A major milestone

Blair turned 18. (Her nickname is Mickey, like the mouse, hence the cake.) I can't begin to explain how it happened. Last week she was five, sitting on her Daddy's lap being unbelievably silly, this week she is eighteen. On her cake is a mortarboard. She graduated from high school within two weeks of her birthday, and we had out-of-state relatives for the ceremony, so she said it was okay to combine the two parties.

The church had a special graduation service with a nice little booklet of the names and photos of the graduates. She got to walk across the stage and get a monogrammed Bible, and the pastors' message was geared right to them. We came home and had an ice cream cake and opened presents. The 'big' present was an iPod. She is so into music and has never had her own iPod before.

The faster I get behind, the more time I'll have to catch up.

Ah, life. It's been kinda crazy around here. I've been working as a mystery shopper, a subject I'll deal with in a not-too-far-in-the-future post. So, life has been a little different for us. Suffice to say I got behind fast so I must have a lot of time for catching up!

John turned 16 this month. His big present was a set of golf clubs. His last set is about four inches too short for him, so he's passed those down to Kate. He also got Super Smash Brothers Brawl, a video game he's wanted since Christmas. He and I are great fans of the comic strip Zits, and I gave him a compilation book. Blair made his cake, with a magic theme.

I took my camera outside for some photos of the spring flowers coming up in my garden. This was the only thing in bloom:

The girls have been doing more cooking lately. I got some plain aprons and fabric paint, thinking they may as well enjoy the job with a hand-painted apron they designed themselves. It was a lot of fun, but mostly it was a mess. I'm glad we chose a windless, sunny day to do this outside.

Rose Turns 8!

Wow. It's been a long time again. Sorry. My work schedule has been crazy. It's been a lotta years since I've worked, so wrangling meals, laundry, school, chores and work has been a plateful.

Well, my "baby" turned 8 this month. There was only one thing she wanted as a gift, and she got it. I'm sure you've heard of Butterscotch, the Fur Real pony. This is her sister, Smores.

She's amazing. She reacts when she is patted, or ridden or talked to. You can feed her and she will make chewing motions and sounds. Rose is in love.

She discovered it's considerably harder to put a bridle on a moving horse than a fencepost.

So, she traded in her "old" pony
and has a new friend
Of course, her cake had to have ponies as well.

Need insanity?

We now have three teenagers in the house. So, if you need a dose of insanity, bookmark my blog. Fortunately, we will never have more than three teenagers at any one time in our house, Blair will turn 20 just seven short days before Christy turns 13.

All that to say...Happy Birthday, Kate!

Kate couldn't come up with anything for her birthday list. She's always been the happy-to-be-breathing type, never wanting for anything, and very little gets her down for long. She is an animal lover and is considering a career in zookeeping or animal rescue. She does have an amazing way with animals. They calm down in her presence and come to her when they see her coming. Amazing. She'll be working at the zoo again this summer, which she dearly loves.

She has a bunch of games (Zoo Tycoon, Imagine Animal Doctor, Nintendogs, Paws and Claws Pet Hospital, etc.) she plays on my Nintendo DS. Well, this is the year we broke down and got her her own DS. She's plenty responsible enough to take care of such a large investment, and neat and tidy enough to not be losing the little tiny games. And she has a good head on her shoulders, so I don't worry that she'll be up in the middle of the night playing. We'll need to keep an eye on the temptation to play when there's school or chores to be done, but that will be a good learning experience for her.

She was so surprised, so happy, so shocked that we could choose for her such a wonderful gift. Her face lit up when she opened it like she'd been given solid gold. It was solid gold watching her take each piece out and look at it and giggle over it.

Blair made her cake from scratch and it was delicious! She used canned icing, but added some cherry and almond extract and her own food coloring to get it the right color. Quite the artist! And boy, was it GOOD.
So, Happy Birthday, Kate! I pray you continue to be the wonderful, happy blessing you are.

Cool! I'm not Urban Amish anymore!

"Urban Amish" is the term for people who don't have the "essential" technology of the day - like a cellphone or an iPod. If you don't know that, you might be one, too.

Well, Happy Birthday to me, I got an iPod Shuffle! It's so tiny (it's the size of a small binder clip!) and cute and GREEN, my very favorite color! I immediately loaded up all of Pastor Jack's podcasts and a few select songs for exercising to. The "autoload" function wanted to put over 400 songs on this little tiny thing. Wow.

{You will now be treated to a paragraph of reminiscing that I am allowed because it's my birthday. Feel free to skip it if it makes you feel old or bored.}

Back in my day, the must-have technology was a transistor radio. They were the size of a 3x5 file card box and claimed to fit in your pocket, but never quite did. They had a long antenna on them because they had to pick up radio waves which were just not as thick in the air as now. If I was walking or riding my bike, the signal would fuzz in and out, or jump to another station suddenly, interrupting the lovely choral strains of "Windy" from my music station with the latest news report from Vietnam on the news station. There was only one earphone, which was fine, because everything was transmitted in monaural - not stereo, and only on the AM band. Ah, AM radio in the 1960's.
{Okay, thanks. I'm back now.}

I also got this cool thing. It keeps the coffee pods for my Senseo nice and dry and organized. I make my own pods and have been using a poorly decorated Pringles can. But this is much prettier and matches my decor much better!

