Who?

    vs I think Maggie could make a fairly good Cindy Lou Who.

Merry Christmas, Y’all

Hope everyone had a good Christmas.  Ours was very nice, aside from Maggie having a little stomach bug.  Its funny what turns out to be a little kids favorite gift.  She’s not dragging the giant teddy bear I got her around the house, but her new potty chair (don’t panic, she hasn’t learned to use it yet).  I think she likes that it has handles on it.

Books, movies, and critics

Went to see Eragon last night. It was a fun movie. But I am a book person and it really irritates me when the movies change things and leave out stuff that is in the books. To me, a book can contain so many more sublties than a movie can, and there’s no time constraint. I want Maggie to learn to read the books first. Now there’s a lot of critics who don’t like the Eragon books and thought the movie was even worse. They say it is just a mix of Star Wars, LoTR, and Pern, which is true, but lets remember this is a book writen by a 15 year old for 15 year olds. It was the Black Stallion books that taught me to read as a kid. Those are just sooo profound aren’t they. Most kids are not ready to sit down to Tolkien, or at least not ready to really understand it, and lets face it the thing I like best about star wars is not the plot but the fact that it was the seventies and they didn’t have animation and full orchestral scores were just making a comeback. I mean really, picture star wars without John Williams, it just wouldn’t work. And I don’t think the newer three were nearly as much fun anyways. So lets just keep it in context, its a cute dragon, a classic plot, and an enjoyable story. Oh and the Friesian horse Brom (or Obi Wan as the critics are calling him) was riding, eye candy for me.

Happy Birthday Kristen!

To my sister, should have put that up last night, but you can see it was midnight when I was writing last night and I didn’t think of it.

Prayer for the day

I recieved this prayer as an email forward.  I’m not into forwarding emails, but I thought it was very interesting.

 When Minister Joe Wright was asked to open the new session of the
Kansas Senate, everyone was expecting the usual generalities, but
this is what they heard;

“Heavenly Father,
We come before you today
To ask your forgiveness and
To seek your direction and guidance.

We know Your Word says,
“Woe to those who call evil good” But that is exactly what we have done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium
And reversed our values.

We have exploited the poor and
Called it the lottery.

We have rewarded laziness
And called it welfare.

We have killed our unborn and called it choice.

We have shot abortionists
And called it justifiable.

We have neglected to discipline
Our children and called it
Building self esteem.

We have abused power
And called it politics.

We have coveted our neighbor’s
Possessions and called it ambition.

We have polluted the air
With profanity and
Pornography and called it
Freedom of speech and expression.

We have ridiculed the time
Honored values of our
Forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us, Oh, God,
And know our hearts today;
Cleanse us from every sin
And set us free.
Amen!”

Do crayons really taste that good?

I really did have something clever I was going to write, but now I forget what it was. Can’t turn my back on Maggie right now, seems this comes in stages. Everytime I turn around she’s got something in her mouth, or is up on top of something, or managed to get her crayons off the top of her bookself and is feeding them to the dogs and sampling a few herself. You’d think kids would figure out that they don’t taste like the colors.

They found the money

Well, the treasure was found way far away from where we were looking. I would feel horrible if it had been right under our noses, but I was not going to drive all over the city looking for it, so good for them.

Here’s a funny thing. I heard on the radio on my bus ride to work that some Truckers magazine voted Louisiana as the worst roads in the country, and guess who’s second- good old PA (no I can’t spell it out). The two states we’ve lived in.

What a weekend

Started out with the treasure hunt. Ever listen to those radio scavenger hunts where they hide the treasure and give you clues to hunt around the city? I don’t usually pay much attention to them, except Thursday night we find out people are looking for $5000 on our street. So I stressed all Friday trying to figure out the clues and I was rooting through our local cemetary at 7:30 Saturday morning. It was 27 degrees out. Once I couldn’t feel my toes I came home to find Mike trying to fix our heater which stopped working over night. Of course the repair man wanted $300 to come out and fix it. Mike found the broken part and fixed it for $15. Yeah Mike! But I think I had a permanent chill by then. Then one of my Guineas got loose and we had to chase him around the yard for a good bit. Some friends came out and we did more treasure hunting but nothing turned up. We could really use it thats for sure. I listened Sunday morning for the clue, but the next one made no sense at all, neither did today’s, so I give up. So I really was going to go to church until we looked out the window and saw that Rhiannon had “climbed” the chain link fence and was in the backyard. Not much left of the fence. It was such a nice looking fence too. So we spent the morning running electricity across the back fence. Now I have no posts to tie to, and I don’t know how to get the horse through the gate if I want to trail ride because of the wire running right in front of everything. Then I decided to go Christmas tree shoping. Our house is small, I don’t want a tree that’s more than four foot, and Mike being a fire fighter doesn’t really want a live one. But Christmas and small apparently no longer belong in the same sentance. And when did the live trees get so expensive? Walmart had a little Charlie Brown tree for $19, but who knows how long it had been sitting out drying. And all the artificial trees that were plain simple trees looked like plastic shreds on a metal pole. They had a fiber optic tree that was all glittery that was the right hight, or you can get a 7 foot one that really does look real for $200, or they have ones that look like tin foil or have snow sprayed on them, but nothing that is just a plain and simple little tree but doesn’t look like junk. Home depot had some cute little trees in pots, but they were only like a foot and a half high. So I went home treeless. Maybe we’ll just put the presents round the nativity set, long as the dog doesn’t eat any more of the figurines. And I still need to get Maggie a Christmas dress before they are completely picked over. Am I the only one who finds this time of year completely stressful? At least its supposed to be a little warmer this week.

Why I don’t watch the news

Mike and I were talking about having one of his friends over who is Muslim, and I’m excited because I’ve never sat down and talked to a Muslim before, and then it occured to me that I have no idea what’s going on in the news in that part of the world right now. Not that that would necessarily be part of the dinner conversation, but it made me think about why I don’t care to watch the news. One, I tend to think it is entirely biased. They show you only what they want you to see so they can get their sensational story out and get everyone riled up. Two, its usually downright depressing. Who really wants to hear about the latest murderer before they go to bed? I think there should be a news station that only does happy stories. What would happen if we only told the good things that happen, and only say supportive things about the president, and highlighted the good things this country has done instead of the criminals. Maybe there’s a website that already does that, I don’t know, I do watch the discovery channel, but there should be on one prime time TV, so we could learn whats going on without all the destructive talk. Think about the power of positive. It could change the world.

Picture of the day

I think the rabbit gets a kick out of this.