REDNECK MULTI-TASKING, BATH AND MOPPING

Sunday was so fun, Angela and the boys come over! They played in the pool and on the trampoline and had water war with the blaster squirt guns! There was water everywhere. It was such a hot day and watching them have fun in the pool and getting us wet was such fun for them. After we went into the house last night Blake (8) discovered that he could slide on my kitchen floor. With all the water it was really slippery! After a few slides head first into the cabinets, it got to be pure entertainment! Angela put a few drops of dish soap on the floor and Blake came in sliding like he was sliding into home base! Bam! We were all laughing so hard. Even Angela was slipping and falling. I got a good video of it. What good fun! I call it REDNECK MULTI-TASKING, MOPPING THE FLOOR AND GIVING THE KIDS THEIR BATH ALL WHILE HAVING A GOOD TIME!!!

Sorry, I tried to turn this but it didn't work. It's still fun to watch!

Thankful Thursday

Today my goal was to be positive in a very negative area. I have always tried to be happy and positive, but when you are around this attitude all the time it starts to wear on you. My goal is to not let it get to me and pull me down.

Today I am thankful for the great Northwest. The beauty here is breathtaking! We have the majestic mountains and Water everywhere. The trees are green and even the weeds are pretty! Our air quality isn't full of smog for the most part, just pollen, but it's still pretty good. I love the places that you can go camp and hike and see the beautiful creation. When we have blue skies, it is gorgeous! Now I know I have complained about our clouds, but it makes you thankful when we do get the blue skies!

I am also thankful that God has given me a 2nd chance on life and that I don't have to be perfect, that I can be forgiven and live in peace.

I am thankful for laughter. It really is a great medicine.

Overflow of a Forgiven Soul: Thankful Thursday- Love of Christ

Childlike Faith!

Checkout Jason's blog if you have time. It is an awesome writing about the faith of a child.
Read my comment on there and see what happened when my children were very little, that
made me see it for myself!

WWS Sighting!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was in my kitchen
after work last night
and something caught
my eye outside my kitchen window.................





I got a closer look through
my rose bush and there it was..........




The visitor was on my chair..........









and in my little porch garden!!!!!







Yes, it was a pleasant sighting of this mystery Western Washington Sunshine (WWS)
It catches us off guard here in Washington when the sun does appear. For example, when a lady I talked to yesterday from Texas is in her kitchen window I doubt very much if looking out her window she is shocked by seeing our visitor there. But in Washington, it's a very different experience. At work we are just minding our own business doing our work when all of a sudden this visitor appears and it takes our breath away and we make comments like "Look the sun is trying to shine" "Wow, it's a clear sky!" Ten minutes later, it's "Where did the sun go? I thought it was supposed to be nice today?" So you see that here in Washington when the rare visitor appears, it's party time! Get out the suntan lotion and put a shrimp on the barbie because it's summertime. Then it's time to go back to work because your break is over and the clouds have come back! Well, we are thankful for these special visitors that are borrowed from those sunshine states! They just take it for granted having this special visitor, but in Washington we LOVE our visitor and we will ALWAYS love and appreciate it everytime it comes, even if it is just for a moment!

TRAINING....ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Ok everyone needs training.... some more than others. Husbands need training, dogs and cats need training, children, drivers, divers, doctors, lawyers and even birds! Where is this going? Well, today I am in training.... it's all good! I have taken my caffeine pill since I don't drink coffee... hey, you coffee drinkers think nothing of getting your boost to start your day, so don't be so quick to condemn me for taking a pill form of coffee beans!!! It works and that is what counts. So, here we go.... time to get started!

I'm a STAR!!!

I'm a STAR on my son's radio station in Florida!!! He put a picture on his web site of me!!! I am doing a weekly spot of poetry, which is really just lyrics to a song that I pretend to write. His callers guess the song and artist. I love it. It is so fun to be a part of his part of the world.
Check it out!!! The picture is an old picture of me, but he thought it was a sassy picture!!! I must keep up my image!!!
http://www.thejoyfm.com/showdj.asp?DJID=43293

Grandkids!

