Last week I posted some pictures sharing Easter's of the past. I got as far as my daughter's third Easter and then couldn't easily find the next picture I wanted to share in the series. I still haven't found it. Before Easter becomes too distant a memory, I figure I should go ahead and post pictures from this year. It was going to be my grand finale (and I suppose it still is), but I had big hopes of filling in the years between this post and the beginning post from last week. Anyway, I'll carry on the best I can without those other pictures for now, and will wrap up this series, for now, with the amazing pictures from Easter 2008.
I must justify these photos a bit. I have a 17 year old and a 15 year old. They have long stopped wearing bunny ears, hunting eggs and such (though my daughter does still hope for a chocolate bunny each year and I gladly oblige) With that information, it becomes our dog's humiliation duty to carry on the cute Easter traditions of our family, tailored to him, of course.
Bunny Ears from Target-$1.00 A very expressive dog-Priceless
"I cannot believe this is happening to me"
"I'm so embarrassed-I know she is going to post these pictures on the Internet!"
"I want down now..NOW" (please!)
"the things I put up with 'round here"
" I dont believe it, I'm stuck up here with bunny ears on my head, can this day get any worse?"
"Nobody knows, the trouble I'm in, nobody knows my sorrow...."
"Cheese"
"Hangn' with my "peeps". At least the little guys stood by me. (and then I ate them)"
Then on Easter Sunday we had a revamped Easter Egg Hunt. Instead of Easter Eggs though, we used dog biscuits...hidden in the grass...
Bayley, restrained by my son Christopher, waits in anticipation
of the "hunt". (he is a cocker spaniel after all-well known for their hunting skills...)
Bayley is so excited he can't stand it. He leaps, he can just taste the treat.
(notice tongue smacking his chops)
Beginning to wonder what is taking so long, Bayley also ponders why there is still a jingle bell on his collar left over from Christmas, which was
THREE MONTHS AGO.
Finally, the time is here-Bayley quickly finds the dog biscuits.
Unaccustomed to eating outside, in particular off the grass, Bayley is hesitant to eat the same dog biscuit that he lunges after when offered inside. He is a dog, a picky, discriminate dog who questioned our reasoning behind dog treats in the grass.
(it still troubles him to this day..a week later)
The sound of crunching fills the air as Bayley finally throws caution to the wind and enjoys his biscuits.
(even though they WERE on the ground)
With the hunt quickly over (there were only two biscuits you know), Bayley turns to head back inside for another nap. (never mind he just woke up only minutes before this moment...there is only so much excitement he can handle in a day, you know)
And while Bayley saw his dog biscuits in their usual colors of dirt brown, an egg dog biscuit hunt just wouldn't be the same without some color! (thanks to the colorization filter of paint shop pro!)
A few weeks ago, Rachael of Always Wanted 4 showed pictures on her blog of one of the cakes they used to celebrate her daughter, Katya's birthday. Her mother in law wrote out the instructions for everyone there. I thought it would be fun to give it a try. I sort of planned on making this for Easter last week, but that didn't happen. I made it tonight. I probably didn't take quite as much time to arrange the chocolate chips on the sunflower cake as Rachael's mother in law did, but I dont think it turned out too terrible. Thanks Rachael for sharing the information on how to make it. Was fun to try it out.
My picture really doesn't do it justice. It really looks like a sunflower on Rachael's site...mine just kind of looks like a layer cake with a circle of peeps. LOL
Lets just say that the display of the food on the plate isnt my strong suit...Hey I'm not trying to impress anyone or be Paula Deen or anything..
Most importantly is that the cake tastes good...uh huh
Now traditionally, Bayley is the only one in this house that likes peeps. We stage him with them in various different ways for photos. Tonight as we were making the cake, he kept looking at us like we were crazy for putting HIS peeps on our cake. How dare we?
So we gave him a few of the ones we didn't use.
Yum! That was great-more?? More?? Are there more??
Bayley looks up at the cake, wondering where it all went so wrong (that HIS peeps would end up on our cake, you know)
Ah well. What he doesn't know is that there is another package of them in the cabinet as well as three more of his bunnies left from last year-dried out to perfection the way he likes them.
