Owner: Writer-Mom URL:http://writer-mom.blogspot.com Join Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 09:58:02 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: "Random daily surprises in all colors shapes and sizes."
A grab bag of my thoughts, life with four little boys, on being a pastor's wife, on Christianity, on music, on writing and books. You really never know what you are going to get. Site statistics:Click here
It's a Party! 2007-03-08 16:34:00 Well, until last night I had never heard of a blog party. I hadn't been invited that I knew of. I suddenly felt a reversal of time. I was 15 years old again, wearing braces and a bad perm and feeling like quite the loner who was always just a few steps behind keeping up.And then the person that told me to go check it out at 5 Minutes for Mom brought me back up to being 17 and one of the nameless, faceless socialites in the eleventh grade. Suddenly I was in the game. I was no longer the 12 year old girl who ocassionally forot to wear a bra and would spend the rest of the day wearing a coat and feeling like a total loser when it came time for P.E. when all truths were routinely revealed. I was no longer the 13 year old who went around feeling like Big Foot because I hadn't shaved my legs for a week and just knew for certain that my legs were the focal point of anyone who so much as got inside of my then 15 foot radius of a personal zone.As I read the instructions for throwing my o Read more:Party
What do you think? 2007-03-08 05:40:00 Here's a link to Barack Obama's church.One short quote from the church site:"We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian... Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain "true to our native land," the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community."Would a caucasian candidate (of any political persuasion) in this day and age get Read more:think
Book Review #2: Are We There Yet?: A Journey around Australia 2007-03-07 00:48:00 That's it! I'm packing my bags for an extended family sebatical in Australia
!Alison Lester, through the realistic voice of a little girl named Grace, makes the beautiful and varied continent of Australia come to life in this charming real-life-adventure based book, Are We There Yet?Not only does this captivating narrative out-do Rick Steves in making a person want to board the next plane to Australia, but it also sweetly and humorously depicts what is now, sadly, an almost, bygone family experience: the extended family road trip. Sure, we still get in the car to visit Grandma once every year or two (or three). But when was the last time your whole family piled in the car and just drove, with only exploration and discovery of the world in which we live and extended time together as a family as the reasons? Perhaps it is still done by some of us. But with plane travel so prevalent and fast paced, highly scheduled lives as the norm, I think less and less of us can say that we have Read more:Journey
Whatever you do tomorrow... (or today if you are reading this Wednesday) 2007-03-06 23:27:00 Do not, I repeat, DO NOT go to Ree's makes you want to curl up and die blog and enter her photo naming contest because I am determined to win one of these dadgum contests if it's the last thing I do. So, I really would like as little competition as possible, thank you very much. So please, mark your calendars tomorrow
(or today!!), as a day when you will go anywhere on the internet except for Ree's you'll fall asleep before the page even loads blog.You would have a much more entertaining read if you would go somewhere like this or here. Really. Maybe you could try reading up on this instead. Of course a good time can always be had if you are into this type of thing. I personally enjoy perusing this stuff. Really. It's one of my lifelong passions. I don't go a day without thinking about it.Please, any of these options would be better than going to Ree's yawn til your throat bleeds blog. It's really not hard to find something funnier and more entertaining. I mean all you Read more:Wednesday
I've posted this before. 2007-03-03 01:28:00 My husband really ought not be allowed out of town. Whenever he does, all hell breaks loose. The last TWO times he left I sprained my ankle. This time I have people projectile vomiting... and other yucky substances exiting the body involving another oraface. So far I have wiped up poop off of a high chair/bathed baby, out of crib/bathed baby, cleaned up puke off the couch twice, off the floor once, twice my five year old was in the line of fire and had to change his clothes. More bathing of baby scheduled for tonight...**sigh**Combine this with the fact that I didn't fall asleep until 1 a.m. ... NEVER a dull moment! Good grief how I long for one stinkin' dull moment! (or a day full of them.)EDIT: Things went from bad to worse. All four of the children (even the one who already had it on Thursday and was getting over it) vomited in their beds last night... a few of them, more than once. All of them were up intermittently, heaving. I am going to be doing laundry for weeks to
Now that's smart... 2007-03-02 16:28:00 Every once in a while I hear of a little idea that makes life easier or more interesting (it's never interesting enough you know with four little boys and a dog.) So today I am here to pass on three little fun tidbits, in the Real Simple kind of way. All of these ideas are recycled so don't credit me with any of them. I'm just passing them along in case you hadn't thought of it.#1 Colorful Crayon PucksYou know those little stumps of crayons that are left after your child has had a box of crayons for a couple of years? All those little ones that find their way to the bottom of the crayon box, making their way further and further down, becoming one with the pencil shavings and empty crayon wrappers? Turn them back into fun and useable crayons.Yesterday my little ones helped me sort out crayons for this project. If you make it a group activity it's more fun and they enjoy deciding how to sort the crayons. First sort them into crayons with covers and crayons without covers. O
My life is so darn exciting. 2007-03-02 03:40:00 I'm doing the domesticated equivalent of dumpster-diving tonight because I have somehow lost the uploading cord for my new digital camera. I have the old cord right here but it doesn't fit my new camera so it does me no good.I have looked in all the ordinary places so I decided this evening, like any other woman with her head on straight, to start looking in the the unordinary places. I remember my Mother having this problem a few times while we were growing up. (P.S. I'm being nice. It was more than a few if I remember correctly.) One time she offered five bucks to the person who could find her glasses without which she is just out of reach of legally blind. Who found it? I can't remember. Probably my little brother since he was highly motivated by money and probably had the house turned upside down before the rest of us could even lift a pillow to look under.So tonight I decided to do the unthinkable. I dug down into the crevices of my couch and living room chair. And lo Read more:exciting
A discussion about the relative merits of homeschooling 2007-03-01 19:00:00 I got too opinionated to post this long rambling as a comment over at Ree's blog.Molly said: "However, I'm still not sold on the interaction topic. That's just my opinion as a former public school-goer."I actually believe that if you wanted to look at it statistically, most homeschoolers now were not homeschooled. Numbers don't lie. Literally millions of children are homeschooled now. 25 years ago when most of us were school aged, homeschooling was *definitely* a fringe thing. Probably less than 300,00 people but at any rate, very few people homeschooled and yes, many of them were (to put it nicely) odd-balls. Trust me, I knew a small handful of them and they were not "normal" in my estimations then or now. So most of us share your school-going upbringing. It's not an ignorance of what school is really like that has fueled our decisions to homeschool but an actual and in most cases personal knowledge of what it *is* like and what it is not like.Schools don't take kids on fie Read more:merits
A Presentation of the ABC's 2007-03-01 00:17:00 My five year old and I worked together collecting a few pictures for each letter of the alphabet. I just wanted to share this as it feels to the child almost like they are creating their own Sesame Street spot. It beats flash cards anyways.Just thought it might be a fun idea for others to try as well. I will only leave this up for a day or two.(Forgive any typos or extra apostrophes. I'm afraid I forgot to spell check!)Nan
My Husband's Unfortunate Overbite 2007-02-27 05:07:00 My darling husband has an unfortunate overbite. It was actually orthodontically repaired years and years ago thanks to the financial sacrifice that his parents made. Little did they know though that they were contributing to its return when they allowed him to purchase a guitar for himself when he was 15 years old.It was a lovely little acoustic. Simple. Affordable. Perfect for his ability and price range. He still plays it. It is his only guitar. It's starting to sound a bit buzzy. A bit pingy. But it still works. It's seen a lot of campfires, worship services and youth activities in its time.At some point during his college years my husband purchased for himself, or was given, an electric guitar. His parents should have been truly disappointed because this contributed to the backwards progression of the orthodontic splendor that had come of their hard earned greenbacks.Oh, cruel wife that I am! I cared too much for his teeth... and for the closets in which this untouched Read more:Husband
"Tra-la-la-la-la. Spring is in the air, and I am a flower with nothing interesting to say." 2007-02-25 06:16:00 Credit goes to Slim, the walking stick on A Bug's Life for that quote.I wish I had something to blog about but I am not about to sit here at my computer with blogging constipation trying to come up with *something* to write because then it wouldn't be worth writing. Hopefully you all keep coming back around knowing that I will only blog when I have something remotely worth saying. (Please note the judicious use of the word "remotely." If I come and blog about something that seems slightly less than worthy of being said, please do remember I used the disclaimer, "remotely.")Slim: What's the point of going out there? They'll only laugh at me.P.T. Flea: That's because you're a clown!Slim: No, it's because I'm a prop. You always cast me as the pole, the broom, the stick... a *splinter*!P.T. Flea: You're a walking stick. It's funny! Now go!Slim: You parasite.Nan Read more:flower
, interesting
, Spring
Hmmm... Interesting... 2007-02-22 21:47:00 This is what I would classify as interesting.The Modesty SurveyWhile I believe in modesty in dress and I believe that we ought to be thinking about how our dress will affect the men around us when we choose our clothing, I also think that people can focus a little too much attention on women alone with regards to modesty.Can we have a similar survey about how women ought to be treated? About how men ought to dress? About what makes women stumble (are we not attracted to men by how they look)? Certainly there are millions of men out there (some Christian) who behave immodestly towards women even though they are fully dressed in modest attire. Can we talk about men's bathing suits and how they can cause women to stumble? Can we get opinions from women about the kinds of (funny looking) suits that would be necessary to keep women from seeing a little too much man-skin?I really am all for modesty. Please don't take anything other than that fact away from this mini-rant. I do get the
Book Review #1 - Dougal The Garbage Dump Bear 2007-02-21 18:08:00 Having been a serious collector of stuffed animals while growing up, this book hit a chord with me. My mother can attest to my ardent devotion to the amassing of more and more stuffed animals. By the time I finally outgrew this mammoth, life consuming passion, I probably had enough garbage bags full of stuffed animals to satisfy a small nation of stuffyless children.Never would I have dreamed of outright disposing of my hoard of poly-filled wildlife. In this captivating picture book, Matt Dray proves to be one of my own ilk. This true story, well... mostly true... is written and illustrated by a true and literal stuffy junkie (pun intended).Dougal was the sad and forgotten little remnant of a young girls overgrown toy collection that was accidentally left out in the harsh elements after a lonely tea party where he felt he was the brunt of a collective snub from all of the other party-goers. By and by Dougal found his way to the trash can, then to the dump truck and ultimately to t Read more:Garbage
Organizational Boost 2007-02-20 19:02:00 Do you have a secret cupboard or closet that is home to everything you can't seem to find a home for? Do you secretly stash stuff there (here and everywhere) when guests are coming over? Is there an overflowing mass of papers, old mail, two year old birthday cards that you can't part with and drawings that your kids have done somewhere in your house that you really want to take care of but can't bring yourself to do it?What's stopping you? If you are anything like me, the thing that is stopping you is the fact that you will have to make a bigger mess in order to fix the current mess. You will have to confront things that you've been putting off confronting. You will have to fight the demon of your inner pack rat and actually throw some things away! ((GASP))Generally speaking I do not have a problem throwing things away. In fact I tend to throw too many things away... things that are useful... things that we need. Whenever we have moved (which has been too frequently in the pa Read more:Boost
What happens when you give your kids a camera? 2007-02-15 04:39:00 I'll tell you what happens. They go nuts. They turn into bonafide freaks. I was pleasantly surprised by some of their pictures as I scrolled through the 115 photos that they took in the 15 minutes that they had their hot little hands on my little old camera (not the new one you gave me Mom and Sandy!)... I honestly was impressed with their perspectives and the "kids' eye views" that we got. Really, I was feeling like this was just a great idea until I scrolled far enough to see a picture of... poop. Yes, I did just say that. One of them took a disturbing picture of a freshly expunged log of poop. I'm sorry to be so foul. But I'm just being honest. I'm just telling you the terrible truth of it. When I discovered this fact, they heard my shrieks of horror from across the house. I then heard them rolling around in raucous laughter, letting out bellies full of insidious guffaws. Sometimes I'm ashamed to call them my spawn.Below I have assembled a slide show of a selectio
Don't miss out! 2007-02-14 18:07:00 Head on over to Ree's blog to try and win her photo naming contest!Today's big prize is an $85 gift card to Williams Sonoma! And rest assured, I personally will be of no competetion for you because I've been participating in these contests since there were just 10 entries and I've STILL never won!Nan
You know what we're looking forward to? 2007-02-13 06:34:00 A warm front. Yup. I'm really looking forward to a niiiiice blast of pacific air. Because, you know why? Because it was -27 degrees with the windchill factor today and it has been snowing non-stop for 2 and a half days and I am really freaking tired of the color white. It makes me want to sell my wedding dress on ebay... oh wait, I already did that. It makes me want to paint my bathtub brown and my toilet orange and put green food coloring in my white vinegar. It makes me want to cover my windows with butcher paper and paint full color beach scenes and green farm scenes, complete with stick figures wearing bathing suits and overalls (respectively) to go in those pictures. I wish I could take a rainbow pack of Sharpies and completely colorize my Mac laptop until the markers are crusty dry and there is not a speck of white left on the unit.I am considering looking up the cat in the hat in the yellow pages because I've heard that when he comes back he turns snow pink. I would kin
Potato Voodoo 2007-02-12 00:09:00 With a title like that you can't help but be interested right? You might remember that I have issues with tators. Anything ending in the suffix of tator causes me to get strange visions in my mind... visions that I cannot easily remove. It makes me want to do bizarre and inexplicable things to the potatoes in my pantry. In this vein I have invented a new and exciting form of entertainment in my home. It's called PotatoVoodoo
. Whenever I don't like someone, I go and crouch in the dark corners of my pantry and begin poking things into potatoes that represent whomever I am displeased with and after that, I feel much better.As a school project a couple of days ago, I decided to teach my kids this evil and mystical art of Voodoo. Potato Voodoo. You too can play potato Voodoo. All you need is a potato and some sort of implements with which to impale them. We used cloves, broken pencils and cinnamon sticks.This little guy (in the middle) represents everyone I love. Look at him.
A bevy of photos 2007-01-30 04:25:00 My mom and sister gave me a new camera for my burfday so I have to post a few recent pictures.Did I tell you all that I got a pair of computer glasses? Yup. I now look like the computer nerd that I apparently am. So here's two pictures of me with glasses... A sight that is as new to me as it is to you.Look I have a cute Canadian baby who knows nothing of California winters, who thinks warm is when you can go outside and don't fear frostbite, who has been sucking on icicles from the time he exited the womb and who thinks he is a close relative of Rudolf the ever famous reindeer, so oft is his nose an unearthly shade of red.Look! More of my cute spawn. Speaking of my cute spawn, do you think I ought to take it as an insult when people look at my children and then ask me how I just so happen to have four such cute progeny? Do you think they know that it could be taken to mean that I am a hideous beast and therefore there is no natural explanation for the state of my offsprings ram Read more:photos
More on question I posed the other day... 2007-03-09 20:03:00 I want to, first of all, thank everyone who has participated in the conversation so far. I have really appreciated the tone of the discussion. I just wanted to continue it a bit more.Kwiz wrote:One of the things that people who are not African-American fail to realize is that the Black Church is part of our identity. What Obama was doing was not exclusionary by any stretch of the imagination. It was an attempt to encourage Black folks. And in spite of what many think today, unfortunately, race happens to be a touchy and painful topic today. In the meantime, African-Americans as a group are the only ones who can encourage themselves. And why is that needed? We are still a minority in a majority culture who is still discriminated against, no matter what people think. The Black Church is part of our culture. As a Black man, Obama was encouraging Black folks. The fact that he was encouraging his own should not be seen as a dig against another people. Nor should he be viewed as not having Read more:posed
Church Art Display 2007-03-13 18:26:00 It is becoming a yearly tradition that our church holds an art display around easter time where entrants submit a piece of work that reflects a certain theme. Last year's theme was "Jesus is King of the whole world." I entered a poem. Here it is:On EarthIf the whole world knew He was Kingwould the heavens sing?For the glory of Godwhere He once did trodwould the rocks cry outif His people fail to shout it out?If the world was on His teamwould they join us in the theme?Why on earth should we waituntil we’re standing at heaven’s gate?Are we not there right now?Did He not show us how?When does eternity start?When I die or today in my heart?Could it ever be too early or lateto worship the one who is great?Could it be too early to live and loveon earth as is done above?By Nancy DoudMy oldest son did a piece of art. Here it is:This year the theme is going to be "A Wise Hope," which goes not only with the theme of the resurrection but also with the sermon series on the Proverbs that m Read more:Church
, Display
I forgot my own Blogiversary 2007-03-13 03:59:00 How could I have done such a thing? I know my archives only go back to April 2006 but I had another blog address for a month before that from which I copied all of my posts. Here's my my first post ever.Happy belated blogiversary to me! Thanks for joining me in my little corner of the blogosphere!Nan
Crazy Country 2007-03-13 01:36:00 Canada can be quite the crazy country.This morning it looked something like this (no I don't live this close to a mountain but the weather was this blue and warm and lovely):Now it looks just a little more like this (not exactly this bad yet but maybe by tonight...)Nan Read more:Country
, Crazy
This was fun... 2007-03-12 22:46:00 I found this over at The Dust Will Wait.... Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™Nan
Recommend Site To A Friend
