"Way Back When"

More scanning of photos today.  It's faster now that I know a little bit more about what I'm doing, but it's still a process.  Some need to be cropped or made larger and some are faded and need adjusting.  Still others will need to go through Photoshop where I can repair them even more, because they have actual cracks or spotting on the pictures, but that process will have to wait til later.

This may become a weekly event, called "Way Back When - Wednesdays!"  Eventually I'd like to put these photographs on discs for family members who are interested or at least upload them to Kodak so others can access them.

Here's a photo of our Mom and us kids.  Left to right is Dawn (youngest), Dolores (Mother), Steaven (seond oldest sibling), Martha (oldest) & Doris (kid number three).  Dawn lives in Florida and must have been up to visit and we had a get-to-gether.  It's not dated, other than our goofy glasses and the short-shorts.  My guess is that it was taken about 18 years ago.

I'm mad at Dr. Oz!

Every one of you knows who Dr. Oz is, right? He's the guy who started out on Opray and now has a show of his own.  He gives great medical advice and everyone loves him.  Well I watched his show a couple days ago on heart disease in women and what we can do to prevent it.  Did you see it?  He had the three paper bags and  he chose a member of the audience to help him.  He asked the woman what she knew about blood pressure.... and she said "Well I have one".  Forgive me, back to why I'm mad at Dr. Oz.

One bag contained dental floss.  Flossing prevents inflamation and inflamation can cause heart disiease, so we all need to floss more.  Okay, I can do that.  I floss pretty regularly, but daily....nope I get lazy about it, some nights I'm just to tired.  Last night, I was a good girl, I flossed and while I was flossing I was thinking about my next check-up and how I'm hoping for good news, because I've been way better with swishing with the anti plaque concotion.  Man oh Man.  I was way off in oblivia when I was suddenly jolted back to the present when my tooth came flying out of my mouth and was bouncing frantically around the sink.  Oh!  My God, I thought it was going down the drain....... Thankfully I caught it in time.  Dang you, Dr. Oz., why didn't you do a program on bunions or something, why flossing this week when I have a temporary cap.

Good grief.  I was panicking trying to get it put back where it belonged, perferably the right way, so I can chew and talk.  (That is the order of importance.)  Of course, I can't remember what they said to use to hold it back on if it were to come off and I couldn't get to the dentist.  I don't want to use something that might damage the interior part that the cap is protecting (like the post) then I'd have to have it reconstructed again.  Yes, this particular tooth has been giving me so much aggrivation... I could scream. 

I had planned to stay up for a while and read, but I was so upset about the thing all I could think about was choking Dr. Oz for his bad timing.  I just so happen to have a chin strap to keep my mouth shut ( no jokes please I'm not in the mood ), because of my sleep apnea, so I put it on thinking maybe that would help.  I lay awake forever worrying about swallowing the temporary crown and having to pay for another one.  I grit my teeth and pray for sleep to come.  It finally does and I awake at 5:00 a.m. with a sore jaw from gritting my teeth all night.   Thanks a lot, Dr. Oz.

Enough Already!

I'm talking about the the snow, of course.  Enough is enough, yet they are calling for snow every day this week.  We have mounds of it on the side of the driveway and the dog comes in with egg-sized snowballs attached to her fur.

Maybe, this will help, but I doubt it.

Do you have any better ideas?

Close Cousins - Will we break the record?

The last two babies in our family were born very close together -  in days that is.  If I've calculated it right they were 45 days apart. 

Griffin Sawyer - 10/9/09

Daniela Elizabeth - 11/24/09

Will we break the record this time?  Well in order to do that we'd need another pregnant person in the family.  Well I'm ecstatically happy to announce that's exactly what we have.  Congrats to Amanda & Derek!  The ultrasound performed on my birthday, shows all is well.  Ava wants a sister.

I've added a baby ticker to my page for the Roberts Baby, which is due on September 11th.  If Audra hits it exactly on that date the baby will share a birthday with her cousin Troy.  Amanda's baby is due the end of September.  Although it may make for a very interesting fall season, Gramie LaLa is thrilled.

These new grandbabies could be 16 days apart or if they do a repeat C-section for Amanda, they usually take them a week or two early, which means they could be even closer. 

Can you believe it?  Our family is increasing by four babies in less than one years time.  We need a big family vacation planned for 2011.  Anyone have any ideas?  That would make 17 of us.  Our four girls and hubbies makes 8 and with us 10 and 7 grandchildren.

