Changing

Same spot, different look.
It's amazing how some snow can change the looks of things!
More pictures here.

After the Storm

It's sooooo nice out today! So nice that I'm taking the rest
of the day off to go to Banfill again to see the sights!

Oh, Goodness

I made butter tonight!! Mmmmmm, NUM!

Here Comes Winter...Again

The drive to work was not fun. Or easy. It was a tense 65 minutes.
But how nice it was to actually get there in one piece, despite the best
efforts of people who should not have been on the roads today.

Curveball

I like this. It's the current banner thing-a-mabob on Kristina's blog:

When God throws a curveball, don't duck.
You might just miss something.

Who Are You?

This morning I was greatly startled to be woken up at 2:15 by a call from 704-765-4267. There was no one there and all I could find out about the number (without paying $14.95) was that it's from Davidson, NC. I don't know anyone there! I was extremely irritated, but not so bad that I didn't fall right back to sleep...yawn. Goodnight. I mean, goodmorning! I get to watch Hailey and Ezra this morning!!!

Back to Banfill

Mom and I went to Banfill after I got off work. Yay! What a nice day.

Here are some pictures. The rest are at Flickr.

Dad was complaining about the bug in the electric
workings of our new water softener...a spider!

Mmmmmm

The sunrise was so...awesome this morning! I wish I had brought my camera to work (like I had thot about before I left) and had time to stop at the park before I went to work to take some pictures. Jen saw it, too!

(Like I told mom...if you think the pictures make the sunrise look nice...they look like poop compared to the real deal.)

Madam Blueberry

(I'm so blue-oo-oo, blue-oo-oo, blue-oo-oo-ooo! I'm so blue, I don't know what to do!)

Tonight after church Janet and I went to the Uptown Diner for a good talk and Janet received an extra-special surprise in her Uptown Burger: A Blueberry!!!! (Yikes!) We laughed...

Golden Times

Kristina had a surprise Golden Birthday party for Josiah tonight!
Here are some of the pix, the rest will be on Flickr tomorrow.

Josiah acting surprised.

Watching the gift openings.

Getting what he asked for - Nothing!

(and a few other things!)

I Never Read Dr. Seuss

Which Dr. Seuss character are you?

You are Marvin K. Mooney!
Take this quiz!

Pictures

Here are some of the pictures taken while the oven
was on fire at Lukas' a few nights ago!!!

The SnoCone is Ezra quietly sleeping...for now!Which color should I use?
What should I do now?
Slumber before the awakening!
Ez and Hailey after Ez was woke up...

A Good Night

Tonight I am celebrating!! American Idol is on, and boy is it going well! Lisa and Melissa are here for another week and Brenna is FINALLY GONE!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!! WOO HOO! She drove me up the wall. She bugged me. Grrr. I was rooting for her to leave last week! And it has happened! Yay!!!!!!
And all my favorite guys are safe! Elliott, Will, Gedeon, and Kevin are staying! Tho Kevin was in the bottom 3. Sway was sent home, which was sad. David is gone this week, too! He bugged me almost as much as Brenna did.
And to top the night off at the beginning of the show Carrie Underwood, the Idol winner from last year, sang her current single 'Jesus Take the Wheel'....yay!!!!
American Idol is done for the week, goodnight!

What a Night

Tonight I was at Lukas' to hang out and we had a visit from the fire department. For the fire in the oven. They came after Gretchen and Heather put out the fire...

The night started out normal: I arrived to...wait, it wasn't quite normal - Elliot wasn't jumping all over me and barking incessantly! Hailey was at the top of the stairs saying 'kan'i, kan'i!' over and over again. I walked up the stairs into the living room with Hailey wanting me to pick her up as I shrugged off my coat. Gretchen and I exchange hi's as I picked up Hailey. We all go into the bedroom where Ezra is lounging on the bed, just waking up.

Gretchen grabs Ez and we go out to the kitchen, where Gretchen is getting ready to make peanut butter cookies. After the cookies are mixed up (with Hailey trying to eat the flour and the batter and saying 'cookie' all the while) we start preparing supper: french onion soup (thanks, Jenni!) and grilled cheese sandwiches. (Mmmmm!)

We sat down to eat, keeping in mind that American Idol would start soon, and we had a nice time visiting over the food. Gretchen cleaned up while I took Ez out of the bouncy seat - he was feeling left out - and Hailey headed off to her bath.

Just as Hailey’s bath ended American Idol came on and while we were waiting for the first pan of cookies we watched upstairs, after which we moved downstairs to watch it on the big screen. (and getting the volume to work is a whole 'nother story in itself!) So, Gretchen, Hailey, Ez and I were all settled in downstairs watching American Idol when the night got interesting.

