Finished!

I thought changing the template a bit would be a simple thing...two hours later I know differently!

My husband, the computer programmer by trade, showed me how "easily" I could change the code for the template. Easy to change the code, yes, but very difficult to choose the background! Too white. Too busy. Too grey. Ooohh! That one alone looks nice...terrible with the rest of the blog. But finally I've settled on the decorated Christmas tree background. You know, I think my favorite part of Christmas really *is* the Christmas tree, so I guess it's appropriate.

I'll have to take the tree down in January, but for now, we can just enjoy it.

How Fun, An Award!

"This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

What a sweet award, huh? Betty @ Keeper of the Skies Wife gave it to me! I thought it was very appropriate that Ashley and Michelle both gave her the award, because her blog is all about relationships. I love how she tells about fun family dates that her dh and 2 dd's go on, and stories that show how much she truly enjoys her family and friends. She has touched my heart with the kindness that she has shown to me for the past several months. I can count on her to read and comment on my posts, showing friendship in her messages. Thanks, Betty, for the award, but for also being a great blogging buddy!

I have gone through my list of favorite bloggers, and came up with this too short (but very sincere) list:

Making Ends Meet April is my real life friend and my get-me-out-of-the-house! buddy. And I love her blog! I love seeing her fun projects that she is constantly working on and the fun stuff that her family is doing. AND I LOVE her caramel popcorn recipe!

Dear Goodness "Kate the Great" is Steve's & my cousin, and it has been great to get to know her and her family better by reading her blog. She writes posts that are just plain fun to read! Lately, many of her siblings have had birthdays and she has been telling fun stories about them. They make me laugh! I tagged her a few days ago AND SHE DID IT! I didn't see it until just now when I went over to her blog, but she did it! You can read her random stuff by clicking here. I am so excited to read it!

As an aside, I wonder how many things I miss by simply watching the title captions of my favorite blogs on my sidebar? I think blogger gets a little behind sometimes. I'll have to just check blogs like I used to, rather than watching to see the blog title change.

Eternal Sunshine of an Empty Mind I have been reading "Eternal Sunshine's" blog since the beginning of my blogging life. She is entertaining, telling funny and clever stories about her cute family, AND she is informative, telling about causes that she believes in and strives to help.

Farm Dreams Christy is another blogger that I have enjoyed from the beginning. She has many of the same interests as me, like gardening and animal husbandry. AND SHE JUST BOUGHT A FARM! I am loving seeing all of her pics of the house and land right now. Her closest neighbors are cows! Now that's my kind of neighborhood!

Marvelous Pigs in Satin "MarvelousThing" is another of Steve's & my cousins; I love reading about her life and getting to know her better. Her stories are great! I love to go to her blog and look at the creative projects she has done. And she just had a baby! I love the snuggly baby pictures! Her other children are simply adorable too!

The Righteous Buzz I've been reading "Coffee Bean's" blog about as long as I have been blogging. I don't remember how I met her, but I remember that I clicked on her link to go read more about spasmodic dysphonia. Since then I have been entertained and informed by her great stories.

Stay at Home Mom Sisters Maren is another of my real life friends. We have been friends for over 19 years! She and her sister, Carrie, just started blogging a couple of months ago, and I am loving her entertaining posts about being a Stay at Home Mom!

Children in the Corn is one of my newer favorite reads. "Farm Mom" is striving for self-sufficiency on her homestead. All I have to do to be in awe of this woman is to take a look at her "2008 Homestead Harvest" figures on the sidebar of her blog. I love all of the great pics she takes of this and that around her farm and all of the great posts about life on a farm.

Thanks to all of you wonderful ladies who brighten my days with your posts!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was going through my pics to find an image for this post, and I found that Emily (the creator of The Singing Frog) had made this turkey. When I asked her about it, she said that she made it a few weeks ago. She graciously has allowed me to use it to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.

12 Things I'm Thankful for:

1. My family. For all of the immediate family members, extended family members. The in-laws and out-laws. For all, I am truly thankful.

2. My home. Though I have countless projects that are unfinished, in need of repair or paint, my home keeps me warm, dry, and safe. Such a home would be considered a luxury for many in our world.

