Exceedingly Mundane

December went by in the blink of an eye!

After we were both sick at Thanksgiving and I was basically down for the count the first week of December, I spiraled into a mild panic about getting everything done. But Tim was right (as usual), we got most everything done, and it all worked out okay. 🙂

Tim took off his one day early in the month and we knocked out most of the shopping. He’s great about getting most of the guy gifts, and then trying to help me with all the girls. We stopped for lunch at his choice, Raising Cane’s (fried chicken strips, delicious but not overly healthy, a fairly common theme for us in the month of December, LOL!) I was able to start wrapping after that, along with all of the gifts I had ordered from Amazon. The carriers (UPS, FedEx) have finally learned where we live, and we are no longer missing deliveries like we did when we first moved here (so many packages didn’t make it and were returned, with UPS saying, address unknown; the down side to being in a totally new area and street). We had two Christmas trees this year, but I only wrapped presents and stuck under the new 9′ tree in the keeping room. We sent out cards, but seem to get fewer and fewer every year. I guess people just don’t do cards as much as they did a generation ago. I baked cookies and made treats and took to all the new neighbors. We had a great Sunday school party a week before Christmas – great food, great fellowship, had fun playing charades and singing Christmas carols.

We had our traditional three Christmases – one with Tim’s family on the Saturday before Christmas, one for ourselves (first in the new house!) on Christmas Eve and then with Gail and family on Christmas Day at her house. Tim and I got up on Christmas Eve, had our once yearly Christmas sticky buns and coffee and juice and then opened our presents to each other. Tim got some gadget-y gifts from me like a bluetooth car code reader, an iGrill mini, and then golf clubs he picked out. He got me a beautiful charm bracelet, a gold long tiered necklace, some earrings and this shiny new MacBook Pro I’m typing this blog post on!. After we finished our presents, we had Suzanne over to hang out and have our meal – Tim grilled ribeyes for him and Suzie and I had a nice piece of salmon, baked sweet potatoes, salad, and some acorn squash. We went to the early Christmas Eve service at church and it was candlelit and just beautiful. Suzanne came back after her early service, and even though it’s tradition for me to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Christmas Eve, Suzie had just seen it (for the FIRST time) a few days before, so we watched my other favorite Christmas movie, I had just watched it the day before, “The Bishop’s Wife”. We missed my Dad a lot this year, my first without my daddy and my first without both of my parents. I don’t like being an orphan 🙁

A couple of photos… Tim plopping out our sticky buns:

Tim with his new bluetooth code reader for the vehicles:

Stacy’s new wok (that I bought and wrapped, because I had no idea I was getting a Mac!):

Tim with his new golf clubs (Taylor MC irons):

My new Mac!

And my new charm bracelet, Tim picked out every single charm for me! So sweet 😀

After Christmas, we stayed busy but nothing spectacular. I did my annual day after shopping, stocking up on paper, bows, etc and also picked up a few decorating items for next year. I still need to get a lot of things for the house, both for everyday decor and for seasonal decor. We are still just using everything from the old house, and a lot of it is 15-20 years old. Yikes! I both love and get frustrated by trying to find things for the new house. I’m not Martha Stewart and I don’t have a great eye for things and how they will look in the house or go with other things I have or want to get. It’s a constant struggle for me. Tim helps a lot and it pains me greatly to admit that he is a better decorator than I am, and even though he’s COLOR BLIND, he’s better at putting things together. Sigh.

We got everything packed up and shoved back in the attic. I do love my Snow Village and Christmas decorations, and always hesitate on putting them away, but then once I get started, I get rolling and am ready to get it put away. There’s something about having the space back and ready to start a new year 🙂

