TGIM

Well, all I can say is Thank God it’s March. Can’t say I'm unhappy to see February gone. It’s been a bad month generally speaking--and not just because of the weather! (Pics below of our early Feb. snowstorm(s)).



But we made the best of it. :)



During one of the storms, my mom needed to go to the hospital--dehydrated from a nasty stomach virus. And again a few days later when things took longer to clear up than expected.

But then, we did get a chance to go down to the cabin, and although it was cold down there, too, it was a little nicer than home.


And then the following 2 weeks we all fought a nasty head/chest cold. Ri and I are still coughing a little, actually.

And the coupe de gras. Having the vaporizer running in Ri's room for her cough, she bumped it and got a nasty burn on her leg. We were treating it at home, but we thought it was taking a turn for the worst, so we took her to the hospital last night, where they removed the top layer of skin. If you think this looks nasty, you should have seen it with the bad/dead skin still on it. Turns out, we'd done everything all right and she is well on her way to recovery.

This brings me to a prayer request and a praise:
Healing, of course, for the wound, as well as her to be able to get around. It hurts her to walk--I supposed the skin moves and stretches, and it's very raw. We're not quite sure how things are going to work at school this week.

Now the praise: when this happened, it was bedtime, and Rog was out working in the back garage. I had gone out to ask him to come in to pray with her. Poor Ri had pulled off her wet, burning pajama pants and put a cool wet cloth in it on her own before I came back in and realized what had happened. We figure God had helped her know just what to do to keep it from getting worse, rather than waiting for me to come back in and giving the burning longer to cause more damage. And the hospital said it really looked good considering.

So, hopefully March will be better, and we will be able to blog a bit more and stay well. Hope everyone else had a better February, and is looking forward to Spring! :)

Christmas Miscellany

So, my evil plan worked. Blog snubbing. Don't post a blog in a while and see if it gets others moving (hint, hint) lol, and it worked!

Heh, heh, yeah it's late. Not much to report here either, altho there's plenty to fulminate about, but we'll just post some fun pics from the holidays.

10 guesses as to who the baby is! :)

Roger opening his "surprise" gift--athough we still didn't give him the big green egg until later.

Roger's "gag" gift to us. We gave the octopus to the dog and just about gagged doing so lol.

Christmas at the Smiths


Like father, like son.

An "interesting person" at the CM. :)

More to fulminate about later, but we'll let these air for a while. :)

Happy not-so-new year to all!

For the guy that has everything

So just what DO you get the guy that has everything and is picky? Grill stuff of course. And just how do you wrap it? Like a parade float of course. I can't take full credit for the idea. My m-i-l Betty mentioned that I could wrap up this chicken/turkey stand like a Christmas tree. Looking at its metal grid structure, the idea came to me to push my many sheets of green tissue paper through and voila. So, you ask, how can I post this blog before Christmas and get away with it? Dear, dear reader ... my husband does not read blogs. But just in case, I won't go into detail about the much larger (and heavier) Christmas gift that sort of goes with this. :D There's a bit of a funny story to that I may share later. I considered putting out the "tree" as a decoration, but I won't push my luck. Meanwhile, Ri was getting ready to decorate the tree with me--donning her "gay apparel" that she put together herself. Complete with red hose, green plaid skirt and red shoes. Even did her hair.


Hope the Christmas plans are merry as well. :) Here's some fun stuff from our home to yours:
Our Elf Yourself for the year
(the horse is a friendly one that came up to us from our recent trip to Cumberland)


Well, now it's time to decorate. Can't keep my little elf waiting.

Fall recital

It's been a very musical week. Thursday, Nov. 13 was Ri's recital at a local nursing home. When we left to go to it, I realized I had forgotten the camera and turned around to come back (I wasn't very far) ... only to realize, after all that, that the battery was dead. Father-in-law to the rescue with his camera, although I missed the first song: Scales and Arpeggios from Aristocats, as well as the group performance of Boogie, Woogie Bugle Boy, which was fun. This picture is while she sang "Scales," taken by grandpa. The camo headband and plastic bugle around her neck were props for "Boogie, Woogie."

Using my in-laws' camera, and not quite knowing how to work it as well as my own, I shot this for the last piece: You'll Never Walk Alone.


In other musical news, the church concert went well on Sunday (I sang in the choir and played flute), and Ri and I may do a duet for Christmas.

Well, Thanksgiving is coming up and I get the bird. :) I've only done a turkey 1 or 2 times before, so I'll be praying for things to go smoothly next week, between having the house clean and cooking a bunch of stuff I'm not used to. But, then again, I like doing different things. E.g. made soymilk and tofu today. Hmm, if my vegan niece shows up, maybe I can make her a Tofurkey. :D Ok, I'm not feeling that creative.

Of Ribbons and Rodents

It's been a rough month for our pets ... and our pocketbook. Sad to report that our guinea pig, Angel, is no longer with us. I think she had a pretty long life for a gp, dying, we presume, of old age. Rog found her "asleep" and buried her in the back yard while Ri and I were visiting family. It was sad to come home to and is a notable absence, although we're glad to be "down" to 3 pets at the moment.


