Christmas Day

It's Christmas Day-Family Force 5

The count down is over, Christmas is here! For unto us a child is born...
Happy Birthday Jesus!

One

Muppet Christmas Carol - One More Sleep Til' Christmas

Our tree is done!

Two

What Child Is This - Mercy Me

Our tree is almost decorated. We cut is a little close this year, seeing as we only have two days left, but our creativity sometimes takes longer then your average tree decorating person. Mom and I are going out this afternoon to gather the finishing touches. It will be beautiful.

Three

David Crowder Band - Feliz Navidad

Four

Emery- Jesus Gave Us Christmas

Five

I want a hippopotamus for christmas.

Six

This Is Christmas - Kutless

We went yesterday and got our Christmas tree. It took longer to tie it to the roof of the van than it did to pick it out. It was the first one we saw. We got it home and it took less time to set it up than it did to tie it to the van. It is a small little thing but as far as trees go its pretty adorable.

Seven

Dave Barnes-Very Merry Christmas. I got behind on my count down so I hope that I'm on the right day. I should get it right so I don't miss Christmas. That would be bad.

Eight

Point Of Grace - One King

Nine

Ten

Straight No Chaser - 12 Days of Christmas.

I now have sand bags in and snow tires on my car. I can go places again, like work.

Eleven

Other than our tree, all of our Christmas decorating is done. And I finished most of my shopping. I shopped on line again this year and I'm telling you its the only way to go. The only problem I'm having is where to hide the boxes.

Twelve

I am doing a count down to Christmas with my favorite Christmas songs of this year. I will begin the count down with Family Force 5, carol of the bells. I love there entire Christmas Album, the whole thing is my favorite. So here is number twelve or number one; which ever you would like to call it.

How Late is Too Late

I really was going to carve them. How long does a frozen pumpkin last? Will I be able to carve it in the spring? Will I remember that they are still there in the spring?

And Down Came the Snow

Lots and lots of snow.
I started this winter season with a positive attitude about snow. But after driving through a blinding snow storm (and I mean blinding), the kind where you have to drive five miles an hour and hope you don't die kind of snow storm that wasn't even supposed to be there. And doing another 180, this time on the high-way during said blinding snow storm. I don't have the same feelings about snow. To say it plainly I don't like it anymore. It has ( accept for right now) snowed none stop for a solid week. It does look nice but it makes it hard to go anywhere.
The sun came out today for awhile and made everything sparkly, but it is supposed to snow again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day...

Toll Roads

On my five hour road trip to my uncle's for thanksgiving we had to drive on the turn pike which is a toll road. I found that I can't reach the ticket from my car. Not even if I unbuckle and hang out the window. I sure that this is just me and no one else has this problem and if they did they could open the door and get out to get it. It was embarrassing. Thankfully I had Spencer with me. He had to jump out of the car and run around to get the ticket. It must have been really funny to the car behind us; watching my arm fling around in a desperate attempt to make it grow longer. Which didn't work. I did better the second time.

Today I almost crashed my car into a guardrail.

It rained all night and snowed all morning. Wet snow. I was on my way to work. I don't really have to go to work because I work at home but I go for hotdog day. Spencer was with me. We stopped at family dollar (which is new in town) so Spencer could get me my late birthday present. It was a ice scarper, I didn't have one so I was happy. We were back on the road several miles out of town when it happened. A truck past and I began to slid. I believe I had put the breaks on slightly, it was a big truck. There is something about sliding sideways down the road that is NOT calming in anyway possible. I completed my slid with a perfect 180 ending up in the opposite lane pointing in the opposite direction. I did not hit the guardrail. Spencer thought it was awesome. I did not think it was awesome. I drove home going much slower than I was when I left. I did not go to work and I did not collected my $200 dollars. I will be staying home for the rest of the day.

The First Snow of the Year!

Well, not really the first but the only one that stuck.

Thanksgivings

We had an early Thanksgiving with my mom's side of the family. We went down to my uncles house and I drove all five hours (that deserves a post of its own)! When everyone was there we actually ate hotdogs and hamburgers. We had the turkey later on. The ambulance was called, football was watched, and the moons were full. And to top it all off we went to the basket warehouse and I bought ceramic mushrooms, I'm very excited about them.
Dad had his traditional nap. This year he had company.

