Finally!

Our bathroom is about done. It's good enough to take a picture of anyway. We just need to decide what accent colors we would like to use as decor as well as install some shoe molding. I'm so glad that is about over with!

Fire, Fire!

Okay, it's not uncommon to burn leaves around here. However, our neighbor has a really bad habit of letting things smolder and leaving home even though things aren't really burned out. Friday, I looked out our window and saw that our neighbor was burning stuff really close to our corner of our yard. It kind of made me irked, but at least she was still burning in her yard and not ours. When my friend came to pick up her little boy from my house, she happened to look out my window and informed me that my back yard was on fire. GREAT! When we ran outside, I noticed that my neighbor was not at home. My friend started running buckets of water to the fire to put it out because our water hose was not long enough to reach. However, it was a windy day, and we had to call 911 because the fire jumped the ditch in our back yard, and had started burning the woods. By the time it ended, we had at least 6 fire trucks in our yard, a lot of neighbors looking to see what was going on, and a couple of fire and forest personalities looking for the missing neighbor who started all the excitement in the first place.

Way to go..............Barton?

That's right, Barton-as in Barton College. Haven't you ever heard of the place????????? Probably not.... unless you are an ardent basketball fan or happened to run across some news report about their basketball team in the last couple of days. Well, Barton is a little college in our town. It has an attendance of about 1300 students and is in the NCAA division II basketball league. I actually took my kids by there just the other day because they wanted to see the road work that was going on in the area. As I drove onto the campus, I felt very oddly like I was at Pensacola Christian College in a smaller scale. So, why am I telling you this? Because the basketball team from that little college somehow miraculously won the NCAA division II basketball championship title. Here is a link to see some footage from the last amazing seconds of the final game. How can a team down by 7 points come back to win in the last 45 seconds. I don't know, but the two previous games were also won by Barton in a very similar way. They must have wanted to win really badly. Way to go, Barton!!

AARRGH!

While I was teaching Zach and Brittany in the den, Johnny and Sierra were playing in the living room as usual. I noticed that they seemed to be having a wonderful time. I thought, "Oh well, there's nothing in there that they can really mess up. That was until I walked in there and saw that Sierra had taken a box of cereal off the counter and dumped all of it on the floor. She and Johnny were both joyfully eating from the pile.........until I walked in. I did have the presence of mind to take a picture although I was so mad I didn't really want to. However, the colors in the picture are off because Brittany had changed the settings on my camera without my knowledge.

Later, I went to take a shower and when I got out, they had both taken chalupa shells and crumbled them up all over the living room again. I was ready to spit fire. That night Sierra got into the unused dog food and was chasing Zach and Brittany with it. At least the mess was on the drive way this time.

I’ve been really interested in financial management. I think it is very important to be responsible with your finances. There are quite a few types of financial reporting software that can help you keep track of things. Also, there is a great site from Crown Financial Ministriesthat gives ideas on how to be a good steward of money. I especially like the tools tab that they have available.

Spencer and some guys at church like to go fishing for a special kind of fish called rock fish. There’s another name for them too, but I can’t remember what it is. They have had some funny adventures out on the choppy seas. They charter a boat and take turns strapping themselves in a chair while fishing. The first year they went was the most eventful. A wave came over the boat and soaked Spencer. He did not have a change of clothes and it was the end of December, so he was very cold. Another guy got knocked off balance by a wave and tore his pants from front to back. A third guy got extremely sea sick and stayed wrapped around a trash can in the cabin of the boat. I guess the trip was worth it to them, they all caught the limit of two fish apiece. That may not sound like much, but the fish were about thirty pounds each. Personally, a yacht charter would be fun to me, but I would probably be like that last guy and stay wrapped around a trash can.

Spencer and I have our anniversary coming up this next month. We always go somewhere special, and I'm keeping my eyes open for a special deal somewhere. A great deal I came across the other day was a $.01 flight sale from Atlanta to Orlando. If you worked it just right, you could also fly back from Orlando for a penny. I thought about driving to Atlanta and then fly from there to Orlando. Staying in one of those Orlando Town Homes would be nice too. However, the dates just don't work for us this year. I guess I'll just keep looking.

HDMI cable. Even my techi husband didn't know what that was. However, those of you who have HDTV might be more familiar with it. From my limited technological view, it seemed that this cable is for your video player so you can view your videos in high def too. I could be wrong, but...........