We spent a quiet New Years Eve and New Years Day. We usually do, but this year more so than most. Tim worked New Years Eve, but they did let him go around 2 PM and so he ran to the golf course to play before dark. Don and Gail had spent the night before, headed to the hospital to see Don’s mom in ICU (as I type this, she has been in ICU for 3 weeks and on a ventilator for 2 weeks). They got here the night before NY Eve and we all went to the new Longhorn Steakhouse that opened up a couple of weeks ago, very good. New Years Eve, Don and Gail had thought they would go home, but ended up coming back here again to stay. Both Ole Miss and Ms State were in bowl games on New Years Eve (and both lost, very sad), and we watched the State game New Years Eve night. The new neighborhood proved to be a great place for watching fireworks! At the old house, we were in the city and fireworks were prohibited. Our here in the country, apparently not! Several people shot fireworks off and on from dark until midnight, including our new neighbor Brian and his family (2 doors down) who shot some great ones. I should have dug out my tripod and read about photographing fireworks. I took a lot of shots but most of them are not good. Anyway, New Years Day, we went to our new neighbors house for food and football, over to Tim and Becky’s across the street. Had a great time visiting with the new neighbors. We watched football most of the rest of the day (well, Tim did, I mostly read Unbroken, so I could try to finish it as he wants to go see the movie soon).

That hits the highlights I guess 🙂 I would like to say I’d do better about blogging in 2015, but I’m not making any promises. I don’t think anyone reads this anymore anyway! 🙂 I have so many things I want and need to do in the new year… I can easily see me letting blogging slip to the side again.

How on earth can it be the end of January already? Wow, the first year of the month has really flown by.

Let’s see… I’ve been sick the last few days. I got a sore throat and it just went downhill from there. I felt like I was gargling glass when I tried to swallow, and then I lost my voice. While Tim thoroughly enjoyed that time, I did not 🙂 I had several days of OTC medicine and lots of hot tea with honey, and now I’m getting better. Good thing too! We’ve had another round of really cold weather. We had a dusting of snow yesterday (and I didn’t take a SINGLE photo, horror!) but it barely covered the deck. I miss Beau when it snows though, that dog was fascinated with snow! It was SO COLD. The highs the last couple of days have been in the 20’s, with the lows at night in the low teens. Yikes, we’re having a cold winter!

I didn’t cook a whole lot over the weekend, since I was sick. We ate out some junk food, and just had easy stuff like cereal and popcorn 🙂 I finally cooked us some decent food this week. I made a chicken noodle soup on Monday, Tuesday I made a panko baked cod, stuffed zucchini and salad. Wednesday was a Tim favorite, eggs, bacon, grits and homemade buttermilk biscuits. Today, I’ve got a tomato basil soup going in the crockpot and if I get industrious enough, I’ll make chicken crescents to go with it and maybe a salad. I’m not planning on date night for tomorrow (since we picked up a lot of food last weekend while I was sick), so I’m hoping to make sloppy joes and roast a head of cauliflower I have languishing in the produce drawer 😀

The Super Bowl is this weekend and I’m not all that excited about it. When our Saints got eliminated from the playoffs, we sort of lost interest in football. It’s harder to get excited since we don’t have parties any more. It’s just so hard for friends and family to come over late on Sundays, with having to drive back home late. It definitely makes it more fun to watch the game, but it is a lot more work, so it’s sort of a toss up on how much I enjoy having a big party versus getting to just watch the game without all the extra work. For the record, I’m rooting for the Broncos. I’ve always liked Peyton Manning (except the year he and the Colts played my Saints, that was a no brainer, but otherwise I root for him) and I’d like to see him win one more before his career is over. Tim and I DESPISE the Seahawks, it’s an NFC thing. Blech.

I am not doing well on my reading so far this year… I had hoped to be further along this far into January. I sort of struggled through a recent book, one I purchased at a reduced rate on Kindle called “Sherlock Holmes and the Needle’s Eye”. Maybe it was the writing or the subject matter, or maybe I was just not in the mood for that type of book. I moved onto a more enjoyable one after Sherlock, the second Jane Austen Takes the South book by Mary Jane Hathaway. Apparently there are only two of these, but I thoroughly enjoyed both, very very Southern 🙂 I just started Sycamore Row, by John Grisham. My sister Suzanne read it first, and recommended it. I went ahead and splurged and bought it around Black Friday when I found it reduced for Kindle. Now, I see my library has it for free in the Kindle version, oh well. This way, Tim might be able to read it sometime on my iPad. I normally enjoy Grisham so I have high hopes for this one.

Watched Jack Reacher again last night on Amazon Prime streaming. We saw it at the theater and really liked it, so it was good to watch again. I think a lot of our shows will be tapering off soon, with the Olympics starting up soon. We’ll have to see how our TV watching changes, which translates to, will I be able to get Tim to watch Olympics coverage with me! I like it a lot more than he does.

