What's that Sound?

That was the thought that crossed my mind as I heard a "scruntch, scruntch, scruntch, scruntch" sound coming down the hallway. And then, in walks Panda with the packing bubble bags on her feet. Here's her "new slippers":

Very Nice!

Lady Bug played in a Suzuki recital tonight. Little Lucy accompanied on piano and Snake Hunter played the duet part on violin. It was WONDERFUL! They sounded great. I came right home and transferred the recording to DVD in hopes of uploading it here. But, phooey, I think my camcorder is just too old - it is not digital and I can't figure out how to get the video on here. It's just not the right format.  :(

So, I have the performance on DVD for anyone who wants to stop by and see it!

Don't try THIS at home

Apparently, piano books do not stand up to being washed in the washing machine.

Now that you are done laughing, would you like to know the details? 

Here is the phone call I received from one of my student's parents who will remain nameless to prevent further humiliation:

"Michelle, you are not going to BELIEVE what I just did."

"What was that?"

"Well, I opened the washer and found what looked like the remnants of kleenex, but it looked like the WHOLE box got washed! I couldn't figure it out UNTIL I found the CD. It was the Christmas book. All that's left is the spiral and the CD!"

So, how did this happen - if you are like me - you've just got to know how a whole book can get washed. This was a new one to me. The piano book does not fit into a pocket!

This particular student left her book at my house after her lesson. Her book was returned to her yesterday. The washer is in their garage. The book was place on top of the washer as the family went into the house. The wash was done today. You can put two and two together....

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Today is my Grandpa's 90th birthday. We are going to go in and take Gma and Gpa a pizza and do a small celebration. This photo is from 2 years ago when we celebrated his birthday. Panda was 8 months old on that day! Time flies! I love this photo - they both have such great smiles!

Thankful Part 3 - Friends

I am blessed to have friends who are in so many parts of my life. 

I have friends who have known me for many years (and they still claim me as a friend - that's TRUE friendship *smile*). I have friends that I have met because of our children. They are such a special part of my life. I have friends who I have met through work. They are an inspiration to me. I have friends who have suffered losses. I was honored to walk with them - they showed me God's strength. I have friends who have walked with me in times of trouble. I have friends who walk with me in our church. They are a treasure as they encourage me in my faith. And finally I have friends who I have never met in person. We share an on-line bond through home schooling and our church.

Many of you fit into several of these categories! Thank you for blessing my life with your friendship!

The Desperation

Ok, I've sunk to a new level of internet and email dependence. I think I may need an intervention here shortly. 

I haven't been able to get Looper email since Saturday. After waiting less than patiently for 4 days, I couldn't take it anymore. I contacted the person in charge of the Loop to find out what was going on. Apparently, my email server was bouncing all the messages. So, I had a choice: I could contact the server or sign up for a different email account. 

I'm hooked back up to the Looper email now. Whew, what a relief! 

So, now that KMEA has started up again, I have two computers on, signed in to three different email accounts. 

Thankful Part 2 - Family

I am thankful that the Lord placed me with my Christian parents. I also have Christian grandparents, I am blessed that three are still with us. My parents brought me to the font to receive the gift of Baptism on May 16th, 1971. They took me to church and made sure that I learned the Bible and the catechism. What a wonderful gift!

I am blessed with two wonderful sisters. We had our share of sibling rivalry as we grew up and now we drive hundreds of miles just to visit each other! :) I look forward to all the times we get together.

I'm married to a wonderful man who is a great dad to our three little blessings. People who knew Brian in high school and college marvel at what a neat dad he is! :) I am thankful that he is willing to work so that I am able to stay home and teach our children at home. I love the closeness that we have because we are able to spend the day together and share in our learning.

I'm blessed with Brian's parents and all my brother and sister-in-laws on both sides. All of Brian's grandparents have passed away. I was fortunate to meet all of them and get to know two of them better. 

I dearly love all my nieces and nephews - there are nine of them. I also have three God-children. 