3. All of the modern day appliances that make my world run a little smoother and faster.

4. For vehicles that run and keep our family going.

5. For my farm animal critters. For home-grown eggs & meat. For the relaxing times I have watching the chickens scratch and peck. For the cute little bunnies that we get to raise. For my goats, even though they are naughty, because they are friendly and nice.

6. For land and soil that makes growing vegetables a pleasure. I have truly loved gardening this year.

7. For a loyal, good husband that I can trust and that I love dearly.

8. For wonderfully talented children that brighten my life with their lives. For their jokes, their artwork, their performances, for their smiles, and for their love.

9. That my parents are still alive. I will greatly miss them when they are gone. I am thankful to get to know them better every year.

10. For all of you wonderful blog friends. For the words of encouragement you give me and for listening to my joys, sorrows, and concerns.

11. For my family's health. You haven't got anything if you haven't got your health! This has probably been our busies year for doctor's visits and ER trips. I'm glad that most of the problems have been resolved and that we haven't had anything more serious.

12. For God. For the goodness that He blesses me with. For the trials that He lets me endure so that I can be stronger. For my knowledge that He loves me and knows me.

HAVE A VERY HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

UPDATED- Waiting for the Moment of Truth

UPDATE......NO CANCER! I'm truly thankful. Thanks for your prayers and encouragement.

From what I understood the nurse to say, the cysts are stones...seems that my kidneys are set up to make stones. That is a bummer, but I'm soooo thankful it isn't cancer. (Isn't it funny how bad news is relative? Seems funny to be thankful for it is *just* stones. :-) I don't have all of the answers from the CT scan; the rest of the info will come on Tuesday. I'll keep you updated as soon as I know.
*******************************

I should be able to get the results of the CT scan today. I'm pretty nervous. The actual CT scan itself wasn't terrible, but I'm not looking forward to doing it again in 6 months.

They had to do the scan with contrast, so they hooked me up to an IV and put the dye straight into my vein. Yuck. The technician warned me beforehand that it would feel warm as it flowed through my veins, and that it would probably make me feel like I was wetting the bed. Yep and yep. Weird sensations. Other than making me feel woozy, it was ok. Today I'll be drinking a lot of water and green tea to cleanse the junk out of my system!

On Saturday Steve & I went to Park City and walked around Main Street. Since Park City is built on a hill, and Main Street goes right up that hill, my legs are sore from all the walking, but it was great fun! We looked in the little shops and even saw one of these (don't look if you get embarrassed easily!). All I can ask is, "Why???"

My favorite shop (other than the art galleries) had hilarious door mats and plaques.
Here are just a few:

I take life with a grain of salt, a wedge of lime, and a shot of tequila.

Go braless . . . It'll pull the wrinkles out of your face!

We've been through a lot together . . . and most of it was your fault!

My husband and I have different religions. He thinks he's God, and I don't!

Friends are like thighs, always sticking together.

I smile cause your my sister. I laugh because there's nothing you can do about it!

Put on your big girl panties and deal with it!

You'll always be my best friend . . . You know too much.

Shopping with your husband is like hunting with the game warden.

Around here, "normal" is just a setting on the dryer.

The mats were funny too. I only remember a couple, but one simply says, "Hi! My name is Mat."

And,

"I love my vacuum.
I've found God.
I gave at the office."

Too funny!

We visited a lot of art galleries. I am amazed at the talent those people have! Here are some of their websites, so you can look at the some of the art without even leaving your home:

West Light Images www.westlight.net

Stanfield Fine Art www.stanfieldfineart.com You'll have to keep reminding yourself that these are paintings, not photos!

Hope Gallery, Inc. www.hopegallery.com

Scanlan Windows to the World www.scanlan.com It is too bad that they didn't post the description of the picture on their website; it is as much art as the photos themselves.

There are beautiful, beautiful pictures at those sites, so I hope you get a chance to look.

I'll post the results of the CT scan as soon as I get them. Keep your fingers (and toes, legs, eyes, arms....) crossed!