Belonging to a few graphics lists for several years, I have seen the following type of graphics come by every now and again. They always make me laugh. I have even made a few of my own from time to time. BubbleBeez passed these along to me this time. (thanks!)
They were somewhat appropriate here lately as I have had a few times in the past few weeks when I felt my computer was angry at me. I feel I am headed towards a reformat, but really am dreading it. I like how things are set up on here. I haven't HAD to do one in two years as I have become very friendly with the roll back feature on XP. (forget Vista-I get very set in my ways, especially where operating systems are concerned.) Even so, I know I probably have a lot of junk files on here and that this machine would run a bit more efficently not being bogged down with graphics, fonts,pictures, and various movies I have made. It would feel better without the games I have on here (that I have forgotten about) . I just know what the process is like to go from having things set to having to reset it all. Somehow I need to find the time to get everything ready to just do this and then go about doing it. I am pretty good at backing things up but I am constantly adding more content that needs to be backed up so it is a never ending process.
Im not afraid of reformating and doing things like that-it is more that I know what it is like and I'd rather not.
Maybe I need to take that last error message to heart-maybe my TV is missing me!
Thirty two years ago today, while in my Winnie the pooh dress, I climbed the stairs to the body of water that was behind the choir loft and in front of every one, I was baptised. I was nine years old.
I always recount the story by mentioning that I was wearing my Winnie the pooh dress when I tell it to my kids. I'm not sure why, except it was part of the flavor of the moment to me. I had received the dress from my parents the Christmas prior to this moment. I was nine years old.
The week before, when getting into bed, I had told my mother that I believed in Jesus and understood why He died on the cross for my sins. She prayed with me that night as she tucked me into bed.
The next day, I woke up and got ready for church like normal. Rather than take me to my Sunday School class though, my mother took me to our pastor's office. She wanted me to talk to him. I guess it made her feel better for him to talk to me. She really wasnt sure about me being baptised yet, so I guess this was her way of finding out if I really understood what I had said the night before.
As we talked, our pastor asked me a lot of questions. He went to get my mother and both of them returned. He told her I understood and that he thought she should let me be baptised. She agreed to it. He told me what I needed to do at the end of the service that morning.
On the first verse of the last song, I remember going down front to talk to him. He sat me on a front pew and one of the ladies that was part of whatever committee handed such things came and sat beside of me and wrote my name on a card.
Our pastor presented me to the church. He told them I wanted to be baptised (which also meant I would be joining that particular church too.) He asked me a few questions and then they went through the process of having someone seconding my request. Then those that agreed said amen and those that opposed....well of course, there were none.
People came up and hugged my neck and congratulated me. My mother stood beside of me. My father wasnt there at this time (as he didn't come to church with us ...yet) The time was set for my baptism to occur the next week....on March 28, 1976.
So after I was baptised, I remember one of the ladies in the baptism committee drying my hair and helping me into another dress my mother had sent along with me that morning. She made sure to wait to dry my hair while the congregation was singing a hymn. We were done in no time and I joined my family in the sanctuary.
I had always been to this church from the day I was inducted into the cradle roll as a baby. My mother was diligent to take my sister and brother and me there, even though for many years, my father didn't join us. (He accepted Christ when I was 12) There was no flash of light, no deep problems that I was involved in beforehand, nothing beyond my nine year old confession and a belief. I was a sinner and I knew Jesus had died on the cross for my sins.
Several years ago, I remember my husband and I going through the process of joining a church (that we no longer go to) and sitting through the membership classes. The pastor asked us each to share our testimony. I remember as my husband shared and then me, our pastor half joked that "oh it's another boring testimony".
I beg to differ.
I may have only been 9 years old, but no testimony is a boring one. Jesus saved me just as much as he saves the man or woman that has struggled with addictions for their whole life before accepting Christ. I am thankful that God allowed me to be born into the home I was born and to have the mother that I have that took us to church EVERY Sunday even though in those first 20 or so years of her marriage to my dad, she did so alone. I am thankful that I had a Godly grandmother who left an example of working hard, reading her bible and giving of her life to others. I am thankful for the Sunday School teachers and pastors that guided me as I grew and were willing to answer the questions I had.