Tim is still enjoying P90X. Me, not so much. We’ve moved into phase 3, and he’s tickled pink. Me, I’d like to chuck the dvd’s and throw a sledgehammer at ole Tony’s face on the TV. Ugh. Tim did it last winter and lost over 30 pounds. Me doing it this winter, I *might* be down 2-3 pounds, but I think that’s from more eating healthy than anything. Obviously, I’m getting out of it exactly what I put into it!

Hope everyone is having a great day!

2013 was a record-setting year for me, book wise. I not only read the Bible through (which I now plan to do yearly), but I also read more books than I ever have in the past (110 total !!!) I’m leaving my GoodReads widget up for a couple of weeks longer, just so I can see it and be motivated to get back into a good reading groove.

I didn’t read many books at all from about Thanksgiving till New Years Eve. We got busy with Thanksgiving, Tim’s birthday (the day after), decorating and shopping for Christmas, wrapping, etc. Then about the time we got all of that done and I felt like I could relax, snuggle up with a good book, watch a Christmas movie, then Tim took off vacation! And while I loved every minute he was off and we could spend together, we were spending it all together 🙂 And one thing Tim is not into is a) reading a book and b) watching a girlie Christmas movie! So, I only read a couple of books and got to watch zero of my favorite Christmas movies. I had even added a couple to the Amazon Prime queue to stream (more on that in another post to come soon). But, I need to go delete them now, since I didn’t get to watch them. Oh well, there’s always next year.

I’m on to a new year of reading, with new goals. I tend to set a low goal at GoodReads, then adjust it throughout the year. I started out with a book I got from the Kindle Prime program, one of their “First” books. Apparently, they pick out a few books each month from new authors and offer them to read for free. I picked the one that sounded the best to me, “Soy Sauce for Beginners” by Kirstin Chen. I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed it! I normally read almost exclusively Christian fiction, because I don’t like the language and explicit stuff in most mainstream books these days. But this one was surprisingly clean, and had nothing “bad” in it, at least according to my standards. The story was good, and I liked the characters, so it was a nice, fun, quick read to start off the year. Now, book #2 is the last in a trilogy I am reading by Lisa T. Bergren. I got the first two in the “Grand Tour” series free for Kindle, and purchased the last one “Glittering Promises” for 2.99, to finish up the trilogy. So far, I’m liking the first two that I got free more, but I hope this one gets better 🙂

We watched a new TV show last night, one we both really liked. “Intelligence” with Josh Holloway, who played Sawyer on Lost. He’s a super soldier who has had a computer chip implanted in his brain, which gives him instant access to anything cyber related. It had an interesting concept, we like all the characters/actors, and I hope this one makes it. We picked up a new show last fall that we both love, “The Blacklist” and it’s a big hit, so hopefully this one will make it too.

Lastly, our Saints won their first EVER road playoff game! They went to Philadelphia last weekend in this cold “polar vortex” we’ve been having and WON! We were so excited. Now, onto an even harder road game in Seattle this weekend. They might not make it, but we’re going to hope they keep going through the playoffs 😀

Have a good day, everyone!

and a little of that!

Today is Friday, and here’s a few bulleted things going on:

* Yesterday I went to the dentist. Glad to get that checkup over with for another 6 months! Up next is the *other* doctor, in the late fall. That’s the one I really dread!

* Yesterday was my mother-in-law’s birthday. We had to call several times to catch her, she’s a very popular and busy lady on her birthday 🙂 Beau did his singing/barking rendition to Happy Birthday on the phone, always a hit. We will get to see her Sunday after church, for a belated birthday lunch.

* Today I took Beau for a walk. Not back to daily, but better, that’s three times this week. Tim’s foot is better, since he played golf yesterday. Better enough for golf, not for walking in the subdivision with me and Beau, LOL!

* This morning, I let Beau out back and he saw a squirrel, I heard his bark. Yes, he has different barks for different things, and yes, I can tell them apart. Then I heard what sounded like the snake bark. Sure enough, he’s got a snake coiled up next to the fence, and I finally got him to back away, so the snake proceeded to slither into some shrubs nearby. I screamed (bloody murder, at the top of my lungs scream) for Tim, who came with a hoe. For a change, he actually killed this snake. Thank goodness! Usually, he says they are “good snakes” and leaves them alone.

