Dancing in the Rain

Here is today's wise & witty quote: "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." --Helen Keller Speaking of life's adventures, little Stellan's latest adventure seems to be winding down somewhat. He's been moved to the step-down ICU and his breathing is getting much better. Here's MckMama's latest update: http://www.mycharmingkids.net/2008/12/movin-on-down.html Oh, and also speaking of life's adventures, I'm going to try to get a "year in review" post done either later tonight or tomorrow...we'll see when it happens! We have company here tonight, so it might depend on when she leaves. Well, I've gotta go finish supper. LOL, that reminds me of a game we played Christmas night. It's called "Imagine If...", and it has all these cards with crazy "imagine if" questions on them, and you have to insert the name of someone playing. One of the cards that had my name asked, "Imagine if Haley were a tr

First, an update on little Stellan: he's had a pretty rough, often scary time for the last little while, but he seems to be doing better now. Here's the latest update on MckMama's blog: http://www.mycharmingkids.net/2008/12/guess-who.html OK, now for Tuesday's Tidbit...well, I suppose I could use the fact that I am the last one up here at our house right now as a tidbit, since that almost NEVER happens, but I had already planned to use this little interesting fact: 2009 will be one second late! Did you know that every so often "they" (the infamous "they" that nobody really knows who "they" are...) have to add in a "leap second" to keep the atomic clocks in time with the earth's rotation? Right now, "Father Time" is about six-tenths of a second ahead of "Mother Earth". By delaying the coming of the new year by just one second tomorrow night, the earth will then be four-tenths ahead of the clocks. Just to giv

Merry Christmas, everyone!!! :D May your Christmas be richly blessed with the Grace and Joy that was born in a barn and laid in a manger so long ago. Love y'all!

Well, "Wise & Witty Wednesday" won on the poll so that's what we'll go with. Here, once again just barely on Wednesday, is today's quote: "If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older." --Abraham Sutzkever Merry Christmas Eve! :D

Here we go with today's tidbit. Me being the "word-aholic" that I am, I loved this little interesting bit: The verb “cleave” is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate. We had a great trip to San Angelo!! Lots of fun and laughter and way too much sugar...which might have played in to some of the laughter. :D We played "Who, Sir? Me, Sir?" yesterday afternoon; always a riot with our family! Papa was the "caller", and he is SO good at that. The faster it goes, the more flustered everybody gets, and the more fun it is!! The ones who were really cute, though, were the little kids that came in to play with us later...watching them trying to a) remember what they were supposed to say when and b) spit it out before being sent to the back of the line was as much fun as anything! Then we played "In a Far Off Land"...that one you have to see to understand just how hilarious it was. I think Micah got

an ornament on our tree here in Springtown, reminding us of Who this Christmas season is all about taken by: me *I know that today is not Sunday, but I had the absolutely perfect picture for this week's "Simply Sunday" and decided that I was going to post it even though I wasn't here on Sunday. So, enjoy!*

Just to let you all know, we're headed to San Angelo today to do Christmas with Mom's family, and we'll be back on Tuesday sometime. Y'all have a blessed weekend! :D Love you all!

There's less than 45 minutes left in Wednesday, but it IS still Wednesday and here's the post I promised. :D I collect quotes. I love those short little bits of wise or witty (or sometimes both!) words that various people through the ages have said. But what fun is a quote if you can't share it with somebody?! So, since this is *my* blog...I'm going to use it to share my collection of quotes with you! One at a time, of course. On Wednesdays. The only question is: what should we call it? I've thought of two different names for this "theme"-- Wise & Witty Wednesday Who Said It? Wednesday If we decide on "Wise & Witty", I'll just post a quote each Wednesday, naming the author. If we go with "Who Said It?", I'll post a quote each Wednesday without naming the author and you will have until the next time I post to guess "who said it"--in a comment of course! :D The fun part of that idea is the interaction and feedbac

Well, it's time for... *drum roll, please* Tuesday's Tidbit!! :D Here's the little totally-unneccessary-information trivia bit for today: Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day. I think we adults need to laugh more, what do you think? :D In that spirit, here's a little something to tickle your funny bone: A friend gave me a report with Stats showing that 4,153,237 people got married last year. Now I don't want to start any trouble but I can't help but wonder. Shouldn't that be an even number? In other news, I was *supposed* to work this week (today and tomorrow) but good ol' Texas weather...it decided to ice overnight in the Frisco area, and since the high today is only supposed to be about 32 degrees Fahrenheit, it's NOT going to be melting. So, I'm at home. Actually, it will kind of be nice to have a couple of extra

