Black Friday

Happy Thanksgiving, one day late! Hope you all had a wonderful day with family and friends. There is so much to be thankful for. God is always good.

I tell you, I would not be caught out at the malls or shopping stores today. I live near a mall and several shopping stores and the traffic around those stores was horrific. The streets were packed with cars just to get into the the mall parking lots. People absolutely lose themselves on Black Friday. I viewed a couple of YouTube videos and people were getting trampled to get into the stores at 5am. No one stopped to offer a hand to one woman who had fallen, she ended up being carted away by ambulance.

I did go to a few stores that were not impacted by the crowds, thankfully. My dad and I went to go and buy our Christmas trees from a local nursery (traditionally, we have always gone to cut our trees down from a tree farm. But we discovered that a local nursery carries Christmas trees that are from Washington, Oregon and extreme Northern California. These trees are from areas that get more rain, which means these trees stay green and healthy for the entire Christmas season). Not a single person buying a tree and no one at the nursery. I bought little seedlings of yellow and red onions to go in the garden. Later, I went to the paint store to get a gallon of paint to paint my spare bedroom. Again, no one in the store. Went to the grocery store for my shopping and the isles and checkouts were empty. I wisely choose not to shop on Tuesday or Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Then went to Home Depot and got some chalking and walked right to the self check out and walked out the door.

Black Friday is not worth it for my liking.

Turning on the Heater

I have only had to turn on the heater a few times thus far this fall. This is good on the one hand because it means my electic bill will be lower but on the other hand, I like the cooler weather and we so badly need some rain.

Every year since I have owned my home the first time I turn on my heater for the season brings excitement and chaos in the house. This year, like all the past years, when the furnace heats up it burns off the dust in the ducts and sends a little burning smoke through the vents. My vents are in my ceiling and most of the vents are near the door to the bedrooms. And what do I have near each door inside each bedroom? That's right, my law mandated smoke/fire dectectors.

Somehow, each year I forget what happens the first time I turn the heater on and this year was no exception. A couple weeks ago, I woke at my normal 5am to feed my hungry cats and it was really chilly in the house. I decided to turn on the heat to warm the place up and to make it easer when I go to take my shower. I turned the heater on and proceeded to feed my cats. The old furnance rumbled and groaned but soon was heating up the house. I smelled that slight little burning smell and then the alarms went off. The cats went scrambling, spilt their water bowl, dry cat food went flying all over the floor. Now I am trying to fan the vents to disapate the smoke but I've got 3 bedrooms to do. A nice calm wake up turned into a frantic scene. I chuckled to myself when I finally laid back down for a few minutes before I needed to head to the shower.

This reminded me of the first year I owned the house when we turned the heater on for the first time. All summer long, the inside of the house was going through major transformations. The popcorn stuff on the ceiling was taken off, new drywall, new texture, new paint, removed all the layers of flooring, new windows, new doors, new baseboards and trim around the doors, . . . let's just say I am sure there was extra dust in the ducts. My faithful friend and contractor, Michael, had installed a new tempurture control box and somehow it did not get placed in the off mode. The next morning the new control box and pre-programed cycle started at 4:30 am. My sister Amy laid fast asleep in one room, my other roommate, my good friend Sandi, lay asleep in another room and I fast asleep in my bedroom. All of a sudden all of the fire alarms are screaming out that there is a fire and it sure smelled like fire. I jumped out of bed, only half dressed in my sleeping clothes, with fear of my "new first" home burning down and my roommates being in danger. I raced to Amy's room opened the door and no fire, she was starting to awaken at this point, I then raced to Sandi's room, opened the door, no fire, Sandi was fast asleep. Amy was out of bed at this point. I ran down to the kitchen trying to smell and sniff where the fire was, I opened the garage door but nothing. I could smell fire but there was none that I could find. I think I discovered that it was the heater at this point but I was still concerned for the smell. Amy was trying to wake Sandi but Sandi was still sleeping (Sandi has a hearing impairment and at night does not wear her hearing aids). Amy was shaking her at this point to get up and to get out of the house. We all gathered in the hallway, not really knowing what had awoken us from a dead sleep. Finally, we all got our bearings and realized that the heater turned on and that the dust was burning in the ducts. We all went back to bed with racing hearts.

We sure laughed about the chaos later that day when we all came back home from our separate days.

1st Annual Turkey Trot

Gobble Gobble!!! The wonderful PE department at my school planned the 1st Annual Turkey Trot at our school this past week for the students. We all worked hard to plan and organize the event. The trot was a 1 mile run around the school and the athletic fields. The principal was the official starter (the Chief Goobler). Over 200 students ran the before school race, some were running to win the prizes and others ran for the fun of running a race. 1st place boy and girl of each grade received a 22 pound frozen turkey, 2nd place big yummy pumpkin pies and 3rd an equally big and yummy apple pie. It was my delight to call home to the parents/guardians of the winners who were from my classes to congratulate their child and to arrange for pick up of the prizes. You would have cracked up seeing our two tiny 6th grade winners carry their frozen bird out to their proud awaiting parent. This bird was almost bigger than they were but did they want help carrying it- NO WAY!