* I’m knocking another item off my to-try list this morning. I’m going to try to make homemade flour tortillas. I hope they turn out!

Got a semi busy weekend ahead. Tim is back to playing golf, we have a Saints preseason game on TV, and then the family birthday lunch for Linda on Sunday. Then Tim has to work all Sunday night on a big project. Busy bee!

Apparently, I don’t have a lot to talk about during the week, just on Mondays after another busy weekend 🙂

This one was no exception, lots of fun stuff going on! Our niece Elizabeth came and hung out with us all weekend. She is staying with her sister and brother-in-law (and their kids) down in Raymond, and the maintenance people came to put new flooring in the house. I told her to come visit us, no need to hang out there with strange worker guys all day! So she did, and ended up staying all weekend. Tim played golf Friday night, since he had not been able to play most all week, between work and the rain. Elizabeth and I went to Taqueria La Guadalupe, a place Tim and I have tried and really liked. It’s a small Hispanic place, and they have what we think is fairly authentic food. When Tim and I went before, it was not busy, but when Liz and I went Friday night, it was packed! They only have 4 booths, and one table, and a bar along the side with bar stools. Every seat was full, and it was standing room only to order, and wait for your food. We all got soft tacos (I got fish and chicken and they got a mixture of beef and chicken), we also got cheese dip for Liz, and I wanted to try their churros. It was all delicious, and I think I’m now craving those churros on a daily basis! Good stuff. We started the next Harry Potter movie (#6 Half Blood Prince) and watched about 3/4 of it before I got sleepy. Tim got in after dark and had a good time playing golf.

Saturday morning, I got up early because it was storming, and Beau was very upset with the thunder and lightening. We all had a big breakfast (eggs on english muffins, grits, sausage, fruit) and then Tim worked on Elizabeth’s car, changing out the oil and oil filter. He’s such a good uncle 🙂 We all went mid afternoon to pick up Gail from the airport (she’d been out in Houston visiting Trent, Shanna and the kids since Thursday). After she headed home, Tim, Elizabeth and I went to see The Dark Knight Rises at Malco. (It was weird, after the shooting in Aurora Colorado at the midnight showing Thursday night). Good movie, I actually liked it more than I had thought I would.

We came home Saturday night and had some sandwiches and finished the Harry Potter movie. I hate seeing Dumbledore die, it’s very sad 🙁 Sunday means church, and Liz went with us to our church, then we all went out for a late breakfast at Corner Bakery. Tim watched a bunch of the British Open on TV and Liz fell asleep 🙂 He left to play golf, and she left to run errands. We hope she gets to come back soon and hang out 🙂

Monday is always my big cleaning day, no exception today. The only thing disappointing is that the sun and heat and humidity is back out in force. I’ve really been enjoying the clouds and chance of rain we’ve had off and on for the last two weeks. That’s gone now, and the 10 day forecast has almost zero chance of rain. Boo. Hiss. I want more rain!

We’re headed out in a couple of hours for our niece’s GED graduation. We love Brittany and are so very proud of her 🙂 It’s a long ride though, and we’ll be late getting in. Tomorrow will probably be one of those days when I really want to take a nap! 🙂

Last week was a pretty awesome one for me – it was cloudy or rained most every day! Just my kind of weather. Not as hot, cloudy and rainy, I don’t have to spend a lot of time outside, watering the grass, flowers, plants, herbs, etc. I am able to spend more time inside, reading 🙂

A quick recap of the weekend, since that’s when we get out and run around the most. Tim again didn’t play golf on Friday night, so we could have “date” night. Except that it was raining, so neither one of us really wanted to get out. Tim offered to cook rumien for me, so I always take him up on that offer! We watched the next Harry Potter movie (Goblet of Fire) and really enjoyed it. I understand them so much more now, having just read each book.