Had these people not been a part of God's work in laying a firm foundation in Christ, when the winds came and the rains fell later in my life, I would have sunk. I knew to turn to Jesus when life threw me to the ground. I knew to hold on to Jesus when life hurt so bad. I knew it was Jesus who let me cry it all out until there were no more tears.
There are no boring testimonies, only precious stories of how God saved us through Jesus Christ, and how we look forward to the day when He comes for us again. Amen.
I had found my son some new-to-him roller blades at a thrift store for $3 (a size 13 mens of all things!!)after he outgrew his older ones. The kids dont really roller blade as much as they used to, but they do enjoy doing so at this particular park with the long low traffic road that circles around it all from time to time. My son Christopher wanted to try out his new roller blades so off we went! It was a beautiful day.
Today a guy from the cable company came. He was totally amazed that we dont subscribe to cable. I mean, we have high speed Internet from them, but no cable TV. We had cable for a year right after we were married and then again for about six months before we found out we were pregnant with our daughter in 1989. In an attempt to cut costs with a baby coming, we easily got rid of the cable. I haven't really missed it and pretty much, anything worth seeing, my mother will VHS tape it for me.
Anyway, as he was doing his sales pitch, he asked me where I was from. He told me I sounded like I was from Maine or something. (do folks from Maine have a certain accent? Do folks from Maine sound like they are from the South?) I looked at him straight and told him I was from Greensboro (NC) , which is about 30 minutes away and that I was born and bred a southern girl. How dare anyone suggest anything otherwise. I KNOW I do NOT sound like I have lived anywhere but here, so I'm not really sure what he was thinking about. Hrmph!
I did get a "chip clip" for just listening to him though. Yeah!
In other news, I need to update you guys on the squirrel shooting ordinance I posted about back in January. I read an update in the latest Creekside Chronicle. It said that our Town Council decided to repeal the ordinance.
I guess that means I no longer can shoot squirrels that are in my yard if they bother me. Nope. No more going to the police to get a permit for a free for all shooting range in my front yard in the town limits!
Seriously folks, I am only kidding. I still find the whole thing that we even HAD an ordinance in the first place that would have allowed us to shoot squirrels very humorous. And now that it is repealed, I somehow feel like I have missed out. I've lived out here for sixteen years and I could have been having some hunting in my backyard ridding myself of squirrels. Just think of what I could have saved from my grocery budget for just shooting some squirrels running amuck in my backyard! (again, kidding!!)
I laugh, I shake my head and carry on...simply amazed at how much fun it is to live in a small southern country town.
Oh and for those who come to my blog again by doing a Google search looking for the shooting squirrels game, as you did before when I first mentioned this article, I have no idea what you are looking for. I do, however, welcome you to my blog!
These layouts are made from photos from 1992 of my daughter Hannah.
The first was taken at a local Hallmark shop with the crayola bunny. I remember we had some pretty cool snow flurries that day.
Hannah, who was 20 months old in a few various Easter pictures below; her first egg hunt at my mother's church, a bunny face from a cake, and enjoying her basket of treats.
Earlier today I posted here and here as I began a series - Easter Through the Muddy Years.
I continue tonight with yet another two photos taken on my daughter Hannah's first Easter in 1991. The picture shows that Jay, my husband and I still have lots of hair....while our daughter sits with a smug grin on my lap. Don't you just wonder sometimes what babies are thinking when they make faces like this? These two photos were taken at my mom's house after church that day. I am guessing that it must have been quite chilly outside that Easter because I am wearing a sweater, and I rarely wear a sweater, much less a coat, you know.
Don't ask me where her sweater is. She was probably actually wearing a coat.
We both had a lot of hair in this picture. It was the 80's afterall. I guess there was so much hair that my mother (who took the picture) couldnt get it all in the picture!
Notice Jay's cute bowtie and suspenders and my bright plaid skirt!
Seriously, we look like we could break out in some sort of song and dance at any moment with those smiles (especially Jay's)
We had been dating for close to a year and were now engaged.
In 1994, when I decided to begin scrapbooking, I thought it would be cute to make us look as if we were hatching out of this egg. The whole thing just made me laugh to look at it today all over again.
I have several pictures, past and present, I hope to share as I get them scanned in, continuing on with an Easter theme. I will call this Part 1, which usually means there will at least be a part two. We'll be optomistic and see how it goes.
