Time...

****edited to include this wonderful announcement: Today is the 19th Anniversary of our (official) Engagement! We were going to get engaged on Valentine's Day but Mark had to work so we did it on his day off. Actually, we were unofficially engaged in November of 1989 but my mom wasn't ready for that so I made him take the ring back(yes, you read that right!). We had only met that July but knew from our second date that we were meant for each other. 'neeways, just wanted to share. And, no, I didn't forget, just didn't realize today was the 12th.****




You're the time of day right around sunrise, when the sky is still a pale bluish gray. The streets are empty, and the grass and leaves are a little bit sparkly with dew. You are the sound of a few chirpy birds outside the window. You are quiet, peaceful, and contemplative. If you move slowly, it's not because you're lazy – it's because you know there's no reason to rush. You move like a relaxed cat, pausing for deep stretches that make your muscles feel alive. You are long sips of tea or coffee (out of a mug that's held with both hands) that slowly warm your insides just as the sun is brightening the sky.

This is pretty right-on. Early mornings are nice since it is usually just me. Mark leaves for work about 7:15 and sometimes Amy isn't up until 8. I can eat my breakfast, drink my coffee, read the news and my email and think about what needs done for the day. However I am more active, both physically and mentally, in the late afternoons and get most of my stuff done then.

Apparently yesterday my body needed some extra sleep for some reason. I was exhausted most of the afternoon yesterday and got very little done in the way of cleaning and decluttering my bedroom. Three of my smaller treasure(junk) drawers got de-junked and I threw away about 1/2 a drawer's worth of trash from them. Just the tip of the iceberg of what I had planned. Maybe today will go better. Except that Ryan thinks he is getting the stomach virus, he informed me at one point last night.

Mark brought home some tortillas for leftover chicken fajitas. I ate, took a quick bath, then fell dead asleep at 7:05pm. He came in to see if I wanted to watch the Sarah Connor Chronicles but I was barely able to respond to him(he said it was a great episode so I'll have to catch it online later this week). The girls kept coming in to tell me various things(about which I cannot recall and were answered by my grunting) and they finally went to bed around 9:30. Next I knew, Tom was in and it was 12:30. Puppy-girl woke me up barking at thunder at 5:50 and I've been up ever since. It is now 9:45 and I've had 3 cups of coffee. I'm still groggy and the bed is calling me back but I must resist!!

In other news...

Mark has to be in court again today. His company is being sued because one of their drivers(no longer working there) had a wreck while on a delivery. The woman suing wasn't even involved in the wreck except that the delivery van came to rest in front of her car, and slightly bumped it. She wouldn't accept the insurance company's offered settlement so they're in court to decide if she deserves more.

I have to grocery shop sometime today and then we need to take the kittens for their shots and worming. Fun fun! I think the temperature has dropped 15-20 degrees since I first took P-girl for her walk at 6-something. Oh yeah, just checked weather.com and it is now 45. I think it was 69 when I logged on earlier this morning. It is still spitting but should clear by this afternoon. We'll see.

Not Full-filled Quite Yet...

Well, the Fulling part is done but nothing has been made from it yet. I wanted to share pictures of the sweaters but we've had a bit of a detour.

Last Monday I came down with an upset stomach. It hit harder the next night with fever and body aches and then Mark got it to a lesser degree. We didn't have a bad case, no vomitting(or even feeling we needed to), just stomach cramps and other unpleasantness that comes with stomach viruses. We both felt 100% better by Thursday night. I did manage to process the sweaters during this time but didn't take pictures, trust me, it was boring aside from the outcome. They are even better than I had hoped, just beautiful, but hard to photograph.

My plan was to get up today and make some secret crafty things out of some of it for my Pay-it-Forward gifties but things don't always go the way we plan do they?


(Sarah and Tom, Fall 2006)

I was up late last night waiting for the neighbors across the street to kick Tom out for the night. He is ill with some aging cat illness that causes him to have very labored breathing, probably CHF. It bothers me that they turn him out in the cold at night so I wait on him and bring him in our house to sleep. Anyway, last night it was well after 11 when they put him out.

After I got in bed I tossed and turned worrying about him and had just dozed off when Amy woke me up. Now, when Amy wakes me up during the night she sneaks as close to me as she can WITHOUT waking me up, then taps me on the shoulder and says, "MOM" in a loud stage whisper. Talk about scaring the beejeesus out of me!! So, she woke me up in this manner at 12:30 and said she felt sick to her stomach. I asked if she needed to throw up and she didn't know. I told her to get in the bathroom NOW and as she turned she started vomitting. Lots. I'm betting half of it didn't make it in the toilet but most did get in the bathroom instead of on my carpet thank goodness. She felt better, I got her a drink and an Advil and helped her clean herself up while Mark de-vomitted the bathroom. I had a hunch she was getting sick with it because she'd had a head and neck ache yesterday and general malaise, just like mine started on Monday. Unfortunately hers was the whole package. She is now resting on the couch, still feeling pretty rotten.