Random Tidbits from the Weak Week

Okay, so nobody else liked the tag. Not one of the interesting people I tagged went on to tell 7 random things about themselves. Not that I'm pointing fingers, mind you. No, no, I don't mind that you didn't play along. Don't mind me & my teardrop, just keep reading. ;-)

This week has been busy, busy, busy. I went to the kidney doctor and the gastroenterologist (sp?? AKA "stomach doc").

I told the stomach doc I didn't like his medicine. He took the news fairly well; he just told me I'd never get better. Okay, maybe he didn't tell me that *exactly*, but he insinuated it. And I didn't exactly tell him I didn't like his medicine, but he read between the lines. And we came up with a compromise: I don't take his medicine and try to eat less, not eat after 6 p.m., eat only things that don't make my stomach hurt, and then he'll do another scope and see if my way works. If not, I'll start on the medicine. This is where all of you come in: pray for me, okay? I don't like the medicine. I'm kind of an anti-medication type of gal. Thanks in advance.

And next, the kidney doctor told me that because of my blood work-up, he really doesn't think anything is wrong with my kidneys. He told me that he wonders if the tech who did the ultrasound was just looking a little too hard. However, because of the findings, I am having a CT scan of my kidneys on Monday. He told me that many people have cysts in their kidneys, but the type that I have can indicate cancer. SOOO I am choosing to believe that the ultrasound tech was just too cautious, and really I am in perfect health. But, I sure won't turn down any prayers and positive thinking on my behalf!

I finally had Amber's family birthday party. Okay, so I am a month behind, so what? I just extended her fun for a while! Amber is currently in line at some movie theatre to watch Twilight with some of her friends. I let her out of school early to go watch it because I am a push-over keeping perspective. She is a good girl who works hard in school, does what she is supposed to do, and gets A's & B's. And I told her it was for her birthday, which means that at no other time during the year will she think that I'll let her do such a hair-brained thing again as standing in a line for 3 hours to go to a movie she already has tickets for! Perhaps it is genetic though, because every time a new Harry Potter book came out you could find me in a very long line at Walmart several hours before midnight. "Hair-brained" must run in the family.

I'd really love to tell what projects I making, but since they are for Christmas and would be seen by the recipients, let it suffice that they will be cute!

This week I have been making a real effort to take my kids to the park. Our weather is unseasonably warm, and I am LOVING IT! So three times this week, the kids and I drove to the park to meet some friends and enjoy the weather, conversation, and play! It is wonderful to feel the warm sun during the last days of November!

And last night April and I went out and took a shopping trip. It was great to get away from responsibility for a couple of hours! (Thanks for going with me April!) I enjoyed the entire trip immensely!

That is my week. At least the Reader's Digest condensed version. It wasn't terribly exciting, but it was a great week!

This weekend Steve & I will be celebrating our 13th Wedding Anniversary. I'm so glad that he is my husband and best friend. He is perfect for me.

Have a great weekend!

TAGGED!

Coffee Bean from The Righteous Buzz left me the following comment on Saturday: "You are TAGGED!"

So I sprinted on over to her blog to see what was involved in this tag. Here are the rules:
• Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules in your post.
• Share seven random/weird facts about yourself.
• Tag seven random people and link to their blogs.
• Let each person know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment in their blog.

So I've been thinking about seven weird/random facts (that I can share!) about myself all weekend, so here goes:

1) I was born on a beautiful tropical island, yet I have a phobia of deep water...basically any water above my head. Even though I *know* how to swim, I panic. As for lakes and oceans, of course I worry about being in that water! Who knows what is down there?!

2) I met, got engaged, and married my husband after knowing him for 10 1/2 weeks! Our first date was one week after we met, we got engaged after 6 weeks, and married 4 weeks later! AND Steve hadn't met my dad until we visited him our honeymoon AND I met Steve's mom the day before our wedding. Steve & I will be celebrating our 13th Wedding Anniversary this next weekend! The best news is: we love and respect each other more now than we did 13 years ago. I wouldn't recommend that route for everyone, but we prayed about marrying each other and both felt that it was right, so we did. It was the best thing I ever did.