Then we had our family Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving. I ate much more than was good for me but so did everyone else, hence is was justified. Everybody laughed at me when I said that the table reminded me of the ocean. Well, not really the ocean as much as a captain's cabin on an old pirate ship. The food was good. As was everything else. We played scrabble, which Stephen's girlfriend Jaimie beat everyone. I kept score instead of actually playing. We then played dominion, its a lot of fun and there is no way to describe it, so I wont. Give thanks in all things.

This Makes Me Giggle

I can't help it. Its just so funny!

Lunar Halo

I saw one of these fabulous sightings last night above our house. Though the one I saw was very dim compared to the pictures I borrowed from google images. So no, the picture below is not my house. I have never heard of a lunar halo before and I find them most fascinating. So I shall tell you all about them.

Anatomy of a moon halo

The ring that appears around the moon arises from light passing through six-sided ice crystals high in the atmosphere. These ice crystals refract, or bend, light in the same manner that a camera lens bends light. The ring has a diameter of 22 degrees, and sometimes, if you are lucky, it is also possible to detect a second ring, 44 degrees in diameter. Thin high cirrus clouds lofting at 20,000 feet or more contain tiny ice crystals that originate from the freezing of super cooled water droplets. These crystals behave like jewels refracting and reflecting in different directions.

The shape of the ice crystals results in a focusing of the light into a ring. Since the ice crystals typically have the same shape, namely a hexagonal shape, the moon ring is almost always the same size. Also, they are sometimes called solar halos. Or if you want to be creative (like my brother and our friend Pete) you can call it a moonbow, a rainbow around the moon. They are pretty common and can be seen whenever cirro-stratus clouds are present at the convenient position and the skies are clear.

The Stuff That Shouldn't Happen

I don't know how much I came tell you about this so I shall leave out specifics and tell it as simply as I can. Just so you know, I did not witness this but it was told to me with great detail.


Last week at work an imported shipment came in, it was damaged on one of its corners. The cardboard and tape were ripped open and the content of the box was partly missing. Wrapped in the tissue paper (where the crystal snow flakes should have been) was something that looked like a piece of machinery. Slightly bullet shaped, no bigger than a shoe. Our warehouse manager was afraid to touch it, because it looked like a bomb to him. No one knew what it was so they called the building manager. Before he got there the guy that worked next door came over and picked it up, shaking it, trying to find out what it was. The building manager had never seen anything like it and it freaked him out, so he called the police. The police really did not like what they saw and they left the building as fast as they could taking everybody with them. The police called the bomb squad. Low and behold it was a BOMB! Then the FBI became involved, they showed up at my bosses house and questioned her for over an hour ( they really do wear suits and flip they badge when they arrive). It turned out that the bomb was not active and would not have blow up. The FBI are no longer concerned, so we are not worried. But it was still a bomb and I wasn't there to see it all happen. :(

Fall

Fall went too fast for me this year. I hate to see it go. The leaves are gone now, and the frost comes almost every morning. I'll have to get out and get some pictures of it because even though it is cold it's wonderful. I love taking pictures in the fall. No matter where you look everything is beautiful! It has snowed twice already. Nothing has stuck yet but winter coming.

Fire Hazard

I was called a fire hazard by the security guard at a Tenth Avenue North concert. Mom is in love with this band and she order tickets months in advance. They were special ticket that got us in early and really good seating. We went with a group of eight and we were sitting in the third row back. I we sitting in the aisle and had been there for about an hour, people were walking around me without a problem. The show started and around the start of the second song, I was told that I have to move because it was a hazard for me to sit there. In the case of a fire the 15 people in front of me would not be able to get out. If the building had caught fire I think that I would have been the first one out. I can move! I wouldn't sit there and say "oh, look the building seems to be burning. I should stay right where I am and get in peoples way so that we all die." The man said that I could move onto a normal chair or to the very back of the room to the wheel chair appropriate seating and I could take one person with me. Just one person, because everybody knows that us handi-cappers don't have friends. I chose the normal chair. So now I am completely immobile and the man took my chair to the back of the room. Now if there had been a fire, I block all the people just in my row not all of them, I cant move and I don't thinl the man wouldn't think to bring my chair back to me and if he did, he would have to fight the crowd to get to me. The whole thing was silly. I did end up moving to the back because when everybody stood up all I could see were butts. But even in the designated seating when the people stood up it was hard to see.

