PINTEREST Made Me Do It......

For all of my dear friends whose lives revolve around hours on PINTEREST, today is for me...and maybe for you.  I am on a mission to really read one board a week and clean it up.  I pin incessantly and have no

 earthly idea what is on there.  It must be like the thrill of the chase.  I have to search and research for great new ideas each night ...or I just can't sleep!  So it was time to go back and view what I had collected and I started on "pinned" quotes.

It is surely easy to tell what time of the day it was when this thought grabbed ahold of me and said  "PIN ME!"

I must have at least run out of the house with gusto that morning...probably did not return that way.!

Hmmm......I can usually find a few of those at work...and other places.  Everything is a problem.  Smile and move on.  Yes, life is too short!

Well anyone whose knows me, knows that that is how I come. 

Sometimes I wear a long sleeve shirt if it is below 32 degrees but I never give up the flip flops...and life is indeed better in Yellow Box!!!

Straight up written for me.  There are days when the filter on my mouth just dissappears.  I try.  I think I am improving....but things just escape before I process.  I think it is a good thing that I stay connected with God because there are days He saves my friends much embarrassment.....so keep monitoring me God.  I am not quite there yet.

The perfect day with a granchild....justification for silly and ridiculous!

No words needed here.  I know how strong I am. And I thank God and my parents for the gift of strength.  I was taught well.

The only way to deal with a boatload of baggage....let your heart smile.  Someday the answers will all be clear.

Thank you Louis Armstrong...well said....for no matter what , IT IS a wonderful world!

Just a Saturday Morning.......

At the ball park!

Oh goodness, how many years has it been and how many hundreds of games did we sit through watching four children compete in about every sports that was offered?  It was never a chore...only pure pleasure and it is hard to believe it is time to repeat the fun of three year old athletics...with GRANDCHILDREN!

In full gear Brooklynn is getting some last minute tips from her dad....maybe something like "you are as tough as every boy out here...go show 'em whose boss!"

Ready guys?

And being part of a big dog pile is okay....when you are three.  Might have to discuss that when you get older!

Just contemplating.....

And doing some art work in the dirt.....

Batter Up....

Run scored!

Time out for a hug from the little sis...

Respite in the grass....

Flower picking.....

Team cheer........

And hugs from dad for a job well done!

It is life come full circle, deja vu, history repeating itself.  It is finding your friends at the ballpark again...watching their grandkids.  The same ones I shared the stands with 30 years ago are there cheering on another generation.  It is what you find when you stay planted and your kids grow up and come home to where they grew up.  It just feels good.
It is just a Saturday morning....and it is great!

Almost A Bride.....

 I have to say...I was not sure I would ever see the day when we would be only six weeks away from celebrating the wedding of my youngest son.  Oh Hallelujah!!!!!  He found a wonderful girl to be his Bride and our family is ready to welcome a new member very soon!!

We are so blessed to be able to celebrate with family.  I can never say enough about how gracious Jimmy's sisters always are.  We never miss a chance to "shower" an incoming family member be it bride or baby!

I have decided that we should institute a new tradition.  After 42 years of married bliss I think I deserve a shower too.  Time to be out with the old and in with the new!  I could be on board with some of these great things.  I just have to do some major discards before I add anything else to my cabinets!

We are anxious...it will be a family affair.  Drew and Heather have tailored it to fit them and I am ready for some "I DO'S"!!!!!!

We Grieve Again.....

It is hard to believe that we are facing yet another tragedy.  Why Boston? Why the Marathon.?  Why should we even have to be dealing with this again?  Why so much hatred and why is there this group of people that only want to inflict pain and suffering?

There has been so much focus, as it should be, on how to handle dealing with the children and their questions.  What to tell them, how to explain this.  This precious 8 year old boy who died was just there to watch his daddy...now gone on what should have been such a happy day. 

Instead of dealing with all of this via the media or TV reports, I went to church.  That is where I find the most healing and the messages that do not come from newspapers....and there it was.  There were the words I needed to hear. 

