Almost Silent Sunday

This is going to be a regular Sunday happening around here. Pics from the week to go up on Sunday. Well, not JUST Sundays, but definately ON Sundays. For most ladies it is called "Silent Sunday". I'm just too much of a talker for that, so mine are Almost Silent Sundays. Thank you Brandi, over at My Mountain Morning, for the idea.

Today, we went to my mom's. While there, we went to a Corn Maze at New Salem Farms. Is it New Salem Farms or is that just the name of the maze? I have no idea. My mom was telling me that it was called New Salem because it's where the witches who were fleeing persecution during the Salem Witch Trials came to set up a new coven. I need to do more research to figure out how accurate that is or not.

As this is Almost Silent Sunday, I'll get on with the photos! We went to the maze with my sis, Katie, my nephew, Alex, my mom and step-dad, also known as Dad around here. Jason stayed home for an afternoon/evening of rest, relaxation, and cleaning.

We went in to the maze down at the bottom, by the teeth of the skull. We came out at the top, by the clouds. The above shots are taken from the bridge, which is the big white thing in the middle. We got to a false start. We got all kinds of turned around. Ironically, James was leading the way to begin with and he was going in the right direction! He thought we were in a completely different part of the maze, but he had us going the right way at least! The kids also each got a pumpkin and we'll be painting those this week.

The photos of the scarecrows and the hay bale creations are off center because I was taking them from the back of the wagon. We rode the wagon to the beginning of the maze and once we came out and picked our pumpkins, took the wagon back to the farm. I'll let the photos speak for themselves from this point. Enjoy!

Saturday Morning and A Purse

Around these here parts, weekends mean I sleep in and Jason gets up with the kids. This includes breakfast on most occassions. On some days I can be persuaded to rise before 11 and make the coveted "Big Breakfast" myself. OK, persuaded isn't the right word. Having a 2 year old cry right outside your bedroom door (having your bedroom just off of the kitchen SUCKS some times) is well "persuasion" enough.

Jason is THE pancake maker in the house. I taught him how to make them long ago and in a galaxy far far away. Well, not quite like that. It was about 6 years ago. He's been making them ever since. Aside from pouring a mean bowl of cereal, it is his breakfast contribution to this family. Eggs, bacon, sausage, french toast, breakfast bagels, all of that are all on me. On occassion Dad can be asked (read: BEGGED) to make pancakes. And he does an AWESOME job!





While Jason was standing there, watching the pancakes cook with an every present mind, I asked him to model Katy's purse for me. He has always been a good sport, and ever so goofy and laugh inducing while he was at it! It is the style that I am using when I make the winner's purse. Oh wait, no one has entered! Jenn has said she wanted to win. She thinks she should get a 2nd one. What do you think?





The purse won't be in the same color for the simple reason of I'm rather sure I don't have enough of that color left. I was thinking a soft rose and cream. I have a lot of those colors. Or a variegated blue bucle. Yeah, I know, if you don't know yarn, that makes NO sense. It's SUPER soft and SUPER pretty.

Prayers and blessings on your weekends everyone. I'm being called to the table to enjoy the pancakes now. Maybe tomorrow we'll do Big Breakfast Mommy Style?

100th Post

Thank you all for participating, the contest is now closed. Brandi, at My Mountain Morning is the winner! I didn't pick it. I had Jenn do it because I couldn't. She randomly picked a number (between 1 and 5, how many entrants there were) and she picked 4! Brandi, I'll contact you over on your blog to find out what color you would like your purse! Oh, and other ladies, if you want purses, just let me know, I have tons of yarn laying about and I'll be happy to make them for you too! I know, I suck at contests. I'm that way with my kids too!


OOOOOOHHHHH!!! Aw come on, you know you wanna say it too! 100 posts! Holy Toledo Batman! I'm sure if I posted every day, I would have suprpassed that long ago, especially considering there are more than 3x that in a year. I digress. No big give away to celebrate, I'm sorry, but we are horridly POOR! Hehe. Oh, I can make you a purse. Unless you are a guy. Then I don't know what to tell you. Let me see, what to do to earn your purse? Leave a comment. In your comment, tell me what you would do if you have a 100th birthday.

I'd post a pic of a purse in similar style, however I can't find the damn camera right now. i'm not sure where it is. I know I need to clean my office, but this is a bit ridiculous! Oh, and Jenn, while you can comment to your heart's content, you are disqualified because I'm already making you a purse.

Anyway, it's my first contest! Ha!

I missed Thankful Thursday. I know I know. Slacker! Um, in my defense I have had a CRAPTACULAR week. It all started on Monday and it just kept going downhill until yesterday. Yesterday cleared stuff up and I was so relieved that my very worn out butt headed to bed at 6:30. I didn't intend on sleeping all night long, I really didn't. However, that is EXACTLY what I did. I woke up at 5 this morning. Yes, I know the date says Saturday, I'm still on Friday though. I will be heading to bed shortly in fact.

