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Showing posts from June, 2007

Summer Movie Reviews Weeks 2 & 3

Our local movie theatre (like many of yours, I'm sure), offers free summer movies on Tuesdays and Thursdays for children. (Each week, two movies are run -- you go see one on Tuesdays and the other on Thursday) We missed the first week because I forgot about the program. We missed the second week due to VBS. We missed the third week's movie because of a punishment I doled out to my son and had to stick to (I hate that! The two movies showing last week were Monster House and Akeelah & the Bee. I was outvoted two-to-one, so we saw Monster House). This week, we saw Dreamer and Happy Feet.



I will be reviewing all three movies. Next week, I'll post a review on Tuesday and Thursday.



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MONSTER HOUSE (PG) CGA -- DJ spends all of his free time staring out his bedroom window at the house across the street, home of grouchy Mr. Nubbercracker. Nubbercracker is so grouchy (how grouchy is he?) that he fusses at children who dare step on his lawn. As punishment, he confiscates their toy…
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The Four Unrecoverable Things

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Infallible Aspirations

Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.- Louisa May Alcott, author




For some of my readers, this blog entry might look familiar as I presented the question in two groups. For those of you who are reading this as a web friend, this is the question I presented: If you could not fail, what would you do? In other words, if you could succeed at what ever you did, what would you strive to do? Would you get over a fear of heights and go flying? Would you go back to school and get your masters? Would you go into business for yourself? The point of the question being what is possible when you take away self doubt and fear of failure. If you sit and think about the options (and there are so many!), it's quite awesome.


I asked my 9 year old son the same question this morning. He said he wanted to tour Europe. I further asked him how this wasn't already possible when…
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Quick Entry -- Back to Business

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I have taken 3 weeks off from Sparking. The good news is that I haven't regained any of the 30 lbs that I lost. This tells me that, when the time comes, I'll be able to maintain. This fills me with confidence as that was one of my concerns. Losing weight is one thing -- but keeping it off? I grew sick just thinking about it! But, these three weeks have proven that I can do it...with relatively little effort (or perhaps six months of good habits are ingrained in my whole being?)

So, now that I know, it's time to get back to business. I didn't do too well yesterday -- I didn't eat enough -- only 900 calories. I've already eaten almost 900 calories with just breakfast and lunch today, so I'll do much better.

I haven't done my workout (I tend to do videos -- we've all seen what happens when I try to take a walk! LOL). I wanted to wait until my son got done with his math. Yesterday, he sat at the table all day l…
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Father's Day

I have three fathers...how many do you have?

No, of course I wasn't conceived by three different men. But I have had three different men in my life act as my father. But not in the way you think...

I listen to the radio a lot. I wake up to Bob and Sheri. I listen to the radio while I'm doing dishes and when I'm driving in town (if I'm not listening to the latest VBS CD or XMRadio, that is). One thing I noticed is that everyone spent Friday talking about their father's and the specialness of them.

Bob and Sheri are my cup of tea. Sheri described her parents as this: "My mom and dad were chain smokers. One day, my dad said that we were going to have to cut some corners to save some money. I looked at him and said that maybe we could stop buying so many cigarettes. He took a long drag off of his cigarette and looked at me as he exhaled and said "And maybe we could stop buying so much food and feeding you."

Okay, so this is bleak. Sheri will be the …
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Why Honky Tonk?

Honky Tonk is what my husband calls my music. To him, it's the standard country-western sob story of the wife leaving her husband for his brother, taking his truck and his dog. But modern country is so much more! To me, modern country is the music of the people: political and social and I like that.

Music has to speak to me. If it doesn't, I won't listen to it. What you hear in the background is the music I'm listening to at the moment. Some of it's fun, sure...but most of it is about social issues. My current favorite artists are Taylor Swift (a cute little teenager who sings about what she knows, which is refreshingly honest) and Rodney Adkins. Included in my song list is Kelly Clarkson (who is not really country), Trace Adkins (are they related?), Brooks and Dunn and Josh Turner. I have tons more, which I'll probably end up adding later, but I thought I'd comment on these:

Teardrops on my Guitar (Taylor Swift) -- Who doesn't remember their high…
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Glow-in-the-dark mess

The kids have been attending VBS (Vacation Bible School) this week and today, they brought home those glow-in-the-dark bracelets. The Oriental Trading Company sells them and I suspect this is where the church got theirs. (When I taught VBS a couple of years ago, the director bought a lot of goodies from OTC as their prices are decent and you can buy in bulk).