After I got back in bed I couldn't sleep so I got out my bible to do some research on a something Ryan is dealing with now(I may blog about it someday if I can do so in a responsible way). I found lots of good things to share with him when he is more alert this afternoon. It was about 2am when I turned out the light. And about 5:30 when I woke up for the day. Would it be too much to ask for a nap later? Now Sarah has a sore throat and runny nose(and mine is getting that way too). So, it looks like sickness has hit the Sonier household. Hopefully everyone will get the mild versions of what is going around and Amy will have had the worst of hers.

I am still going to work on my PIF projects but won't be posting them until after they've been received. Yes, I did say I was sending things out before Christmas but if you've read anything on my blog about our Soshie cat and the other daily stuff we've been up to you'd know I was suffering from wishful thinking. Now that I actually have the projects in mind, have the materials to do it, and a bit more time, I am aiming for mailing them by Valentine's Day or the weekend after.

There was something else I wanted to post here but for the life of me I can't get it out! I can't even remember what it was but it was very important! Grrr, I hate it when that happens. Maybe I need that nap now. If I think of what it was, I'll come back and update.

Coyote Conspiracy and a Blog Award!!

But first, the kids sporting their new hair dos! Ryan got about 5-6 inches cut off his!!! YEAH! I do wish they'd give Amy a different style though, I keep trying to explain what I want and they do this thing that is popular now with it in short stacked layers in the back and long stringy in the front. That is NOT what I'm asking for people!!

Ok now...

Yesterday we saw a dead coyote on the side of the road. In town. We were headed to our homeschool group's park day at a park where it is known that coyotes, deer, homeless people and wild hogs hang out. So, why do we go there? It is a beautiful park, they've put in a nice walking/bike trail, and cleared out lots of the underbrush. Still there are coyotes, deer and homeless people, we aren't sure if the hogs are still around or not because they tend to go up and down the creekbed to better pastures. A coyote yipped as I passed a thicket along the trail last summer, so close I could have hit it with a rock had I thrown one. A friend of mine, whose backyard borders the park, saw one in her yard with a dead cat in its mouth. When we left the park the dead coyote had been picked up by the city's crew. Now, there was a skunk, a very large one, hit by a car back around Christmastime on an equally busy road. It is STILL there. Nobody cares if there are skunks about. But a coyote? People will start freaking out. So, they came and got it probably within hours of it being hit. Had it been a dog or cat, or possum or skunk it would have been left to rot, I feel sure. It is a conspiracy. Read here about the urbanization of coyotes.

Last night when I walked P-girl, they were shrieking and carrying on across the street and when I went to bed they were howling like I've not heard in a while. I feel horrible for them. Construction of new homes has closed them in tighter and tighter and they have no place to go. Because they have no enemies except people, their numbers are growing by leaps and bounds. This causes huge territorial issues for them, hence the reason the ones across the street can't just pack up and move to the "country". They aren't welcome there. So far, the woods at one end of our block and the pasture at the other end are providing enough food to support a breeding population of probably six. They have stopped terrorizing my dogs and I don't think they're currently in a territory war like two years ago when they were scent marking and scatting all over the lawns. So far we've only known of a few cats disappearing at the end of the neighborhood near the pasture. It remains to be seen what will happen to them. Hopefully something good.

Please visit a Girl and her Coyote for a fascinating tale.

Susan over at Blackberry Creek awarded me this!


I am flattered that someone thinks my blog is excellent. I would also like to point out that ALL of the blogs listed in my sidebar are rated E for Excellent, or I wouldn't have them there!

My blog came about as a way for me to keep myself honest with my weightloss and UFO finishing. Well guess what. I gained some weight back and haven't finished a durn thing yet. But I have discovered this crazy blogworld!! Wow! Many blogs are for information purposes for a person's business, some are craft-only or stick closely to some other topic. Then some folks will blog about their very lives, which I love! I consider some of these folks to be my friends. In fact, I've met two of them in real life(but before we did blogs, I knew them from online email groups, quilting and unschooling respectively). My family had lunch at Barb's(The Quilting Belle) and spent the night with Karen(Leaping From the Box) on our way from east Texas to North Carolina a few years ago.

Here are some other beautiful blogs. They are not in my sidebar because I don't visit them often and they're not ones I comment on(maybe once on a few of them) but they are all just wonderful for many reasons! Check them out and you'll know what I mean. I'm not putting descriptions, I want you to be pleasantly suprised. Maybe I need to add them to my blogroll.

As I See it Now
Miss-Frugality
Honeyflake
Garden Variety
Daysgoby
Dutch Colours
Arkie Mama
Coffee Time Quilt Studio
Em and the Gang
Mostly Adventurous
Adventure Journalist

And of course I have to share a great recipe with you all! We had Indian Rice and Chicken last night. Something I threw together out of pantry and freezer findings. No pictures because we inhaled it, there was NONE left! It was SOOOOO GOOD!!!

3-4 chicken breasts, mine were med-large so I used 3
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped

Brown these 3 things in a bit of olive oil, in a 3-4 quart pot.