Damn, now I'm going to wonder where the hell the camera is. I wonder if Jason knows. We found it behind the t.v. once. This is going to drive me batty!

Prayers and blessings everyone. I hope you all have a splendiferous weekend. We will be doing a lot of housework. I will be working on James' costume. Halloween is just 2 weeks away and I took the pattern out of the package for the first time today. Oy Vey.

I Spy with My Little Eye

I've been Memed again. I love how I find them randomly and then get tagged that way, it's fun! Sophie had the Meme from Kat on her blog so I followed good naturedly over to Kat's blog and got memed myself! Her rules are to make it random and long winded, I believe I can do both. After all, one of my labels is "I digress". Uh, yeah. Oh, and consider yourself tagged. I think you should go over to Kat and get it from there, but hey, you don't wanna, that's all right, I'll pass it along from here.

By the way, at some point in the future, I will have my interview with Sophie completed (we are still in the emailing back and forth stage) and will post it up here. Huh? Interview? Why are you doing interviews? Head on over to Neil and you can figure it out. It's The Great Blog Interview. Sign up. Take it from there.

I'm going to do my meme with the help of a couple of pics. It's very random and has the potential for some great longwindedness. We are going to discuss The Things on My Desk at this Current Time. Here are the pics.





OK. See what I'm talking about, lots of things that are random. Let's start with the monitor. That wallpaper is something I won for completely a badge at Pogo . I love Pogo. They have all kinds of games you can play. A lot of them are free. Personally, I feel the $4.99 I pay a month for membership is WELL worth it.

The green mug in the foreground is a coffee mug. I have two of them that size. I got them on clearence from Meijer last year around Christmas time when I got my teapot. I've recently started drinking coffee. I've never been a coffee drinker before. I always found it too bitter for my liking. However, I need something that is less sugar than soda, and keeps the caffine kick up for a while. I tried some mixed flavored stuff at the gas station. It worked REALLY well. Now I'm making it at home. I take Folgers French Vanilla and some Instant Hot Cocoa and brew them together. When I make my cup of coffee, I use International Delights Irish Cream Refridgerated Creamer. MMMMMMM. Not a ton of sugar, like soda has. The caffine benefits are still there AND I'm not getting the sugar crash after a couple of hours like I would with Mt. Dew, Cherry Coke, and Dr. Pepper. Also, the coffee is cheaper per serving.

I love the lamp on my desk. It used to sit in the dining room. We moved things around out there and it wasn't being used, so I put it on the desk. The shade has some great beading on it, and the base is wood. It's cute and ecclectic, like me! We have 2 of them. The other is in the bedroom on Jason's side of the bed for a reading lamp.

The bottle of lotion is Bath and Body Works Pleasures in Mango Mandarin scent. They don't make it any more. I've had that bottle for a couple of years at least. The lotion doesn't work so great as lotion any more, however the scent is still strong and wonderful so I'll use it for that.

Ah yes, the pill bottles. The ones that are free standing belong to James. I turned them so you can't read his full name, our address, or the meds he's taking. I don't think the world at large needs to know those things, do you? yes, there are 4 bottles. He actually takes 5 meds a day. 2 in the mornings, 3 at night.

Next to James' meds is a dragon Jason made for me out of polymer clay. The green thing laying down is a really cool green man also made of polymer clay. When it is daylight, I'll set it up so I can take a better pic of it (the green man). He's really cute. The brown woman is also made of polymer clay. She's a tree nymph. Jason has a LOT of talent when it comes to using the clay to make shapes and what not. I've asked him to make me beads for my knot work. Like me, he is Gemini and we are procrastinators. I suppose if I ever get to the point of needing the beads, he'll get to the point of making them for me.

We only drink Aquafina water. I've tried others and I don't like the flavor. I like aquafina because it's flavorless, no after taste. To me, that's how water should taste. More often than not, the kids drink from the tap. They need the flouride. They have large refillable bottles to drink from.

The packet of papers next to the monitor is my notepad, a bill I need to call on, my checkbook, and some forms I need to fill out for James. The notepad is all important. When I'm writing things down while on the phone, or making shopping lists, that pad is where I go.

The metal pen holder is a recent addition to the desk. It's been about 4 or 5 months that I've had it. I needed something more suited to holding pens and misc. desk crap. Currently it has my scrip for folic acid, my bottle of baby asprin, a bunch of pens, sharpies, and highlighters, a staple remover, 2 nail clippers, a pencil sharpener, a nail file, a seam ripper, and a heart shaped piece of jade. In the drawer are staples.