Last year sometime, we had a dog begin to hang around our house. She was pitifully scrawny and skittish. Spencer and another neighbor began feeding her, and she began to fill out and become really friendly. The kids came up with a really generic name for her-"Girl". It was not too long before we noticed that she was expecting puppies. Eventually, she disappeared into one of the neighbors bushes.............never to return again. We're not exactly sure what happened to her, but I do know that we have dog supplies hanging around our house and no dog. Don't get me wrong, I kind of prefer it that way, but Spencer and the kids are of a different mind set. Now to keep Sierra from eating the dog food.

We have decided that we have way too much stuff in our house. That's partly why it feels so crowded. Very shortly we are planning on going on a major removal campaign.. I'm even thinking about getting rid of some furniture although I don't know that Spencer will let me go that far. One thing I do know. When we go shopping for some new furniture, we won't be buying any sectional sofas!

The Man

Spencer likes to embarrass me in public sometimes, and it's even better to him when the kids join in with him. Take "The Man" we drive by quite frequently. Spencer will sit at the stop light and wave at the stupid statue because the "The Man" is waving at us. More correctly would be because it embarrasses me that he is acting so stupid. Now every time we drive by the place Sierra says, "Wave at the man!" and waves her little heart out regardless of whether Dad is in the car with us or not. Maybe we need to find a different route.

At the same intersection there used to be a man who would stand on the corner with his brown bag of whisky and yell very angrily at the cars at the stop light. It always made me nervous. Of course, Spencer kind of got a kick out of it. He was especially amused the day the man was walking in front of our car yelling at us and our light turned green. Spencer revved up the engine like he was going to take off right then. You should have seen that man take a hop and a skip to safety.

How do you make your computer faster? There are actually quite a few ways. How would I know? Because I'm married to a "computer geek." He has introduced me to quite a few things in the computer world. A few ways to make your existing computer faster is to put in a bigger hard drive, do a computer memory upgrade, or over clock your computer. How to do that stuff?? Well, you'll just have to ask him because I have no clue.

Who needs Hoodia when you have kids? Not my husband. He decided to take the day off work so he could finish remodeling our bathroom finally. It was a typical day around the house. Incoming phone calls, home schooling the kids, fighting with Sierra to get her to eat her lunch. What got my husband was when Sierra stuffed all her fish sticks in her mouth, gagged and vomited them and milk up on the kitchen floor. He about lost what was in his stomach too. After that, I had two kids taking a test, one in the bathtub, one on the toilet, and one sister on the phone. How's that for multitasking? Who said, being a stay at home mom was easy. Sometimes I think I would rather be at work!

I don't know how many times I'm going to have to write about diet pills and especially Hoodia diet pills. I think there are only so many ways you can say something. I had never heard of the stuff until I started getting paid to blog about it. I still don't personally know anyone who does take diet pills or if they really work. How about you. What is your experience with them?

Quit Ticking Me Off

As most people know, we have three children. The oldest two definitely look like brother and sister, but the third one doesn't look anything like the other two. The older two have dark brown eyes and brown hair. Sierra has blue eyes and curly, blond hair. Very often I'll get the comment , "I can tell who the other two look like, but I can't tell who she looks like." I've even had a couple of comments like, "Where did she come from?" and "She must be the milkman's daughter." Sometimes that makes me so mad, I feel like getting a paternity test just so I can pull out a paper and say, "See! She belongs to both of us!" People just don't realize that I had very blond hair when I was little, and curly hair runs in my family. There are also blue eyes on both sides of the family. Sierra just happened to get all the weaker genes. Thank you very much.

What to do with my life.

Spencer says that I should become a real estate agent because I love looking at houses so much. He on the other hand really does not like looking at houses. He'd much rather be at some computer store looking at what kind of gadgets he can add to the computer. I think that there are some aspects of being a real estate agent that I would enjoy, but I know that there are other aspects that I would absolutely despise. So, instead of getting into the business, I'll keep recommending certain houses to my friends who are in the market for one and keep an eye on different real estate web sites such as Wilson Board of Realtors and Ellijay Real Estate. Maybe I'll find a bargain for us one day or the kind of house that we would like to build. In the mean time, I'll stay right here at home with my "angels" and dream.

Been practicing with my camera