Simply Sunday...

Jasper enjoyed the view.



Sarah talked on her phone to grandma and friend Callie.



Anyone want to buy a 1991 Suburban?



I love it when the oak tree is this color.



This is one tall tree!



Jasper tried to make friends with Jeff, the red eared slider Sarah caught at the park today.(click to enlarge any of the pictures)

It Isn't White!!!

It seems as though almost every car we've had in the past 20 years has been white, especially the last 3 or 4. Finally, we have branched out and added a nice neutral! Introducing my new ride!!

Ocean Sapphire...

Sarah's friend got a Siamese Fighting Fish(betta) a few weeks ago and she's been bugging us to get one too. I resisted because of the cats, but finally gave in today. He's GORGEOUS!! (click to see larger images)



I wish his irredescence showed up better in the photos. He's a dark blue with slightly lighter fins.


Here he is backlit, showing off his greenishness. You can see a few of my needle-felted balls behind his bowl too, an nice foil for his coloring.


This is the truest picture of his color.


We already had the bowl and red marbles, a perfect habitat for such a beauty. However, we will be looking for a bigger container. They do better in 1-2 gallon tanks, this one is probably a half gallon. Why yes, that is a C3PO standing in the corner!

In other news...

I'm taking time this weekend to go through a newish(acquired last year) old cookbook, Rodale's Naturally Great Foods Cookbook by Nancy Albright(published in 1977). Is it ever full of good stuff! Not just recipes but instructions on everything from making yogurt, sprouting sprouts, and even grinding flour from pumpkins! Wowza!!! There are soooo many recipes in it that I'm dying to try out, like Alfalfa Sprout Gazpacho, Avocado Banana Dressing, Grainburgers, Millet Meatloaf, Broccoli Timbales, Yogurt Cheese, Sourdough Rye Bread, and the list goes on and on and on!!! I'm also reading another goodie called Cooking Vegetables the Italian Way by Judith Barrett. Lotsa good stuff there too.

We are supposed to be taking the last bits of wallpaper down from the dining room tomorrow. The paint we've decided on is called Caramel Cream, a rich, bright orange. All the playing I've done at Valspar's online room painting thingie points to this color. I think it will be perfect.


I'm sure it looks garish on your monitor, kinda looks washed out on mine too. Trust me, its really a rich, goldish orange with depth and a nice warmth. In fact, if you'll scroll back up to the third picture of Ocean(his true color pic) and look directly above his tail you can see a felted ball of red, yellow, and orange. The orange in that picture is very close to the wall color. I can't wait to get it painted!!

Guess that's all the goings on for this weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to blog more next week. Having a working teen who is also very social is demanding more of my time than I ever thought possible!!

New Shoes...

Yesterday was shoe buying day for some of the Soniers. Amy was outgrowing her Converse and wanted Chuck Taylors and Sarah found some brown and white checkerboard Vans that are just adorable! I wanted something with a little more support for my older model feet and tried some Eccos on just to see. Oh my GOOOOSH!! I never even took them back off!! They got their first workout today at the park and my feet feel wonderful!!! No sore spots, no aches at all! I am impressed big time.

HERE are the shoes I got. They aren't quite as bright blue as the picture, more of a greyish blue actually, but still very stylish.

I wanna be a rink rat...

The Thinker


You are analytical and logical - and on a quest to learn everything you can.
Smart and complex, you always love a new intellectual challenge.

Your biggest pet peeve is people who slow you down with trivial chit chat.
A quiet maverick, you tend to ignore rules and authority whenever you feel like it.

In love, you are an easy person to fall for. But you're not an easy person to stay in love with. Although you are quite flexible, you often come off as aloof or argumentative.

At work, you are both a logical and creative thinker. You are great at solving problems. You would make an excellent mathematician, programmer, or professor.

How you see yourself: Creative, fair, and tough-minded

When other people don't get you, they see you as: arrogant, cold, and robotic

You Are An INTP

What's Your Personality Type?

In other news...

Sarah and I want to go camping again when we visit my parents this summer. Here's the place.

In Which I Ruminate...

As some of you know, we are dealing with Mark's mom's moderate to severe Alzheimer's Disease. She refuses to see a doctor, won't take so much as an aspirin, and considers herself to be healthy "pioneer stock". Mark's dad is doing the best he can and has taken over the cooking and such, but she's really way too much for him to have to look after. They are in their early 80s and he has health issues of his own. She's bad enough that she's preventing him from seeking the care he needs as well. Anyway, without going into all the gory details, it is time for her to be cared for in a facility and we are starting Monday with getting her evaluated and placed.

