Messing with the camera

Yesterday we got to see my daughter's old babysitter. Or Nana as they called her. We hadn't seen her in a few years. They were a little quiet around her because they haven't seen her in so long but it was a nice visit. She was the best babysitter! I was so lucky to have found her when I did, just before my first was born.

Last night I was hanging around outside with my oldest and I decided to bring out my camera and was playing around with it. I tried a different setting and ended up with this:

She thought it was so cool that she wanted to try some other movements and see what we'd get. So here are the others.

I also tried taking a few of the moon, but they kind of suck! lol I need to work on that, I usually end up with an ugly white blob. There is one that is semi OK but I think I need to play with it on photoshop a bit. You can see some of the detail on the moon but it's a little dark and the sky is black but when I was taking the pic it was still fairly light out and the sky was still blue.

Hmm, there is supposed to be a lunar eclipse at around 5 am tomorrow. Maybe I'll get up and try to catch that. Haha, who am I kidding?? I'm so not a morning person!

One more week!

That's when the kids go back to school. WooHoo! But really, I don't know if I'm more excited or nervous.

Excited because they will be back on a more regular routine and out of my hair for a few hours a day....some quiet time for me! I'll be able to get out and work a little more. Not that I love my job but it gets me out of the house and the extra spending money is nice. They won't be here constantly bickering about EVERYTHING! And driving me bonkers! I know it was just a few short months ago that I was looking forward to them being out of school, so we could sleep late and spend more time together. That changed fairly quickly.......it's a vicious circle.

Nervous because my older daughter will be going back to school for the first time after being diagnosed with diabetes. I'll constantly be worrying about her and hows she's doing. Also because my younger daughter ended up with the toughest teacher in 3rd grade, after having the complete opposite in 2nd grade. I was worried enough as it was that she'd be behind the other kids, now more so! Who knows maybe that toughness and structure will be good for her. She can be a handful!

Where's Noah with that ark?

It's raining yet again tonight. It's like day 6 or 7 or 8 in a row now! I don't know, I've lost count and I'm about to float away! It's getting quite soggy and by the time we'll be able to mow the grass we're going to need a machete to get through the yard. At least the grass is green.

Army Wives

The army has its code.......the wives have their own.

I'm really enjoying this new series on Lifetime about living life as an army spouse. I'm just a tad behind in watching it though. I think the season finale is this Sunday but I still have like 6 episodes waiting for me on my tivo! I sneak them in when I can. I don't think I've made it through one episode yet without shedding a tear to two.

I have to give those in the military and their spouses credit. It's not an easy life. I don't think I could handle all that comes with it. My husband was in the reserves for a few years and I didn't like when he was gone for his two weeks each year. Desert Storm was going on right before we got married and there was some talk of his unit possibly being called up for that and I freaked!

August 23, 1949

Join me in wishing my favorite singer, songwriter, actor Rick Springfield a very Happy Birthday!!

Here are a couple pics I've taken in concert this past year.

Not bad for a man of 58, hey?? And here we are when I met him at a sound check in May of 2006.

Whew! TV crisis avoided!

First I must say my husband and I watch quite a bit of TV. Now that we have the Tivo.....forget it, we are taping everything! lol I love it though, I'm able to watch some of my favorites when it fits my schedule and not miss them because of other appts. etc.

Anyway, hubby turns on the TV today and there's sound but no picture! He comes into the bedroom knocks on the bathroom door telling me that we are in crisis mode. What? We can't live like that. Especially now with Rick Springfield's Noah/Eli storyline finishing up it's run this week with him performing on GH for the first time ever!!

So he calls Best Buy to set up a service call. We just got this Sony Wega about 1 1/2 yrs ago and it's still under the extended warranty. They told us the bulb would last much longer than this so we were a little miffed. A short time later I turned it on to see what was up, no pic. But I asked if he had changed the channel, tried this, that? I changed the channel and boom we have picture! Whew! Because who knows how long it would have been to get a technician out here.

So now he is happily watching TV (and eating dry croutons, what's up with that?) as I type this. Just finished watching The Take Home Chef........now who wouldn't want to take him home??

Mount Rainier pics

I thought I'd share some more pics from our trip to Washington. These were taken the day we visited Mount Rainier National Park.
An uprooted tree...


My daughter wanted me to get a close up of the rain drops on the leaves.

One of the waterfalls we stopped at on the way up the mountain.

It was cloudy and rainy that day so much of the mountain was hidden.



I think this is one of my favorites from that day.




