Carnival of the Blogging Chicks 5

Check out this week's carnival! There are a lot of great Blogging Chicks out there, and this is a great way to sample their writing. And of course, yours truly has an entry. Go, read now!

I saw it, I saw it!

Hubby was sweet enough to take me to see POTC: Dead Man's Chest last night, and I loved it. Maybe that's an understatement. I wanted to see it again, immediately. I enjoyed everything about it. And yes, I have even changed my template to reflect my appreciation for this movie. Thank you, Disney, for the wonderful picture!

Now, for those of you wondering, "Should I spend my hard-earned $8.50 (or more) to go see this movie?" let me ask you a few questions: Did you like the first one? Or like me, did you watch the first one so many times you pretty well have it memorized? Do you like action and adventure? Are you willing to suspend your disbelief? If the answer to either of the first three questions is yes, you probably already want to go see it, so go! If the answer to the last question is no, you might want to wait for the DVD. There is a lot to take in during the course of the movie, most of it unbelievable.

I will not spoil any aspect of the plot for you, but trust me, it's fantastic. And it answered a big question I had from the last movie, for which I highly applaud the writers. There is not a lot of romance, but boy, can Orlando ever pull off the hurt/jealous look. I just wanted to hug him and tell him it would be okay. The special effects are of course spectacular, and the stunts so amazing my hubby swears they were done digitally. There is plenty of humor, and the return of some great supporting characters from the first film. The bad guys are maybe not quite as scary as the skeletal pirates of COTBP, but still pretty creepy. And the main bad guy, well, let's just say I won't be eating calamari again anytime soon.

So now I'm counting down the days until I can buy the DVD, watch the commentary, see the behind-the-scenes stuff, etc. And then another wait for the third movie. Does anyone have a time machine I could borrow?

SPF - I hear wedding bells!

As Kristine and Shaun's wedding approaches, she gives us a lovely wedding-themed SPF for this week. Best wishes, guys, and congratulations!

My love: I have always loved this picture. Taken at our wedding, I think it captures perfectly a casual, unposed moment where you can actually see on my face how much I love my husband.

Honeymoon: How about a cruise to a private island, where waiters will bring you champagne while you swim? Yeah, I thought you'd like that.

Something blue:

In keeping with the tropical island theme, you can't get too much more blue than this!

Did you play?

Happy birthday, Joshua!

I can hardly believe my second son is turning seven today! He is such an amazing kid, sweet and funny and affectionate. He loves giving hugs and kisses. His favorite things are Legos and Thomas the Tank Engine. He adores his brothers and plays with them all the time. When he was a baby, I used to stare at him for hours, just so thrilled that he was mine. Now, when I try to take a picture, this is what I get:
Trust me, though, he's still adorable. Happy birthday, Joshua!

Coming soon

I saw him the minute I walked into the room. He stood there, his black, wavy hair slicked back, a few strands loose across his forehead in a careless, casual way. His brown eyes seemed to look right through me. And yet, there was no doubt that despite the gorgeous girl next to him, he was looking right at me. I felt the heat rising in my cheeks as his gaze burned into me, a look that said he didn't care if I had four children running around my feet, a look that ignored that ring on my finger. I smiled at him, but the intensity of his gaze never wavered. There was a daring abandon to his expression. Let the adventure begin, he seemed to be saying, You're in for the time of your life. I held his gaze, as if to assure him. The time is not right, I thought, willing him to hear. But I'll be back.

Just then, a hand touched my shoulder. My husband was ready to go. Reluctantly, I turned away from the poster. I'll see you Friday, Orlando.

[To see what I saw, click here.]

Carnival of the Blogging Chicks 4

This week's Carnival is up, and I actually got my link in on time! Just click on the cute picture!

SPF - Shaun Style!

This week, Kristine has been busy with wedding plans, and has asked her fiance Shaun to come up with the SPF topics. So here we go!

Something with a story behind it

When my great-grandmother died, my parents, brother and I were given the task of cleaning out her house. Now, I was only twelve at the time. I asked if I could keep something from the house as a memento. These teacups were what I chose. She had collected them from all over the world. Some of them are quite old. Most of them have matching plates. The cup on the bottom shelf in the middle is from Germany. Both of her parents immigrated from Germany in the late 1800s, so that's probably the oldest one. I have added my own pieces from my travels, as well. I would have added more, but I ran out of shelf space.

Something truly Random and Odd I found this on my kitchen table this morning. Caption, please!

Something borrowed When I was trying to get pregnant the first time, someone lent me this book. I never told her I wanted to choose the sex of my baby, I just said I was hoping for a boy. She insisted I borrow this book. Then we moved away, and now I can't remember the name of the woman I borrowed it from. So, does it work? Maybe too well. Not only did I have a boy, I had three more after that!

So, did you play?

Monty Python gets married

I recently came across this letter I had written to my former college roommate after attending the wedding of a friend. I won't include names - who knows who might come across this - but I thought it was funny. The groom was a dear friend of ours, and the bride, well, we didn't think much of her. She was a nasty, snarky person who didn't think her intended was funny, when he was actually one of the funniest people I've ever met. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with having something done at your wedding that other people have done in the past. But since my dad was a wedding photographer, I had seen a lot of weddings, and this one was the grand cliche of weddings. No originality whatsoever. Anyway, here's the letter:

A mutual friend put it this way: "This is like a parody of a wedding. It's like Monty Python Gets
Married." Seriously, it was like the whole thing was planned by Weddings-R-Us. Imagine anything that you've seen at every wedding you've ever been to and they had it at theirs.

First of all, the guys wore black tuxedos, of course, and [the groom] wore tails. The bridesmaids wore the typical bridesmaid dresses of satiny material with lots of ruffles and puffy sleeves. The color, and trust me, this is a very common wedding color, was teal. The other color was ivory, and would you believe [the bride]'s dress was ivory? I wonder why... It was a very plain dress, which is not to say it wasn't pretty, it just wasn't very fancy. And of course, it had puffy sleeves.

The ceremony took place in a church which was extraordinarily plain inside. The only decorations they had were two flower arrangements. The ceremony itself was literally a joke.
The pastor they had didn't seem to think this was any serious thing, this getting married. He stood up there and joked around, announced each thing that was going to happen from the
program as though he'd never seen it before ("Oh, and I see now that Paul's going to sing another song!"), and had us all applaud the soloists ("I know this isn't usually done, but they've sung so beautifully, let's give them a hand."). If our pastor had acted like that at my wedding, I would have been furious.

The reception, of course, was total cliche. They had a buffet for the guests, including cold cuts and that wedding reception favorite Swedish meatballs. They also had a DJ, who played some of the most cliched wedding songs of all time (It's the new album from Ronco: "Wedding Cliches of the Eighties"), including "Always," and "Just You and I." Naturally, they danced to "Daddy's Little Girl." But imagine how amazed [Hubby] and I were at the incredibly original idea of having balloons as centerpieces! They didn't release theirs, though. [We had balloon centerpieces at our wedding three months earlier, which we then released.]

[A bunch of us] and the best man completely nuked [the groom]'s car. [Hubby] and
[his sister] wrapped it in toilet paper, [his brother] filled it with balloons (and I mean FILLED it), and [the rest of us] put streamers everywhere. It was awesome. I also made the Just Married sign which, when flipped over, said "Call 911" - just in case of any highway emergencies. Just as we finished it started to rain and all the colors from the crepe paper ran onto the car, and of course the toilet paper became a wet sticky mess. It absolutely poured. But by the time they came out, it had stopped and the car still looked pretty incredible. [The bride] thought it was
wonderful, amazingly enough. She looked right at me and said, "This is great!" and she meant it. Wow. Maybe she's changed. That would be pleasant.

Anyway, to top it all off, they went to the typical honeymoon spot, a tropical island. Bermuda to be exact. We tried to call them a little while ago to see if they were back, but we got a very frightening answering machine. "Hello, you have reached the blissful abode of ..."
with some kind of sappy music in the background. Ack!

WBW - Let's play dress-up!

I thought I had nothing for this week's theme. I was not a girly girl, and rarely if ever played dress-up. And then I saw TKW's. So I give you this, which, like hers, was taken on a cruise ship:
In December 2003, we went on a cruise on the Holland America line. One evening at dinner, these adorable little Dutch hats were waiting for us on our plates (Holland, Dutch, get it?). The men got little caps (see my little Dutch boy sitting next to me?), and the women got these things that looked like mutated napkins. But, being the goof that I am, I wore it the whole meal.

So, did you play?

Let me give you a hand

My mom had surgery on her hand last week to replace an arthritic joint. I know many people have heard of knee replacement, but it seems as I tell people about my mom's surgery, most are surprised that doctors can and do replace joints in the fingers.

So I found this neat page at Hand University on how the joint replacement surgery works. It has illustrations and animations, but nothing gory. From that website, here is a brief description of the surgery:

An incision is made across the back of the finger joints that are to be replaced. The soft tissues are spread apart with a retractor. Special care is taken not to damage the nearby nerve that passes by the joint. The joint is exposed. The ends of the bones that form the finger joint surfaces are taken off, forming flat surfaces. A burr (a small cutting tool) is used to make a canal into the bones that form the finger joint. The doctor then sizes the stem of the prosthesis to ensure a snug fit into the hollow bone
marrow space of the bone. The prosthesis is inserted into the ends of both finger bones. When the new joint is in place, the surgeon wraps the joint with a strip of nearby ligament to form a tight sack. This gives the new implant some added protection and stability. The soft tissues are sewn together, and the finger is splinted and bandaged.

