Don't Say B___ On a Plane! (Thursday Thirteen #5)

Thirteen Things about Tracie

1. I have a special story to tell you, a true story--here is the title: "Don't say B___ on the Plane!" Are you intrigued? I know I would be............... On the way to Arizona, we had to sit next to this guy on the plane. First he tried to get me to sign up for his natural home health care pyramid buisness-I declined as nicely as possible. Then he took a nap. Then he woke up-with burning itchy eyes from his contacts. It was just a couple of days after the new no liquids rules so he didn't have any contact lens solution with him (which I think you can actually bring, but he didn't know that at the time) So he proceeded to complain about how much his eyes were bothering him. I was sympathetic-we still had two hours to go..........Then all of the sudden the pain in his eyes must have affected his brain because he decided to come up with an idea how he could sneak contact lens solution on the plane when he traveled home in a couple of days. He told me that what made sense was to just put some in a plastic bag and tape it to his leg. Because the metal detector wouldn't pick up on it and he could easily sneak it on. Well, at this point I was already looking nervously around to make sure that no flight attendants were standing nearby hearing this, because I was sure it was a forbidden topic---And then.....you guessed it he started saying "Of course I don't understand why those guys who were making the bombs didn't do that. You could easily go into the bathroom and untape the bags and mix the stuff together to make a bomb. If you wanted to bomb a plane that is all you have to do. In fact it would probably only take a couple of bags of stuff to make a bomb. Really bombing a plane probably isn't' that hard" Yep, he just kept going-I promise you that man said the word "bomb" at least thirteen times before Katarina saved me by wanting to ask for some of my Sprite....and then I pretended to sleep, because "Bomb Boy" was sure to get us all arrested if he was allowed to continue talking like that on the airplane! What an idiot! Don't say bomb on a plane!! (I'm glad that we weren't sitting behind an air marshall or anything!)

2. I did ask the guy if he thought it would help to go to the bathroom and stick his head in the sink to try to get some water in his eyes.....he wasn't impressed with my idea. I was just hoping that if he stuck his head in some cold water he would come to his senses and stop saying "bomb" on the plane.

3.When we were starting to land in Arizona Katarina looked out the window and said "Arizona is brown. There is a lot of dirt. I see a few houses, but mostly it's just dirt" --that's the truth!

4. I interrupt vacation items to say....have you tried the Sunkist Cherry Limeade? Because if you haven't, you need to go buy some right now. It is suprisingly very good!

5. One of the best things about visiting my family in Arizona--good Mexican food. That is something that is pretty impossible to find in Florida!

6. On the way back we took off in a big storm and flew through the rain. I looked out the window and saw lightening several times.....a little scary.

7. Here is a picture out of our window- that streaky stuff you see is rain. I didn't get any lightening in the picture, but trust me, we saw it!

8. Katarina really liked it, though-lightening, turbulance and all. She seems to be a natural airplane person.

9. For some reason whenever I visit Arizona it always rains.

10. I interupt vacation items again to ask a question. Do you remember when you could take the lid off a Coke bottle and win something-a free Coke or money or whatever?? I miss those days. Now all you get is some stupid code that you have to go online to enter and see if you have won. That is just too much work people--bring back the easy Free Cokes!

11. My cousin is getting married in April and she asked Katarina to be a flower girl. Katarina is so excited to "wear a pretty dress like a princess and throw flower petals all over the floor of the chuch" We are going to have to let her practice in a hallway or something so that she won't just throw them "all over!"

12. This is the first time that I really missed Arizona after coming home. I sort of wish that we lived there with all of my family and that Katarina could be closer to my mom.

13. Someone found my blog by google searching "lizard of peace" and several people found it through googling words in pig latin from that time I translated it (Why people are google searching words in pig latin, I am not sure, but apparently they are) I wonder if people who are searching for bomb on a plane will come here--I hope not. I am decidedly anti-bombing planes. I just wanted to make that clear.

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Emmys.......

I am back from vacation! It was wonderful........Katarina did really good on the five hour flight.......I have lots of fun pictures that I am too lazy to go through putting up tonight (but I will soon, promise!) Lots of great stories too........of course tons of cute things that Katarina said......all of this will have to wait though because there is something that just has to be said no matter what......