This is a picture of my brother and me in 1972. We had just arrived back home from a city-wide egg hunt in Greensboro. My mother had helped me at the egg hunt to find eggs for my basket. Michael pretty much went into the group he was suppose to go into alone. When it was time to go, we could not find Michael. Someone alerted my mom that my brother was up on stage. Apparently my brother found a special egg during the hunt in his section and because of that, they took him up to the stage to award him with this giant basket of goodies. I am five, he is eight. Bunny ears and all..here we sit on the front steps of our house.
Layout created with papers and elements created by Erica Zane .
It's late in the day of Easter 2008. We went to a church nearby last night and then to my mother in laws for lunch with my husband's family this afternoon. We gave the kids a chocolate bunny (my daughter loves those things) and Bayley, our eight, almost nine year old Cocker Spaniel got a few extra dog treats (pictures to follow later)
As I considered what to write today, my mind filtered through many of the Easter's that I remember. There are some memories that are more of a secular nature with Egg hunts, Easter Baskets and parties. There are memories of going to church, dressing up (perhaps even in a new dress), new shoes and learning what Easter really was about. There is the Easter I saw my dad baptised when I was 12, and another Easter where we found out we were pregnant with Malea (our second baby that died)
Then there is the Easter, six years ago when we were attending a home church. For all of my 41 years, so far, this remains perhaps the most poignant of Easters in my walk with Christ. I was facing a serious decision I didn't want to make. (I just wanted God to take the problem away) I remember us going to church in shorts and jeans. All the outside was stripped away as we wore the ordinary and went into this person's living room in their home. There was no stained glass. The time at the home church was all about Jesus and not about what we were wearing or what was going on a few pews away. It was a couple of families gathered together to worship God through song and the reading of His word while sitting on some couches in a living room here in the South. There were no special songs or people singled out to sing them. The message came from where we were currently studying (as the teacher/pastor of the home fellowship felt that no matter where you taught in God's word, it always pointed to the cross and the resurrection of Jesus) God met me on that couch, right where I was, just as I was. (and continued to each Sunday we worshiped there in that house over the next few months)
Don't get me wrong, this isn't a critique of the church. I'm not on some campaign against the special songs, the special services or the special clothes that are enjoyed during the Easter Season. For me though, I get so distracted so easily. I know satan doesn't want us to celebrate Easter. He doesn't want me to be open and changed by God's word and the praise in my heart. (no matter what day of the week or year it is) I know I have to work hard at remembering:
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ 2 Corinthians 10:5
Even so, over time, as I've moved on past that particular Easter Sunday, there has yet to be an Easter where everything is stripped away in such a way as it was that particular Easter Sunday that all that is left is Jesus to be seen, worshiped and loved. That particular Easter remains one that will forever remind me of what it is like to worship God when all else fades grey to black while what is seen is His son, Jesus.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace.
These were the first four words of a soliloquy I did when in ninth or tenth grade at church a few weeks before Easter. The performance had eight performers, each taking a day from Sunday to Sunday of the Holy Week. Each performer would describe the day's events, along with the emotion they felt with what they saw according to the character they played. In between each day the choir would sing Were You There . I was Saturday. I was the day after the Crucifixion of Jesus and before the day He rose again on Easter Sunday.
Hence, my speech began, "There was a void". I remember reading the words for the first time. I remember opening up my dictionary to gain a greater understanding of this word, "VOID"...
As a noun void can be described as an empty space, a vacuum, an open space or a break in continuity; a gap, or a feeling or state of emptiness, loneliness, or loss.
I imagine it described perfectly what the followers of Jesus, without the benefit of Resurrection Sunday, felt on Saturday.
A death of someone we hold dear leaves a gap, a hole, an empty space in our lives. Even more so, I imagine that the followers of Jesus spent a good deal of Saturday wondering, "What now"?
Without Jesus there is a void, an empty space, a vacuum, a gap and a feeling of emptiness and knowing we are without. Without Jesus we are perpetually in the state of Saturday before Sunday. We are lost. We wonder what this life is all about.