I got three DVDs: T2 (still can't look at Robert Patrick without my blood running cold), The Hunt for Red October (which the older kids and I have been watching on VHS), and the first season of House (gotta love/hate him!)

The highlight of the day was most definitely breakfast in bed. The kids are becoming really good cooks, and this year's feast wasn't the undercooked-and-runny eggs, burned bacon and untoasted bread of years past. Christy is becoming a barista excellente, making my coffee a little differently each day. (Okay, the slice of banana in the bottom of one cup was a bit unnerving, but it wasn't terrible!)

Finally, my cake. It was layered graham crackers and chocolate pudding, with the top crackers frosted with chocolate frosting and sprinkles. It sure tasted like a smore!

So, Happy Birthday to me. This was so much more pleasant than watching tornadoes threaten my house!

A very unmerry birthday to me.

What did I get for my birthday? Tornadoes that killed dozens. My dislike of my state of residence has turned vehement once again.

We're safe. The Lord protected us, and the only "damage" we had was the miraculous fixing of a gate that was stuck. The wind unstuck it! The first supercell held onto its tornado until it passed over us.

We all slept in the basement, just in case, though. Well, those of us who did sleep, that is. I stayed in the basement through the first supercell storm, but once it settled down, I came back upstairs to see what the news was saying about further storms. There were four more, but by the time they reached us, none were as bad as that first one. But they were much, much worse for others.

My emotionally sensitive child was very, very freaked out by the storm. We had prayed and discussed what we would do, even held a very brief "what to do if" session. I didn't want anyone focusing on the what if, but I wanted them to know that God was protecting us and I had a plan. That all worked well until the lightning hit. The sky lit up like daytime—no, daylight is warm and yellow, this was a harsh blue light that was quite otherworldly. Anyway, it was bright as day, and didn't dim for fifteen minutes. There were flickers where some smaller bolts would hit, but the largest bolts were continuous. We had the blinds shut, but the light came into the room like moonbeams.

To comfort her, I made up a story about a firefly convention just outside the window. How ours was chosen to be the most friendly window in all of Tennessee, so the fireflies met in front of it to discuss their summer plans. Many had woken up in the 70° weather earlier in the day, and were quite confused as to why it was so warm in February. They talked about all the fun things they would do once summer really came: licking up spilled ice cream on the sidewalk, watching the fireworks and trying to recreate their patterns, watching the movie at the drive-in. Eventually the fireflies got sleepy and went back into their winter hibernation and the storm moved on.

I'm so thankful for God's care and protection, and I really, really hate it here.

For the want of a nail...

Chutt Chutt has gone to the vet again this morning. They are keeping her this time, and removing the offending toenail. The swelling isn't going down, and is creeping up her leg. Poor baby. It was SO hard to hand her over. She's so tiny and trusting. But, sometimes to save a life you have to do hard things.

I have an online acquaintance whose mother is in the hospital, at death's door. After several years of unmanaged diabetes, they had to remove her leg above the knee. That would be bad enough if it were the only thing. But this woman also has had several cardiac arrests and major organ shut-downs during the process. She's not saved, and her negative attitude profoundly affects those around her. She's hurt her family over and over to the point that her grandchildren want nothing to do with her. She's alone now, her family has all moved out of state. Her ex-husband has been kind enough to deal with some emergency issues for her while she is incapacitated. My heart breaks for this woman, and I pray for her often during the day. There, but for the grace of God, go I.

On a more "up" note, take a look at my Aerogarden! It's only been two weeks since the last photo, and look at these little plants go! I can't even begin to tell you how exciting it is to see things growing and not dying under my care!

The car, on the other hand, is not doing so well. We're having fuel injector issues (I think, but I'm not a mechanic, so that's just my best guess) and looking at more major repairs. On this particular car, to get to the fuel injectors, you have to disassemble the gas tank. We've done this once before and it cost us over $1000. Let's hope that tax refunds are running fast this year!

We stayed home from church this week, but hubby listened in on the web simulcast. He took notes and we'll discuss it, but I can tell from the notes he took that our pastor is seriously misled. There will be a Q&A during the Wednesday night service, but I don't know that we will be able to make it. It wouldn't matter anyway, really. I've heard this teaching before and it is heretical and insidious. There's no Q my pastor could A to my satisfaction that this particular teaching is Biblical.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'd like it to be my last birthday, the one I never age from, like Bob Hope did. But, with kids you can't do that. Not only do they keep getting older, but their birthday is such a positive, happy thing that they don't want to deprive you of the joy they feel! Why am I not feelin' the joy??