Don't Lick Toilet Bowl Cleaning Tablets

For our birthday Rocker and I decided to go out to eat. Yay!! No cooking is a great gift for mom on her birthday. In the midst of a delicious steak dinner this disgusting and odd conversation came up. Let me set the stage...

Rocker & Shaggy quickly enter stage right after exiting the men's room. They rush to our table full of excitement chomping at the bit to tell us something profound. I am quietly enjoying my amazingly scrumptious steak.

Rocker: Mom, mom!!! Don't lick the blue toilet bowl cleaners in the toilets, they burn your tongue.

Me: Gasp!!!!!!! My mouth drops to floor with a crash and I am trying to fully understand what was just said.

Shaggy jumping on the toilet bowl licking bandwagon: Yeah, if you do it burns the top layer of your tongues skin off.

Now maybe other moms would just shrug it off as silly boy talk but this mama knows my sons all to well. My heart and stomach dropped as I thought "The only way they would know that is if they tried it!"

Me really loudly: YOU LICKED THE TOILET SANITIZING THINGY!

Rocker smiles and laughs: No our Nurse at school said some kid did and went to the ER. It burned the top his tongue off.

They both proceeded to tell me all the gory details until they realized I almost hurled my steak dinner back onto my plate.

Oh, my, goodness I almost had a heart attack. I honestly thought my two sons licked the toilet.


Uhhhgggg!!! I need therapy now. What possesses a young man to think and ponder such things? Yes I really thought they licked the toilet thingy.

Rocker Rocks On @ 10!!!!

Happy Birthday my prescious Birthday surprise!!! 10 years ago I had an amazing birthday gift by having Rocker on my birthday. I had no clue it was my birthday that day I went into labor. All I remember is after I finished pushing and the doctors put Rocker in my arms my Knight wispered "Happy Birthday Mommy". In my exhausion I smiled thinking it was his official birthday until my Knight leaned over and said "Today is Jan. 27th honey...it's your birthday!"

All the nurses and doctors were flabbergasted that I had no idea it was my birthday. Oh, how tired I was that day. Rocker made me work really hard on my birthday.

You are an amazing blessing to me and our family. We would be lost without you. I love you so much and am blessed to share my birthday with such a gift as you. You just didn't want me to ever celebrate alone. Growing up I had my twin brother, Uncle Brad, to celebrate with and now I get to celebrate with you. How blessed I am!!!

The Signifigance of 33

Tomorrow I turn 33. I don't mind it as much as I thought I would. I thought my 30's would be difficult to accept but I am really enjoying this time of my life. Today while I was at work the team (the Founder, Director & Ministry Assistant) helped me celebrate my birthday with cake, cards and prayer. It was a beautiful moment for me. Their sincerity and love brought me such profound peace and joy. One thing that was mentioned was my age. They reminded me of how significant 33 is. The Founder of Teaching The Word Ministry, Brother Key as he likes to be referred to in emails, shared how he took his 33rd birthday as a year of identifying with Christ in his 33rd year. See Christ was crucified when he was 33. Leading up to that time though, it was a year of understanding His full purpose and destiny. He knew he would be united with His father through his death and resurrection.

In Jewish tradition a child, especially sons, were not referred to as sons until 30 years old. That was the age when a father stopped calling his son a child and now called him his son. It was the year that the father recognized the son's ability and responsibility to take charge of the fathers household. Hmmmmm...doesn't that remind you of a time in the Bible?! Jesus was estimated to be 30 when he entered his ministry. Many believe this because at the time of John baptizing Jesus, God spoke "This is My Son in whom I am well pleased." The Jewish people of that day would have recognized that as the Father giving the Son authority over the household. That would also confirm the age of 30. You could also not be recognized as a priest until you turned 30 as described in Leviticus.

So here I am pondering my age and wondering what will this year bring? I am excited and nervous about this new revelation. Christ did many great things at 33 but more importantly he died to himself for the purpose of redeeming creation. He laid down his life for his Father. What is it that I will be dieing to this year? How will the Father allow me to connect with Jesus at 33? I don't know what it will be but it will be interesting to look back next year and see what the Lord did. I also find it significant that Scott and I are celebrating our 12th wedding anniversary in two weeks. Wow!! Numbers, numbers, numbers. Nothing is a coincidence with God!

AT-ET Down.mov

Shaggy's Film. He needs a little help with slowing the pace down but it still great. He had over 300+ pictures for his. I wonder how many it would take if he did slow it down some?

BTW this is all done with our little digital camera (no biggy at all), a tripod and our computer. If you have a PC and Windows there are quite a few tutorials on how to do this too. It's quite simple.

Lego Exoforce.mov

Rockers First Film. Very Funny!