Did anyone watch the Emmy's tonight? I did.

I have to preface this with the fact that I am not even concerned about how stupid you may think this sounds or how much you may want to tell me that I am overreacting...........because I know that there will probably be lots of you who will tell me that in comments. But that is all right, becuase even if I am the only one out here saying it, someone has to.

Online predators aren't funny. Child molestation isn't funny. Adults who prey on children and sexually abuse them aren't funny........not at any time. Not for any reason.

Conan O'Brien wants to put himself in a bunch of TV shows for an opening to the Emmys?-I think it is beautiful-
Visit the Lost island? Sure.
Fall through the celing at The Office? Hey, I love that show, sounds good to me.
He wants to have phone conversations with the people of 24? Fine, who cares. It was humorous.
Get diagnosed by House? That's fine.
He can even be put into South Park if he really wants. I don't understand why he would want to(....but my South Park rant is a whole seperate subject to be adressed on another day.)

But.....To Catch a Predator is not a joke. It isn't a fictional story, and there is nothing funny about being a child predator. Nothing. It isn't funny to be one and it isn't funny to pretend to be one, or to pretend to be in any way associated with being one.

Do you hear me Conan O'Brien and NBC?? Child Sexual Abuse isn't funny.
It isn't funny and trying to make it into a joke was extremely offensive to me. Extremely.
1 in 4 girls will be sexually abused by the age of 18. This isn't funny.
1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused by the age of 18. This isn't funny.
Out of children aged 10-17, 1 in 7 are sexually solicited online. This isn't funny.

Vacationing!!

Katarina and I are on vacation visiting my mom in Arizona for a week. It is very hot but wonderfully dry with no humidity!! (gotta hate the humidity!)

She lives in the sad land of dial-up. And her computer is located in the room that Katarina is in, so this is probably the only time I will even get near it until I get home next Thursday.......until then you all can have some hot chocolate and go to the bottom of the page and feed my blue monkey lots of bananas!

See you next week!

Send Some Love!

Two Write Hands will only be here with me for one more day!

Only one more day for you to find out how she is being stalked by Elvis!

Only one more day for you to visit her and leave her inspiring comments that will make her realize just what a great person I am to rent from!

Only one more day for you to click on her thumbnail over there to the right and find a blog that might be your new daily read!

That is all the exciting things that I have to share with you today except......
"Green Green It's green they say on the far side of the hill. Green Green I'm going away to where the grass is greener still"
(All of that folk music from the other night is still rolling around in my head today!)

Pass the Guitar....and the Granola!

The other night I was watching PBS (you know that you do it too!) and they had a special about Jim Croce on. It was great! And it reminded me just how much I loved all his music. My husband and I sat around singing all of his songs for the rest of the night.....good times.

Well, tonight we were watching PBS.
Yes, again.
And don't even say it-I do have a life. PBS on Sunday nights has great BBC shows like "As Time Goes By" and "Fawlty Towers". I know you watch it too. Except tonight they were doing fund raising so instead of BBC we got a special on folk music-"This Land is Your Land". We had a great time watching all of those great folk groups back together again. We were even singing along.....even after it was over we sat in our living room singing folk music. We were on our way to becoming a strange singing family (yep, give us a tambourine and call us the Partridge Family) except for one important thing.......

My husband doesn't know complete lyrics to any song. He plays the guitar and he knows the notes and the rythm to every song....he just doesn't know the words.

Time for an example? Okay......
Who could forget that great Seekers song "I'll Never Find Another You":
"There's a new world somewhere they call the promised land. And I'll la la la la if you will hold my hand. La la la."

Or, by the Lovin Spoonful "Do You Believe In Magic":
"Do you believe in magic in a young girl's hear? How the music can free her whenever it starts. It's like magic Da da da da da da. It makes you feel happy like an old time movie. I'll tell you bout the magic De de de la la. But it's like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll."

But my personal favorite (becuase, he is a minister and based on the fact it mostly comes out of the Bible he should do much better on this one at least!) is Pete Seeger's "Turn"
"To everything turn turn turn. There is a season turn turn turn. And la la la la la a purpose under heaven. A time to la la. A time to laaa laaaa. A time to something. A time to move on. A time to ask and something la la not too late."

