25 Random things about me

I enjoy reading these on other blogs.  If you would like to do one on your blog and link me to it in the comments….I would love that.

 Here goes:

1.  I don’t listen to very much music. Just don’t think to turn it on.
2. I love to listen to a good book on tape while driving.
3. I think God rocks!
4. My masters degree was in endocrinology (hormones).
5. My favorite age to teach…9th graders. They just crack me up.
6. I love to scrapbook…capturing the story either in words or pictures or both just really makes my day.
7. I love little tweety bird images and stamps.
8. I don’t get the female obsession with shoes…just plain old don’t get it.
9. I love that my husband is a born boy scout…always thinking ahead. 
10. I love it the my oldest takes after my husband in that respect.
11. I love popcorn.
12. I am glad my youngest loves popcorn too…it is often our afternoon snack together.
13. I enjoy a good suspense book but many that have read are too graphic for me. I need an author who can write a cliffhanger but not be graphic.
14. I have never read the book of Esther before. I am doing a 10 week bible study on just that book of the bible…and loving it.
15. I loathe some chores around the house…like laundry and cleaning bathrooms. 
16. I enjoy dusting and vacuuming.
17. I like to dust and vacuum while listening to podcasts or books on tape…maybe that is why I enjoy those chores!
18. My favorite UFC fighter is Rich Franklin. He is a Christian who loves his God, wife and country…these things I can respect.
19. I am so grateful that my parents raised me to to know God, respect my elders and deal with my own concequences.
20. I enjoy college basketball and football…but never watch NFL or NBA.
21. My husband and I are currently addicted to 24…so that is the first step right? Admitting our addiction. 

22. I pray for our nation.

23. I pray for other nations.

24. My youngest child can laugh and make me laugh. It makes parenting him difficult..but I am working on it.
25. If I bake from scratch…I always use spelt flour.

Since we had the day off…

We went on a hike.  Second year in a row on Martin Luther King Day, here is last years post.  You would think we have beautiful weather here  for such fair weather in January and I will let you in on a little secret…we do have gorgeous weather as long as the wind stays away!  :0)

Same hike as last year, when the boys were 6 & 4.   Now they are 7 & 5, such troopers both years but this year not one single complaint or question about how much further, etc.   None of that and it is a 1.7 mile hike. 

I am always struck by the brilliant blue color of the water next to brown and tan tones of the grass and shrubs. 

A bunch of snow geese in one spot.  Also got a few decent duck pictures.

And just for fun….bottoms up!

 

That was my 5 year olds favorite part…the duck that hardly came up for air, didn’t even know we were around watching him and all we saw was his hiney.  That is what gets a 5 year old boy chuckling!

Oh, and by the way…2 things:   1) how fun for me to read last years post on the same hike that I took yesterday.  That is why I keep a blog!  Too fun.  And… no I don’t think it is longer than 1.7 miles.  Maybe  it just seemed like it when the boys were a year younger.  Plus last MLK day was the first time I had ever been on that hike and so maybe not being sure about landmarks, etc.  made it seem longer.  Not sure but truly blessed that I have a blog with my thoughts and view point one year ago today.    2)  I finished my momma’s and daddy’s calendar today and sent it in the mail.  Yeah.  That leaves one more gift calendar to go…and them ours (and in case my hubby is reading this..yes…I am going to actually do ALL of ours this year).

Scrapbooking post

Remember how I bought these SEI calendars.  Love them.  Such great quality…cardstock paper, cardstock embellishment stickers (which I use very little of)…and cardstock that you can put double stick tape on and remove if you don’t like it (this makes me very happy). 

So thought I’d share some of the layouts I did. 

I think I have done one of these “guess who?” layouts per calendar.  Great way to use up the dress up silly pictures.  Sorry the picture quality is terrible.  I tried to quick fix it for lighting and my editing program got a little crazy…

 

And this one has a poem my momma wrote.  Here is a link to the poem.  Very cute.  She took this picture while the boys were there visiting this past summer…precious.

Anyway…so today is January 19th right?  I still have 3 calendars that are not done.  They are going out this week.  I can not believe that I am still working on them!  I am soooo sorry if you are one of those waiting on your calendar…I am working away.  For the record, both of my Grandmas have them in their hands.  I figure, if you are in your 80s…you get priority!  :0)

And so…

I wanted to share some things that I thought were cool at this time in my life.

I have sat down several times to do so…haven’t gotten it accomplished.

Let’s see…

Ali Edward’s new workspace tour…worth the look.  In typical fashion, Ali generously follows up the post with lots of specifics. 

The Generous Wife - I have been receiving her daily generous wife emails for awhile now and have been blessed by them. My husband was the one to tip me off about these as he was getting the Generous Husband emails and thought they were pretty cool.

This Lazer Tag system

I get beat every time…but that is beside the point.

Esther Bible study

Super excited about this new study that I am doing!!!! Yah!

Two friends…

 

This is the first of a series of grateful posts I am doing.

I am so grateful that my boys are close in age.  They are not quite 2 years apart…the best of friends at times.  I was looking through old photos that I had on my photobucket account and was struck by God’s timeliness when I saw this one. 

They are perfectly spaced to be good friends, playmates and wrestling mates.  They are also perfectly spaced to really NOT get along at times.  They really butt heads at times and that is good too.  I figure it helps them in future conflict resolution. 

Anyway…giving glory to God.  He spaced them perfectly and they are such a cool couple of boys.

Happy New Year!

I am so grateful for all the people and blessings in my life!  The New Year always brings that to the front of my mind.  God is so good to me!

That being said…I have also been spending time thinking about and praying about how to best to take care of and resource (for lack of a better term) all the blessings in my life. 

My blessings are numerous, here are a few that I have been most reflective on lately:

 health, my boys (all of them ages ranging 35-5), time, faith, family, the “stuff”, money, friends

With that in mind…I have been doing some reading on several new things that I will be blogging about in the near future.

But the first issue of the year was to do some organizing around the house.  Starting with the playroom. 

We have used the big green/blue  bins over and over for different toys but I finally decided to label them with fun stickers…making the organizing a little more of a happy time for me. :0)  I used some scrapbooking stickers that you can see here and here (I got them at Hobby Lobby).

The two Lego bins are labeled with cute stickers and I also used actual Star Wars and AquaRaiders logos found on printed material that comes with the Legos.  The lego bins themselves were a wonderful find from Mardel Christian Store.  Not a recent purchase however, I found them in the late summer I believe.  I certainly wish I would have bought more of them.  My Target has something similiar in their kids rooms area but only in a couple colors and the sizes are limited…Mardel had many size and color options.

When I was hunting for organizing inspiration I took in pictures from here.  Flikr has some really neat organizing ideas and if you use there search option and then go to “groups”, you can find pictures closer to what you are aiming at.

A couple organizing blogs that I enjoyed were organized with style (the blog) and stacks and stacks blog.