3) I lived on a 120 acre farm in Kentucky in a predominately Amish community for 5 years. My home was a renovated Amish house, and the house was heated solely by two wood burning stoves. Here is a fun story: during the first month or two I lived there Steve had to go to a seminar in California for a week. Now you have to understand that I was raised in places that ranged from small town to large city during my lifetime, so I was a full-fledged City Slicker. So Steve went to CA and I was left behind with farm animals and the previous owner-of-the-farm's dogs. There was one dog in particular that I was afraid of. He wasn't the friendliest dog and looked a bit wild. While Steve was gone, that dog chew on the necks of two chickens. The kids rushed in and told me what had happened and the chickens were bleeding. I did anything that a normal City Slickin' Woman *could* do: I rushed them to our "next door neighbor's house", you know, the one 1/4 mile away! I must have sounded in a panic when I explained what had happened and that I needed him to kill them for me and he could keep the meat, when he answered very quiet and calmly "Are you sure you don't want to keep the meat?" I felt like a raving fool, but figured they'd forget all about me and the incident. FIVE YEARS LATER I was at an Amish School Consignment Auction buying a plateful of bar-b-qued chicken when the lady looked at me and smiled and said, "Aren't you the lady that brought us those chickens a few years back?" ARGH! She remembered!

The next two stories come from when we lived by Steve's parents when we first moved to the South. We lived in a mobile home on the top of a ridge on their 100 Acre Woods in the back-woods of Tennessee.

4) The power company was slow as molasses in January when it came to putting up a power pole for us, so they finally got to it *after* the mobile home had been moved on. When they came, they told us they had forgotten a blasting mat, but they thought it'd be ok. Um, no. They blasted a boulder out of the ground that landed on top of the mobile home roof and put new skylight in my kitchen! It was there that I learned that I *love* roofing houses! It was beautiful, peaceful, and quiet up on the roof, especially with my small children being watched by my mil!

5) I really wanted the carpets cleaned before moving all of our stuff in, but our electricity hadn't been hooked up yet. I called a carpet cleaning company anyway, to ask them if they would be able to clean our carpets...no, we don't really have electricity, but we could use an extension cord from the chicken coop...
We really did use an extension cord from the chicken coop for the electricity that we needed during the first month. We could choose to use a lamp or a fan, but not both at once.

Back in Kentucky:

6) OH! I was shot at once when I was visiting a lady from our church. Ok, it wasn't my car they were shooting at, but the other lady I was going with. We didn't have an address, but just directions for getting there. The lady had told us she lived in the first house on the left on this one back road in Kentucky. So we were driving down the lane and saw a mobile home that looked like it was recently moved onto the land. It didn't look like a place Cindy would live, but she did say the first house. So Midge turned into the driveway. I saw the front porch light go off and on and was followed by a light way out in the field turn off and on and then a KABOOM! from a gun. It was a warning shot, and we high-tailed it out of there. Come to find out, Cindy hadn't taken into account the newly moved on mobile home...she lived in the second house on the left.

7) And here is another similar to the last. Midge and I was going visiting a lady named Angela on a different night. Again, we had directions since street addresses were of no use in the country. She had directions written down, and we were ok until we came to a fork in the road that hadn't been mentioned. Huh. We looked at both of the roads and decided to go up the hill since it looked more traveled on. We drove up the hill and around the bend. There were only two houses up there, so we drove to the closest one, opened the mailbox and looked at the name on the envelope. It didn't match who we were looking for, so I said that we should go to the next house and see if that was it. We couldn't see a mailbox to that one to check, so I said that we should drive on down the lane and ask the people if they knew where Angela lived. As we got closer Midge said that she got a really bad feeling about it and said she thought we should go down the hill and look around again, so we did. We took the other road and found Angela's place just as the sun was setting.

We visited for a bit, then her husband Bill said to be careful on the way home: don't stop or slow down, but just drive like you know where you're going. It is the marijuana harvest and the harvesters are paranoid. They'd rather shoot ya than look at ya, so just be careful.