I am told she is recovering nicely, and my parents will be here tomorrow to set up camp next to our house for a couple of weeks. She had the same surgery done on her left hand a while back, and has been very happy with the results.

Isn't modern medicine amazing?

Carnival of the Blogging Chicks 3

I totally forgot last week and again this week to submit anything, but go check out the Carnival. There are some great submissions from great bloggers over there! And next week, I'll be in there for sure. Unless I forget again.

4 Boys + 1 Toad = 5 Hours of Fun!

You can probably imagine the scene at my house on Saturday when this little guy made the mistake of hopping across my three older sons' paths. Hubby and I were up on the deck, working on putting up posts for the railing, when I heard a squeal of, "A toad!"

I walked over to the edge and peered down at them. Sure enough, my six year old was holding a large brown toad. I smiled and went back to work.

A while later, my oldest came to the bottom of the deck and wanted to know what they should do with the toad. "Um, let it go?" I answered. "Oh, wait, bring it up here. I want to see it." So they all trooped up to the deck and brought it over for me to see. I had never held a toad that big before. It was pretty cool. "Okay, now let it go."

I watched them go back down and set the toad free in the field.

Imagine my surprise when over an hour later, they were playing with Mr. Toad again. Apparently, he had not learned his lesson the first time and had hopped right past them again. By this time, the baby had gotten up from his nap. I suggested that he would probably love to see the toad, too. Sure enough, he squealed with delight watching the poor little thing try to escape from my other boys, repeatedly. I went back up on the deck.

Then things got really fun. There's a large tray on the ground, catching the drips from our air conditioner. It was pretty full of water. They decided to watch Mr. Toad swim. Over and over again, the poor thing would swim to the edge of the tray and climb up, only to be tossed back in, like some kind of survival boot camp for toads. This delighted the baby to no end. Eventually, they got bored and walked away. But Mr. Toad hung around, right near the tray of water. So naturally, when they came back, it was time for round 2 of his swimming lessons.

Finally, they grew tired of the toad and left him. This time, he used the common sense he should have exercised hours earlier and got far, far away from there! It sure made for a fun afternoon.

Update on the poison ivy: Still there. Still itching. I am tempted to just scratch it open. It is slowly driving me insane (not that I have far to go).

SPF - June 23

For SPF this week, Kristine has given us the following assignment:
1. Your Drinking Glasses.
2. Your Address book/Stationary (remember that stuff we used BEFORE email?)
3. SOMETHING NEW

Here are my drinking glasses, still in the dishwasher:
I think this is the most recent address book I used. It's got loose pieces of paper stuck in everywhere and things crossed out. I was so happy when computerized address books came along. Of course, our kids will say, "You mean you used to write down people's addresses? In a book? Why?"
Here is my new shirt. This is the first time I've worn it. I love purple and for five bucks, how could I say no?
So there we go. Did you play?

Itching to blog

I have always been one of the fortunate ones. People around me have fallen to its power, but I remained untouched. I suppose some would say I got cocky. Others might say I deserved it. Either way, that which I so long mocked has its revenge: I've got poison ivy.

Now think of the worst place it could be. No, not there. The other worst place. Your mouse hand. It's on my wrist, precisely where I normally rest it when I'm mousing or typing. It's also on my index finger, the one I click with. By the time I finish this post, I'll be itching so badly I'll have to soak my arm in hydrocortisone.

So if you haven't seen me commenting much recently, that's why. No longer will I mock the power of the poison. Never again will I defiantly pull weeds bare-handed. I have learned: payback is an itch.

WBW - Summer fun!

In honor of the first day of summer, TKW has asked to see any photo showing summer fun. I had come across these pictures the other day and wished for just such a topic for WBW. So here goes!

Here is a cookout on my back patio, complete with hot dogs on the grill! From left to right, my mom, Kenny (a friend of mine and hubby's), my brother the goof, me, Hubby, our friend Dan, and Sonia, the Spanish student who stayed with us the summer of 1988. Dan truly thought he was going to get somewhere with Sonia. Her favorite phrase that summer became, "No, Dan."

Here we are on the Fourth of July, sitting on the side of Federal Hill in downtown Baltimore. You can tell it's the Fourth of July, because I'm wearing a red and white striped shirt and blue shorts. We went up there to watch the fireworks over the harbor. That's Sonia, Dan, me, Hubby, and my brother down front. That was a fun summer. The same summer, Hubby ran a house painting business and Dan and I were painters for him. Dan used to sing "Roll With It" by Steve Winwood every time he was rolling paint on a wall. Drove me nuts.

So there you have it, summer fun of the past! Did you play?

Oh, and check out my wedding photos below - I love to show them off!

Fourteen years!