1.5-2 cups of brown rice
garlic powder
curry powder
coriander(dried powdered)
tumeric
1 can of chick peas, drained
2-3 teaspoons red wine vinegar(or to taste)

Add the rice, chickpeas and 2 cans of water along with the seasonings to taste(between a teaspoon and tablespoon of all, more garlic than the others).

Cover and simmer for about 45 minutes, checking for water absorption about 30 minutes in(you may need to add as much as another can full). When the rice is tender, stir in about 1/2 cup of regular cream cheese. Serve with crackers and a green salad.

Yall have a great weekend!! We have a friend of the girls spending the night tonight. The weather will be super, mid to upper 60s and sunny. I'm thinking yardwork. We really need to get all the leaves off the pool cover and start working on the rest of the pool area. Anyway, be safe and have fun this weekend!!

Just Some Stuff...

First, some sad stuff.

Please pray for all the tornado victims across the south. I fear the death toll could possibly double from the 45 so far. We missed much of the nasty weather but did get high winds and hail for a brief time late yesterday afternoon. It got much worse as it moved east. I have a bloggy friend, Susan of Blackberry Creek who is in the line of storms. Hopefully they are ok there. I also have several homeschooling friends in northern Alabama and a sis-in-law in Tennessee, praying they are safe as well.***updated, Susan is ok, just some strong thunderstorms at her place*** Thank God!

Now for more uplifting stuff.

If you read the some of the same blogs I do, you've probably already seen these but they are worth watching again!


(go to Faith is Messy to see what she is up to with a similar project)


(not an endorsement, yet)

Our Furry Friends....

Puppy-girl is our oldest pet. We bought her from a Cairn Terrier breeder who'd had an *accidental* pregnancy(her nephew let the dog out when she was visiting for a wedding). The father is a Daschund, she said long-haired but we think wire-haired by the looks of P-girl's face. She turned 13 on October 7th.


Muffin is our oldest kitty and the last one we have from our Nacogdoches days. We got her in June or July of 1996 after she was secretly transported in the engine or some other part of a car. She jumped when they stopped at the corner in front of our house. She's a weird cat.


This is Daisy. She has just turned 4 years old. We have no idea what kind of dog she is. Probably a border collie/lab mix(she weighs about 40 pounds). Any guesses? She has lots of mental and emotional *issues*, it seems like we've had her forever!


Daisy and Buttercup in their usual place, on top of the dog house. They love to sleep up here and keep watch too.


Buddy is Buttercup's brother(she is hiding behind him). They were in a litter of 14 with a Chocolate Lab mom and a Yellow Lab dad. Five of them were black but have a sprinkling of gold. They will be 2 this July. We got Buttercup when she was about 4 months old, after we'd met Buddy(who was known as Judas then). His owners were unable to take him when they moved to California so we adopted him last June after they had him neutered.


This is Buddy again. He is a gorgeous dog and very loving.


Ruby and Rosie will be 5 on April Fool's Day. We got them from our cousins in Oklahoma.


Tom is not really our cat but he lives with us 80% of the time, especially when it is cold out. He sleeps on our bed and is 16 years old.

I didn't include pictures of Jasper and Gypsy, scroll down a few entries and you can see them!

A Fullin' Fool am I...

Well, not yet anyway. I need all yall crafty ladies, help me!! Please, direct me to your favorite fulled(or felted) wool crafty sites or blogs. I found 3 books at the bookstore but only one used sweaters, the others were for knitted objects that were then fulled to make a specific shape(I don't knit so those don't work for me!).

Here's the stash:





I wish the pictures had come out better. The dark one next to the mint is a medium-dark mossy green and beside it is a navy blue with the lighter top.

The white/cream sweater on the right side has some embroidered detailing and a ribbon sewn around the hood and across the front. Should I remove this before I full? I'm thinking yes. I should probably also do two batches, a light and a dark, huh? And, there are two sweaters that look like they've been accidentally fulled. Should I go ahead and do them again just to make sure or clip a piece to see if it unravels? It is hard to tell on one of them but the other is obvious. Any advice is most welcome!!

Super Bowl Sunday!

First, I made some of this:

(8oz each fat free and regular sour creams, about 6oz light mayo with Hidden Valley Ranch Original Dip Mix)

Then, I made some of these:

(filling of mayo, mustard, relish, egg yolks)

At the same time, I started this:


(orange cake from box with pokes filled with sugar free raspberry jello, frosted with french vanilla cool whip)

Along with this:


(secret recipe chili= pinto beans cooked with salt pork, turkey meat, chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, cayenne, green peppers, onions, tomato sauce and diced tomato)

****updated 9:37pm, MY CHILI WON FORTH PLACE out of TEN!! Wooohooo!****

Then, after I wished for(but didn't get) a nap, I took pictures of these two cuties:


(Jasper snoozing under the nightstand)


(Gypsy-that Jypsy thing just isn't working for me- checking in with her piggies)


(she just knows they'd be great playmates!)

I am wiped out! We are expecting rain tomorrow, a good excuse for movie watching and/or napping!