And the Winner is....

The 1,000th visitor to my blog was....drum roll please....cue the confetti and the balloons...

Karen! 

(well, I think anyway - if I'm reading the site meter correctly...!)

What does she win? I have no idea! It just sounded like a fun heading!  :)

Out of the Loop

It's been very quiet on my email. Something has gone wrong with my Looper email. I have had none since Saturday very early in the morning. I hope whatever it is gets fixed soon - I'm having severe FOMS. (fear of missing something)

Thankful Part 1

Because it is getting close to Thanksgiving, I'm going to start writing about what I'm thankful for. But, since I don't have time to think this out the way I'd like to - I'm going to go in a completely random order! I was thinking about this the other night and...."poof" the thoughts have disappeared! So, to begin in the order that things are occurring around this house:

Tonight, I again realized how thankful I am for Lucy's family. At a moments notice Little Lucy and Snake Hunter put together the piano part and the duet part with Lady Bug's Suzuki solo, "Long, Long Ago". And then they came with  us to group violin class to do a run through there (which was NOT on their agenda until later this afternoon!). It's going to turn out so nice for the recital next week. What a treat!

I'm thankful for music. I enjoy listening and playing music. I really love listening to children make music!

Long time, no blog

Yes, I'm still here in cyberspace somewhere! I again got stuck in life and couldn't get to my blog!

So, let's see. My parents were here this weekend. We had a fun time. They came to celebrate Grandpa's 90th birthday (which is coming this Friday). We did not go in because Grandma had been sick the day before. We'll try to go on his birthday.

I dug out my room yesterday. Mostly. I don't ever have enough hours in my day to actually complete a task. But, it's been rearranged, dusted vacuumed. Now I need to get to the bottom of the clutter.

My mind has weighed heavily on a couple from childbirth class who had a stillborn baby last week. The funeral was today. The young couple is strong and mature and I am thankful that they have faith in the Lord. He will carry them through this hard time.

Now I must get back to work. I'm hearing strange, whining sounds from the children. The weather must be changing again. I hear there's a cold front coming through. I believe it!

Oh, I also noticed that I have now had over a 1,000 visits to my blog! That's fun. Thanks for visiting me and reading my rambling thoughts!  :)

It Has Arrived

Here is the purse I purchased in a beeeautiful purple! I found it interesting the track it's progress to my house. I actually passed within an hour of here and then travelled 3 more hours east before coming back to a location 30 minutes south and then finally to my doorstep! It has a cell phone pocket (left) and another pocket (right) on the outside. It has a strap which can be connected to the purse to carry it horizontal as well as loops to carry it vertical. It also has loops that you could attach to a belt to carry it on your waist.

Here's the inside (as well as I could do taking a picture one-handed). It has a pen holder, inside zippered pocket, two middle zippered pockets, slots for credit cards and various other cards (if you are like me - it seems that there's a card for every store....). 
Best of all, it's a nice small size. If I need something to haul more junk, I'll just grab the diaper bag! Kuddos to Lucy for showing me hers in a different color! I love this one!

Now....to clean out all the junk from my other purse.... Which, by the way, answers Laura's question about whether I have any money left to put in the new purse... I actually found $3 in the old purse already that I had hidden from myself - apparently so well that I couldn't even find it - until now!  ;)

A First For Me

I did something yesterday that I NEVER thought that I would do. (technically speaking, I sent my husband to do this task) We BOUGHT crickets. Yup. I detest those little insects, yet, we BOUGHT a dozen of them. I should have my head examined.

My oldest daughter caught a praying mantis a week and a half ago. We hunted for crickets outside and fed the mantis and then my intentions were to let it go. But, as I should have known, Lady Bug is attached to the mantis. She does not want to let it go. The mantis then laid an egg case, so we decided that we would get a container and keep the egg case and try to hatch them in the spring. We also decided to get a better container for the mantis too. We continued to hunt for crickets, but because it is getting colder, they are hard to find. We found some beetle-like bugs and fed those to the mantis for a while, but those also have been hard to find. Tonight, I sent Brian after the crickets. 