I really cannot believe it's been fourteen years already! If you recall my series back in January about how Hubby and I met, and how I chased him until he caught me, you know that we spent a lot of time apart during our courtship. I am still thrilled and thankful every day that I am with this wonderful man, who is everything I ever dreamed of, and more.

And now, the wedding photos! Sorry for the quality - my album is way too big to put on the scanner.

Happy anniversary, my love!

Families and fathers

We had a nice day Saturday, going to the annual reunion of Hubby's family. His father was the youngest of twelve (I think - I lose track), so he has tons of cousins, second cousins, etc. Every year we meet at Cowan's Gap for a potluck lunch. Afterward, Hubby took the boys for turns in our bike trailer, while his sister and I and one of the aforementioned relatives went for a walk around the lake. Isn't it pretty?
Yesterday, we invited my parents over for a Father's Day dinner. I grilled pork chops, and even though the grill caught fire, they turned out very well (done - haha). Then Hubby and I went over to the motor coach to watch The Dead Zone season premier, a show I have now managed to hook my parents on, too. Incidentally, the preview for next week's episode, which is on the website right now, could be called "Every Dead Zone ever written." All it shows is Johnny saying, "Something's going to happen here. People are going to get hurt. Some people might even die." That's it. If you've ever watched the show, that could be any episode!

So, that was my weekend. Tomorrow is my anniversary, but we're going out tonight so my parents can watch the kids. Fourteen years, people! And yes, I will be posting wedding photos tomorrow.

SPF - Puzzled

Ick, it's been a migraine morning. I'm feeling a bit better now, so I thought I'd pop on here and play SPF - wouldn't want to let Kristine down! (Yeah, like she'd notice if I didn't play...)

Anyway, here is My Puzzle: How does this room end up messier two days after they clean it than it was before they cleaned it? I think if I could answer this puzzle, I could solve the problem of world peace.

My Best: I used to love to sketch people's faces. This is, IMO, the best one I ever did. Bonus points if you know who it is.

Something Old:

An authentic Little Black Sambo Story Book. We found this at my great-grandmother's house after she died. It was published in 1930 and, of course, isn't in print any longer. A fascinating little piece of history, no?

So, that's it! I'm going to go see what other people have done. Let me know if you played!

EDITED TO ADD: My son decided to play this week! Go give him some love at Caleblog!

Photo Safari

My dad had this great idea and I thought it would be fun to share it. He gave each of my older boys a camera, he and my mom each took a camera (yes, they have that many), I got mine, and we went for a walk down our street. Dad had given each of us a list of things to take pictures of, no two exactly the same.

The first thing on my list was Red, White and Blue. I saw this:

Then later, I saw this:

See the red bricks hiding behind the white paint?

Next, I had to find something fuzzy. First, I saw this:

And then I saw this:

Then I had to take a picture of someone not in the family. I thought this would be the hardest one, but there were some little Mennonite kids sitting out on their front step. They all ran inside after I took the picture. I think I scared them.

And finally, I had to take a picture of a horse. Now, just about everyone on this street except us owns a horse. I thought it would be easy. Wrong! For some reason, no one had their horses out yesterday morning! I had to wait until we got home to get a shot of my neighbor's horse.

We had so much fun, we're going to do it again today! I can't wait to see what Dad comes up with this time!

A few updates and such

No WBW this week - I have no picture of myself in a tub that I can access at this point in time :(

So, I will give you a few updates as to what's been going on around here. My parents are here in their coach and will be until next Wednesday. Mom and I have been working in my front weed patch garden and have got it looking pretty decent. Now we just need about a ton of mulch to finish it off. The boys have finished their "official" school for the year, though of course there will be numerous learning opportunities throughout the summer.

I am 90% sure I'm going to keep Joshua home again and just try to be very relaxed and not stick to any really strict curriculum. I've been researching my options and there are tons of nice curricula to choose from. If it's not working, then he will be enrolled in private school mid-year, but I'm very hopeful that changing the way we "do school" around here will change his attitude. It definitely did with Caleb, and he was MUCH more difficult than Joshua from the beginning!

I have lost a grand total of six pounds so far just by dieting. Now I have to get myself in gear and add some exercise. My muscles definitely got a workout pulling weeds, but I need to get some aerobic activity in there, too.

I've also started the Clean Heart, Clean Home Challenge. Sort of. It has way too much stuff for me to keep up with, so I'm just trying to do the devotions and the cleaning. So far I've cleaned out my vehicle. Today I'm going to clean the front door area outside, including windows. Tomorrow I move on to the living room. It's a 52 day schedule, so it'll take a while, but I hope to be rewarded with a sparkling-clean home and a bit of organization. And maybe I'll find a few things I haven't seen in two years. I just found my bathrobe the other day! (Not in the car - just during some unrelated cleaning).