My mouse pad says "Little Miss Trouble". I thought it was cute and for only $1 at Target, a deal I couldn't pass up. That mouse pad changes regularly, about every 6 months or so. I've got quite a few of them around the house.

There is a regular deck of Bicycle brand (in blue) cards and a deck of cards specifically for the game war. They are big and meant to be a little more child friendly in size. I recently (as in the last month) taught the kids how to play war and I am still teaching James how to play Gin. Once he has Gin down, we are moving on to Rummy.

The screwdriver is my favorite and most used tool. It has an adjustable shaft/tip combo that is good for 5 different needs. 2 philips, 2 straight edge, and one nut tightener. I am CONSTANTLY trying to figure out where the thing is. It gets put in all kinds of places.

There are coupons for ciggies for Jason, and for a local pizza place. Receipts from shopping that need to be tossed or organized. A strand of hemp that I'm using as a belly measurement for the Biggest Loser competition I'm in on one of the message boards I belong to. I can't find any of my fabric tape measures, something else that happens frequently around here, so this is my substitute. I also have the ruler I used for it on here as well. The papers have random numbers and needed info on them. Notes from Jason's game playing.

If you look under the monitor, you will see a window lock (it came off and hasn't been put back on), another seam ripper, some misc papers (cards for hot tubs and bank account info) and a lot of water bottle caps. I take the caps off and then just never put them back on once the bottle is done. Go figure. On the main part of the desk there is also a pen (black) and a half eaten pretzel rod (thank you Izzy). The 2 cd's that you can see are The Sims Making Magic, both discs.

The batteries are AA in size and the size that we most frequently go through. I really need to buy stock in Rayovac because it seems like once a month I'm buying a big pack of them. Behind James' meds is a roll of wide masking tape.

Now keep in mind, I have no idea how or why most of this random stuff is up here. It just is. It either is in it's place, or it hasn't been put in it's place, or it doesn't have a place and it is using the desk as it's temporary home. Do you think you can learn a lot from someone by looking at their desk? Did you learn a lot from mine?

Prayers and blessings everyone. Monday was a pretty stressful day to me, and now Tuesday won't be much better, so I hope you don't mind my random meanderings as a pleasent distraction. Yes, it really is 5:43 in the morning now. It's a long drawn out story for another day. Have a pleasent day yourselves.

Family Pics and House Repairs

This next week brings us Oct. 15. On the 15th, there will be a home inspection. Houses for rent need to be inspected annually to ensure that they are habitable. At least that's how they do it here. So there is a last mad dash and scramble to get things cleaned up (BLECH) and repaired. My dad is over today to repair the front door and the ceiling upstairs. Both things he said he would do.

I have been doing all right with adding exercise to my schedule. I'm accomplishing on average at least one 10 minute segment of pilates or yoga a day. I'm really trying to make it consistently both. Once I am comfortably ensconed in that, I'll be extending the sessions, working my way up to 30 minutes a day for each. Every so often I take a day off, I'm working on keeping that from being habit as well. It's so hard sometimes to start back up after a day off, and I don't want to lose the flow that I've been getting.

We did family pics in the park yesterday. I'm trying to decide if I want to post them all here or not. Who am I kidding, of coarse I do. So without further ado, family pics. I do need to say that most of the pics that are blurry were done by either James or Katy. The one of the 4 of them, I did, but I was also distracted trying to get James to cooperate and Izzy to just sit there. Jason took film pics too, so I'm hoping that those will have turned out better.

The weather was gorgeous thankfully. Of coarse, I wanted pics taken in sweaters and it was 80 degrees! I had everyone put on shirts under their sweaters so they could take off the hot shirts when they weren't needed in pics. We didn't get any of Jason and the girls, or me and each kid, or Jason and each kid, like I want to get, but we can always do it again later.

Izzy really was having nothing of taking the pics. It's why he's always crying or frowning. James wasn't too pleased either until Katy knocked over Jayden to see if that would make him smile. It worked, in fact it made him break out laughing! Jason got some pics of Izzy on the slide, so I'm hoping those turned out well enough to not need to try to do another photo shoot with Izyy.

A lot of people tell me that the girls look like me. I find this funny. I know that they resemble me, it's inevitable after all. I think Katy is the most beautiful girl I've ever known and that Jayden will grow up to be quite a looker. However, I don't see myself this way at all, and that is what makes the comparison of how I look compared to them funny in my eyes. I know Jason would disagree with me.

As you can see, it was a gorgeous day. The fall colors are starting to come out in full force around here. Sitting there in the park, watching the kids play, looking at all the beauty surrounding me reminded me of why I don't want to move from this state. No matter the economic issues or anything like that, fall and winter are really my favorite times of year and I won't give those up for an all year 'round sunshine fest.

Prayers and blessings everyone. I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing weekend to be able to start off the week on a fresh foot.