Soooo, in Mark's communications with his sister about all this, he was presented with the story of how he came to be a part of their family.

Mark's mom has always told conflicting stories about the adoption of their children. He was never really sure where he or his sister came from or the reason his parents couldn't have children of their own. His sister told him yesterday that his birth mother is a relative of a woman his parents knew socially here in our hometown. She claims to have seen this woman once and says there is a very strong resemblance. My mom, Mark and I have, on rare occasion, seen a young man(maybe 8-12 years younger than Mark) who could be his twin. Same hair color, facial structure, body frame, eye color. Mark knows the friends of his parents, he even saw the husband in Walmart last week. He has never, to his knowledge, seen the woman who might be his birth mother. We don't know the situation that caused her to give him up for adoption. Maybe she was a young adult, unmarried and pregnant for the first time, or maybe she was older, divorced and unable to take the responsibility for another child. It wouldn't be hard to find out these things without actually contacting this family, but it would be nice to hear the true story from someone who knows. It is SO unfair that the adults(when he was born) are the keepers of the knowledge. Even now, as an adult, he is, possibly forever, in the dark about his blood lineage while "everybody else" knows his history.

Does Mark want to know her story? We've talked about it and I think he does but not right now. He has an enormous volume of work with his new business and the goings on with his parents so it might be a while before he's able to focus on this part of his life. I hope he chooses to approach the family about finding his birth mother. There are medical issues he's dealing with that are adult onset, things we might need to know for the sake of our children.

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we deal with his mom and dad. Its going to be stressful for everyone involved rest assured.

A weekend day around the casa...

First we enjoyed the comings and goings at the bird feeder.





Then we enjoyed the company of our youngest three kitties.


(Tallulah, 7 months)


(Gypsy, 16 months)


(Jasper, 16 months)

Later, the girls helped out with the garage clean-up. Ryan helped too but I didn't get a picture of him.





Finally, I looked through our glass door at the afternoon sun. Can't wait to get it sanded, painted and installed!

Abundance Is....

(First I'd like to thank everyone who commented on my deliberate living post. What you all wrote was inspirational and has given me more to think about. I'm absolutely at peace with dancing to my own music, using my microwave, and sleeping in dyed sheets.*G*)

Now,

Abundance is...

Having enough to give away and never miss it.

We filled the whole Suburban today with stuff for charity and gave a nice dresser to a needy family. We aren't finished, not by a long shot, but we were cleaning first, sorting out second. There are more weekends coming up.

Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again. Give portions to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land. Ecclesiastes 11:1-2.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.~G.K. Chesterton

Abundance is...

Perfect weather, rain or shine.

The past two weekends were spent raking, moving, hauling, lifting, digging, bagging, and so forth. We got our entire front and back yards done! This Saturday we awoke to chilly, windy drizzle and it was just perfect because we had nothing to do outside(no yardwork). Ryan had to be at his job just before noon so we all got ready and dropped him off. We headed to Lowe's for some shelf holders and Jake's for guinea pig and dog bedding. The girls were hungry and decided on Taco Bell. Just as we were waiting for the light to change for us to turn onto that road, Mark had the brilliant idea that we needed something a bit more substantial so we headed for our favorite Tex-Mex dive. It was exactly what we needed on a gray day, very comforting and relaxing.

Today we had no plans to work in the garage but it happened. The weather, once again, was just perfect. Not too cold, not windy, sunny and mild. We didn't get hot on the west side of the house nor did we get cold fingers(except the girls when they washed some box lids). Now after hours of hard work, our garage is clean and organized with (almost)everything in its place.

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ~John Ruskin

There's nothing like biting off more than you can chew, and then chewing anyway. ~Mark Burnett

Abundance is...

Experiencing one of the Earth's most powerful and awesome events and not being hurt or scared.

We had an earthquake early this morning! Actually, what we think is that it was an aftershock from one that happened north of Oklahoma City at 3:43am(Did You Feel It?"). Mark and I were awakened at 4:45 by a series of vibrations like idling in a diesel truck but there was no noise(our bedroom doors did shake a bit). The dogs had actually got me alert a few seconds before so I felt them before Mark. The shakes woke him up. It was unnerving but we really didn't think "earthquake" until we'd got up and around later in the day.

Which would you rather have, a bursting planet or an earthquake here and there? ~John Joseph Lynch

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. ~Frederick Douglass

Deliberate Living....