Just Add Ice | Phalaenopsis Orchid Care

I feel like I hit the jackpot.  I signed up for the Gardening club at Home Depot and a BOGO coupon was emailed to me for orchids.  For you non-coupon people BOGO stand for Buy One Get One – Get one FREE that is. 

An orchid is an expensive plant when it comes to my budget, so I’ve never purchased one before, but when I saw the BOGO I just had to have  it.  The orchids were $14.98, so that was quite a savings for me.  And they are just beautiful. One has green outer petals and a yellow center and the other pink petals, with darker pink center. 

The photos I took of them do not due them justice, but if you go to the website below you will see just how beautiful they really are.

Here’s a link to the website they recommend for caring for your orchids.  I have never heard of watering a plant by just adding ice cubes.  It’s a very interesting website with tips to trigger re-blooming, how to repot your orchids, and trouble shooting, just in case something should go wrong.  Just Add Ice | Phalaenopsis Orchid Care  This is the link for all you orchid lovers out there or for you newbies like me, that don’t have a clue what to do with orchids.

Dorsey's Another Year Older

Today I'm another year older another day wiser.

This is where I went. 

And this is what I ate.

That would be the Seaside Shrimp Trio.

Rick & Audra celebrated my birthday for me too.  Rick had lobster and a chocolate desert just for me.

I saw pictures of both by text messaging.  So nice of them to help me celebrate, just wish we could have done it at the same Red Lobster.

Miss Ava sang "Happy Birthday" to me on the phone; the whole song in her little cutsey ( and a bit raspy) voice.  She's having a cough again, she and Amanda have both been sick.

I recieved phone calls, emails, texts from all my loved one.  Thanks everybody you made me feel special.

Calendar Pictures

As our kids were growing up my older sister and brother and I would get together and take our kids pictures to make a yearly calendar for the grandparents.  I'm so glad we did, because it's sure been fun looking back at those photos now and seeing how cute they were when they were little.

This one was take November of 1978.  Stephanie - lower left was 3 1/2, Troy was 3, Amanda - third level up was 2 1/4 and Denise - at the top was 1 1/2 years old.

No date on this one, but the family has doubled.

Bottom row:  Taryn, Meghan, Blaine

Top Row:  Denise, Amanda, Troy, Stephanie & Baby Deann

October 85

Same bunch only older

Bottom Row:  Meghan, Deann, Blaine, Taryn

Top Row:  Troy, Stephanie, Denise and Amanda

My parents ended up with a bakers dozen of grandchildren.  My younger sister had Melissa, Chad and Matthew and I had two more seven years after Meghan, that would be Ashley & Audra.  That makes four boys and nine girls. Wow! 13 grandchildren for four kids.  Will I end up with that many???  Only time will tell.

Side Tracked Again!

Do you get side tracked?  I started making myself a sweater and I've finished the back and started one side and then I got pulled away by a fun idea for something for the grand kids.  Do something for the grandkids - do something for myself.  Yah! I got side tracked.   I was looking for some ideas on how to use greeting cards that I've saved over the years, mostly Christmas cards.  I found a neat idea on how to make a bowl out of greeting cards and the edges were all crocheted to hold it together.  Well that gave me an idea. 

When my kids were little I made a Christmas memory game out of old Christmas cards.  I just traced the cards and cut out similiar objects.  Like I had two Christmas trees, two presents, two teddy bears, two snowmen.  You get the idea.  My kids favorite one to find the match for was the ones of baby Jesus laying in the manager.  I may make a set of those for the grandkids too someday, but right now this is what I'm up to. 

Here it is:  The First "Let's talk about it Book"

This one is "Let's talk about Christmas!"

Soon to be follow by Easter & whatever holidays I have enough cards of to be able to make enough pages to make a book.

My husband quickly pointed out that there are no words in this book.  That's okay, because I'm not going to read it, we are going to talk about it.

It works like this:

What color hats do the snowmen have?

Which snowman has the most birdy friends?

Which snowman has the longest nose?

Can you count the trees in each picture?

Can you point to the steeple?

What do you do in a church?

I just hate the thought of throwing out cards that people paid $3.00 - $5.00 for, some of them are so darn cute.  Who doesn't love a reindeer?  Especially Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer!

And the real reason for the season.  Jesus was born to become our Savoir. 

Who was at his birth?

What's his Mom & Dad's name?