Thankfully, as believers, we know that Saturday eventually did bring us to Sunday and the hope that came from the knowledge that Jesus did rise again on the third day. With Jesus, there is no more void, there is no more empty spaces or loneliness. There is peace and hope and joy, lots and lots of Joy. Amen
Go ahead, Drive the nails in my hands; Laugh at me where you stand; Go ahead, and say it isn't me; The day will come when you will see! 'Cause I'll...
Chorus: rise again; Ain't no pow'r on earth Can tie me down; Yes, I'll rise again Death can't keep me in the ground!
Go ahead, and mock my name; My love for you is still the same; Go ahead and bury me; But very soon I will be free! 'Cause I'll...
Repeat Chorus...
Go ahead and say I'm dead and gone, But you will see that you were wrong Go ahead, try to hide the Son, But all will see that I'm the One! 'Cause I'll...
Chorus:
Come again; Ain't no pow'r on earth Can keep me back; Yes, I'll come again Come to take my people back.
After yesterday's post, I went to pick up my daughter from work and then headed to Wal-Mart for our bi-monthly stock up trip. In all honesty, the driving force was the desperate need of toilet paper. We walked quickly through the isles, we knew exactly what we needed and how much of it we should get. My son was with us and the three of us can brought the super center down to size easily as we split up to conquer the trip. I love my teenagers. They are so helpful. I wonder what I will do when they are too busy living their own lives to help me get through the trip to Wal Mart, but then I reason to myself that I will be buying a lot less (hopefully) than I do now by then and it won't be such an ordeal. (I think to myself-it sounds good anyway)
We arrived back home and unloaded the car.
I took a nap. I rarely take a nap, but by the time I got home, I was tired. My daughter decided a nap sounded like a good idea too, so she took one too.
It was a nice day for a nap, it was a nice rainy day. Part of our trying to get through the Wal-Mart trip so quickly was because we hoped to be home and inside before the rains fell. We succeeded and our reward was a nice long nap.
When we woke up, we had dinner and then watched Survivor and the results show for American Idol. I wonder if this will be the last Survivor.
We did a few more things around the house and then watched some more hulu. I must say I am quite pleased with hulu. We have quite the list of things we hope to watch there.
Today was another day of paying bills and errands.
And more hulu. (and all these mentions of hulu is for MSM who said I did a bad thing by introducing her to hulu in yesterday's post . :::grinz:::)
And now I could use another nap, but what probably makes more sense is to just get ready for bed at this point. (but I won't, I know I won't because my husband would wake me up in two hours or so when he gets home and then I'd be wide awake all night....so I'll stay awake and maybe watch more hulu)
Arent you glad I posted?
Some days are full of errands and Wal-Mart, some are full of rainy day naps, some are full of hulu and others are full of housework.
Arent you glad you came to my blog to read about the ordinary?
How sad. Close to a week has past since my last post. Sadder still, that post was about an expensive fridge that I saw on the price is right that I'll never buy, but thought was neat.
I guess you could say that I ran out of words after that.
Or you could say that I was doing some spring cleaning.
Or you could say that I have been over at hulu watching old TV shows while introducing my kids to some shows I used to watch growing up.
Any of the above is true among other things that distract me from important things, like my blog. Real life has a way of coming between a woman and her keyboard from time to time. Only I didn't run out of words, and hulu is a part of the Internet, so technically the only one that would have taken me completely off of the computer is the spring cleaning thing and even that included opening up my computer and cleaning all the dust bunnies out of it. They had made a burrow and had a few baby dust bunnies it appears.
I also spent the first couple of days calling hulu, hula for whatever reason, until my kids corrected me. I still call it hula sometimes though, they know what I mean. The danger in teaching your kids to read and correct grammar as a homeschooling parent is that they will eventually use this knowledge against you one day. I love them anyway.
To say that I am not cutting edge where technology is concerned would be an understatement. I do not stay on top of the new inventions of the day and usually I just hear of things in passing. More than likely, when I do hear about such new fangled things, the item has already been on the market for a few years. I don't drool over spending large amounts of money on gadgets like some do and it takes a lot to impress me. For me to chunk over money for something, I have to have an express need for this item. It will have to serve a practical purpose in my life or I wont have it.