Gretchen started smelling burning cookies so went to check on them. I thot nothing of it - figuring that the timer had gone off and we hadn't heard it. Well....Gretchen started screaming for Heather to come up cuz the oven was on fire. Heather went running upstairs (with me following to bring Hailey back downstairs) and....you'll have to ask Gretchen the rest of the story. I kept Hailey and Ez happy in the basement while Heather and Gretchen put out the fire and started cleaning up the mess. Oh! Did it smell...bad. Not like peanut-butter-cookies-burnt-bad, but... house-burnt-down-strange-and-kinda-indefinable-bad. After calling Dan’s mom Gretchen called the fire department. They came. It full gear. They checked everything out. Used the word 'fluke'. They left. Dan came home. (remember me saying before that he always leaves when I come over?) I went home....and spilled stuff all over my car that I had to clean up, but I don't want to talk about that now...goodnight!

Not Empty Handed

Just when I was ready to start simply surviving....I popped the new Avalon CD in and this is what I heard:

I think I caught you just in time
I caught you trying to survive
Broken pieces in your heart, never mend
But every hope you’ve ever had
Can breathe again

Love won’t leave you empty-handed
Broken down and somewhere stranded
Love won’t leave you hanging on for life
Cause love is
Love is always true
God is love
And love won’t leave you

I wanna say you’ll be okay
Always doing things the hard way
Living paralyzed by fear
But you know
You can let it go today
And save tomorrow

Love is gonna free your mind
Love is gonna steal your pride
And even though the hard times come
Love is gonna make things right

I think I caught you just in time
Love is gonna save your life

Dreams

I woke up frustrated today. I have been updating a bunch of special pricing at work for the past month and it’s finally getting to me. In my dream, a sales rep was yelling at me for not getting his price letters done fast enuf, there were several guests wandering around, and some listened to the rep. Not that anyone could drown him out, tho. He is loud to begin with.
The dream progressed with my boss growing taller (than he already is) and standing over me all the time. He was laughing at the rep and scowling at me. One of the guests started laughing at us so hard he was crying.

Today is Josiah’s Golden Birthday! Woo Hoo! Party time!! Happy Birthday, Josiah!!

Kissing Cousins

Tonight I met Janet at my grandparents house for supper. Oma prepared a tasty potato bake, bacon, grapefruit, pears, home-made-bread-toast, and served no-flour peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips. Mmmm! What a tasty meal! The conversations that went with the meal and followed would have scared anyone who didn’t know us. Good thing Opa and Oma have known me all my life - Oma said Janet ‘fits right in’ with me…Yup. We knew that already. For some goofy reason it keeps coming up, tho. Craziness.

When You Hurt

I woke up singing this song by Krystal:

I desire for you to understand
I wanna be there when
You need me, my friend
Let me be the one you cry to
I know that I can truly make you happy

Cuz when you hurt you know
I hurt just as much as you do
And when you hurt you know
I hurt with you
I hurt with you

Don't believe all the things
People say about me
Cuz they will tear us apart
I just wanna be with you
So that we walk together
For worse or for better
I know that we can make it

You gotta believe
Put your trust in me
All it takes is faith
I will help you believe

How can any of us make a sad friend truly happy? We can hurt with a friend, but never as much, because we don’t fully know/understand what that friend is going thru.
I find it wonderful that Jesus calls me ‘friend’. Not only am I ‘friend’ but ‘child’ and ‘beloved’ and ‘family’ and…get the drift? :-)
Only Jesus can really hurt as much as I do (in things I get hurt by). And He comes along side, so understanding and loving and accepting and forgiving and…He hurts with me! How awesome is that?!?!
If I believed half of the things I’ve heard about Jesus, would I follow Him? Probably not. But, still. Jesus wants to be with me, to walk and talk together - for better or worse! Together, Him and I can make it thru the toughest storms of life!

Copies, Please!

AT WORK WE GOT A NEW COPIER/SCANNER/PRINTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS IS A HUGE DEAL!!!!!!!!!!!! WE'VE NEEDED ONE SINCE FOREVER!!!!!
THE ONE THAT FINALLY GOT JUNKED IS OLDER THAN ME AND THEY QUITE MAKING PARTS FOR IT QUITE A WHILE AGO.

Second Chance

Well, Jenni stayed until 12:30. We had some good and some funny conversations…and some very heated rounds of Care Bear Uno!

At 6:35 (on the dot!) I met Katie, Marcus, and Janet to watch ‘Second Chance’. Since I didn’t know quite what to expect, I…had mixed feelings about the movie. After all, it’s Smitty! No time for a full review, and who knows when I’ll have time???

Mom and Dad got home at 10 from Ishpeming, and we hung oiut in the kitchen talking about our weekends. Great itmes, but 5:30am comes mighty fast...