What's in a name?

I've had more and more poeple from my real life reading my blog lately. It's sorta like worlds coliding. When I first started this blog, no one in real life read it. Only my cyber freinds. Then my real life freinds started reading it too.

When I first started it Sir D was uncomfortable putting our real names on the interent. I respeced that and only used my first name and used alieses for the kids. You can read the post where I explain our internet aliases here.

I'm not really sure if they're necessary anymore or not. I shall have to think on it some more.

On another note, Sir D and I are supposed to be going away for a weekend getaway with our RV this weekend for our anniversary. The place where we are going was struck by a tornado (yes, in January), and now they are calling for snow and ice and freezing temps this weekend. It was almost 70 earlier in the week. sigh.

I must say that we have more trouble celebrating our anniversary. Feb 1st is a terrible time to get married in TX. It is so hard to plan your anniversary. It could be 70 and beautiful or it could be sleeting/snowing. You could have tornado's or snow. Texas weather!

Also, I'm getting over the flu. That is why the blog was so quiet. Coughing, sneezing, crackly lungs, sore throat, headache, fever, the whole works. yuck. I've not left the house since Friday of last week. TOday though I must go out to the store no matter how I feel. We're almost out of toilet paper. YIKES!

Today I must muster up the strength to go on a run. (funny, that meant something totally different back when I was younger)

(Please forgive the disjointedness of this post and any grammatical or spelling errors, I am still on cold medicine. I have no excuse for the other posts with spelling and grammatical errors, however.)

The Girl Who Went To Haiti

This is my freind Jessie and her husband John. Jessie is a sweet girl that I have known for many, many years. Her youngest brother and my oldest son are friends that have known each other since they were crawling around in the church nursery.

Jessie is an amazing woman. She is a RN, who has volunteered for disaster relief with Heart to Heart International for several disasters, the earthquake in China and the Tsunami to name a two. She's now in Haiti as is her husband, John.

I can not even imagine what she's seeing and experiencing. What I see on my TV overwhelms me, I can't imaging the feeling of actually being there, seeing all that NEED with my own two eyes.

Jessie has set up a blog to document her experience in Haiti. I am finding it very powerful and moving. It somehow seems more real to look at Haiti through Jessie's eyes than my own because I have no experience with which to filter the images I'm seeing.

Jessie does. She's done this before. She's an AMAZING young woman.

BTW, Heart to Heart needs all the help it can get to send Dr.'s and RN's to Haiti. One more good charity in need of funding if you find yourself so able.

Of Fireman and Froot Loops

It's a Saturday morning and I am home alone. I know that is probably not something that I should post on the internet, but I am banking on the fact that those of you that know where I live wish me no harm, and those that might wish me harm do not know where I live. I like to live dangerously.

It is a strange thing being home alone on a Saturday morning. I spent much of my adult life awake way earlier than I wished, laying on the couch at oh dark thirty, with my head under a throw pillow while some horrid cartoon kept my wee little children somewhat still and entertained until those of us who are not nocturnal woke up.

But no longer. Now I find myself awake and in a quiet house able to drink my coffee in peace and quiet and have a complete thought. It's quite shocking to the system.



The boys are off being Fireman today. (Good Job, Fireman!), Eve is working at her grandma's house helping her out with some spring cleaning, and Sir D had to go into the office for a few hours and took Ann and Violet the Test Dog with him. (and really, if he's taking Violet to work with him, is it not just semantics to continue to call her the 'Test Dog'?)

So now I find myself in a place I thought I'd never see again. Alone, quiet. peaceful. ahhhhhh.

I know one day they will all move out, I know one day I'll be sad and wish those days of little ones back, but not yet. It's still to fresh in my mind. I'm not so far away from it, that I don't still really appreciate the gift of solitude.

Also, I know what a busy day I have ahead of me. My dearest friend in the whole world's daughter is having her graduation party today. This dear girl and my Will have grown up together. This girl is graduating today, a full semester early and...with her associates degree. Yes, I KNOW! Amazing.

Then we go to my BIL's birthday party. Let's just say those numbers are getting a little bigger than I am comfortable with my peers turning.

Time marching on. It happens in the blink of an eye. One minute they're sitting in front of the TV eating dry froot loops out of a cup and watching 101 Dalmatians for the millionth time, and the next they're out dragging around 100 pound water hoses and putting out fires.

I meant to end with something deeply meaningful and profound but I just realized that I just admitted on the internet that my toddlers ate dry froot loops for breakfast...

Violet the Test Dog

When we got home from our trip to the SPCA on Sunday, where we met and had to leave Glitter, I remembered how some friends of ours were trying to find a home for their Black Lab/Border Collie mix, Violet. They were leaving the country and needed to find her a home. I remembered that they had not had any success and the dog ended up living with their college age son who stayed behind here in the states. I was pretty sure the college age son was still trying to find her a home. He is gone so much...



So we gave him a call. He was more than happy to bring Violet over for us to try. We have begun a one month trial period with Violet. If, after a month it's too much, or she's hard to deal with, we can give her back to the college age son.



So far we've learned Violet can sit, stay, heal, potty outside, and best of all she does not rub her butt on the carpet. It's a match made in heaven!




