First Banana Pudding

Our first Banana Pudding. Princess did much of the work including cutting the bananas. Yummy, although a bit too sweet. I think I will cut the sweetened condensed milk in half next time and use greener bananas. All in all, very good!

New Family at the Castle

Ladies and Gentlemen, please give it up for the new, the wonderful, the beautiful:





Spencer

















and Fiji!

We have an aviary built into the office. It's part of the structure of the house and is really cool. Princess has wanted to add some feathered friends since she saw this place. Yesterday, we finally settled on two very lovely male parakeets. They are living in the lap of feathered luxury, I tell you. They really have no idea how lucky they are to have left the bin-o-budgies at Petsmart!

Summer Cut

In an effort to save money, I have been teaching myself how to groom Dixie. Here she is in her "before" picture with Nana over Memorial Day weekend.














This is what came off of Dixie Sunday night.















This is what Dixie looks like "after". Much better! Ready for summer fun!

Please Pray for the Chapman Family

On Wednesday, March 21, the youngest member of the Chapman family, Maria, was accidentally killed by an SUV driven by her brother. Please pray for each of them, but especially for her brother.

Creepy Things

I have found Lisa's blog and love it. You should drop by for a visit. For me, the fun thing about visiting blogs is finding people with common interests and beliefs. I am challenged by so many women who are blogging about their sanctification. To strive for holiness is biblical. To walk with the wise is commanded.

With all of that said, Lisa has encouraged me and challenged me all while I lurked on her blog. In a fun little posting, I saw her post about creepy things and just had to copy her idea. She only listed 5 things, but I'm going to list 10 because, well, I guess I'm borderline OCD. :)

Things that give me the creeps, in no particular order:
1. Public handles: shopping carts, gas pumps, restaurant doors, bathroom fixtures, just to name a few.
2. Bodily fluids.
3. Non-chlorinated bodies of water. Add people and it gets worse.
4. Insects (except for ladybugs and dragon flies)
5. reptiles
6. poor hygeine (especially unbrushed teeth)
7. Publicly shared items (sorta goes with #1). Bus seats, airplane blankets, chairs, salt shakers.
8. Hair. Anyone's. Even mine. It can be on my head and loved my me, but if I see that same hair in the shower 10 seconds later ... "Ewwwww!"
9. Gum under the table
10. Mouth kissing anyone besides Superman/King. Cheek kissing is fine.

I am very tired at the end of the day. Very tired. Avoiding fatigue is a large part of my maintenance with Periodic Paralysis. Usually, I take a nap during the day to avoid fatigue and, thus, avoid episodes of paralysis. Yesterday I did not nap and by the time I got in bed, the Sudoku book had no chance of keeping me awake.

This is how King found me when he walked through the bedroom. I was sound asleep!

You paid attention during 69% of high school!

68-84% Pretty good, you know that there are libraries and newspapers, and you remember what you've read. You were a child that wasn't left behind!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
Create a Quiz

How embarressing. I always knew that I wanted Princess to have a better education than I received, but I didn't know my education was that bad!

Storms

Night before last we had ourselves a STORM! The downed tree covering the road was at the exit of our neighborhood. The other pictures are of hail just north of our house. This is a sampling of the lawn at the Capitol building. Many trees were uprooted or torn apart all over town.

Laminin

If you have seen this, cool! Shout with me.

If not, then please stop what you are doing and spend the next 8 minutes 44 seconds watching this video. Hang with the speaker. It takes 5 minutes for him to say the word "laminin", but the build up is worth it.

Just do it. Your day will be changed. I promise.

