3 things I saw today...

1.) A semi truck driver with both hands off the wheel, texting. Made me mad.
2.) An employee at Target with a safety pin stuck through her eyebrow. Made me a.) want to ask why. b.)throw up.
3.) An airplane pretty low in the sky and as it went through some clouds I could see it's shadow streching out in front of it on the clouds! Made me dizzy.

For My Mom...I love you!

Click each picture to see it bigger...

Happy Birthday to the Joy of my life!

Well, it was difficult to top last years dreamy party at the horse ranch but somehow we managed.

The girls decided that since Santa had delivered a 90 ft. zip line to Grandma and Grandpa Kensinger's house last Christmas, they wanted to have their party at their house. And as if 3 acres of country life, complete with 1/4 acre pond, trail through the woods, frog catching, gynormous tree swings, pumpkin painting and zip line weren't enough, my dad decided to build a tree house!! That's right, a house in the trees!! It was incredible. It was complete with this awesome little launch pad for the zip line. It is an amazing tree house. The party was perfect. My mom and dad are awesome!

Funny story...the morning of the party I woke up and decided 3 hours before people started to arrive was the perfect time to throw together some indoor party games. So, I scanned PINTREST (my favorite new addiction) for some ideas where I happily found this:

So, I ran (in the rain) up to Hobby Lobby to buy a giant piece of foam board, some balloons and oh how about $60 worth of other stuff for the party that I had not yet purchased! THEN, I had to go (in the rain) to Meijer's to get some darts and candy to stuff inside the balloons and $60 worth of other stuff! THEN, I discovered that I had somehow managed to FORGET the foam board that brought me out (in the rain) in the first place! So, back to Hobby Lobby for that...straight home to pick up the fam...and down to G&G's for the party. Thank you A-dub for getting the balloons to tape (in the rain) to G&G's mailbox to let people know where the party was, since I didn't bother putting an address on the invites!!!! And again I tell you...it's weird to be me.

P.S.As you can see God cleared away the rain for us for the rest of the afternoon. It was the perfect day for an outdoor birthday party.

   

The next day we continued the festivities with Grandma and Grandpa Merrill at our house for dinner. And of course, the girls with their all time favorite cousins!

All in one day

So, after the girls and I finished up reading Hatchi I was feeling sentimental about Lucky and decided to go to PetSmart and get him a new necklace with a pretty new tag. On the back I had it inscribed :

That was 24 hours ago.

Today, "Best Dog Ever" puked on the carpets I JUST WASHED LAST NIGHT! After recleaning the carpets I took him in the car to the store. After I stopped at Martins to get cake mix and taffy apples for my two little girls birthday party tomorrow, me and "Best Dog Ever" went to Michael's. When I got back in the car "Best Dog Ever" had completely eaten one box of cake mix and one taffy apple, getting ready to dive into number 2! Then, as if that's not enough "Best Dog Ever" climbed over the fence and out of our yard where I found him amazing close to the edge of the busy road we live on.

We named him Lucky for a reason.

the Amazing Grace W.

  So, Emily had her horse back riding lessons this morning on dear sweet Sugar. The lessons went great. Her instructor said Sugar did really well today, much better than last week. All was great. Afterwards, Emily's BFF Grace W. wanted to ride her. Well, the inside arena was full, the outside arena was full, so we decided to take her out into the open expance of land way out past the enclosed areas.

  As we were walking out there I noticed the "inmate horses" in the fenced in pastures were all excited by the fact that one of their own was heading out to the open pasture. But, alas, I am not a horse person so I didn't recognize that as a potentially ominous sign.

  So, we get out to the vast open pasture and Grace gets on Sugar and all is well for about 20 seconds. Something, who knows what, but something made those fenced in horses take off running and the second they did off blazed Sugar. With dear 9 year old Grace holding on for dear life. She was screaming and I'm telling you that horse was off and gone, following the trail that apparently leads back around to the barn. Well, once she was out of the pasture and around behind the fenced in area you couldn't see her at all. They just disappeared. So, I ran the what felt like 20 miles back to the barn, jumped in my van and drove as quickly as possible back to where they disappeared and followed their path. All I could think about was the fact that we're no further than a quarter mile from US31. And Sugar was headed in that direction...

  When I finally came up to the back side of the barn, there stood a guy from the sherrif posse, our trainer, Sugar and Grace-smiling like she just had the time of her life!!! I couldn't believe it. Sugar was standing there wondering what all the fuss was about and Grace was ear to ear grin. I said "Grace, please tell me you're going to ride a horse again" and she said "of course I am, that was fun!"

This will probably upset some of my faithful readers...

Oh wait...I don't really have any. 'Cept mom-hey mom!
So I may as well let it all out. Here it is...I'm thinking about renaming my blog to...dum da da dum...College Education is (mostly) a Joke!!!!!! How do you like it? It's fresh and new and controversial, I think it will work perfect.
Here's the problem folks. I am 39 years old. I was born to be a mommy. Emily and Grace's mommy. And there is nothing better in the world than being their mommy and their daddy's wife. I LOVE IT. But, now that my children are growing up and in school Mark and I decided it was the perfect time for me to go back to school and get my degree so that I can do the other thing I was born to do...teach.
I know children. I know how to teach children. What I need is a degree telling everyone else that I can teach. So, here I am at IUSB. One of the general education classes I am required to take is art. Well, sure, why not. I'm going to be an elementary teacher. I should know some art. So, let me tell you about this class that cost my family $700 and countless hours of my life. Today we made paper. Last Thursday we spent 2 1/2 hours making paper. Today we made more. Except it wasn't "we." Because there is only room for  about 6 students to do it, the other 10 sat at their seats and talked to each other. The instructor talked about the Blueberry Festival and her book selling endeavors to one of the non-paper making students. And that is how our valuable class time was spent today. Talking to each other about what we did this weekend. This is class #5 and we have done nothing. AND! The paper making we did was not "here is how they did it in the old days" it was let's tear up already made paper, put it into our $16,000 grinding machine, press it under our high tech compressor machine and call it hand made!
Please someone explain this to me.
I am convinced that it is IUSB. I know this can't be happening all over the place. I have to tell you, if I had a kid here, at least in the Education dept. I would be furious to find out that this stuff is passing for an "education."

This is an amazing interview...

I think we could all learn a lot from this incredible man...

Crank.It.UP.