As long as I sing real loud (because I do know all the words!) I can block out his wrongness and we can have special family sing along times........with our Jim Croce and our folk music-it's great, really. It is....and for those of you laughing at me, I just want to say that I can drown you out with my happy music if I just sing loud enough "WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE. LONG TIME PASSING. WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE. LONG TIME AGO."
Now I just need to figure out how I can get one of those groovy busses with all the colors on it.....
And according to BooMama if I get the bus and a pair of birkenstocks I can harvest granola, Dude! It just keeps getting better and better (or scarier and scarier!)

Something I will never say again!!

Something I will never say again....today I felt a little like Britney Spears. No, don't worry, I didn't walk around town half naked or anything like that. Do you remember her almost dropping the baby? How that is all we heard about on the news for weeks it seemed? How no one could get past it or find anything more interesting to talk about?

Well, today that happened to me...sort of.

I was carrying Katarina up these cement stairs that had little mats on them, and one of the mats was falling off the stair, but I didn't realize it because, honestly, I couldn't see it. All of the sudden, I felt my foot slip and down we went. I held her up in the air as we were falling, so she is fine (she didn't even touch the ground the whole time) but of course it was still a scary moment for both of us. A scary moment which she relived all day today to anyone and everyone who would sit still long enough to listen........no, seriously, this afternoon we were in Wal-Mart and actually ran into my husband's kindergarten teacher (how random is that!) and my usually not-going-to-talk-to-a-stranger daughter started to immediately tell this woman who she had never seen before, "My mommy was carrying me on these stairs and then she fell and almost dropped me." Everywhere I went - I couldn't get away from it. And as a side note I also couldn't get away from the huge bruise on my knee that is throbbing and swelling, but that is a whole other story.

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Please be sure to check out my roomie over there on the right. Two Write Hands. You don't want to miss out on what she is talking about and why she ordered a chocolate milkshake....she is just too sweet. So, just click on the thumbnail and leave her a nice comment!

Hallway

Thinking about that last post about the people reading their teenage diaries for a crowd got me all retrospective today. I started thinking about the school that I went to until 6th grade. It is sort of a crazy school in some ways (very rigid with certain rules and such) There was this hallway when you first walked in that had this mural on it of kids (six of them alternating boy/girl/boy....) holding hands.....only it was just the shadowed figures, each one a different color (red, blue, green, etc). I have actually been thinking about this hallway for about a week now, but today I got inspired to look through old yearbooks to see if there was any pictures of this hallway and I did find one that has all of the figures mostly visible in it.

Next to that hallway was the cafeteria and after lunch you would stand in line with your class (with no talking--they were very big on no talking!) for a few minutes before walking back to your room. I remember staring at that mural everyday and making up these wierd stories in my mind about it. I used to pretend that if I would just break out of line and run over there, I could go up to the purple girl (she had an outline of hair that was the most similar to mine) and if I ran into her picture on the wall I would be transported somewhere else. Strangely it was usually to a different school that I pretended I would go......not away from school, just a different one. There was also the depressed days that I imagined that if I did the same thing I would find where they hid kids who were in trouble.....sort of a dungeon/graveyard thing that is way too dark to go into, and I am saddened that at the age of 5 or 6 it was even created in my mind.

As an adult looking back, I know that this was during the sexual abuse years and of course it makes sense that I would want to get away from where I was in general.....and that school situation didn't help much-it seemed that they structured things in such a way that you didn't socialize with anyone (students or teachers-----no relationships at all) and that just helped me to continue to feel helpless in my silence about the abuse. Of course, I can't say that if I had been in a different school situation that I would have formed any type of relationship with someone that I would have told about the abuse. I would be lying to myself to try to blame it on the school entirely my poor social and relating skills.

I don't know why this hallway has been so present in my mind lately......I have even been dreaming about it and imagining drawings that I would like to do that involve it. Looking through those old yearbooks brought back so many memories from that school, and memories of the stories I created in my mind while I was there to escape from reality. Crazy.

