YES! I JUST remembered my password!!!

Does this ever happen to anyone else?

But the good news is that my last post was just about this same time of year! LOL!!

More to come.......
if I dont forget it again!!

:-)

Photo #4, #5 and #6

Unreliable. That's what I am regarding blogging. Totally unreliable! My "picture a day" apparently is really "a couple of pictures every month or two" :) Ooops.

Photo #3

Strawberry Freezer Jam!

Nothing better on Christmas morning, when the kids are going through their stockings than to pull one of these babies from the freezer. It thaws in just about the time it takes to make homemade biscuits. Mmmmmmm!

Photo #2

This was taken at the Old Idaho Penn and I wasnt sure if it was used as a toilet or a faucet. ICK! But, it called to me so I took its picture :-)

Photo #1

My daughters Brown Leg-Horn rooster, Elvis. He's a crooner so he has earned his name outright. I didn't get too far from home today...

Photo Journal

Because I'm terribly homesick for the ocean and want desperately to move I need to do something to remind myself that THIS is where I live right now. I have decided to commit to a photo journal of sorts of my town and surrounding areas. I will take pictures of the places I go and the things I do and post one every day. (And heck eventually maybe I'll even slip a few pictures of my house in, you know, in case I can wrestle up a buyer! ) Starting tomorrow I'll try to find a picture that inspires me a little and share it here.

"Home is where your heart is"... and my heart isn't here right now. So I have to think "Home is where you hang your hat" instead, for now.... but one day, the seaside will hold my heart AND my hat :-) (It seems fitting that my first photo be of the ocean though. Ahhhhh.... HOME.)

People Watching

My husbands birthday was yesterday.
He realized his drivers license expired while sitting at The Outback having his birthday dinner last night.
Today we packed up the kids and headed off to the local DMV since you cant renew online. The place was packed and as he pulled his number out of the number dispenser dohicky we saw that he was about 40 minutes behind the line leader. I wasn't wearing my happy face.
But once we settled into seats in the back row of the packed waiting area and the kids were occupied with their Nintendo's, I was free to do a little "People Watching". The DMV is HANDS DOWN the best place for it, too! The first to catch my eye was the kid with dreads. How do they do those things anyway? I mean they look cool enough, but I dont fully get it. I saw a pregnant woman with her husband and four kids. She didn't stop talking for one minute and her husband looked like he was a million miles away as she talked at his face. I think he was dreaming about pounding his head agianst the pole beside him. There was an attractive heavily decorated 50-ish woman bringing her daughter in for her permit who was trying to fully ignore the 50-ish man who was desperate to chat to her. She looked extremely relieved when her number was called. In stormed a 20 something wearing more tattoo's than clothes. She turned a few heads, but no guy there was honest enough to gawk for fear of someone gawking at him while he gawked at her. My favorite co-bored person at the DMV was a 3 or 4 year old girl who was sitting on the row next to mine wearing red plastic Elmo high heels, a dress that was at least two sizes too big and a lopsided headband that caused her hair to cover one eye. Pure beauty! She smiled at me as I watched her try to see me through her hair.
My time at the DMV today was well spent.
People Watching is way fun!

Every Guy Needs It

I found this list of the 30 things no guy should be without.
I agree with lots of them... but I really think most men could get along nicely without a frisbee, the Joy of Cooking and the man purse. Maybe replace those with Neosporin, a cell phone and muscles... then it would be a pretty good list. If you also took off the card holder, money clip and the shop specific boots... then even better. (Where is the undying love and devotion on this list?)

1. Cast-Iron Skillet
2. Valid Passport
3. Multipurpose Tool
4. Waiter's Corkscrew/Bottle Opener/Knife
5. Ax
6. WD-40
7. Cordless Drill
8. Work Gloves
9. Chain Saw
10. Lantern
11. Claw Hammer
12. Chef's Knife
13. Flying Disc
14. U.S. Road Atlas
15. Card Holder
16. Grease
17. Lucky Charm
18. Money Clip
19. Joy of Cooking
20. LED Flashlight
21. Jumper Cables
22. Boots for the Shop
23. Boots for Everywhere Else
24. Pocket Knife
25. Air Pump
26. Charcoal Grill
27. Carpenter's Level
28. Weekend Shoulder Bag
29. Jack
30. Giant Wool Blanket Never Removed from the Trunk of the Car

