Bowling

I know it's not the coolest sport in the world, but I LOVE to bowl. I think my kids are going to grow up liking it too! Here are some shots from the day after Christmas when we went with Robb's parents and the kids. And be sure to take careful note of that score screen.
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Christmas Kids

 

 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 

Mixed Media Found Object Collage Art

 

I've been saving stuff like this ever since I can remember and in recent months, I've begun to research this budding branch of crafting and artwork. I'm looking forward to switching from supplying artists with this goofy stuff via ebay to actually trying my hand at being creative myself. Then maybe I will have a good excuse for keeping all my interesting doo-dabs.

And if you happen to have anything that you don't want to throw away but want to get rid of like:

marbles
buttons
broken dishes
broken mirrors
seashells
sea-glass
broken dolls
broken jewelry bits
foreign coins
cancelled stamps
bottle caps
or other interesting junk

I'm interested!

latest project

Ness, where have you been?

Well, I'll tell you.

First I made this red velvet cake. Then, I served it for Christmas to all my smiling, happy people. Then I ate a lot of it all by myself. I'm still recovering.

When I do, I'll post some pictures of my children having a very happy Christmas indeed.

Merry Christmas Eve

 

My heart and home are full. I wish you all the same as there is nothing better on earth to have.

Lights at the Square

 
 
 
 

 

Why do I still have that?

When I was a kid, we had these snowflake window clings that we always put up. Some of the points on the snowflakes were so pointy, when you tried to take them off, they would cut into your finger under the nail...ouchy!

But this Christmas, like I have for more than 10 years, I put my set of plastic snowflake window clings up on my windows and even my mirrors. I had a few extra that I found Charleigh practicing her scissor skills on, which caused me to ask (loudly) "Why would you do that?" But the answer is obvious. She had scissors. And they can cut things. It's just a matter of figuring out what they will cut. And the snowflake window clings were on the "can be cut" list.

My annoyance got me thinking. Because you see, these window clings that I have had for over 10 years, that I held on to because they were just like the ones we had when I was a kid, came from somewhere. Namely, a college care package from a boy I went to elementary and high school with. Who had a crush on me. An unrequited crush. Which caused his mother to whisper in my ear at my wedding, "I still wish you had married my son." She embraced me so warmly that our photographer was led to believe she was a close friend, and he took a picture at that exact moment. That strange moment was captured on film for all time.

I have a number of odd items in my home with similarly odd stories attached to them. I am an extremely sentimental decorator and could never just buy my decor from Walmart for that very reason. If there is no story, I just can't get "into" it. But some of it is just weird. Like the window clings.

Which leads me to wonder...am I alone in this oddity? Do you have things in your house with quirky back-stories? Like for instance, a pair of socks that belonged to your high-school boyfriend's deceased grandfather? Just an crazy example...except that they are black and I never seem to have enough black socks so I just kept them.

Please tell me I'm not alone.

I made 8 kinds of cookies yesterday...

and I hate myself a little bit for eating one of each for breakfast.


Especially this one, which has a filling made of pudding, milk, butter,and confectioner's sugar sandwiched between a graham cracker infused chocolate cookie crust and drizzled with a milk chocolate melted with butter topping.

It's a mistake I'll probably make again.

If it's true...

....that "the Army does more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day," could I just say, Rah Rah for them and go back to bed?

It's gonna be a busy day. *Sigh*

Vintage Rocks

I just have to write and say again how much I love my church and how proud I am of them all. Yesterday was amazing. From the moment the service began, I was present, mind, spirit and body. I thought it was one of my husband's best sermons ever as it really encapsulated what is so wondrous about this season without being the least bit trite. He really revealed what he believes and lives out to me and our family and to anybody else who gets to know him. And as the advent candles were lit, I felt God's love. I hope everyone there did.

And then our band...our kickin', soulful, talented, rocking, -dare I say SEXY?- band. This is worship music, man. Belting it out 'til your voice cracks, harmonizing, wailing, joyous, full-tilt love for our God. I've never sung "O Holy Night" as a punk anthem before, but I imagine after this, I won't be able to help myself.

And then after a short nap, and a great Browns' game, we headed to South Fayetteville to serve a meal to 125 needy folks. I was awake the night before wondering if I had figured for enough food, and made two extra pans myself...which left us with about 6 extra pans when all was said and done. We were able to leave the extra food in their freezer to serve when another meal is short We had most of the church present to serve and visit with people and when all was said and done, I know I received the greater blessing just from having the ultimate joy for me, of feeding hungry people.

I love Vintage. Thank God for you. 
 
 
 

Mr McCrillis

Thanks to Kendra, I was reminded of the wonder that was Mr. McCrillis, my junior high math and science teacher. I think if you asked most graduates of CBCA, they would say they hated our school but loved and respected our teachers. And certainly, the most colorful person of the group was Mr John McCrillis, mad scientist, reformed 60s "chemist", purveyor of ever-increasing-in-size-and-magnitude stories, and curator of one freaky closet museum.

I only knew him as a teacher. Which is a relationship that is limited in dimension, really. But as people talked about him around me, I was able piece together an idea of him as a whole person...a husband, father, public speaker, and child of God. And like many of our teachers, he stayed at a job that paid a meager salary when he could have been paid a lot more at a place where he'd receive a lot more respect and money, I guess because he realized he was making a dent in our heads.

I stunk at math...couldn't get the hang of most of it. But he was super-patient and told me often that he knew I was smart even if my grades were abysmal. I found math so boring, I wanted to give up and check out, but the rumor was if you fell asleep in class, he would throw a chalky eraser at you.