A new friend of mine said something that gave me pause. She said she needed to start living more deliberately. Hmmmm. As with all philosophies, some followers are rather militant, taking it to the very far extreme. Many, however, like my friends Cheryl, Kel, and Anet (and others of course) are just wading in and doing what their hearts tell them. Baby steps for me. I'm not sure I am ready to commit to any certain "thing" yet. It might be that I do as these women are doing and deliberately change the foods I serve to my family but it quite likely won't be exactly what they are doing. Maybe I'll work at reducing my plastics like Kel has done.

There are things we have that we cannot give up, like our swimming pool. Sure chlorine isn't the healthiest thing to be swimming in but does the exercise we're getting count against that at all? We can't afford to switch over to a salt water filter but I can research alternatives and possibly switch to a less toxic treatment or determine when the best times for swimming would be. There are other things out there that seem to be hype(or at the very least, overly dramatized) as well. I won't be giving up my microwave, sticking my feet in a detox machine, or exchanging our current bedding for organic, unbleached, undyed sheets. I have no room for a garden, nor do I have the inclination to dig in the dirt so that's out for me too. What I do know is that the phrase I heard at park day, "live more deliberately" struck a cord in me and I want to investigate further. How about you?

Here are more websites about living deliberately...

DeliberateLife.com

Deliberate Living: Slowing Down & Simplifying

Living Deliberately(a discussion group)

Living-Deliberately.com

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!

Well, just when I thought the bad stuff was over, it wasn't. But, it is now. The perpetrator of the lies, rumors, and innuendo has been found out and whatever she says will no longer be believed. Of course this has come to an end that wasn't what I had envisioned, so if you are a praying person, say one for all involved. I woke up this morning and my first thought was nothing to do with this, that hasn't happened in weeks! I've got such a peace finally, its overwhelming and soooo freeing!!

So, on that HAPPY note, I will post some "lovely" songs for a "lovely" day. We don't celebrate Valentine's Day really. Mark and I are not sentimental beings unless there is a deep personal meaning behind something. V-day doesn't have that for us, although we did get "officially" engaged on February 12th(he bought me a ring the previous November and I made him take it back because it was too big-what was I THINKIN'!!!). However, we love love and don't mind celebrating that at all!!!

Ryan had his first "official" date last night, we drove them to dinner and a movie. He's had casual "friends who are girls" and even "girls of interest" but not a true "girlfriend" before. This is the first one he's let us meet. She's really cute and has a sweet, outgoing personality(and she's smart!!). She's coming over this afternoon with a friend and we're going to grill steaks and shrimp. Now I'd better extract my booty from this chair and go help with the yard work!!















And, OMG!!!

Just Messin'

First, a fun personality test. Dead-on accurate as usual.

View Full MyPersonality.org Profile

0 50 100	%
Openness	84%
Conscientiousness	16%
Extraversion	5.5%
Agreeableness	64%
Neuroticism	21%

(click to read but don't go by their graph, the numbers aren't right on that one for some reason. they are right here on this one.)

And now collages of pictures scanned on my trip to mom and dad's, click to enlarge and see the lovely details!

These are my dad's parents. His mom is the one in the light colored overalls and on the right in front of the car downtown(bottom pic).



My great-grandfather(the young man) and his parents and siblings(bottom pic) with great-grandpa being the little boy front and center. I'm not sure who the babies are in the first pic.


I'm feeling a bit better today. Enough to make a trip to Hobby Lobby for yarn and crochet hooks! Now we just need to get Mark well and I think we'll be out of the woods. We're expecting nasty ice stormy stuff tonight, bluck.

The flu...

We has it.

Ryan was sick over the weekend of the 17th, I came down with it Tuesday, Sarah on Wednesday, Amy on Thursday, and finally Mark on Saturday. Everyone except Ryan still feels bad. Bluck.

Maybe I'll feel like a real post by mid-week, I've got tons of pictures to upload, transfer and edit. I've missed it! However, I am having fun on Facebook. If yall haven't tried it, do so!!!

We are trying to get back on track today by cleaning guinea pig cages and litterboxes, vacuuming the floors and doing laundry. So far the vacuum is clogged and we've been unable to locate the wad of stuff so the floor won't be happening for now. You wouldn't believe how ready I am to not have carpet in the living area! I'm looking at tile online as I type this but my tastes apparently run to the expensive side. What I want would cost about $4500. Maybe we'll just paint the concrete and get some area rugs...