OK, I first saw this on Elyse's blog, and thought it looked like fun, so I'm going to try it. It's actually hosted by MckMama ...her blog is a lot of fun to read, too, so go check it out! :D So, here we go; the point is that I'm going tell you all the things (or all the things I can think of) that I "didn't" do this week. I did not trip and fall while running up to our back porch with my dog yesterday, banging my shin (hard) on the bottom step. I do not, therefore, now have a big "beautiful" bruise on my left shin. I did not cheer on the Dallas Cowboys yesterday while also telling them, "But don't sack Manning!" Eli Manning, that is, the New York Giants' quarterback. (it didn't work...poor guy "did not" get sacked 8 times! But, the Cowboys WON!!! Or should I say they did not win...? *shrug* I've got myself totally confused now!) I did not stay up until at least midnight pretty much every night this week...I w

"our" deer in our backyard here in Springtown taken by: me * I'm sorry I'm just now getting this posted...I've been trying to post it all afternoon, but our internet connection apparently couldn't handle the Blogger uploading thing. So, I finally found a "round about" way of doing it. Hopefully this works right! :D*

OK, so I said that a post was coming tomorrow. Hey, it's "tomorrow"! So what that it's now tomorrow's tomorrow...and perhaps now I have you sufficiently confused that you won't care that I'm a day off when I said I was going to post. *vbg* So, let's see...longer and newsier. Well, longer won't be difficult; I think this post is already longer than Tuesday's. Newsier, on the other hand...when nothing much is going on, that one can be hard to accomplish! So if the events of my life start to sound boring or mundane, just remember this: it's a lot more fun to live it than to talk about it! I've almost got all my Christmas shopping done; now it's just a matter of finishing the making/putting together somehow of various and sundry items. Once I have a present for everyone in my immediate family actually in my possession, I'll wrap them and put them under the tree. I like being the first one to put gifts under the tree; but I like to

I think it's my internet connection. I've been so spoiled with high-speed, fairly reliable internet all my life. Midland's was the worst, but even it was better than this I think. I have a whole long blog post all typed out, and it won't post it. So, I'm going to see if it will post this shorter one. If so, I may try the longer one again...and, it may be tomorrow before it gets published. :P Computers are enough to drive me crazy sometimes!

OK, I'm racing the clock to get this posted on Tuesday... :D Here's today's "Tuesday's Tidbit": The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal. A longer, newsier blogpost should be coming tomorrow! :D

The flag next to the mailboxes in the Highland Range Estates in San Angelo, Tx taken by: me

Well, so I didn't get the little Christmas trees out in the front yard... *shrug* I did, however, manage to get menus and grocery shopping for the next week done, reply to some e-mails that have been sitting in my inbox for a while (if yours hasn't been replied to yet, I'm sorry and I'm working on it! :D), and figure out a pattern that will work for some Christmas presents the boys are going to make. Oh, and I got to Christmas shop with my sister over the phone (we live almost 4 hours apart, how else are we going to do it?!). Speaking of which, there are a couple things I'm supposed to go check out online...I'll do that real quick when I get done here! We also called Papa Rollins and sang him "Happy Birthday". Don't ask me how old he is, I can't ever keep up with my grandparents' ages! We ended our evening watching My Fair Lady . It's kinda strange to be hanging out with all boys and it be their idea to watch that particular movie. :D O

You know that great feeling when you put your hand in the pocket of a coat you haven't worn in a while and find some money you forgot was there? I got to experience that feeling the other day when I went to change my address for my bank account online and discovered that there were $10 in there that I didn't know I had! I realize that $10 isn't a whole lot of money, but when you've been an unemployed babysitter for a few months, it looks really great. I had completely forgotten that when I switched to Bank of America, I was supposed to get $10 because I was "referred" by my parents, and it had been deposited a couple weeks ago. Cool! :D I had so much fun babysitting yesterday and Tuesday! The boys have grown a LOT since I last saw them about 5 months ago. It was most noticeable in Reilly, who is now walking and chatters (unintelligibly) nonstop. Noah, who is 4, "interprets" for him...which is always cute and usually very funny, since apparently Reill

OK, so since "Tidbit Tuesday" won on the poll, and I liked my mom's suggestion anyway, we're going with Tuesday's Tidbit! :D Here's the tidbit for this Tuesday: What famous person invented the "bucket seat" for cars? Steve McQueen - Not only was Steve McQueen famous for his movies, he was also well known for racing. A patent for the "Buck Seat" was issued in 1970. May the Lord bless you all richly with His sweet grace today! :D

Last week, while Amber and Caleb were here, we played a game of Life (Jonathan's favorite game--hence the reason we were playing it). About halfway through, somebody landed on a "Spin to Win" space. If you haven't played the newer version of the game, the "Spin to Win" space is where everybody gets to pick a number and bet some money; the person who landed on the space spins the wheel, and if it lands on your number you get 10 times the amount of money you bet (it's all pretend, we don't really gamble, so don't get all judgmental on us! :D). Well, Amber had a "share the wealth" card that let her pick four numbers. She bet $100,000...and won! (actually, she might have bet more...I can't remember, but I'm sure if I'm wrong, she'll post a comment and set it all straight :D). Later she won another Spin to Win, and ended up with $4,000,000 (yep, that's four million ) in the bank. Well, the next time somebody (me) landed