Anywho, the kids and I are driving down the road and they are telling me a story that the director told them about a time she went to a concert. Someone had cut one of the bracelets open and started swinging it around. Well, I guess a glob of the liquid landed in her eye and she went rushing to the bathroom, in pain. She said when she got there, her eye glowed in the dark, but the pain was not worth the cool effect so the children should not to try to open the bracelets in anyway.

Unfortunately, when you tell my children not to do something, it's a sure-fire way to ensure that they will. I'm not entirely sure how it …
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Playing around a bit

Okay, so I've been playing around with my blog. I'm sure you can't tell from looking at it (or maybe you can), but this is an old blogger template (standard HTML coding). The new blogger (from what I can tell) is XML coding. It's quite a challenge to find templates for the new blogger. I walked through a tutorial with a friend and she has a really great blog set up. But I saw this and I really liked it, so I switched back to classic. It probably won't stay as it doesn't support widgets (did you notice all my links are gone?) In fact, I can't edit the links that are displayed here without going in and messing with the HTML coding. I know the basics, but nothing fancy. I am a cut and paste woman (giving proper credit where credit is due always!)

I use free templates as I can't afford to buy one. Besides, I wouldn't consider myself a power blogger. Oh I'd love to be one! And I suppose the summer months is the best time to start because my time is mo…
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My not-so-typical day

My dear readers, you've already deduced that I'm not the kind of housekeeper whose house can pass the white glove test. It's clean. It's just not spotless. Well, usually...

For the past couple of days, I've had this urge to clean my house. If I were pregnant, I'd say I was nesting. I still say I'm sympathy nesting for a friend. Or it could just be that with the new system I have in place for the kids, I want to get more organized. Or maybe I'm done with my summer break and ready to get back to work. Whatever the case may be, I spent my whole day cleaning yesterday.

Typical cleaning for me is vacuuming, sweeping and mopping. (Remember, clean--not spotless). Yesterday, I vacuumed walls, cobwebs, spider webs (my son was able to rescue a few spiders for his collection) and baseboards. I found curtains in my laundry room and decided to hang them. I cleaned out the refrigerator and the freezer. I swept and mopped the kitchen floor. I vacuumed hall…
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The Just-Like-Dad Pay System

I've discussed this loosely on various message boards and since most of my friends are familiar with this blog, I figured I'd discuss it in depth here.

For awhile, I've been debating whether to pay my son for doing his chores. If I do, how do I determine what he gets paid? And shouldn't he do chores simply because he's part of the family? And if he does do chores as part of the family, should I pay him an allowance? Should he get an allowance for doing nothing?

After thinking things over and talking things over with the gals over at Homeschooling Moms, I have come up the following system. (If anyone would like sample documents of my system, just let me know and I'll pass them on along).

The system I have come up with fondly called The Just-Like-Dad Pay System and is loosely based on how my husband gets paid. My son has a list of chores that he does because he is a part of the family (keeping his room cleaning, scooping out the litter box, taking out the tras…
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Is there a 12-step program for this?

Today, I spent my whole day in my bedroom -- cleaning. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be such a big deal. Everyone cleans their bedrooms, right? For four hours?!?!

No, what I did today could only be described in one word: sick.

Don't believe me?

Exhibit A: I dusted all my furniture, including my oscillating fan!
Exhibit B: I went through both DH and my bedside tables, organizing them.
Exhibit C: I cleaned under my bed and vacuumed.
Exhibit D: I cleaned out my closet and vacuumed it, too.

All of this sounds pretty 'normal', right? I saved the best for last:

Exhibit E: I color coordinated the clothes in the closet and the empty coat hangers!

I really need help! I never clean this thoroughly. I'm not exactly a bad housekeeper, but I do what needs to be done and pretty much let the rest go. After all, housework is one of those tasks that, in my opinion, is a fruitless waste of time. Don't get me wrong -- keeping a clean house is important -- but let's be honest -- …
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