My kids and I were visiting with my mom a few weeks ago. We were watching the price is right at night. All of a sudden I saw this prize that I found fascinating. It was this TV in a refrigerator. I was amazed. I looked at my mom and told her so. I told her, "we needed that when we were little". She smiled and understood the reference.
You see, when I was younger we had one of those big TVs that sat on the floor. If something was on TV that we didn't want to miss (yet dinner was ready), one of us would turn the TV towards the kitchen so we could all peer around the door to watch and hear. There were no VCRs in that day(yet) and no rewind. You watched TV when they said you were going to watch it and that was that. A refrigerator TV would have been great in that time. Oh the fun we would have had, and without the neck strain.
I've looked at the price of this refrigerator. Unless I win some large amount of money, I wont be buying one. They are neat, but I could hardly justify buying one for myself at this point. We have so many options for recording shows, watching TV online etc, one rarely would need such a thing, except that it is very neat. Very neat indeed.
The other day I discovered that I had something on the bottom of my shoe.
(Thank you Bayley!)
I left it out on the front porch until I could have a chance to clean it. Saturday was windy. As we were going out that evening, we noticed that my shoe was chained to the porch. My son informed us that he had chained my shoe to the porch to keep it from blowing away. Clever kid, but funny. This is what it looked like.
As I cleaned my shoe, Bayley came to investigate. He was not pleased that he was blamed for the whole dirty shoe scandal of '08. He also didn't like HIS chain being used for something besides him. I mean, he doesn't want to be chained up out there, but he finds it even more offensive to find an inanimate object chained up with it.
Don't try to reason with a dog, you will fail and besides, he will glare at you as Bayley did in the picture below.
That said, this week, I have one customer that said she mailed a check but will mail another one if the other is returned. Huh? I mean, come on now...it should be rather obvious whether I got her check or not. (check with your bank, they can easily tell you if the money has cleared) She hasn't answered me in the dispute after the first comment about having mailed the check. It's been five weeks now since the auction ended. If she had come back to me saying that she did mail the check and given me more details about a check number, date sent, copy of canceled check or something, I would gladly mail the book to her. Instead, silence. I am at an impasse as I need to close the dispute (which could give her a strike) so that I can be rightfully credited by eBay. I have considered just letting the whole thing go and walking away. If the check ever materializes I can mail her book. What I dont understand though is if she really did send payment, then why isnt she complaining to me about her book not arriving yet?
I also have one customer that informed me today that a book I sold (textbook) had answers written in ink. I have no proof to the contrary, and honestly I cannot remember looking at it real well to know either way, so I offered her a complete refund. (it was not a book that we used in our homeschooling, it was a book I found for cheap and bought to sell on eBay since I knew what it was) If it was me, I would want a refund if I was in her shoes. My word taken, money returned. I dont even want the book back. I didn't have that much money in it in the first place.
I also have another customer that says her book never came. When she first contacted me a week or so ago, I sent her a copy of the mail receipt showing the date it shipped. She then opened a dispute against me. So after a week or two, rather than come back to me and talk, she opens a dispute. Hmm. I am not happy about this, but I did offer to give her a full refund. I mailed the book to her and have proof, but likewise I also noticed that I didn't insure it as she asked me to. (my mistake-though it would be nice if they would point it out somehow that they are insuring the book when they do)
I have a no refund policy. I am just a mom who sells a few things here and there as I clean house or we finish the school year. Generally, I would not refund money, but since the mistakes may be my own, I will refund the money they paid to do what is right. I go back and forth at how much I like doing business on eBay. Sometimes it has been great. I have made a good amount of money on things that I was done with. Other times I have had to deal with difficulties there and have had to make hard decisions. I have only had to refund money once though in all my years there. I did so because I made a mistake in a description. I let her keep the item and did not ask for it to be returned. (likewise, there wasnt a lot of money in that item either)
I have no idea how any of these situations will go. I have a very good rating at eBay (445 at the time of this post), and would like to keep it that way. I cannot however, change a thing about what has happened here with these three buyers. If I make a mistake, then it is my responsibility to make it right. What I cannot control though is how, even though I have offered refunds and even though I have given the one lady that says she paid though I never received the check lots of time to communicate with me, I cannot control how they respond.