Can you sing Away in a Manger?

And of course, since I made this book with Sydney in mind.  I decided I'd better make one for her brother too.  It's smaller, but just as cute.  Here's what it looks like before it's put together.

The penguin is the cover and these are some of the pages.  I'm sure Sydney will want to "Talk About It"  a million times before Griffin is big enough to, but that's fine with me. 

I'll have to put in a request at work for old greeting cards that other people have hung onto, but really don't have any idea how to put them to use.  Looks like I could be in the book making business.  It was fun to make and it will be even more fun to share them with my grandchildren.

Grandparenting From Afar

I've reccetnly discovered a new web site called Grandparents.com.  It's really awesome.  It has information and ideas galore.  I feel like I've found my niche there when I joined one of the many groups to choose from - this one is called Grandparenting From Afar.  I'm making a few connections with other grandmas who's grandchildren also live far away from them.  In the day to day world the grandparents I meet are ones who's kids live nearby or a couple hours away from them, there aren't many who are in my situation and none who share my woes times four.  I'm hoping to find new ideas on how to stay connected to my grandkids between visits.

This website is a great resource for Mom's & Dad's too.  There are guides for buying gifts for children by age, expert advise on many topics, a food section, vacation information, activities etc.  They had some great ideas for Valentines Day. 

Check it out and if you have a favorite website please share it with me and others in the comments.

My Girls

I'm trying to learn how to use my new scanner.  Boy! is this going to be a process.  The scanning part is easy, you push a button.  I'm very good at that part.  Resizing the photo, improving the resolution are causing me a few headaches.  I hate reading directions off the screen, I'd rather have a book in front of me.  Ugh!

I'm not sure what year this picture was taken, I know it was at my sisters for a graduation party for either Troy or Taryn.  If anyone reading knows for sure, please leave a comment.

Left to right:  Meghan, ME, Ashley & Amanda,  Down in front is Audra.
Let's see by state:  North Carolina, Michigan, Guanajuato (MX), Maine and down in fron New Mexico.  Who would ever have guess we'd end up strung so far and wide.   NOT ME!

I think we do pretty good at keeping in touch.  Some weeks I hear from a particular girl several times in a week.  I've skyped with two of them since Christmas and sent coupons to them and books to them and their children.  I text with Audra, because that's her preferred method of connecting, but to be truthful it's not mine.  (I very sledom text with anyone else). Valentines have gone between houses and birthday wishes.  But I'm really looking forward to next month when I actually get to hop on a plane and fly to see Meghan & family.

I'm proud to be MOM to this bunch, they are remarkable girls, each and every one of them. 

#6 - Will my 6th Grandchild be a Boy or Girl?

I currently have five grandchildren of which two are boys and three are girls, so I'll be happy either way.  The other Grandma, Rick's mom is the only girl in her family and she has three sons, so it would really be nice for her if it was a girl.

I'll have to ask Audra to take this Gender Prediction Quiz  or how about this one on Mom Quizes?  Here's another one on My Daily Moment and I Village has a Chinese Chart, that one is bound to be different.  Maybe that would give us something to do anyway while we wait another 10 weeks to find out what the real answer will be, well with much more certainty anway.

Here's a glimpse of Rick & Audra's first baby.  Isn't is amzing how this baby stuff never gets old, each one is such a miracle.

I've added a poll to my side bar, so please take a minute to vote.  I have a feeling it's a girl - because I had a propensity for having girls and so have Audra's sisters so far.  What do you think?  And there's always the comments section if you don't want to vote because you believe you should do it the old fashioned way and wait to find out the day the baby is born.

Who is This?

Try to guess who this is?

Who looks like her?

Make your guess in the comments, but have your guess ready before you read other peoples comments because I don't want them to sway your choice.


*** UPDATE ***     This is my mother, Dolores.  Both people who guessed were right.  We also agree that she looks like her grand daughter Deann in this photo.

The Aut Spot

Typo?  No it's actually a new website that I found ....

  http://www.theautspot.com/

This is a new website for me and I thought I'd visited most of them by now.  It features an Online Community, Informational Library, Inspirational Stories, Developmental Charts, National Events Calendar, and Global Resource Center.  You may not have access to more than definitions of what's on the site without signing in.

This site is in the beginning stages, but I found it to be good already and destined to be even greater in time.
If you only have time to check out a couple things, click and see what resources are available in your area and then read an inspirational story or two.  I will be adding this website to my favorites folder and investing more time in checking it out and telling others about it.