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On to happier things. I have a new roomie-Two Write Hands-Stop by and see her. You can find out about the creepy bathroom situation at her work and think of a way that she can find out what creepiness is going on in the men's room. Just click on the thumbnail to your right!! You won't be sorry!

Cheaper Than Therapy??

Was anyone watching Nightline last night??

They had this story about this bar in New York where they have "Cringe Night". Adults get up, in public, and read their teenage diaries out loud. Scary!! They say it can be better than therapy, but I am not so sure that I wouldn't need some therapy afterwards if I tried that.

It made me think about blogging.......it is sort of like a diary....only public. Of course I am not quite as out there and open on my blog as I was back in my teenage diary years. (and aren't you thankful for that!!) And there is still something very annonymous about blogging that just isn't there when you stand up in person at a microphone reading it for anyone to hear. (and certainly different from being the person they showed on Nightline doing it!)

I did start thinking about my old diaries....what exactly was written in them. I almost feel inspired to pull them out and share some old entries with you all. Almost!

What do you think? Would you do it on your blog? Would you do it in person?

A Skunk!

Today we went to eat at this Chinese buffet that is in this little strip mall. When we left it was pouring rain!! I mean, flood-like proportions! So we decided to look into the little stores that were right there, one of which is a pet store.

We worked our way around looking at the birds and fish. (Strangely, this pet store didn't have any cats at all!) We even played with a puppy.

Then, Katarina saw it.........she went running over to it's cage........"It's a skunk, a skunk!" she cried in a loud voice. "Can we play with it!?! Can we get it out? It is so cute!" I quickly ran over and was relieved to see that it was actually a ferret. But it was a good reminder that she is not quite ready to go camping. She would be the only one running toward the skunk that would try to sneak in the campsite.......and everyone else would want to run away from her after she tried to pick it up and hug it!

Click and Comment Monday!!

It is that wonderful time again....Click and Comment Monday!!
On Mondays, Cat has been promoting clicking and commenting. What I want to encourage you to do is click on my renter. Then, you comment on her blog and click on her renter, or if she doesn't have a renter, someone on her blogroll. Do this again as many times as you can. I really encourage you to try to do it at least 5 times if you can. It is a lot of fun and you never know when you are going to find a new favorite read.

Also, you can get in on the Click and Comment fun by going here and adding it to your blog. Let me know in comments and I will come visit your renter.

So, let's get started spreading some comment cheer! Leave me a comment and a link and then go check out Crayons, Playdough, and Wax!

Th-Th-Th-Th

Now that Katarina is three we have realized something clearly--she has a problem saying "th" she substitutes a "f" every time. This also explains why she insists on skipping the number 13 while counting--she just refuses to acknowledge it's presence in the list. In her world, numbers go ........10, 11, 12, 14, 14, 15, 16,..........

Yesterday we started really trying to teach her how to make the "th" sound. Thomas decided it would be good to think of a sentence with mostly "th" words and get her to practice. Here is what he made up--"Thirty three thousand thumbs throwing thimbles" -great right?? So he keeps saying it to her and she is sitting there patiently listening to him, but not saying anything.

Finally he says, "Okay, Katarina, say this with me. Thirty three thousand "
To which she quickly responded "Dollars!"

That's right-she might say "Firty Free Fousand" but what she means is dollars! She's got the important stuff down.

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Please don't forget to check out my roomie over there on the right. Les will only be here for a couple more days and you don't want to miss out all the fun!

"I Really Had No Life As A Kid" -My Version

I want you to read this post--it is fun!--but I also want to ask you to click on that thumbnail over to the right and visit Crayons, Playdough, and Wax......Please!!

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I haven't really done any memes except for Thursday Thirteens, but this one that Wordnerd had was too good to pass up!!

Disclaimer---some of this stuff I was forced to watch because that is what my parents were watching, so don't judge me based on this list alone because I was (and in some places, painfully!) honest. But all in all this was a fun thing and a great list! And you know what?? I watch a lot of tv and I guess I always have!

Feel free to do your own and leave a link for it in comments--I would love to see what eveyone else has spent their lives doing!