Great weekend with grandsons! What can be better than you grandkids telling you that you are their favorite grandma? Come on now.... NOTHING!!! If you aren't there yet... just you wait! It's a secret hormone that God doesn't tell you about until you are there. You think that you don't want to be called grandma, until you hear that little offspring from you own child, calling you grandma, or say, "i wuv ew gammma" I tell you that it melts you heart! There aint nothin better! Riley and Blake clung to me like barnacles on pilings! They didn't want to go anywhere unless it was with grandma! I even got kisses in front of Riley's friend! Angela said she doesn't get kisses in front of his friends, but I got em! They know how to work me though. Let's go to ToysRUS...uh huh! Grandma will get what we want! These kids have so many toys, it's unreal. I tried to help them be thankful for the abundance that they have. I love how they listen to me. I heard Blake demanding to his mother and I talked to him about that and his big eyes looking up at me and he said I'm sorry grandma and he went and told his mommy he was sorry. Good choice sweetie!!

I am very thankful for my husband. He decided that I needed to have hand rails put up our two stair cases due to my bad knee. It was so sweet of him to even think of doing that! I am hoping that after my surgery in two weeks that I won't need them, but it was awesome that he even thought of it without me asking!
The funny thing is that my husband is NOT a handyman! He does not do mechanical things at all and he hates having to put things together or do anything crafty! He measured wrong and cut off too much of the rail and had to take it off that wall and put it on the shorter wall and he was SO frustrated. He didn't like the stud finder and thought it didn't work, but it was just that he didn't know how to use it! It was all forgotten when the job was done, but I thought I would go nuts before it was done! I was very proud of him AFTER the job was done!
One time he decided that he was going to caulk our window outside because it was leaking. He was out there quite a while and I about died laughing when he came inside. He was covered from head to toe with white caulk. I asked why he had it all over himself. He showed me the caulking gun and it had oozed out from every seam but the end where it should have come from.... HE DIDN'T CUT THE TIP OFF THE END!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Crafts are NOT his thing and that was a craft!! I will never forget how funny that was, even though he was trying so hard to be a handyman! I am thankful for him inspite of the fact that he isn't all that handy. He makes up for it in his love and his sacrifice for me. He is a good man and I am blessed!

Destruction Derby

I love going to the destruction derby! Nothing like seeing cars and trucks smash into each other on purpose! They run lap races and time trials, figure 8's, rollover contest and my favorite, the last car standing finale! You can smell the leaking gas, watch as the firemen put out the bursts of fire, feel the rumble of the engines as they attempt to stay running, feel the excitement of the crowd and enjoy the food from the vendors. Last week there was a women that won 1st place in 3 races!!! Yeah for women drivers! Where else can a woman driver speed, drive crazy, crash into people and not get pulled over for it? This Saturday is another derby and I'm excited that the weather is going to maybe be better than the last one. It was raining, cold and windy. The mud was so thick on the track and we were sitting on the front row. When they came flying and sliding around the corner the mud flew. It's a good thing that our seats were about 12-15 feet up or we would have looked like little pigs in a pig sty! If you have never tried this sport, you must give it a go....it's very entertaining! Even discount tickets are available!

Vintage Restoration

A few weeks ago I spoke at a vintage trailer gathering about restoration. I love vintage cars and how people restore them into such beautiful condition. I talked about how many people see an old car like this sitting in someones back field and talk about the "junk" in that back yard. I don't see them as junk. I look at them and see what it can become. Someone said to me that some are just too far gone to even try to fix, but I don't believe that. I relate this to life. I have been working with a young lady since she was in 8th grade and now 34 years old. She came from a extremely dysfunctional family life and has been going down the spiral of life to the point that she has given up on life. She is a cutter, user, violent and every other abuse she can try to cover the pain in her life. I see her like this car. Every one looks at her like she is too beat up to try to fix up. Too damaged, too far gone, no hope! I can't think that way. She needs someone who won't tell her it's too late. She needs someone who will care and love her even though she doesn't care if she lives or dies. I believe that God looks at us this way. He sees beyond what we have become no matter how wasted we are or how low we go. He sees the value of what we can become and doesn't give up on us. So when I look at this old car I see a car that has been used and abused, but I see what it can become with the help of someone who cares and loves it and will work with it until it is restored. When these cars are restored then people see the beauty in it again. Some of the scars are still there just like in our lives, but it reminds us of where we have been and helps us to remember where we have come from. So try to look at life through God's eyes and know that He will bring us through anything we face and if we allow Him to restore us, He can bring beauty out of the junk of our life.