And they put all the merchandise on the second floor and no one could find the elevator. And when they did they said you have to go outside, around the side of the building and down several steps. Silly people.

October 3rd

My beautiful cousin Amanda got married!

Look What I Did...

...to my poor front bumper. I don't even have a good story to go with it. I'm going to say street racing. Because it sounds so much better than a slight misjudgement of distance.

All By Myself

Can you believe that it is September already? I can't, summer went too fast. But I love fall so I can deal.

I don't know about you but I still have those "I did it all by myself" moments. I had one such moment just the other day. I got gas (for my car) all by myself. This may sound easy to most and really it is, but if you think about it, its harder than it sounds. For me to get gas it is near impossible. First I would have to get out of the car, which would also involve getting my wheelchair out. Then I would have to get close enough to the pump to push the buttons, and most gas pumps are up on a concrete slab and a mile in the air. I don't do concrete slabs. Or most slabs for that matter unless it is in reference to food. I would then have to get back down to the car to do the actual pumping. In the past I have taken someone with me and made them do it. But no longer; I have solved the problem. I went to a full service station!! Ta Da! I even used my professional voice so I sounded like I have been doing this for years. " Fill it up please" I have places to go.

The Bunny Story

All the bunnies are gone. When we were on our family bike ride, most of the bunnies escaped. The people taking care of them while we were gone thought that they were supposed to be out, so they never put them back in the cage. We have cats and they like fuzzy things that hop. Anyway, when we got home we found that three of them had been killed. (including the two that we were going to keep) We caught the remaining bunnies and recaged them. The next day another one got out and before we could get it, the cat did. So we were down to four fuzz balls. And those ones were already promised to someone. Meaning we couldn't keep any. They went flop eared. So they all look dopey.On Wednesday Samantha and mom took the three rabbits Nicky, Cappuccino, and Buggsy (who was the bunny hopping round in our yard, we caught her) to the auction. They made eight dollars.
Now we are back down to our original two, Mordecai and Naomi.

Here's The Story Morning Glory

Well, we had two hens go broody. They have been sitting for a very long time, on a lot more eggs then fit under their little butts. Under one chicken the count was 16. They share their eggs with each other, switching net boxes and sometimes trying to sit on the same eggs at the same time. Back when we were away at our biannual family bike ride the eggs were collected and put in the frig. Nobody has eaten many eggs at our house for fear of what they may find. This little accident did not discourage the chickens. They simply started over with new eggs. We thought that they would have given up long ago because a egg takes 21 days to hatch, and they have been sitting for maybe twice that long. We did not expected any of the eggs to hatch. And it has only been 17 days since they started over. But yesterday when mom went out to the coop she found this:
His egg must have been hiding. The mother hen is very happy and the other hen is still sitting. We are going to move her into her own cage and see if she'll sit long enough for her eggs to hatch.

Reunion

Today I just realised that I have posted over three hundred times. This post is 304. I always feel so accomplished and that I have done more things than I actually have. I suppose that I will feel the same way when I reach 400. But that is not what this post is about. This is about the family reunion. Which has been going on for forever. Its pretty much the same as it all ways has been. No one know who anyone is and everybody eats too much. Gobs and gobs. This year there were alot of people missing, Grandma counted 30 some. However the hay ride did have hay, which is fairly new. But no one likes to sing anymore. The ride was long this year, I didn't mind. But some did, as little cousin Jarid put it "I don't like this tractor anymore. It doesn't stop at any houses or parking lots or nothing." Grandma was ready to jump off and walk back. It was rather boring until after supper when we got a good game of apples to apples going. There was Matthew, Samantha and I, Emily (I didn't know we had an Emily in the family) Teri, Nicole and her new husband Mark, and Jarid. Jarid is not in our family, I think he might have been the neighbor. But according to my mother he is her new brother. That was about it and we went home.

What Would You Have Done

A photo montage taken at Kingdom Bound, Darien Lake 2010.
SHARK!