Instructions: Bold all of the following TV shows which you've ever seen 3 or more episodes of in your lifetime. Bold and Italicize a show if you're positive you've seen every episode of it. If you want, add up to 3 additional shows (keep the list in alphabetical order).

Are you ready??

24
3rd Rock from the Sun
7th Heaven
Adam-12
Aeon Flux
ALF
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Alias
Allo Allo
American Idol /Pop Idol/Canadian Idol/Australian Idol
America's Next Top Model/Germany's Next Top Model
Angel
Arrested Development
Babylon 5
Babylon 5: Crusade
Battlestar Galactica (the old one)
Battlestar Galactica (the new one)
Baywatch
Beavis & Butthead
The Ben Stiller Show
Beverly Hills 90210
Bewitched
Bonanza
Bones
Bosom Buddies
Boston Legal
Boy Meets World
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Bug Juice
Chappelle's Show
Charlie's Angels
Charmed
Cheers
China Beach
Columbo
Commander in Chief
Coupling
Cowboy Bebop
Crossing Jordan
CSICSI: Miami
CSI: NY
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Dancing with the Stars
Danny Phantom
Dark Angel
Dark Skies
Davinci's Inquest
Dawson's Creek
Dead Like Me
Deadliest Catch
Deadwood
Degrassi: The Next Generation
Designing Women
Desperate Housewives
Dharma & Greg
Different Strokes
Doctor Who (new Who)
Doctor Who (series 1-26)
Dragnet
Due South
Dungeons and Dragons (old cartoon)
Earth 2
Emergency!
Entourage
ER
Everwood
Everybody Loves Raymond
Facts of Life
Family Guy
Family Ties
Fantasy Island
Farscape
Fawlty Towers
Felicity
Firefly
Frasier
Friends
Futurama
Get Smart
Gilligan's Island
Gilmore Girls
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
Green Acres
Green Wing
Grey's Anatomy
Growing Pains
Gunsmoke
Happy Days
Head of the Class
Highlander
Hill Street Blues
Hogan's Heroes
Home Improvement
Homicide: Life on the Street
House
I Dream of Jeannie
I Love Lucy
Invader Zim
Invasion
Iron Chef (Japan)
Iron Chef (USA)
Hell's Kitchen
JAG
Jackass
Jeopardy
Joey
John Doe
Kath and Kim
LA Law
Laugh-In
Laverne and Shirley
Law and Order
Law and Order SVU
Little House on the Prairie
Lizzie McGuire
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Lost
Lost in Space
Love, American Style
M*A*S*H
MacGyver
Magnum P.I.
Malcolm in the Middle
Married... With Children
Melrose Place
Miami Vice
Mission Impossible
Monk
Moonlighting
Mork & Mindy
Murphy Brown
My Family
My Favorite Martian
My Life as a Dog
My Mother the Car
My So-Called Life
My Three Sons
My Two Dads
Mysterious Cities of Gold
NCIS
Night Court
Nip/Tuck
Northern Exposure
Numb3rs
One Tree Hill
Oz
Perry Mason
Picket Fences
Pirates of Darkwater
Pokemon
Power Rangers
Prison Break
Profiler
Project Runway
Psyche
Quantum Leap
Queer As Folk (US)
Queer as Folk (British)
Queer Eye For The Straight Guy
ReGenesis
Remington Steele
Rescue Me
Road Rules
ROME
Roseanne
Roswell
Samurai Jack
Saved by the Bell
Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Scrubs
Seinfeld
Sex and the City
Six Feet Under
Slings and Arrows
Smallville
So Weird
South Park
Spaced
Spongebob Squarepants
Sports Night
Square Pegs
St. Elsewhere
Star Trek
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Enterprise
Stargate Atlantis -- New season
Stargate SG-1 --New season
Superman
Supernatural
Surface
Survivor
Taxi
Teen Titalns
Teletubbies
That Girl
That 70's Show
That's So Raven
The 4400
The Addams Family
The Andy Griffith Show
The A-Team
The Avengers
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Bionic Woman
The Brady Bunch
The Colbert Report
The Cosby Show
The Daily Show
The Dead Zone
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Flintstones
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
The Golden Girls
The Jetsons
The L Word
The Love Boat
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Mighty Boosh
The Monkees
The Munsters
The Mythbusters
The O.C.
The Office (UK)
The Office (US)
The Pretender
The Prisoner
The Real World
ROAR
The Shield
The Simpsons
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Sopranos
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
The Twilight Zone
The Waltons
The West Wing
The Wonder Years
The X-Files
Third Watch
thirtysomething
Three's Company
Top Gear
Twin Peaks
Twitch City
Upstairs, Downstairs
Veronica Mars
Vicar of Dibley
Wings
What Not To Wear (US)
What Not To Wear (UK)
Whose Line is it Anyway? (US)
Whose Line is it Anyway? (UK)
Witchblade
Will and Grace
Wonderfalls
Xena: Warrior Princess
Young Hercules