Saturday, Tim finally got to play golf. He had an early tee time with his buddies. Beau *really* wanted to go for a walk, but I decided to be lazy and stay home. Poor Beau. With all the rain, he hasn’t been in several days. I caught up on some shows on the DVR and read some on the new book I started on my Kindle, “Lion of Babylon” by Davis Bunn. Tim got in around lunch time and wanted to go out and eat, so we headed out and went to the new Newk’s near our house. We got shrimp po-boys and caesar salads, it was really good. I was surprised that their po-boys had steamed or boiled shrimp, instead of the normal around here, which is fried shrimp. After Newk’s, we headed to Sam’s to pick up a lot of items. When we got back, I had an email from the library saying that the next Harry Potter book (#6 Half Blood Prince) was FINALLY available. I have been waiting a while for it, so I went ahead and downloaded it and started reading. Around suppertime, Tim didn’t seem to want anything that we had in the house. So “we” decided to get pizza. 😀 Instead of our norm (either me making homemade pizza or us ordering from Papa Johns), he wanted to try Dominos. We placed our order on the web, then drove to the pick up spot a few miles from our house. We were both surprised that it was pretty good! The last time (years ago) we tried Dominos, it wasn’t good, but this was pretty good.

Saturday night, Tim wanted to rent a movie, and he really wanted to see The Grey with Liam Neeson, so he watched that while I went in the bedroom to read. Afterwards, I asked him if he liked it and he said NO. Which is not like Tim, he usually likes movies. He said it had a bad ending, so he was not very happy about it. I hated wasting the money to rent it (through Apple TV/iTunes), but at least he got to see something he wanted 🙂

Sunday was busy with church, then stopping by Fresh Market to pick up some figs, blueberries and a few things. Tim headed out again to play golf, and shot his best score to date, a 74. He was really happy when he got in!

Today will be “back in the saddle” day! We got up early to go walking, so that helped get us back in our routine. I’ve got a dirty house to clean and have to figure out something to cook for supper, so I guess it’s back to normal around here 🙂

Another Monday, and yesterday was the first day of July. Whew! This year is flying by, hard to believe it’s already half way over. It’s just hot and dry here. I’m spending most of my Monday morning outside, watering the grass, flowers and plants. It apparently rained here while were in Nashville, but we’ve been home three weeks tomorrow, and it has not rained one drop. It hasn’t even clouded up and pretended it might rain.

We had another nice weekend, enjoyed being at home and not being on the road. We had date night Friday night. We went to Newk’s and since Tim was in a healthy mood, we both got salads. I love their Newks Favorite, so that’s what I got, although I was sorely tempted to add some lobster bisque to my order (they only have it on Fridays and its soooo good!). Tim got the Ultimate, and we passed on dessert at the places next door (Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and Gigi’s Cupcakes) and instead came home and had some frozen yogurt (Moose Tracks, good stuff!). We watched the next Harry Potter movie (#3 Prison of Azkaban). Actually, re-watched since we’ve seen them all, but I’m enjoying going back and watching them since I’ve been reading the books. I’m slowly plowing through book 5, The Order of the Phoenix. It’s a long sucker (901 pages, this is probably the longest book I’ve ever attempted to read).

Anyway, Tim didn’t play golf Friday so we could have date night, so he played both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday, I had good intentions about getting more scrapbook pages done and reading some on the Harry Potter book. But I woke up with a horrible headache, seemed like sinus, so I spent most of the day resting, watching a little tv and fighting that headache. We watched more TV when Tim got home, and watched “How to Train your Dragon” from the DVR. Sunday was church, although later this week. July 4th weekend is one of the “One Service Sundays” they do in the summer. After church, we went to Majestic Burger and had lunch. My favorite, seared tilapia, for me and Tim tried a new one, the buffalo chicken. Their food is always good and we’re always pleased to go there. We ran by Fresh Market on the way home, looking for figs (I cannot remember when they are in season, I hope it’s soon… I love to get some and have for breakfast!). We bought some blueberries and salad dressing instead.

Sunday after Tim got back from playing golf, we ran to Sno Biz and got shaved ice (cherry pie for me and Patriot for Tim). I made homemade pizza and we watched “Larry Crowne” (also on the DVR) and some tv shows we had taped. All in all, my kind of weekend – eating out, watching tv and movies, and a little bit of reading. I didn’t get any scrapbooking done, so that was the only let down.

Going to be a busy week. July 4th means going to the big family get-together, and I’m sure there will be plenty of golf for Tim this week. I’m just glad it’s going to be a tad bit cooler, 96 or so this week, instead of 100 and 101. 🙂

We watch a LOT of TV around here. I used to list all the shows we watch in my sidebar, but I took it off a while ago — the list just got too long!