Just for Fun

1. Your cell phone​?​ .​.​.​.​.​.Blackberry (love it!)
2. Your signi​fican​t other​?​.​.​.​.​ I'm married to Superman
3. Your hair?​ .​.​.​.​.​.​.dark blonde
4. Your mothe​r?​ .​.​.​ forgives quickly
5. Your fathe​r?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​multi-talented
6. Your favor​ite thing​?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​ being with my family (other than Jesus, of course...)
7. Your dream​ last night​?​.​.​.​.​.​.sad, sad, sad
8. Your favor​ite drink​?​ .​.​.​.​.​.​ Starbucks Peppermint Hot Chocolate
9. Your dream​/​goal?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​. Can I have two? Bring people to Jesus & adopt children
10. The room you’​re in.​.​.​ my office
11. Your talent ?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​ encouraging ppl and breaking computers
12. Your fear?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​open water, boats, failure, denying Christ
13. Where​ do you want to be in 6 years​?​.​.​.​.​ with my family
14. Where​ were you last night​?​.​.​.​.​.fishing!
15. What you’​re not?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​. thoughtful (birthdays fly right past me)
16. Muffi​ns?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​blueberry or pumpkin
17. One of your wish list items​?​.​.​.​.. sell the company
18. Where​ you grew up?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​Have I? Oh, ok. All over the state in which I live.
19. The last thing​ you did?​.​.​.​.​. woke Princess for school
20. What are you weari​ng?​.​.​.​.​.​.​black seater, brown slacks
21. Your TV?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.do not have one
22. Your pet(s)?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.tiny, toy poodle
23. Your compu​ter?​ .​.​.​.​.​.​ thankful for it
24. Your life?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​. amazingly blessed
25. Your mood?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​. funky (potassium trouble this morning)
26. Missi​ng home?​.​.​.​.​.​.no (I am home)
27. Your car?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.van
28. Somet​hing you’​re not weari​ng?​.​... shoes
29. Favor​ite Store​?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.Target
30. Your summe​r?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​busy with work
31. Hate someo​ne?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​not currently, but have
32. Your favor​ite color​?​.​.​.​.​.​.​. pink
33. Last time you laugh​ed.​.​.​.​.​.​.​. last night when I caught the catfish
34. Last time you cried​?​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​last week
35. Who will re-​post this?​.​.​.​.​.​YOU!

King and I came to dinner one night and this is how Princess had served dinner. Isn't that pretty? She found these flowers from a vine on the property and picked them fresh for dinner. Awwww.

What a night!

Princess caught her first fish, swam in a creek for the first time and lost a tooth.

Meow, Meow!

After an all day migraine, I was looking for a diversion. My headache had eased up and with an eager Princess at my side, we headed for the creek. Fishing before bedtime has become an obsession, a-hem, welcome distraction to the end of the day. King was at a meeting, so the girls hit the creek bank with fishing rods in tow.

Princess chose blood flavored Powerbait for catfish at Wal-Mart at our last visit to the fishing department. The girl is good. What a good hunch. This is the second time that we used it and on a whim, we just squished some dough bait onto our regular lures. You would not believe the chorus of cheers that went up from the water. Bass hit it, perch hit it and then ... BOOM!

Previously we had a few sessions of hyperventilation as this long catfish would slide through the water, but we could never get him interested in our offerings. The water is so clear in this creek that it's a bit like cheating. You can cast where you see the fish and then watch them follow the lure. There's no guarantee that they will bite, but it certainly lets you know which lures make them yawn and which ones make them excited.

Princess is my photographer and just as I said, "Take one more picture!", he splashed me RIGHT. IN. THE. FACE with all of his "fishy-ness". I guess I deserved that.

The "Kingfisher"

A Typical Evening

We spend much more time together as a family here at the new office. After we stop answering phones, this is what the evening typically looks like:

A little swimming

A little paperwork

A little dinner

A little fishing

Then King goes back to work for a while during the time I put Princess to bed. Sometimes he will work into the night and sometimes he will go to bed at the same time as the Queen. Then he's up at 3:00, 2:00 or 4:00 hitting the pile of work incessantly waiting for him. It's all doable. God is Gracious in providing what we need, when we need it. It's not too early or too late even though it seems like it at times.

Life is good.

It's Bird Day

So, the posts from today all have a bird theme. The first photo is of the baby birds in a nest on our back patio. There were 4 baby birds in the nest and they all left the nest yesterday. This photo was taken on the morning that they left the nest. Look at those big eyes looking back at my camera. Aren't they so cu-u-ute?

The next picture was taken by someone else and is what their mommy looks like. She was a busy lady lately feeding all those open, red mouths!

We have moved into our new office and are living here during our year lease. The view over the yard/creek was beautiful yesterday morning. As you can see, there is abundant wildlife on this property. Thankfully no mountain lions. At least we haven't seen or heard of any. There was one sighted in the county just to our south. eeks.

Is the bird a Bunting??

Here is a picture of an Indigo Bunting. What do you think? Same bird?

Help Me Identify

Isn't this bird beautiful? Anyone know what it is? The male and female are pictured here in these pictures. That is the bluest bird I have ever seen! Feel free to email me if you don't want to leave a comment.

Another fish story

This time King caught the fish!

Sunday Evening Fun

We always seem to have a deadline looming before us. Monday is another deadline and we have attempted to work toward it all weekend. By tonight we were just pooped, so we decided to head down to the creek to have a little discussion with the fish.

All was going well until King's hook got stuck in the bushes across the creek. So, here he is giving the fish a crash course in reverse limbo. "Ok, guys, here's the plan. Tonight there will be no hooks. Tonight we jump over the fishing line. It's REVERSE Limbo! C'mon, here we go!"

Then ... King snagged another set of bushes across the creek. We just cut that one loose.

All's well that ends well.