Facebook Society

If there is a better place to go when you want to talk all about YOU, YOU, YOU (or is that ME, ME, ME...?) I haven't seen it. Facebook. It's this really cool place to reconnect with all your old friends since kindergarten. Well I for one haven't spoken to 90% of those people on purpose! It takes a lot of hard work to totally disappear from someones life, why would I want to go onto facebook and give full freedom to all my secrets? I don't get it. So, yes of course I have a facebook account (LOL!) but I don't exactly use my real, full name. Nobody from kindergarten would ever be able to be a friend. I know, I am not valuing all that facebook has to offer. I'll learn to live with that somehow. I'll admit, I did create a "How well do you know me" quiz... and I have looked up an ex-... and I have sent and received pretend gifts... and I do regularly chat with relatives I've never even met... so I suppose I'm a little bit face-booked... but only a little :-) teeny tiny little bit.

Youth Novels

"We kissed for about an hour. I swear, with him sitting on the side of the boat, his legs spread open me in between his legs I could smell his skin. He smelled like sun, baby oil and the ocean."

Well, as fun as all that sounds, I guess I am not totally clear about what Youth Novels are all about. My daughter reads quite a bit above her grade level so finding appropriate books isn't always easy. I have learned to be careful when I pick off the shelf for her. I found what I thought was the coolest sounding book about a girl and the ocean in the youth novel section of the local library. Now that sounds like the perfect book! Two pages after I learned what "whats-his-name" smelled like, the 15 year old in the story (kissing the twenty year old) tells us how kissing "whats-his-name" makes her want sex and some other fairly interesting stuff. This is chapter one.

I think I'll let my daughter read the next Eragon book instead of the ocean story. Dragons sound almost cute now for some reason :-)

Now, off to see exactly why "whats-his-name" smells like baby oil....

Disneyland on a budget

I know this is totally pathetic, but hey, ya do whatcha gotta do.

And tonight we needed to go back to Disneyland.

Since our vacation bank account is as dried up as one of those deserted wells on Bonanza, we took a freebie trip down memory lane tonight. First a friend who is beyond crazy about Disney lent us two old video's of the Disneyland park. So, you watch those and you don't know if it makes you feel better or worse. Now you REALLY want to go! Once the video's were watched and returned we then broke out the many scrapbooks of actual trips. Well, of course you see the pictures of the kids driving their first car at Autopia (Thank goodness for those guard rails!) and you see Minnie hugging everyone at breakfast. OK now the entire family is homesick for a little Mouse Time! One more memory to relive... the family videos. I love watching those! Seeing the kids faces on their first trip, back when they still thought it was all magical and real, their first plane rides, seeing the palm tree's and hearing us all sing "Yo Ho Yo Ho" really loud on the Pirates ride and getting the whole boat singing was fun! (I have to admit that we make that ride fun for everyone who goes on with us.) :) Maybe I'll try to whip up some of those cool Tigger Tail marshmallow things or maybe a Dole Whip, and then we can really say we took a little mini vacation tonight. (I even have some cool little bottles of Disneyland Hotel shampoo's!) :-) Even with a pitiful budget, there is still fun to be had at our house. Those are memory making ingredients and I'll take that any day. Anyone want to take a little trip? We have some pretty cool scrapbooks and video's of the Oregon Coast too, if anyone is interested :-)

Come on over. We'll do the beach.

Seussical and students

A local "arts focused" private school recently invited a group of homeschoolers to their performance of "Seussical". WOW! What a fantastic group of young talented performers! I was totally blown away by the sheer talent and devotion by these 6th thru 12th grade kids. And I couldn't believe it!! Two of my past students from a drama camp I held a couple of years ago were on stage acting and singing their little hearts out! THAT was so cool. We exchanged a quick wave and I clapped until my hands hurt every time they stepped on stage... and then to get to congratulate and hug them after the show just totally warmed my heart. They just glowed when I told them how proud I was of them that day :-)

When you work with kids, you never know where their futures will take them. But if you do a good job, somewhere in that future a teeny tiny little drop of you can go along with them.
If you're lucky.

If you ever see kids perform... clap really loud!