I've spent a large bit of my afternoon today checking my email to see if there were any responses to the above situations. I've prayed through the situations and I've hoped that they would be resolved. If the two people want refunds, I want to go ahead and get them their money so that I can move on. I cannot control the feedback they may give me thereafter.
So I've fretted over something I cannot do anything about today, and tried to work on something I need to get done that is within my control. As much as I'd like to, I cannot do both well.
I also have a "to do" list in the back of my head of things that are not pressing at the moment, but do need to be worked on soon. It's like a dream that keeps replaying itself in my mind again and again.
I then went to check one of our family's email boxes and there sitting for me was this verse, Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Psalm 139:23
If today was a test, I failed, at least where an anxious heart is concerned.
I've been tied up in things I could not control and while I've prayed over them, I also held on to them. All I can do is to do the right thing and then hope that God works out the rest. Pray I let go as I hand over all these troubles to God.
Every week, it seems I get at least two or three hits on my site meter telling me that someone has come to my blog because they were doing a Google search for puddles, or mud puddles or some sort of combination of muddy puddles. I know that they arrive because of the name of my blog comes up when they do their search for pictures.
At first I felt it was funny, then I found it interesting. These people kept coming because they were doing searches for pictures of puddles in some way. My blog was letting them down. I really started to feel a need to oblige these faithful people that are on the Internet so that their "click" to here was not a waste of time. So for a while now, I've been planning on taking pictures of puddles, mud puddles etc to meet their needs.
Only problem is that we in NC are in a drought and so rain has been scarce.(and with water restrictions, its not like I can just go turn on the hose and make my own, you know..) Today though, you are in luck, it is raining (hard) and I finally went outside to take a few pictures. Mind you, it is still raining and it is cold, so these were taken from my front porch and back porch. That is about all the dedication I can drum up for you this time. My hope is to make this a regular thing so that my blog is not a wasteland of random incoherent thoughts, but a blog of purpose, of intent.....er...scrap that-this blog will still be a wasteland of random incoherency...but occasionally, I hope to post pictures of puddles and perhaps sometime, most specifically mud puddles!
These pictures are for personal, non-commercial use. They are my own personal pictures and I maintain the copywrite to them. You are just allowed to use them in a family friendly way as long as you're not going to make money from their use in anyway.
Enjoy the show!
Bayley came out with me to supervise the photo shoot, but after two pictures saw I had it under control and so he wanted back inside again.
I call the one below, "Puddle in a Porch Chair", isnt that clever? :)
Bonus picture below.
While not a Puddle of sorts, you can see the waves the drops are making in the water standing in the wagon.
With all that said, the pictures above might not be anything you are interested in or looking for, so I offer you the Gund version of "Puddles"
Yes, this little dog is called "puddles" officially (click on the picture for a close up of the tush tag)
The one on the far left is "mama" puddles, the one in the middle is just "puddles" while the one on the right is "baby puddles". My son added the extra distinction of mama and baby to the collection (two of these are his from his childhood) to tell them apart.
"I'm so embarrassed-I know she is going to post these pictures on the Internet!"
"the things I put up with 'round here"
" I dont believe it, I'm stuck up here with bunny ears on my head, can this day get any worse?"
"Nobody knows, the trouble I'm in, nobody knows my sorrow...."
"Cheese"
Then on Easter Sunday we had a revamped Easter Egg Hunt. Instead of Easter Eggs though, we used dog biscuits...hidden in the grass...
Bayley, restrained by my son Christopher, waits in anticipation
Bayley is so excited he can't stand it. He leaps, he can just taste the treat. 
Finally, the time is here-Bayley quickly finds the dog biscuits.
Unaccustomed to eating outside, in particular off the grass, Bayley is hesitant to eat the same dog biscuit that he lunges after when offered inside. He is a dog, a picky, discriminate dog who questioned our reasoning behind dog treats in the grass.
The sound of crunching fills the air as Bayley finally throws caution to the wind and enjoys his biscuits. 
With the hunt quickly over (there were only two biscuits you know), Bayley turns to head back inside for another nap. (never mind he just woke up only minutes before this moment...there is only so much excitement he can handle in a day, you know)
And while Bayley saw his dog biscuits in their usual colors of dirt brown, an 