Home for the Day

There is something nice about taking a day off of work. Not sure why that is because work has been going great (this will be another post on another day) but I have been looking forward to having this day off for the last 2 weeks. I am at home because I am getting a new garage door and opener. This in itself is exciting. There had been plans to one day replace my old heavy garage door but the project was no where on the radar screen for projects that need to be done. Somehow the opener broke about 2 months ago and the only way to fix the opener was to get a new garage door and opener. It should be real nice and add a nice clean look to the front of the house. I might need to paint the new door to match the color of the house but I will see how the white door looks first. So, the garage door is another step closer to having the front of my house closer to being finished, still need to landscape the front yard (still saving the $ for that one, I know it all takes time).

After I am done on the computer, I am going to spend some good needed time with my LORD and Savior, with His word and time in prayer.

Sweet Peas

Today I planted 6 packets of sweet pea seeds along two of my fences. Kathy D. has given me the inspiration to grow sweet peas. Her yard always is so beautiful in the spring and summer, full with incredible aromatic sweet peas. Was told you plant the seeds in the fall, just like you do the bulbs. I can only pray to have half the sweet peas flowers that Kathy has in her yard.

Trin Trin is 2!!!

Can't believe it has been two years since I held my sweet niece in my arms for the first time. She still is precious as ever, I love her to pieces. They had a party for her at the little gym with some of her friends. This was fun to see her in the birthday dress that Nana gave her, running around , jumping, hanging from the bars, kicking and throwing balls, doing somersaults and being the center of attention. She knew full well it was her day.
















Papa's favorite name for her is "My Little Miss America". Here is papa's Little Miss America in the beautiful dress Nana got for her. She loved her little dress for her birthday party.

The theme for her party was Elmo. Here she is attempting to blow out the candles but she does not quite have the concept down of blowing to the candles. I had to lean in behind her to help blow out the candles. It took me 3 tries to get them out too, I did not do much better than she did. Check out this cool cake, it is a cupcake cake. There were 36 cupcakes (some chocolate, some vanilla) under the frosting. There was no cutting involved, just pull away. Unique idea.

Auntie Amy gave Trin a rain coat and umbrella. Sunday it just happened to rain a little and Trin asked for the rain coat. She got her rain boots on (how come all children love rain boots? I think every child has a pair and they wear them for everything) and her jacket and we went outside with the umbrella. She walked up and down the sidewalk, splashing in the puddles. I even heard her softly singing while she tromped around. She is so very cute.

Soon there will be 2 children in the family. I am excited for June and Baby #2 to arrive.

What's Happening in the Garden

Today I am going to go out and work in my yard and garden. I already went out and watered, mainly to give my plants a drink and to prep the soil for pulling weeds and planting a few new crops. Ate a few things while I was out there too. I had a delicious, juicy orange, a few leaves of sweet basil, a tomato and a leaf of lettuce.

My garden produces many things throughout the year. I am thankful that my orange tree is a year long producer. My apricot tree produced hundreds of yummies (pretty good for a toddler, only 2 years old- he's potty trained too!) but they were all ready to be picked and harvested the week I got out for summer vacation.

I have 12 heads of green and red leaf lettuce that are ready for picking, good thing I am bringing a salad for a hospitality home meal tomorrow. My lime bush has produced limes for the first time (another 2 year old) and I think they are ready to be picked. I am going to try to make tacos this week so I can slice one of those babies open and use in the guacamole and tacos.

It is time for me to cut off all of my oregano and allow the new baby oregano to sprout up. I think I am going to make small little bundles of my oregano tied with raffia and give to people at church tomorrow.

Charity and Alex, you will be happy to know that your little "Lemonade" lemon bush has exploded with blossoms. There is no way this smaller plant can handle the weight if all of those blossoms turn to fruit. There is one small lemon on there that is the size of my first digit of my thumb.

Today I am planting chives, sugar snap peas and more lettuce. I have to tear out some of the tomato plants to do that. I hate taking plants out but I know that tomatoes will have a very hard time of getting ripe now, even though there are still lots of flowers and green tomatoes on the plants. Soon the nursery will have onions for me to put in too. I think I am going to try carrots again this year.

My bulbs have started to sprout. This is odd because bulbs are to be planted in the fall to be ready for spring. We have been on a roller coaster for weather here. We had a "cooler" summer and mild September. October had some rain and cool weather but the last 2 weeks have been warm and dry. Think the poor little bulbs are a little confused.

Wasting my time, I want to get out to the yard. Everyone enjoy your day!

"Now is the time for all good gardeners to arise, take up your hoe and strike a blow for fall vegetable gardening!" Quoted by Dr. Jerry Parsons

Volle'onics

Last night my friend Dawn and I went to watch a Cal Berkeley volleyball game. The Bears crushed the Ducks in 3 games. My vocabulary and linguistic phonology reverted back 20 years to what my volleyball buddies called "Volle'onics". Back in my college volleyball days, the discussion and debate of "Ebonics" had just surfaced and was part of headline news. Unlike Ebonics, our "Volle'onics" was slang and not dialect and was mostly used in reference to the play and game of volleyball. We had our own vocabulary for life in general too but I think this was in relation to those I hung with.

Here is a sampling of my "Volle'onics" from last night's game:

she spanked it, PACK, what a rip, ROOF, get out of my house!, monster smash,
pancake, cake, sky rocket, dealing the Ace's, dink, dig, slime, stomping, romp,
crawling the floor, face print. . . and it goes on.

My "Volle'bonics" only presents itself when I am in the competitive world of volleyball.