I like this one too. It has kind of an eerie feeling to it.

Mmmm! Frozen Custard!

Just got back from a frozen custard run. I had been craving it all day since I saw the flavor of the day! If you aren't familiar with it, it's a frozen treat that is creamier and softer (but not like soft serve) than ice cream. And in my opinion way yummier!

There is even a website (Custard List) that tracks the flavor of the day at various custard stands around the US. Now I think it used to be just in the SE Wisconsin area but today is the first day I've looked in years and it lists quite a few states. I used to think it was a fairly regional thing, but I guess it's spreading. I had a friend that used to monitor this site on a regular basis to find her favorite flavors. I don't know maybe she still does. She also used to periodically bring custard to her co-workers when she worked over the border in Illinois because they had no place to get it down there.

So, if you ever get to an area that has it, try some. My favorite: Caramel Cashew!

Another Birthday girl

Or should I say "older adult", "old lady", "senior citizen"?? ;)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!! (u dora!)

Too bad I didn't win at the casino last night or maybe I could have bought you a present!

Harry Potter

Well, we finally got a chance to go see Harry Potter on Wednesday. Great movie. But of course you knew I'd say that. I've loved all the book and the movies. Now I just need to get reading so I can get to the last book. I'm in the middle of re-reading book 4 right now....The Goblet of Fire. I just might skip re-reading the other two and go right to the new one. I can't wait any longer! I want to find out what happens and who dies :( I can't believe it's been, what? 10 years since she started the series and now it's come to and end. Looking forward to the last two films also. They better get moving, the actors are starting to get too old for the characters they play! lol

The only bad part was sitting near people who couldn't be quiet! The woman behind us made comments on all the previews and throughout the movie. Even was imitating the sound of the water horse in the preview for that new movie. Then this guy started belching. Not a small "accidental" burp or anything. A full on, I know it's coming belch!! And a few times. Gross!

Anyway, heading out to dinner and gambling tonight. Wish me luck!

Birthday Girl

My little girl turns 12 today! What am I saying, she's not so little anymore. She's 5'4", only 3 more inches to go to catch up to mom. Normally we go out to dinner when it's one of our bdays, but my husband works tonight so we're going to do lunch. She picked Olive Garden. Then we will do something with gramma this afternoon. It's kind of rainy, maybe we'll finally go see Harry Potter!

She keeps coming down to announce how many minutes she's been 12! Too funny. She is in the process of designing a picture to make our own matching shirts to wear for our diabetes walk. I'll be doing those on cafepress. Looking forward to seeing how they turn out. She's been doing some cute "doodlez" (as she calls them) lately.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAIGE!!! LOVE YOU!!

(oh, and I know it doesn't really match my page, but we're in green today to honor her. It's her fave color right now)

Doesn't it just figure

That...
1. Because I have to get up early today to work, the one day in the past two weeks, I couldn't sleep last night? Thunderstorms, snoring husband and whiny kid!

and
2. Because I KNOW I have to pull my hair back for work (preparing food) that it's a good hair day and it actually looks fairly decent down. That doesn't happen much at all!!

So better get going to work!
Later~

What's your thing?

By that I mean, the one thing you need to have, have too many of or every time you go into a store you have to look at whether you'll be getting it or not. For me it's shoes (well besides cameras). I just got a new pair on Thursday and it got me thinking about it.

Back about 12-13 years ago my husband and I were getting ready to move into our first house. I worked at Kmart at the time and remember asking a co-worker to save a box she was emptying. She knew we were moving and asked what I was going to use it for since it was fairly big and odd sized. When I told her my shoes her jaw dropped and she asked just how many pairs I had. Well, I went home that night and counted and it was only about 35-40 pairs from what I can recall. Nothing out of the ordinary, I thought! She couldn't believe it when I went back and told her the next day. She started calling me Imelda Marcos. Not quite, from what I read on Wikipedia she had more like 3000.

Anyway, with that move and the next I condensed and slowed down in the shoe buying because we had kids. Our money was going to clothe and feed them!! Go figure. But over the past couple years I've started accumulating again. I counted now after buying this last pair and I'm at 25 (27 if you count my two pairs of winter boots).

For my mom it's books.......go into ANY store and if there is a book for sale she will find it!! For my grandmother it was curtains. Don't ask me, I don't get that one at all!! I hated being dragged to the curtain dept. every time we went shopping.

So, what's your thing?

