Face Book Eats My Time

Um, Yeah.  I'm o.k.  I'm still here.  I just spend too much time  on Face Book playing with those silly applications like Farm Town and Mafia.  

My one year Blogiversary has come and gone without my acknowledgement.  I haven't even checked my stats lately.  I'm sure the few readers I did/do have gave up on me weeks ago.

Lil Sis is playing with playdough and I'm listening to Days of Our Lives.  I've totally lost track of what's going on there.  I used to be a diehard fan and even if I didn't watch it, I read updates on line.  It's just not the same anymore.  What's going on with Bo and Hope anyway?

The girls and I are struggling with the time change.  In addition to losing an hour, we have a brand new feather bed and it is so comfy, it's hard to hop out of bed in the morning.  And for some reason, my alarm didn't go off this morning.  

Looks like the bachelor (Jason) is on the Bonnie Hunt Show, so I think I'll watch and see what's new there.

I'm also going to try to update the background here.  I do not need snowflakes cluttering the background.  I need to find something springy.

more soon :)

Second Post of the Day

This post is just an experiment.  I had problems in my previous post and I'm seeing if I can do a normal one without problems.  I think part of my problem is the editing within blogger is different on my Mac than it was with the PC.  Like, I can't move text or pictures within my posts by dragging them.  I can't seem to cut and paste from my word processing program either. I can't figure out how to import pictures and have them not be at the beginning of the post and in the reverse order I want them in.  

And then, there was the weird underlining in that last post.  How did that happen anyway?

White

Today I'm writing about the color white.  White is the color of the snow that fell yesterday and caused school to be dismissed 2 hours early.  The girls played outside for about an hour.

I bundled them up, sent them out, took their picture and then stayed inside and drank hot cocoa while watching them out the window.

When they came in from outside, I decided it was a good time for them to take a bath.  I took a picture of them laying down with white bubbles surrounding their heads.  They love doing this.

I have no idea why the text is blue and underlined.  I am having some strange problems.  Leave a comment if you have a solution.  I don't even see an option to underline text here, so how do I turn it off???????  I'm quite frustrated  I never changed the color of the font either??? What's up with that?????

Now I changed the color, but it's still underlining.  

White is also the color of a wiggling animal we saw along the road on our way home today.  We turned around to see what it was because all I saw was something white wiggling around in my rearview mirror and I thought it was odd.  As we were returning to the site of the wiggly white animal, we saw a truck stop and a guy got out, picked up a squealing baby pig and put it in the back of the truck.  Hopefully they are able to return the pig to his/her owner.  I guess this is the kind of thing that only happens in Iowa. :)

Well, I'm ending this silly post.  It's supposed to be about the color white and in my randomness, I've made it quite colorful!!

Until next time.....signing off.

There's something about a clean refrigerator...

How's that for a catchy title?  

This morning I cleaned out the fridge.  I removed everything (well, I didn't do the stuff in the door...I just realized I forgot that part).  Dismantled the shelves, washed them in hot soapy water, dried them, threw out the expired stuff and replaced the good stuff.  It looks so nice.

Lil Sis and I went out for lunch to celebrate our hard work.  She didn't really help, but she likes to celebrate.  We also got a few things at Wal-Mart and then went to our favorite grocery store to buy stuff to refill the fridge.  In the spirit of celebrating the upcoming holiday, I caved to Lil Sis's request to use the cart that looks like a truck.  She rode for awhile, then we needed her compartment to hold all the stuff and she was eventually ejected from her driver's seat.  She was very helpful in loading up the cart and counting gallons of milk (3) and cream cheese blocks (5).  I may have overdone the cream cheese, but I firmly believe that you can never have too much cream cheese in the house this time of year.  There's hash brown casseroles to make and dips, and cream cheese frosting for pumpkin bars, etc.

We bought a spiral ham (the smallest one I saw) and ordered a fresh turkey (12 lb) that we'll pick up on Saturday for our Sunday dinner.  We decided to make two meats this year.  Not sure why, we just wanted to have options.  I think we'll also have some leftovers.  We're cool with some leftovers.

Wow, when I began this post, I thought, what am I going to post about?  And now, I'm wondering, how can I babble about the refrigerator for this long?

Yesterday, when Big Sis unpacked her backpack after school, she showed me a turkey she had colored that was attached to a paper.  On the paper, she wrote "I am thankful for family and I am thankful for God and Jesus and friends and food and waddr".  I asked her what the last word was... it's 'water'.  I think that's a pretty awesome list.  Note to readers:  she goes to public school.  So I think this is extra cool!

I'm Here!

I'm back.  I didn't really go anywhere, I just haven't posted.  The above photo was taken on our way to Omaha recently, when we stopped at a rest area to geocache.  We found the cache and we were supposed to take our picture with the camera enclosed in the cache, however, the camera was full, so we used our own camera.