We have a lot of shows that we are excited about, that are returning. To mention a few: Chuck, NCIS and NCIS: LA, Leverage, The Mentalist, Fringe, V (not sure when it’s coming back on, but we really liked it), Bones, etc. We’re also pretty pumped about the new Survivor: Heroes vs Villains. I hope it’s a good one! We also like a lot of the USA shows like Psych, Burn Notice, White Collar and In Plain Sight. I’m on the fence about a few, most notably Heroes.

Being Jack Bauer addicts, we’re really excited about 24! We’re also going to try the new show that comes on this Sunday with 24, Human Target. I hope it’s good 🙂 Also coming back is the final season of Lost. I’m a bit conflicted about it, wondering how they are going to finish it and how satisfied or dissatisfied we will be. Sigh. I would give it up, but I like to complete things, so I feel compelled to finish out the series.

Another spring show that we used to watch is American Idol — but we’re going to give that one up. We weren’t huge Paula fans, but we hated that they let her go. I always liked the dynamic of Randy, Paula and Simon. Last year, I was just not thrilled with Kara, and I do NOT like Ellen DeGeneres. So, we had already decided to just skip Idol this time, and now this week, they’ve come out and announced that Simon will leave after this year. I’m a little confused about the new show that he will come out with in 2011, the X-Factor. It sounds just like Idol to me!

OK, just some rambling… if you are excited about any show coming on, leave me a comment and let me know. I know most people are not tv junkies like we are 😀

Couldn’t think of a snazzy title… I tend to use misc, random and odd and things like that a little too much 🙂 “Stuff” will have to do, since it is just a bunch of silly stuff!

* Things are busy here, yet not in some ways. Tim is working most every weekend, in the middle of the night, which really messes up his sleep patterns. He was up all last weekend, and I got up at 4 AM to put a roast in the crockpot. I discovered that a) 4 AM is not a natural time for me to be awake and b) once I’m up, cooking in the kitchen with all the lights on, it is very difficult to fall back asleep!

* I’m so glad football season is back, as well as fantasy football. Once again, I tried to draft my own players and ended up botching up my team. Oh well, at least it’s all for fun. It will NOT be fun around my house this weekend, as Tim and I go up against each other in our fantasy football league this time 🙂 On a happier note, both of our teams are doing well. Our college alma mater (USM) and Tim’s beloved Saints. Oh, the hope for our Saints springs eternal every fall!

* Beau has been very worked up lately. We’ve had a lot of grey days and rain and “looks like rain”, so he has not been outside as much. He has a lot of pent-up energy and some days he is hard to deal with. Of course, I should be a good doggie parent and walk him regularly, but I tend to open the gate and let him run wild in the area behind our house 😀

* I’ve been cooking a lot, and finally trying some new recipes. I have been motivated because we’ve installed a new recipe system on our website (more on that in a future post, I have one brewing in my drafts). Of the new recipes, most have been hits but there’s been a couple of misses. One was last night, I tried a crockpot orange chicken. I should have known better, and I did, but I wanted to try it anyway 😀 Tim doesn’t do citrus in any way, shape or form. I liked it though, so I’m debating on whether to post it on our site.

* I haven’t been reading as much as normal. I haven’t been watching many movies. It’s hard to pin down just what I have been spending my time doing, LOL! But we are picking back up all of our fall tv shows. So far, we’re back into Heroes, NCIS, the new NCIS: Los Angeles, Survivor, Bones, Fringe, and Mentalist. I think we have a few more to go. I wanted to try Flash Forward, but we already have two shows recording in that time slot, hehehe!

* I had a bunch of credit built up at Amazon, including some gift cards I have won at Swagbucks (check it out, and use me as a referral if you’re interested!). I ordered a bunch of books and I’m eagerly awaiting their arrival. Of course, I just went to the library, so I have a stack of books to read, but still. I love to get a box full of books on my doorstep in that brown Amazon box! I’ll post a picture when they get here (I always use free shipping, so it takes a lot longer!)

Ok, I’m sure there’s more… I have an update to my recycling post that I made a couple of weeks ago. And then there’s the wildly interesting post I have in my drafts folder about cleaning out and reorganizing my pantry, riveting stuff, I tell ya! Anyway, I’m still trying to blog, but I think a lot of people have given up blogging, as well as reading blogs. I still do Facebook and Twitter though, so maybe that is where I’m spending most of my time!