Inaugural Celebration Chicken With Rice....

A melting pot of spicy flavors...

2 large bone/skinless chicken breasts, in 1-inch cubes
2 bone/skinless chicken thighs, in 1-inch cubes
1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
couple glugs of olive oil
1/2-1 teaspoon of each of the following spices, adjust to your taste:
cumin, cayenne(about 1/4tsp of this one), dry mustard, curry, ginger, celery seed, garlic powder, onion powder and salt.
2-3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 14 oz cans no-salt-added diced tomatoes with juice
1 14 oz can pineapple chunks in juice, with juice
1 bunch cilantro, washed and chopped fine


Cook chicken and veggies in oil for 15 minutes. Add spices and cook 5 more minutes. Add soy sauce, tomatoes, and pineapple and simmer for 20 minutes, covered, stirring occasionally. Throw in cilantro and simmer another 10 minutes or so. Serve over hot, buttered rice or grain of your choice.

OBAMAMAMA, this was goooood!!!!

I really should post...

But it feels so good to be lazy!!! I haven't been lazy all the time though, mostly I've been busy! We got in late Monday night, mom and dad left Wednesday morning and we hit the ground running, picking up where we left off but with more laundry. The kids had church Wednesday night, I had a doctor's appt Thursday, kids had to be carted to various and sundry places Friday and Saturday... In between the driving we got some things done. I spent my birthday money, we got a paper shredder for Mark's business, bbq for my birthday, kids went to church and spent the night with friends, etc, etc. Anyway, I am TIRED now and Ryan has apparently contracted the flu, yuck, so we may all be sick next week. He was fine Saturday afternoon when we took him to a friends' house but came down with high fever and chills late that night and has been that way all day today. He tried to watch football but ended up going to bed early.

My camera decided to die while we were on vacation but my brother just happened to be giving me his old one(again). My computer won't upload from it so I have to use the girls' which means no pics for a few days. I'll try to get to that in the next day or so.*G*

It is 8:15 and I'm headed to bed. Whew.

Musical Trip

My dad and I are the singers in the family. Not that we're good, just that we can't help but do it. I sing all day, every day and I'm pretty sure my dad does too. Here's a tiny bit of what we sang along to on our trip from North Carolina to Texas.

I'm HOME!!!

We drove straight through yesterday, leaving a very cold Micaville around 7am and arriving in Longview around 10:30ish(honestly I didn't look at a clock). There was fresh snow on the far end of Yancey county but not too slick on the roads. It was beautiful on the mountains but I don't have a picture, the cameras were packed.

The trip went by really fast, dad and I took turns driving. We saw dozens and dozens of deer all through Mississippi, probably over 100. The girls and I had fun watching for them, until we hit one. Dang things leapt in front of us, the first one made it across to the median, the second one crashed into the rear wheel well. I have no idea if it could have survived its wounds, we found a dent and where it wiped off the road dirt along the back of the SUV. After that it was a nervous trip, there were deer EVERYWHERE!! Thankfully the Louisiana deer weren't as plentiful.

Mark took me to lunch today for my birthday. Then mom and I went and enlarged patterns from several books and magazines for our thrifted wool projects.

We're having homemade chili for dinner with cornbread. Mark's coming home early because we didn't sleep well last night. He's VERY busy with his new company, getting everything in compliance takes a long time!

Anyway, I've got pictures on 3 different cameras so it's gonna be a few days. I'm sure it will take a week to get back to normal!!!


(the girl in the hat is my mom's mom's mom, Ollie Skaggs)

Killing Time...

Here's what my mom and I have been up to today, ignoring housework and laundry, scanning old pictures!! Click to see them better!


(the top middle is us with my great-grandfather who lived 99 years)


(I'm in the budweiser shirt, by the way. AND, my dad still wears that maroon and white tobaggan!)

The Family...

Well, MY family anyway...



Check out that poodle perm! I think this was a few weeks before my 14th birthday.

thrifted afghan pictures...

I just LOVE this afghan!! My mom's mom had one and I have always wondered where it went. I'm sure some cousin has it but mom thinks it may have been donated. No telling, that was well over 20 years ago. Anyway, I've never seen one in a thrift store til now and this is a beauty! There are several squares in need of shoring up with some matching yarn but that can wait til we get back home, it won't unravel before then. Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures, it was late at night and I've got no editing software on this computer.










(Nan kicking Bert's butt on bags of our salvaged wool)