Dreams

It's been a while since I've remembered a dream and now here I've remembered them the past three nights in a row. I usually do recall them quite often, my husband claims he never does. Maybe he just doesn't want to tell me! I really don't know anything about dreams, why we dream certain things or what they mean but I think it's interesting non the less. So, wanna hear mine? I'm gonna tell you anyway.......

Monday I dreamt that I saw Rick Springfield in a Levi's jeans commercial. I was watching Days of Our Lives (which I haven't watched in a long time) and there was a scene with Bo and Hope and it went to commercial and it was Rick crawling around in jeans. Nice! After it was done I tried to rewind my tivo to see it again and I couldn't find it. :(

Tuesday my dream was that I noticed the new Harry Potter book we bought was missing pages and I was frantically trying to warn my mother who was reading it at the time. I recall that in the dream I stated exactly which pages were missing but I can't remember them now. It was a chunk of about 300 pages.
I'm thinking it comes from the fact that my mom mentioned she saw in the news that there were a bunch that were misprinted. They were missing pages but had double of others.

Last night I dreamt that we were all sleeping in my mom's old house and this car full of people pulled up in the driveway and someone started pounding on the door screaming something about lying. We all woke up and I screamed at my brother to call 911. By the time we got through the car had left.
Now when I woke up I had the feeling of this happening twice and I can't determine if I've actually had a similar dream or if in the dream it was the second time it had happened. Weird....

Grocery Bagging 101

Is it too much to ask that the people bagging your groceries actually know what they are doing? I'm sick of coming home with more bags than necessary, squished food, all the heavy stuff in one bag or cleaning supplies mixed in with fresh food. It's not rocket science people!! Today as I put my bags in the van they wouldn't stand up straight, when I got home I realized it was because she laid all the bottled stuff sideways on the bottom of the bag and then tried to stack stuff on top of it. My frozen items were spread throughout all the bags. Why? I purposely put them all together on the belt so when you bag them they are together. Ugh!

A trek through the wilderness

During our trip to Washington we visited Northwest Trek Wildlife Park in Eatonville, WA. You take a tram ride through the woods and can possibly get up close and personal with some of the wildlife there. The last time we visited in Sept of 1998 we didn't get that lucky. This time we got pretty close to many of the animals. At times so close you could have reached out and touched them. I decided to keep my hands to myself!
I thought I had down which was which as far as the elk, caribou and moose. Now I'm not quite so sure. You're guess is as good as mine. They do have each marked on the map I have but I'm guessing they don't stay in their designated area marked on the tram tour map so going by the order they are in the pics is not necessarily a sure thing!

Say what??

So, I'm out running errands with the kids this afternoon. My 8 year old decides she needs to ask me a question. "Mom?, How can turkeys hear us blink?" Um, What??
I thought I was losing it and asked her to repeat herself. Yup, that is definitely what she said. That's a new one! I just told her they must have really good hearing. I hadn't the slightest idea where she got that until she explained to my husband later in the day that that is what the kids in her class who go hunting with their dads told her.

So there you have it. Next time you are sneaking up on a turkey, be sure NOT to blink!! They'll hear you coming!

Summer movies

Went to see Ratatouille with my kids, my mom, my niece, and brother yesterday afternoon. Wasn't my first choice for a movie to see but it was the only one we could agree on that was also appropriate for my 8 year old daughter and 7 year old niece. I usually like the animated kids movies anyway. This one was OK, wouldn't add it to my favorites list. But at least now I know what Ratatouille is!! A french stewed vegetable dish.........made by rats (well in the movie).

My choices for movies to see this summer (though I know I won't see them all and will end up putting them on my netflix list when they come to DVD):
Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix This is my number one choice. I've seen all the others and read all the books and I can't believe it's been out for 3 weeks now and I haven't gone yet. Been way too busy.
I'm in the process of re-reading all the books right now because I wanted to refresh my memory on everything before I read the last book. My mom is currently reading it and will be finished way before I'm ready. I am only on book 4 right now. I better get a move on!! I know she is dying to tell me some stuff that has happened and I've been trying not to read any reviews on the new book.

License to Wed I absolutely love John Krasinski from the Office so I really want to see this one, even if only to check him out!

Hairspray I just wanna see John Travolta in drag! I did hear the movie was good though, we'll see.

And the two that aren't really in theaters anymore, except a few value cinemas that are not very close to us,
Pirates: At Worlds End I know it's a really long one, but I've seen all the others and wanted to continue.
Fantastic Four: Silver Surfer For some reason I like the first one, not sure why so was interested in this one too.