But then he would start one of his stories...

oh the stories....of people going sledding on car hoods and labs blowing up... of kids on the bus sitting on the heater and passing gas...

And then the stories would lead to the items in the closet...the giant pickle jar of a tapeworm in formaldehyde...the human skull...the aborted baby in a jar.

Or if he managed to finish the lesson and there was some free time, you could play with the rats he raised for the 10th grade biology class to dissect. Only everyone got so fond of them, we hated to have them killed, so he gave them away as pets...Rachelle Kegley's mom let her have one but my mom would NOT. And he bought a batch of already dead ones for the dissection....probably with his own money.

He had a devilish grin with dark, heavy eyebrows. And he employed it for kicks when, again, just to get your attention, he would say the word "SEX" just to creep out a bunch of squirrelly 7th and 8th graders (that was back then junior-highers didn't know anything and the mere mention of the word sex made you gag.)

He managed to make collecting Campbell's soup labels into a sport. This must have been big money to our little school, because as class adviser, he would take the class out on the town, going door to door asking for soup labels. The class that brought the most won a day trip. He had a big sign over his chalkboard which read, "Humility" which was very tongue in cheek, indeed, as his class nearly always won. My brother's class, in a very "O Captain, My Captain" moment, drew a cartoon of Mr McCrillis' face on white T-shirts for the whole class to wear on their reward trip to the beach.

Another tradition was the 8th grade series on rock music. I still find it hard to believe that he didn't secretly love rock music. But the series included lessons about how drugs were involved and backmasking and all that crazy stuff. I suppose it was all very real to him, having attended a liberal college in the 60s, but to us, it was a little removed from our Phil Collins and Tiffany. He told wild stories in that unit too, but I don't remember much about them. Something about Ozzie Ozborne and poop being thrown at a concert maybe? He had taught this unit for years...by the time the grade below mine reached it, it must have been at least 15 years. Which was why it was so disgraceful that one of those punks complained to his parents about one of the stories. And they were outraged. And got him fired.

Just like that. All the color gone. No more human skull. No more rats. No more Campbell's Label contest. No more evil laugh. No more flying erasers. It was all just...science and math and a very proper late-middle-aged southern female teacher who's accent we couldn't understand half the time.

I saw him once after that. He had a job at Allegheny College where I guessed...from the fact that he was no longer wearing dreadful polyester pants with shiny pressed creases and a dingy white shirt...that he was getting paid much better. He came to my dad's feed store to buy some fertilizer chemicals and I rang his order up. Did the math correctly and everything. He seemed both sad and relieved at the same time.

He died of cancer a few years later, leaving a wife and a very young daughter and son. But in the minds of his students, he is still very much a live.

Tick Tick Tick

Just 9 more days until....

I get to sleep in for two weeks.

whoo hoo!

Pray

If you are on speaking terms with God, please remember some little people today.
Blog-friend Cindy has a little guy in dental surgery all day. Donna's youngest is facing her yearly battle with pneumonia. And from our small group in Michigan, 9 year old Jake had a mass removed from his lung which turned out to be cancerous.

Now go be thankful if your kids are healthy, even if they are smearing peanut butter down their shirt and fighting with their siblings.

Another Pastor's Wife Cracks

This is the third pastor's wife in the news for a meltdown in the recent past. I always put myself in these womens' place and ask why did it get to this point? I guess I'll keep blogging, praying and taking my medicine.

E. B. White

"People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust."

Poptarts & Grandma

The kids were very excited that I bought pop-tarts last week. And I must admit, I really enjoyed them myself. Not really as food, per se, but as a trigger for memories.

When we were kids, every year we spent a week at my Grandma's house while my parents went to Lancaster, PA for a trade show for Dad's business. Since my grandparents only lived about 7 minutes away, spending a week there was actually pretty rare. But we were always excited about it, because Grandma brought exotic and wonderful things into our lives that we NEVER had at home...like name brand snack foods, spaghetti WITH MEATBALLS (instead of ground beef) and the best part, Pop-tarts for breakfast.

I can still see her, plain as day, standing in her long quilted, zip front robe and scuff slippers, at her orange formica counter-top reaching for straws for our hot chocolate and serving it in the Fire King mugs I use today. And then the Pop-tarts would appear, piping hot on a napkin. And we could have as many as we wanted! And she never tried to make us eat the plain top ones, only the good iced ones. At home, it was all pancakes or french toast, scrambled eggs, cream of wheat, toast and tea, or other complicated, hot and nourishing breakfasts. But at Grandma's house, it was the wonder of things that came out of a shiny package!

There were other wonders, of course. Grandma wasn't much for braiding our long -nearly waist-length hair. But she could smooth it into a pony-tail that was high enough without giving you a headache, but also completely free of a single bump. You don't realize what a feat of engineering that is!

And when you got home, Grandma was ready, with a plastic bowl full of cheese-nips, to spend the next couple of hours playing cards or if you were feeling cocky, Chinese checkers. But you might as well accept the fact that you would NEVER beat her at Chinese checkers...there must have been something about marshaling a house-hold of 7 children on a shoestring that made her a genius at getting 10 marbles across a little maze.

And at Christmas, it was Chex Mix. I simply can't imagine a Christmas without Chex Mix. I have supplies laid in to make about 10 gallons of it. My fingers will swell until I can't twist my rings, but it will be worth every salty, crunchy bite.

I miss you, Gram.

Sepia Merry Christmas Decorations

 
 

Merry Christmas Decorations