Addressing the gathered school children, our priest told those precious students to remember the light that they were given in baptism.  "You walk with Jesus, who is the light of the world.  You cannot let this criminal extinguish that light you carry."  These children can continue to shine in the world as a sign of hope, and love, and strength. Those were the words they needed to hear. That was something they could relate to and understand.  They have in their short lives been exposed to way too much terror...on our own soil, not in a faraway land.  We can not hide from it any longer.  The children were rightly told that they can shine, as a ray of hope on a darkened day.

A message well delivered even to the adults.  It is so easy to be bitter.  It is a much easier emotion to display at a time like this.  Yet, I believe that this is a time once again to show we cannot be knocked down.  We pray and join together as a united body in the United States to show we are strong once again....and hopefully we can help these children realize that they need to carry that light with them everyday....and they can change the world.

Weekly Recap....

You can assume that we are headed down the road to complete randomness when a post begins with a picture of a plate lunch from the school cafeteria.  Yes, I ate this...well, not all of it.  I was really a bit amazed, being a Food and Nutrition teacher at the high school from which this lunch was purchased.  I spent the whole last year in the classroom telling my students about the move to make cafeteria food healthier...WHERE???  This is a plate full of nothing but fat and starch, except for the green beans which were probably cooked with bacon fat for taste. 

Now, on to why I was eating cafeteria food.

I simply got sucked in to working far too many days this week.  Monday, Tuesday sub job, Wednesday play with the grandbabies, Thursday sub job, and Friday recuperate!

So this is really about what I learned in the three days I was at work...bear in mind I have an hour and a half conference period so I did have time to view a huge stack of magazines I had collected over the past few months and here are the highlights. I figured I could possibly save you a lot of hours of reading time just by filling you in on the good stuff that came out of each one...

Recipes...Oh, how I love recipes.  You can never have too many stuffed under the toaster in the kitchen just in case you want to cook...NEVER!

Yes, I want to look 7 years younger and if I can do it by eating dark chocolate, edamame, and  tart cherries, well, bring it on.  Beats bushels of kale any day.

The Case for Face...stop texting and emailing and visit with your friends face to face.  Why have we all gotten so busy that personal face to face contact has become a case of  "Well, we will have to get that on our calendar...someday"  Great article. Lunch anyone???

Lady Chats...those awesome moments when we have heart to heart talks with our granddaughters.  Priceless.  Never knew how much I would love the time when you could discuss the details of a day with a three year old...who happens to have amazing insight.  Would not trade a second of this time for anything.

Create a Happier Life ....by simply being creative.  No wonder my most therapeutic moments are in a totally chaotic sewing/craft room.  To quote the article:

"You cannot help but be happy when you collect ideas and combine them in an original way".

I am now sure I am justified in putting that DO NOT DISTURB sign on my sewing room.  I am just getting happy back there! !!

Great article but I simply don't have one...an Empty Nest, that is.

Personal Style.....right back here where I sit in my sewing room.  No wonder I love it here so much.

More great thoughts but I really need to feel better from 8 am to 9 pm...I need more hints here.  This is not nearly enough info.

This really has to be the least useful article that I happened to come across.   I really have no day look.  I just have a look and I cannot remember a time in the last 40 years I needed to GLAM it up for evening.  By evening all I want is a bar of soap to get rid of my day look and go to bed.

So three days in a classroom and in between sharing useful hints on how to understand Renaissance writing, and how to create a box that would allow you to drop an egg two stories and have it remain unbroken, I stretched my mind....and got paid to do it. 

Next week I am taking a break to be creative and I can do it with this weeks paycheck!

Perfect Day......

 

It is oh so dreary here today. It is an early April wintery type day. It is a do not venture out of the house if you do not have to day.  It is what I would imagine it would be like to live in the state of Washington.  I personally would not be too happy there because I pretty much function according to the weather.  Waking up to sunshine in the morning always promises I am going to have a great day no matter what is on my agenda.

BUT...we need rain...lots of rain!  We have dried up lake and it is not looking promising for fun at Cedar Creek this summer if we do not have some serious downpours soon....so...some days you just have to stay inside, enjoy the dreary, and CREATE YOUR OWN SUNSHINE!

Laugh!

 Be super silly.

 Accessorize.

And giggle...

We stayed in today and created our own sunshine!

What a fun day.