Bob was great friends with the boy of the family Violet belonged too. Violet loves Bob. Violet will do whatever Bob says. Violet sleeps in Bob's room and follows Bob around like, well, like a puppy.



I know we have a month yet to go, but really? after one day with Violet the Test Dog, I'm pretty sure she's a keeper.



Isin't she sweet?

Who doesn't need a little Glitter?

We are not dog people here on the hilltop. We had a dog. He was a pug. It ended badly. He snorted, he snotted, he was untrainable, and he rubbed his butt on the carpet in an obsessive compulsive manor. It was bad.

When he started getting out of the fence, despite our best efforts to thwart his wanderlust, and marking the neighbors front door, we decided it was time to find him another home.

That was 5 years ago. Trygve the Pug left us shellshocked. Last week all the stars aligned, the gods smiled on us, and my husband had a momentarily brain spasm and somehow, Sir D and I ended up at the Dallas SPCA.

While we were there we met Glitter. Glitter was so sweet. I completely fell in love. She was shy and would very slowly come up to you and sniff your hand. If she decided you were worthy she'd let you scratch around her ears. She wasn't too sure about Sir D. She didn't make a peep, even though she was surrounded by yapping puppies. She'd just look at you with those big brown eyes, silently asking you to take her home.



Unfortunately, Sir D said no. He thought she was a little to big. We were looking for a smaller dog. Our house is the size of a postage stamp and she was just a bit too big. I could have probably talked Sir D into taking Glitter home, but, well, Trygve was my idea. Need I say more?

So there Glitter sits. If you live anywhere near Dallas, please go get Glitter and take her home, K? Then tell me you did, so I can stop thinking about that sweet little dog with those big brown eyes sitting in that cage.

My Word, 2010 Edition

Last year I choose a word for the year instead of a resolution. I love how that worked out last year. The Lord taught me many things through the study and focus on the word ‘Courage’. I think I will write up a recap of my courageous year perhaps later in the week.

I have been pondering and praying over what my word for 2010 should be.



I choose ‘encourage’ because it occurred to me how encouraging words are like a balm to my soul, like food to the starving or water to the thirsty.

When I’ve had, for instance, another mother tell me something positive about my children it makes up for an entire day of hard parenting. When I have someone complement me on my writing or parenting or cooking (rare!) or whatever it may be, when it is specific and sincere it fills me up. It occurred to me that I’m probably not the only one who feels this way.

I think encouraging things all the time. I think the complements and the kind thoughts all the time but I don’t often verbalize them. I’m not sure why but I’ve given it some thought.

I think part of the reason I often don’t express encouragement is because I don’t want to seem arrogant. Like I’m the expert on parenting and I am deigning to offer you a token of praise for a job well done from the master. I don’t want to seem patronizing or like I have it all together myself. I don’t want to appear that I think myself the expert in whatever field I am encouraging someone else in. But as I was praying over this word I realized that I have never once been encouraged myself and taken it this way.

So this year I choose to be actively, verbally, encouraging; to my children, to my husband, to my extended family, to friends and acquaintances, and even to strangers on the street. I’m asking God to show me circumstances where I can use the courage he taught me about last year and do His work by speaking life into others with encouraging words.

After

I think I shall call this photo 'Anticipation'.



We hadn't even come downstairs yet. It was about 6ish in the morning. To say she was excited would be an understatement.

This next photo we shall call 'The Aftermath'



And this next photo shall be called 'Since Then' because that pretty much sums up my attire since then.



Also, I think someone needs to make it law that Christmas is from now on and forever, to be followed by a weekend.

That is all.

Marry Christmas from the Hilltop

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.







May you all have a blessed Christmas and be surrounded by those you love, and maybe even a little snow.

In case you're wondering...

...where I have disappeared too.



I'm under here. I may be out sometime after Christmas.

Pay no attention to the crazy lady in the Excursion driving like a nut.

I was driving down I20 at a speed that may or may not have been in excess of the posted limit, in the far left lane when I noticed the hood on the Excursion begin to shimmy and shake up and down, like it was not properly latched. I had visions of the hood flying up and momentarily blinding me as I swerved all over the highway narrowly missing other drivers, before it flew off and crashed into a vehicle behind me, causing a 50 car pileup shutting down I20 completely. Then my life flashed before my eyes, which was much less interesting than my previous imaginations.

As my mind was occupied with all this panicked thinking, I made my way, ever so carefully to the exit, all while watching my hood bounce up an inch, down an inch, up an inch, down an inch, over and over and over.

Please, please don't fly up! Please, please don't fly up, I pleaded with the inanimate object that is the hood of my Excursion.

I made my way off the highway and into a nearby parking lot. I sang praises to the Lord as I put the Ex in park and hopped out. I walked to the front of the vehicle and pushed down the hood, hearing the blessed sound of the latch catching. I glanced to my right to see two police officers gaping at me from their cruiser. I smiled, waved, and hopped back in the Ex and on my merry way, praying they would not pull me over and ticket me for generally recklessness and idiocy.

I then called Bob, the last person to open the hood of my car and told him of all the ways his life would be awful if I were not in it, and could he please not try to kill the Mama in the future.