We'll see how long I last on this project.

Baby Fix

Sunday I got to borrow my godson through our entire Sunday School class! Oh, I love the opportunity to hold babies! They smell so sweet. They make such cute facial expressions and sounds (those little squeaks). What a nice gift my friend gave me - to let me have a baby fix!

KMEA Registration

Yeah! We started pre-registration Friday. I've had 4 pre-register on-line already and many more have down loaded the forms (I get a notification when people generate a registration form so that I know that the form is coming - thanks to our webmaster.)

I love my KMEA work. I love working with mail merge, spread sheets and organizing data. I really love computer work.  

The Purchase

Yup, I did it. I purchased the purse. Thanks for the encouragement Karen and Amusedmomma! And it is purple.

It should be here by Wednesday. With the power of internet tracking, I've been following the progress and it's getting closer!

I'll take a picture when it gets here.

All right, Ok

Here's another post to read for Lucy's family (because they check my blog about 8 times a day looking for something new!)

So, "Hello" to the Little Professor, Survivor Boy, the Snake Hunter (or whatever you want to be called....) and Little Lucy.

According to my site meter - they make up at least half of the visits I receive! (Laura, I would say you are close 2nd! :)   )

Now, I'm going to go back to my business. And you boys behave and get your work done!  

Birthday Party

Lady Bug's friend had her birthday party today. They did the party at a local farm. We had a blast! We roasted our own hotdogs for supper. Cooked popcorn in a kettle (it was HUGE!). Went on a hayrack ride. Sang songs around the campfire. Roasted marshmallows and had smores (YUMMY!).

Here's Brian (green jacket), Lady Bug (with purple scarf) and Monkey (blue coat) enjoying their supper around the campfire. It was only about 45-50 degrees out, so the fire felt very good!

Here's Panda. She enjoyed her supper too. In fact, if you look closely at the picture you can see remnants of Doritoes still on her face! She was fascinated with kettle corn and the fire. 

Monkey-ings

Monkey asks this morning:

"Do we have church today?"

"No."

"Ok, I was just make sure-ing"

Later we were reading about some oryx. (as well as looking at the pictures):

"Those little ones don't have 'buttings' so they could get eaten, right? Because, those big ones could butt the other animals if they tried to eat him."

An Effect of the Older Siblings

A conversation with Panda:    (right after she got up in the morning)

"Daddy's not here, he went to work"

"Nuh Uh"

"Yes he did"

"No he didn't"

"You're wet. Let's change your diaper"

"I am not."

"Yes you are."

"No I AM not."

More Panda "Madlibs"

Yet another from Panda:

Farties (that is HER pronunciation!) = Smarties

(If you ask her to say 'farties' then it becomes 'parties'!)

My Next Purchase

is going to be a new purse. Big deal. Why am I blogging about that?! Several reasons:

1. I haven't bought  a new purse in 11 years. Really. I can never find one that I like and then if I do I don't want to spend the money on it. If I spend money on a new purse, I won't have money to put in my new purse!

2. I can't think of anything to blog today. Well, other than election stuff and I'm tired of that and quite frankly I can't think of anything nice to say, so I won't say anything at all!

3. Little Lucy wants SOMETHING to read on my blog. She's gets bored when I post nothing.

So, I think this one is going to be purple. After 11 years, I want something functional but fun and I like purple!

The Last of the Veggies

Last week we ran out and picked the rest of the veggies just in time before it froze that evening. This is the end of the veggies until next summer! I will definitely miss my fresh tomatoes!

Me and My Shadow AKA The Doggie Blog

This is Lucy's dog. If I ever have a day that I am down, I just go over to their house, where all of the kids want to talk to me at once and even the dog adores me! :) The is a picture of their little dog cuddled up on my lap while I was dog sitting recently.