What?! We told him about the high road that we'd taken and looking in people's mailboxes and almost going to the house down the lane to ask directions. He just shook his head and said it was good that we didn't because they were the biggest offenders and always had marijuana. ARGH!

Good times! Okay, so now you've heard my random/weird stories, here is your turn!

I tag:

1) April at Making Ends Meet
2) Maren AND Carrie at SAHM Sisters
3) Robyn at Robyn's Adventurelog
4) Rebecca at Marvelous Pigs in Satin
5) Kate the Great at Dear Goodness
6) Eternal Sunshine at Eternal Sunshine of an Empty Mind
7) Betty at Keeper of the Skies Wife

Okay, ladies, I'm ready to listen! ;-) Have fun with the Tag. You can be as verbose or consise as you like.

Places to Go and People to See

As I was reading though "My Daily Reads" - you know, all the blogs that I love to read everyday (they are listed on my sidebar), I came across great ideas!

Like here, at flipflops and applesauce. She gave the recipe for a great stew that she got from Rachel Ray and modified a bit. It sounds delish, so grab a pen and go write it down. Your family will thank you!

And want to read a good book? Robyn, at Robyn's Adventurelog, has recommended two books and has written a synopsis for each. Both are about women, one from India and the other Afganistan, and their marriages; one marriage was arranged and the other tells of the woman's story when her father couldn't afford to pay her dowry after one year. These aren't Cinderella stories as far as I can tell!

Betty at Keeper of the Skies Wife has written two tutorials. One tells how to make a button that other's can put on their blog to link to yours. The other tells how to change your blog background using a picture that you like. She recently changed her background using a cloudy sky pic that looks like it was taken in an airplane high above the clouds. Love it!

And I looked over at SouleMama, and she has a fabric give away going on! Take a look at the cute prints and leave a comment for your chance to win! AND if you love the fabric and want some whether or not you are lucky in winning, the seller is offering a special discount for SouleMama followers.

If you want to strengthen your brain, take a look at this quiz Ree gave yesterday. Then, when you have racked your brain all you can, check out the answers she's posted today. Too bad I didn't see it earlier, because their was a giveaway attached! She has a fun, etertaining blog to read, and she posts almost everyday. AND her giveaways are nothing to scoff at! The winners today won gifts that range from $500 Amazon gift card to a $100 e-gift card.

April at Making Ends Meet has some cute Christmas ideas that she links to from her blog (look on the right sidebar at the WoodChesters at Etsy). While your at her blog, take a look at the cute quilt that she recently made and say hi!

Have a great weekend!

FINISHED!

( I made it clickable so that you can see it in better detail )

My doll quilt is fInIsHeD!! Hurray! It turned out cute. I can see my mistakes, but thankfully my family says that they aren't noticeable.

And Matt had his Cub Scout Pinewood Derby tonight. His car did well, but didn't make the top 3. He was sad, but not too sad. He and Steve did a great job on the car. Matt chose the design and painted it; Steve cut it out, took the burrs off of the wheels and axles, and added graphite to speed it up. They worked hard and did an awesome job!



As for me, I am sooo ready to start on Josh's quilt. I'll wash the fabric first, so if it bleeds it won't run on the other colors. I'm glad that I did the doll quilt first. There are a few things I have made notes about so that I don't make the same mistakes twice.

Here's hoping the big quilt turns out as good as or better than the small one!

Doll Quilt and Tales of Woe

I finished the top of the quilt! Isn't it cute? I love the subtle pattern. Now I just have to tie it and put the binding on.



Michael seems to like it, too. I had it setting on the bed looking at it and he climbed up on the bed, and even though there was a whole lot more bed around the patchwork top, he proceeded to sit himself atop the doll quilt. He knows what he likes! Why, in church he has to position himself directly below the light fixture. If he isn't directly underneath he gets frustrated and moves until he is. I guess he just likes what he likes. I'm always glad when he can have what he likes. He also wants to go swimming. Every day, a hundred times a day, he tells me he wants to go swimming. But I can't give that to him. He'd freeze. So I have to say no. All day long. And I hate it. So YES! Michael, you can sit on the quilt and directly under light fixtures as much as you please!

Last night I made my mini-meatloaf in muffin tins (because I hadn't decided earlier what to make for dinner) and as I was serving them up one flipped out of the pan and landed behind the stove. Horror! So, I drug out the stove, and my little cabinet, and the fridge and scrubbed underneath and behind everything. For those of you who hate to clean behind the fridge and stove too, you'll understand my abhorrence. I hate the sticky stuff, the dust bunnies, and the feeling that if you touch this repulsive "stuff" your fingers will probably get sores and fall off, sooner than later. I only clean behind there in the spring and fall, so I've needed to do it but have been putting it off. BUT IT IS DONE! Hurray for it being done and I don't have to do it again for six months!

I hope that today you can have some simple pleasures in life, like sitting under a light fixture if you'd like, or having house elves clean under your stove for you!

Whew!

Today Jared started wrestling for his high school team. He has to *be* at the school at 5:55 a.m. He woke up (and so did I because I am a light sleeper!) at 4:50. Steve has agreed cheerfully to take him to practices every morning that he can. He says it will get him into and out of the office earlier every day. So they were out of the house by 5:30 this morning, and I was thinking about going back to bed.

Instead I got up and worked on my doll quilt before the kids woke up. It is turning out very cute and all is going well. I've only made 2 mistakes on it so far. One mistake was in cutting out the material. It was supposed to be a 4 patch quilt, with the 4 patch consisting of 2" squares (finished size) and a 4" solid piece in between the patches. I forgot to cut the 4" squares, and cut them all to be 2 inches! So... I have been doing them all 4 patches. It is very time consuming, taking me about an hour to finish a portion that equals a 16 patch. (I do have to add here that I am a perfectionist. But really, the process is time consuming.) I am making a pattern in the quilt that uses 16 squares, or 4 - 4 patches. The second mistake was just sewing a patch wrong.





When I was taught counted cross-stitch as an elective in jr. high, my teacher said it was as valuable to make the project have a clean and nice looking backside as front. The lesson stuck, and look! Even the backside of the quilt looks pretty:



I feel like I've gotten another 4 hours tacked onto my day. Maybe I won't hate having Jared wake me up at 5 in the morning.

Personality Test Revisited

The other day Emily took the personality test I told you about a few days ago and came out with Ingrid Bergman. I was surprised when I read her results and found that it sounded like me when I was younger.

I pondered on it again tonight when Steve & I were hanging out with some friends and I had them take the test.

On the Bette Davis result it said, "take charge in the family because they perceive themselves as the strongest, or grow up in difficult or abusive surroundings." It made me start wondering about nurture vs. nature. My parents divorced when I was 12, and I often felt the need to take care of my mom. Funny thing to feel responsible for someone who is supposed to be taking care of you. I wonder if she ever felt that she needed me to take care of her. Anyway, maybe it is just that everyone has combinations of these various personalities and none of them are totally cut and dried.

Ingrid is my soft side. This is the result for Ingrid:




You are an Ingrid -- "I am unique"


Ingrids have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.


How to Get Along with Me
· * Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
· * Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
· * Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
· * Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
· * Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!


What I Like About Being an Ingrid
· * my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
· * my ability to establish warm connections with people
· * admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
· * my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
· * being unique and being seen as unique by others
· * having aesthetic sensibilities
· * being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me


What's Hard About Being an Ingrid
· * experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
· * feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
· * feeling guilty when I disappoint people
· * feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me
· * expecting too much from myself and life
· * fearing being abandoned
· * obsessing over resentments
· * longing for what I don't have


Ingrids as Children Often
· * have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
· * are very sensitive
· * feel that they don't fit in
· * believe they are missing something that other people have
· * attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
· * become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
· * feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)


Ingrids as Parents
· * help their children become who they really are
· * support their children's creativity and originality
· * are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
· * are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
· * are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed


I do feel more like Ingrid when things are going well and I can relax. Bette comes out in me when there is a crisis, when I feel like people are depending on me to be strong, or when I'm feeling protective of someone I love.

So how did your tests turn out? Did you feel like it was accurate? Did you feel like I do, and that maybe there are many sides to you and it isn't just all cut and dried? I'd love to know!