Have a wonderful, blessed day!

Tim called me outside a day or so ago, and said “You have to see this!”. I had no idea what he was talking about. I was just glad it was not a snake! We’ve had some rain here lately, although not as much as some areas around us. It’s been grey and overcast though, and it hasn’t dried out much, without the sun out. Apparently, it’s great weather for growing mushrooms!

Here’s what he wanted me to see:

And he put his golf club up next to it, to show how big it is in comparison 🙂

I think our days of watching American Idol are now over. We didn’t watch in the beginning, but picked up around season 4 or 5. Last year, when they added Kara, it was okay, but we weren’t thrilled. It helped that they had a lot of talent. I personally really liked both Kris Allen and Danny Gokey, and am looking forward to their albums later this year. But, now with them getting rid of Paula and adding Ellen DeGeneres, I think we’ll probably skip this one from now on.

Here’s a link to the story, if you’d like to read more… click here.

How about you, did you ever watch and will you continue to watch if you did before?

Just some random thoughts…

Life is busy, but life is good! I just need to blog more often, LOL!

Well, hello to all my fellow bloggers! We’ve been offline for about 2 1/2 weeks here. We went out of town one weekend, only to return and find that our website (hambones.org) was down and we were having hardware issues. We have a couple of computers that run our website, but the primary one (which is 4 1/2 years old, btw) was not booting up. We tried buying various parts locally, then had to order stuff online. Several times. One thing turned into another, and before you know it, we basically had to start over from scratch, on both hardware and software. I say “we”, but really I mean Tim. He’s worked night and day for weeks to get things back online. We still have a long way to go, there’s still a lot of problems and things that don’t work, things that used to work before. We were several versions behind on different components, things I don’t really even understand, but Tim does. Thank goodness! Our blogs are now back up, but we aren’t able to load pictures and images for a while, nor is the email working. And a few other things that hopefully are behind the scenes and no one will notice! LOL 🙂

So — you’d think with all that time while our website and my blog was down that I would have been uber-productive, huh? Well, you’d be wrong! I enjoyed the break immensely and had considered more than once not even blogging when we did get things back up. I’m still on the fence about that. However, yesterday, Feb 3, was the four year anniversary of my blog, and I sort of hate to just “give up”. So, we’ll see. I still have a few things to say, but not nearly as many these days 🙂 In the beginning, I blogged every day. About anything and everything. I talked about my day, all the little things going on, I did every meme that came along, etc. Those days are gone. Tim doesn’t like me to blog about where we go or what we do, at least for the most part, for security reasons. I’ve lost my mojo where memes and tags are concerned. And the days of blogging daily are long gone. We’ll see how long I do keep going though.

Back to the break – I should have gotten a lot of stuff done. But, I didn’t do hardly any of the “projects” that I should have done. I haven’t worked on the piles of paper and receipts and magazines that are overflowing around here. I watched a lot of TV, played a lot of Wii, read a fair amount (7 for the year, so far), and generally enjoyed the break. I did have my computer, so I was able to keep up with other blogs and Facebook. But I didn’t miss blogging here, so that leads me to believe that it may be time…

Ok, so, we’re back, but hobbling and limping along. If you have an error or notice something that is not working, please let me know. We still have a long way to go, but right now, Tim needs a break. He’s worked nonstop on this thing, night and day, and until the wee hours of the morning, for too long now. He’s a keeper though, don’t you think?! 🙂

I’m sure everyone is going to be busy this week. I know we are. We had a jam packed weekend and look to have a busy week and weekend coming up. This past weekend, we were only home at night to lay our head down on our pillow and sleep – we were gone most of the rest of the waking hours 🙂 We had a good time though, and are looking forward to a great Thanksgiving with family, and then Tim’s birthday next weekend.

I won’t be blogging much this week, or getting a chance to stop by and visit. I’m going to do a couple of things though:

1. Post a quick poll today about your Thanksgiving plans
2. Post a poll later in the week about Thanksgiving food
3. Try out a new theme for Christmas. Yes, I know I’m mixing holidays. Normally I don’t do that, but it seems that Thanksgiving is so late this year, that we won’t have a long time to enjoy the Christmas season. I may put up two themes. Let me know what you think (one will be blue and the other red).

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday!