Puzzled

When my wonderful mom is here, we like to do puzzles together. :-) This is our first... we have already moved onto the second one.

Before and After

My skin was feeling very restless, stressed and uptight today. It just couldn't relax, even with a massage. See?

Then I got out my new lotion from Jergens and rubbed it in.......

My skin calmed down immediately and was at peace. Amazing!

I know you will want to run out and get some so your skin can be calm, too! Hurry while supplies last.

Everything tastes better when you eat it outside....

The weather here the past few days has been perfect. Around 70, a nice breeze, not alot of bugs out, yet, and the pollen hasn't become unbearable. It's hard to believe we had SNOW a week ago!

These perfect days are few and far between, so we have to make the most of them. My favorite part is having windows open in the house, especially at night when I am sleeping! And then last night Libby wanted to have our dinner outside on a blanket on the lawn, but I talked her into the (covered) back porch instead. Our back porch isn't really big enough for alot of patio furniture (although I wish it was), but we drug an old table and some chairs out there and ate outside. I even cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill, so it was the perfect picnic food. And, we also had CORN (I like corn, just not the word) and fresh pineapple. And we used a bright, "Springy" table cloth I got recently for $1.00 at Old Time Pottery. It was really nice.

I am sharing this picture just to embarrass Sarah (my favorite past time)...... :-)And then the kids played on the swing set a while, but I couldn't figure out how to adjust my camera to take pictures from the porch, with the movement and the darkening sky... this is all I came up with (ha ha):

Plinky

I signed up for something called Plinky... that I don't fully understand... but I do know that they email me questions that I can use for blogging about, for those days when I am stuck for what to say, but really think the world needs to hear something profound from me...

Yesterday's question: "What words do you hate? Certain words just rub you the wrong way, don't they? List the ones you can't stand to hear". These are off the top of my head, I may think of more later.....

yikes

slice (as in "slice of pizza")

furthermore

manchild

woo (as in woo-ing someone you love)

corned beef

cornish game hens

corn

corny

hash (unless we're talking about hashBROWNS, then I'm okay with it)

On the flip side, here are some words I like:

dollop

supper

lavender

stupid

de-lish

quandry

Hmmm....

I have no real opinion on the "health care crisis" in our country... so I just wanted to say that up front. But sometimes I will hear a snippit of something and it will just stick in my mind, because something just seems a bit askew about it. I heard such a snippit this morning and I'm still mulling over why it bothered me. Obama said this in a speech recently on the need to do something about health care issues:

"It is no longer just a moral imperative, it has become a fiscal imperative".

And what I heard was, (read with sarcasm) "Oh... well, now that it's affecting us financially, then it certainly needs to be addressed. When it was only a question of what was morally right, that wasn't nearly as important".

And I'm glad there was acknowledgement that there might be a moral right and wrong in the whole issue. But, things don't seem to bother us nearly as badly until they start to affect us financially. Money prompts us into action, whereas morals may not. Just a thought....

The Sad Story of my Kitchen **UPDATED**

A few weeks ago, we noticed our wood floor in the kitchen was bubbling up. And gradually, it got worse... and we started to get these ugly dark spots that hadn't been there before. We assumed the dishwasher was leaking. We were right. But we also had a leak under the sink... and that one seemed to be causing a bad scent of mildew.

The plan right now, and we are waiting on the estimate from the repair guy and for the approval from the insurance... is to rip out the kitchen floor and put in a new one. We probably won't go with wood again because the wood goes into the dining room and it won't match AND I hate having wood in the kitchen... that's a long story. I am looking at the options. The work, though, will take 5 days and will include removing this section of the cabinets (below) because of the mildew underneath.

That will put the kitchen almost completely out of commission for 5 days. I am not looking forward to that.

And the dishwasher has already been out of commission since the beginnings of this sad story. I have been doing dishes by hand. Now, two nights ago, the sink backed up. Tim has tried, but cannot fix it and I am currently waiting on the plumber.

All my cleaning supplies in a box:


I have not been able to do dishes in 2 days.... I have them stacked in boxes because they were embarrassing me. They have food all over them. It's so gross. I have since switched to mostly paper products.

I can't wait to have my kitchen all done and get my life back to normal! :-)

**UPDATE**

The plumber came, spent 10 minutes, and got my drain unplugged. (Children: I recommend plumbing as a career choice because I know how much I paid him for that 10 minutes!) Here is the happy result:

My Heritage

Grand-daddy Freddie (as we like to call him) is my great great great grandfather. If you ever wondered where our family fortune came from- now you know. (I'm assuming you've seen this, Kristy!)