"Christmas Cookies" sung by Jeremiah the Bullfrog

Emily (my pre-teen daughter) drew this bullfrog on MS Paint yesterday. As she was playing around with it she found that she could make it look like it was singing, so the frog then began singing the songs on my playlist that she was listening too.

So Ladies and Gentleman, without further ado, I present Jeremiah, the singing bullfrog. (Be sure and pause my playlist so that you can enjoy it to the fullest!)

Voting Day & Cutest Pic Ever

I've shown you this picture before, but isn't it the cutest picture ever?



Okay, maybe I'm biased, I mean he *is* my kid, so of course I think he is the cutest kid ever, but isn't his pose totally cute? The pose was spontaneous. I looked over and there he was. I love it!

I actually want to incorporate it somewhere on my blog that is permanent. So when you see him permanently attached to some corner of my blog, you can say that you saw it first. ;-)

Today is voting day, so go vote. I'd love to say something funny like, "Go vote, as long as it isn't for _______.", but I trust your judgement. Follow your gut. Don't vote the two party bias just because you'd be "throwing away your vote". Follow your conscience, and you'll feel much better in the end.

Have a great day, and good luck with the long lines at the polls! And may my candidates win! (I had to say that! ;-)

Guess what is still in the garden?!

Take a look at these beauties!







Cabbabe, broccoli, and cauliflower are still alive and gRoWiNg! How exciting! I actually have not been to my garden for about a month, and after the frost came I gave up on my cool weather crops, assuming incorrectly, that they were dead. How excited I was yesterday when I went back and looked and found them thriving!

I have never, ever had these crops grow before, though I usually plant some every spring. It simply gets too hot and stops growing. From now on, I'll skip the cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower in the spring and only plant them in the fall.

See you tomorrow,

Another Quiz - Who are you?

As I read Eternal Sunshine's post yesterday entitled "Who am I", I decided to take the quiz too. It only asks 2 questions - each has 3 answers that you have to thoughtfully answer. I was pretty impressed with the answer, though, because it got "me" right. I showed Steve the results, and he agreed that yep, that was me alright.

I was told I am "Bette Davis" and as my real-life friends read my results they'll probably agree that the results are strangely accurate!


You are a Bette -- "I must be strong"
Bettes are direct, self-reliant, self-confident, and protective.

How to Get Along with Me
· * Stand up for yourself... and me.
· * Be confident, strong, and direct.
· * Don't gossip about me or betray my trust.
· * Be vulnerable and share your feelings. See and acknowledge my tender, vulnerable side.
· * Give me space to be alone.
· * Acknowledge the contributions I make, but don't flatter me.
· * I often speak in an assertive way. Don't automatically assume it's a personal attack.
· * When I scream, curse, and stomp around, try to remember that's just the way I am.


What I Like About Being a Bette
· * being independent and self-reliant
· * being able to take charge and meet challenges head on
· * being courageous, straightforward, and honest
· * getting all the enjoyment I can out of life
· * supporting, empowering, and protecting those close to me
· * upholding just causes


What's Hard About Being a Bette
· * overwhelming people with my bluntness; scaring them away when I don't intend to
· * being restless and impatient with others' incompetence
· * sticking my neck out for people and receiving no appreciation for it
· * never forgetting injuries or injustices
· * putting too much pressure on myself
· * getting high blood pressure when people don't obey the rules or when things don't go right


Bettes as Children Often
· * are independent; have an inner strength and a fighting spirit
· * are sometimes loners
· * seize control so they won't be controlled
· * figure out others' weaknesses
· * attack verbally or physically when provoked
· * take charge in the family because they perceive themselves as the strongest, or grow up in difficult or abusive surroundings


Bettes as Parents
· * are often loyal, caring, involved, and devoted
· * are sometimes overprotective
· * can be demanding, controlling, and rigid
http://www.helloquizzy.com/tests/are-you-a-jackie-or-a-marilyn-or-someone-else-mad-menera-female-icon-quiz

So go take a look at the "Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz". It is pretty entertaining and insightful! And then come back and tell me who you are.

Have a great weekend!