Did you see it?

The Movie Temple Grandin was on HBO on Saturday, did you see it?  I didn't even have HBO, but I did have a special rewards card , which entitled me to get HBO for 3 months free, so I signed up just so I could watch this movie.  Did I mention that I'm have an insatiable interest in anything and everything to do with autism?

I thought they did an awesome job of showing what an autistic persons sensory world is like in several scenes (eating in the cafeteria, getting settled in her room at the ranch).  Maybe this movie will help people understand what it's like for autistic individuals to use a public restroom when the toilet self-flushes with hurricane force and the air comes out of the blow dryers much like the water out of a fireman's hose.  Is it any wonder they are scared to go into a public restroom?

Temple had much to say about the making of this movie.  Check this out.  Okay, that was my very first visit to Beef Magazine.  It could be yours too.

Head here if you want to go check out Temple Grandin's official web site.  I have read two of her books - Emergence: Labeled Autistic, and Thinking in Pictures and intend to read a few more after seeing Claire Dane's moving performance.  I hope this showing of the movie starts an autism informational avalanche in the media.  The more people educated on the subject, the better off our world will be for those who are challenged by this disorder.

I'm very interested to know what other people liked or did not like about the movie as I realize that my autism connection may influence how I perserved it myself.  Please leave a comment.

Okay, I'll start.  Did you notice how much more attractive Temple's character is in the movie than she is real life?  I caught that right away.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.  Even at the end when they showed pictures of the real Temple at different stages of her life, they were really small and you really couldn't get a good look at her.  Who's idea was that?  I don't think it was just a coincidence.  Would the outcome of the movie be more positive using an attractive character versus someone plain or weird looking?  What do you think?

***UPDATE......A commenter let me know that there's a more recent article in Beef Magazine, so I checked it out and have added the link here for you.

Decisions, Decisions.... I'm no good at this!

Sometimes I just have so much trouble making decisions.  That's why there has been such a long delay in the making of the sweater with my alpaca yarn.  The first hold up was finding a pattern, then I had to get some advice and then the dreadful decision making started haunting me even in my dreams.  Have you ever been chased by a ghost wearing a sweater?  Just kidding, the decision has been haunting me, but not in ghostly shapes.  Mostly it is the form of those to do lists I make.  I cross off most of them that I get done and then rewrite it to make it look neat.  Some how ....Start Alpaca sweater never seems to get crossed off, just rewritten and rewritten and rewritten.

The pattern I found calls for bulky yarn.  Okay, the Alpaca yarn is not bulky it is sport weight.  Do I combine it with another sport weight yarn and knit the combo together?  Do I look for another pattern calling for the same type of sport weight yarn.  Finding patterns is not easy, it took me from Oct. to Jan. to find the one I did.  I want to get this right, the first time, because really I do not want to end up wasting the yarn, or not liking the sweater pattern or being disappointed in the end result.  So what's a knitter to do?  It's been a long time since I've knitted myself a sweater and there's sentimental value to this yarn.  I have mulled it over and over, talked to other knitters and have finally decided to do this.  I'm knitting the pattern I found with the bulky yarn, to make sure I like the pattern and the sweater fits, then I will make the sweater in the Alpaca yarn combo.  Who knows, maybe I'll even buy more Alpaca yarn in a lighter gray to go with it, so it's 100 % Alpaca instead of 50% Alpaca & 50% Wool.

Here's a picture of the sweater pattern and the yarn.  It should knit up fairly quickly as the needles are size 11 and there's no fancy stitches, just knitting.

What do you think?  If you're a knitter, please don't hestitate to leave me some advice in the comments.  I'll let you know how it's going in a week or two.

Thinking of You!

Thinking of you....Keeping you close in my thoughts.

A blog friend has suffered the loss of a child.  They knew it was coming, since Emma had been striken with the incurable illness called Batten's Disease, but I don't think that makes it any easier.  They are a beautiful christian family, trusting in the Lord to carry them through this time of loss.   Please join me in praying for them.  Emma's race has been run and now she has her angels wings.  I can visualize it clearly; God holding Emma in his arms, whispering in her ear "I'm especially fond of you".

Any Day Now

Remember this post about Nikki and Blogs for a Cause.  Well I managed to get my order in on the very last day.  Keep checking back, because very soon I'll have that face lift I was talking about.