I added Law and Order SVU and Vicar of Dibley and Green Acres (a random trio of shows--I know!)

A Successful Birthday/Slumber Party!

Katarina has successfully turned three! And her mommy has successfully made it through her first slumber party! We ended up having her 3 year old cousin, a friend from church who is 6 years old, and another girl from church who is 12 (she is close to Katarina, but she was also old enough to be a help to me!)

Lots of Presents!!

I am just finally getting caught up on my sleep, but it was worth it. We piled up lots of blankets on the living room floor-moved the couch-and watched movies and ate a cookie cake. We let the girls stay up very late (because everyone knows that slumber parties aren't really about sleep) At 12:30 I went ahead and put Katarina and her cousin back in her room in bed so that they would get some sleep. Her cousin fell asleep immediately, and I layed down by Katarina and talked to her for a few minutes. Then the sweetest thing ever--she looked at me and said "Mommy, I had a good birthday, it was so much fun. Thank you. I love you very much" That made up for any lack of sleep on my part.

Thank you for all the birthday greetings on my mommy's last post!

This weekend I am determined to do nothing but rest! Okay, and blog, but that is pretty restful-just sitting, reading and typing!

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Please don't forget to check out my roomie's blog! Just click on the picture to your right-you will get to see pictures from the North Pole, and she has a great TT up. You won't be sorry!

Happy Birthday to my "No-Longer-A-Baby" Girl!!

Katarina is turning three!! At 3:23am on August 2, 2006 my little girl will be three years old! It is unbelievable-crazy-wonderful-exciting-scary-fun-special.

Three!! I just can't get past it.

And she is so excited. My mom sent her a box of presents on Saturday so she has been picking them up and holding them several times a day. I am really proud of her. She holds them and says "These are my birthday presents from Nana! I can't open them until Wednesday because that is my birthday!" then she goes on to talk about which one she is going to open first and which one has the bow that she likes the best......she really is showing a lot of restraint! I haven't had to stop her from ripping paper yet, but I know that they will have to be opened first thing in the morning or she just might explode! And that is never a good thing to happen on your birthday.

The other exciting thing is that her friend/cousin is going to come spend the night and have a slumber party with her tomorrow night (two three year olds "slumbering" together--what was I thinking!!) It should be a great birthday!

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Don't forget to go check out my roomie~Crayons, Playdough, and Wax---she is over there on the right side. Exciting things are happening there-tomorrow she is going to the North Pole!

My New Roomie!

Over there to the right is a thumbnail of my new roomie's blog. Please click on it and go meet her.

Her name is Les, and her blog is called "Crayons, Playdough and Wax".....who can resist clicking on a blog with such a cute name? I know that I couldn't!

Les has had - and is having lots of company and excitement; so go visit Colorado vicariously through her blog as she does all sorts of fun things (yesterday she visited the Olympic Training Center!)

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

What a crazy week this has been. A lot of stuff has been happening, but just not a lot of stuff that I can share many details about. (because you never know who is out there reading.....)

I will say this much, though. It started out with car issues-that aren't completely resolved, but will be soon. It continued with some "other" issues that felt like the worst possible thing, but have quickly shown to be opportunities for blessings and growing and moving forward (just in different ways than we would probably have planned it for ourselves-but God is in control and everything is always better when He is the one making the plans!)

So, all in all, I expect good things to come out of all of this, and I expect to be back around my computer again this week ---------- It is sad to go days without blogging, I really missed it!