Even worse, our beloved cat, Bob, nearly met with his end a couple weeks ago. A ribbon, no kidding, nearly killed him. He "ate" part of it, and his intestines got "scrunched up" on it, blocking him up and damaging his intestinal lining. He had to have surgery and about 4 days of intensive care, racking up quite a bill. He's still not quite back to his old self, but he's definitely making progress. I must say that the vet we use was very kind to us in the followup care after the surgery--even taking Bob to his own home to give him round the clock care. I understand that Bob wouldn't be left alone at his guest's home, but "insisted" on getting in bed with the vet by trying to open the door all night. Good thing he's so sweet! Well, sweet and sassy. That's him in the image above eying Angel (look for the eyes and their reflection on the table in the background!).

Stormy must've been a little worried to have lost Angel, then Bob, then the dog went to a friend's while we left for a weekend trip. Alone for the first time in years! A friend stopped by and checked on her, noting how starved for attention she was.

Well, I'm happy to report that all are well at this house at the moment. In fact, other than being crazier-than-usual busy, things are pretty good. Mariah got a lead part in her school play and has a recital from her voice lessons tomorrow night. I may post some pics/vids of that soon.

At this point, I'm just glad to have most of the dr. and vet appts. over with for a while! Too bad the bills are still "out there lurking"! Upcoming holidays, birthdays, and going to music practices and recitals is a welcome change to all of that! Speaking of which, here's a shout out to all my friends and family with late October and early November birthdays--a ton of ya--not to mention all the new babies!! Hope your November is going well.

Are you a good citizen?

Being a good citizen requires more than showing up at the voting booth. It means carefully considering the options before you. I've shown up in the past only to find confusing names and issues and felt ashamed for going in unprepared. Not anymore. I've learned and admonished myself enough over that to always prepare by checking out the issues and candidates ahead of time. Not that this is giving any readers much notice for this election, but a website I've found to be handy is "smarvoter.org." About to go there myself to do a bit more research on the issues after spending about an hour or so last night reviewing the candidates. It doesn't take that long to find out what you need to know to feel informed, but ultimately, you can't really know the candidate entirely from any information you can find at this or other sites. The next thing to do, then, is to leave it in God's hands after prayer. Really, unless we've done both, we're not being good citizens, nor good Christians.

One last pertinent comment regarding Obama's statement about him not being socialistic because he shared his cookies in Kindergarten. Roger pointed out, deftly: "But did your teacher make you share them." Aye, there's the rub, now, isn't it. Let's see it for what it is. Democrats, I'm all for many of the programs that you want to support, but let me choose when and how much to give, and it might surprise you how much you get. Christians are supposed to work hard to obtain excess--yes, that's right, excess. But what is the excess for? Ephesians 4:28 tells us. Sadly, I bet that I give more to multiple charities personally than many of the Democrats in office with much more affluence, and I'm not "giving until it hurts," by any means. When Dems put their money where their mouth is (not mine), I might consider their social work policies more seriously. Not that there aren't other glaring problems with their policies otherwise, namely abortion on demand.

Now, go do your part ... THEN vote. Let's not encourage ignorance or popularity polls. And let's continue to set the example for how to care for others without compulsion. That, my friend, is charity. Government is something else, entirely.

Addendum (11/4/08):
I meant to add this earlier. Reading with 'Ri last night brought us to Isaiah 37. Verse 14 is particularly appropriate today. Let's lay our ballots--and the nation--before God today.

Who won?

I'm not the most patient person. I never liked politics. Never liked much of what's on TV. Never really liked debates in general. So maybe I'm not the best person to comment. But has anyone considered that the words "who won" and a discussion concerning presidential (or vice-presidential) candidates really don't belong together, at least until November? If the debate serves any useful purpose--whatever that is supposed to be--it seems like it should be more than winning a battle of words. When the country is horribly divided, the economy is in shambles, and the war isn't over, I don't care who won a silly debate.

I know who's losing. We are. The entire political system is much like that debate. Pointless and much like a popularity contest. Who's the best speaker? Why does that really matter. What we need is an intelligent person surrounded by other intelligent people knowledgeable in several different fields that can make good decisions.

I heard talk of how people felt differently about the outcome depending upon the medium--e.g. Nixon was said to have won the radio version of the debate with Kennedy, but Kennedy won on TV. This just proves my point. It's all about perception. Not about who's right for the job. And, y'know, if the job were something non-important, I guess it wouldn't matter so much, but this is perhaps the most-important job on the planet right now.

All this to say, I'm in a state of despair over our nation. I've heard sensible people say the debate came out a "tie," yet I hear that support is continuing to swell behind Obama. Not that McCain is my favorite person in the world, but if the nation supports Obama, that, for me, is just the last nail in the coffin of common sense---in fact the survivability of our nation---for many reasons I won't go into here. Suffice it to say, I see him and his campaign much like Herod who didn't quiet the cries of those who said "the voice of a God and not of a man," except the worms are eating our nation.