To celebrate the end of the first trimester, Cool Daddy-O took a day off work and we went to the zoo in Omaha.  It was a fun day.  After the zoo, we found our first out-of-state geocache.  It was pretty easy.  We tried to find a second one, but ran out of daylight.  It was in a wooded area, it was getting dark and our gps was acting weird.  

We have spent the past few weekends doing some deep cleaning, preparing to host a family Thanksgiving dinner.  Today's task was washing windows, doors, and curtains.  To celebrate the completion of this task, I spent a couple hours at Target.  

Well, that sums up my excitement.  We're watching the Iowa Hawkeyes trounce Minnesota.  It's pretty exciting!

A Snickers update:  we've been visiting the vet regularly.  For now we've changed his food to prescription diet food and he's recently started taking Amitriptyline for treatment of "litter box incontinence".  Things are improving, but not yet perfect.  We'll continue this treatment and hope for continued progress.  

My new promise to myself.  All future cats will be female.  No future cats will be persian.  I've owned 3 and haven't had such good luck overall.  Their personalities have been AWESOME, however, the health problems, not so much fun.

Current gas price: $1.61. How low will it go?

One more thing:  I'm going to make an effort to post a bit more often.  

Hope & Change

Two words we've heard a lot lately!  The time has come.

I live in a divided political household and have many friends with differing political views than myself.  I try not to jump on a soap box very often.  Allow me to jump up and down a bit :)

I talked to the girls a bit the day before the election.  We hadn't talked with them much about politics, but at the age of 6 and 4, they were able to name both candidates.  When asked who they wanted for the next president, their response was "Barack Obama".  They don't know much about platforms, etc.  I think they just like the name.  Who can blame them :)

Since they agreed with me, I decided to take them along to the polling site, so they could be part of this historical election night.  Big Sis was watchful as I colored in the ovals and made sure I colored them all in well.  She said I scribbled a bit ;)

Some people seem down right discouraged about the outcome.  This, I do not quite understand. I can recall voting for only 2 candidates that ever became president.  I've tried to keep a positive attitude through it all.

I'm very happy and hopeful for the future of our country.  I think we need someone right now who can reunite the people of our country.  I think Barack Obama has the charisma to unify and excite us to rebuild the economy, responsibly end the war, and bring jobs back to the good old USA!  I want to be able to go to my local discount store and buy products manufactured in the US again!  

O.K.  I'm jumping off the soap box now.  Thanks for reading my ramblings...

Now, I must go have a premature Thanksgiving dinner at church.  There's a turkey calling my name :)  

I have a lot to be THANKFUL for!  

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Walmartz...

I took the girls to their Wednesday evening church activity and decided I'd do some shopping.  I went to the dollar store and immediately found a pair of sunglasses I liked for under $4.  I looked around the store, but didn't find anything else.  When I went to get my wallet out of my purse, I remembered I had not returned it to my purse after paying bills this afternoon.  

Initially, I panicked and then realized I probably had a few dollars loose in my purse. No sweat, I had enough.  

I drove home to get my wallet.  As I was driving back toward town, I pulled out my old sun glasses and tried to put them on.  I heard a snapping sound and looked down.  They had broken.  I laughed out loud.  Pretty amazing that I bought new glasses right before my old (actually they're rather new) glasses broke.

Good, eh?

I'm here!

Yeah, I'm still here.  You see, I've been spending my spare time on face book.  It's soooo addictive.  I really need to blog.  

We've been having fun and enjoying fall.  I'll post some pictures soon... I promise!  Meanwhile, I just completed the task of switching seasons in the girls' closet.  It is fall / winter in there now. The Christmas shirts that I bought on clearance at Target last year are all ready to go!  They've already worn their new Halloween shirts!  We are with it in the clothing department.  Now I just have to get with it in the blog department.

Oh, and I finally used the iTunes card I got for Christmas.  I downloaded an album by a guy I've never heard of and I love it.  The artist is Joshua Radin.  I also downloaded a few tunes by Patty Griffin and Dave Barnes.  I'm listening to them now.  It's nice to have some new music to listen to.  It's also nice to save a Christmas present this long and enjoy it in October.

I just remembered this time of day, this time of year, the sun blinds me when I'm sitting at the computer. Fortunately, the leaves are still on the tree and are just beginning to turn shades of orange.  Yeah, I'll post some pictures of the tree too... later, after I check face book :)

Help me!!!!

One more random thought.  I bought some coffee beans (Blueberry Cinnamon Crumble) at my favorite coffee house today with a 20% off coupon.  I think I just got a whiff of it and had to write about it.  Can't wait until I can make a pot!