there were none of them from our church but there was one student from our Daughter Church, Clearcreek Chapel. There was also a grandson of out members.

They also shared a few solo pieces along with the entire group as background.

Remember, you can click on the images to get a larger view

I received lots of praise for the group, so I will have to tell Tracy to give everyone an "A" for the day!

You can hear their music by clicking the following link:

http://www.whbc.org/media/audio/20160510_Resounding%20Joy.mp3

After the program, we all retired to the dining area to enjoy a very nice meal of Salad and Enchilada followed by an ice cream and cookie sundae!

Be sure to thank Lisa Poe and all of the kitchen and dining room staff for their cooking and serving. We are truly blessed with a fine and talented group of volunteers!

Next month, we will hear from another musical group, "Glorious Day"!