DK's Turn With Legos

Each of the boys wanted a chance to develop and film their own Lego Stop Motion Animation. This is DK's video. I just assisted with the Computer end and some of the pictures. He came up with the story line and told me how to edit. It was fun. More to come....

What To Do On A Rainy Sunday...

You make a Lego Stop Animation Film!!!! It's our first time so I hope you enjoy. I now have a small Lego Stop Animation Studio in my dinning room. I love creativity!!

Ingredients for a truly Romantic Evening!!

Nothing says I love you like a romantic evening with you husband. After a long week or long day at work you both can just kick back and enjoy one another. So here are the ingredients for our romantic evening we spent together last night. I thought with Valentines Day approaching you all might need some good tips.

Romantic Evening

1. Choose a great romantic location - we chose our basement.
2. Food is essential - 2 cups of coffee.
3. Clothing can make a statement - Jeans & T-shirts, old stuff to be exact.
4. Lighting helps the mood - dimly lit Energy Efficient bulbs.
5. Gaze into one another eyes - we did.
6. Do something romantic like watch a great movie, read poetry or kissing -we went right to business and skipped all that...we spent the evening fixing our washing machine.

Yeah, not much romance really happening here. Are washing machine broke over the past weekend and the part just arrived yesterday. We did do a lot of gazing at one another but it was through a hole in the washing machine. Scott kept asking for tools and I would have to rumage through his tool box looking for things. He'd ask for a dingle hooper and I would inevitably hand him the thingy-ma-bob. Both of us tore up our knuckles trying to get screws out and bolts out. I love how the directions that came with the new parts have these few easy steps to follow. Appeartenly it's simple when the thing you are working on is outside of the washing machine. It's a whole nother ball game when everything is still attached.

Needless to say it is working again. We were given a $200+ quote for someone to come out and fix it for us. So my Knight in his "I will do it myself" manner found the part for $46 and figured out how to replace. I do love that about him. He can tare apart anything and put it back together again. He actually fixed something else that was wrong with the machine and we didn't know it and now it is working better then ever.

So please don't take our advice for romance. It just ain't happen around here lately. Maybe I should be asking for ideas on how to have Romantic evenings, any suggestions? Please don't include any suggestions related to fixing cars, appliances or replacing door jams in the house. Done that! :-)

The Purgenator Strikes Again

I don't know what it is about cleaning up Christmas but it always throws my Knight into a frenzy. He then makes a dash to the nearest telephone booth and emerges as the PURGE-A-NATOR. Every year! One time I would like to just put away Christmas without combing through closets and desk drawers and so forth.

Today we began working on dismantling the tree when in a flash my Knight began to show signs of a purging streak. He opened the downstairs closet and started to rummage through it, then came the trash bags. Look out here he comes. Maybe instead of the telephone booth analogy I should just liken it to the Incredible Hulks fierce transformation. Things get ripped up and torn out before you realize he is no longer your dashing Knight but the brute force of 10 maids and a moving company. To your amazement he is now the Purge-a-nator without the green complexion.

I have a deep love-hate relationship with this character. I know how wonderful it is to be in a clutter free home and how much I appreciate his amazing organizational skills but we are going to have to work on the timing thing. So needless to say we spent the day taking down the Christmas tree and decorations, cleaning, reorganizing the kids rooms, decluttering the dinner room and now he is out changing the oil in both cars. What A Man!!!! I did tell him he looks cute in his Carhart's.

Again if anyone needs to have the Purge-a-nator drop by this New Year let me know. I am sure he would work for food and maybe that way would give me an extra month or so before he strikes again at our home. He told me today it felt so good since it had been 5 months since our last purge. We need to keep it to every 6 months. The poor kids ran around the house hugging all their toys and things as he spouted out his favorite saying "If you haven't loved it or hugged it in 3 months it goes!" I made him quickly hug me and the boys. :-)Now to go take a nap!!!

My First Signs of Gray Hair

Oh...my...goodness!! It has happened! I am now faced with gray hair. It's funny, this morning I was getting ready to go to the hair salon to have my hair cut and colored and while brushing my hair I saw my first strands of gray. I think their gray, they might be white. I don't know I have a massive head cold so they could be blue for all I know, I just know they are not my younger looking natural color.

What better way to celebrate my 33rd birthday this month with the discovery of gray hair. It's not freaking me out as much as a thought it would. Scott has had white hair showing up for the last two years and many of my friends already battle gray so I knew it was a matter of time. Well, I just take it as a sign of wisdom. I will color the those blessed signs of wisdom but they are signs of wisdom non-the-less and I only need to know I have them.

So off to make my signs of wisdom match the rest of my hair color!!! I am getting older aren't I?!

I Wish We Had Gone To A Cabin In The Wilderness For New Years!

This New Years just brought more heartache and sadness to our family. We traveled to up-state New York to be with Scott's family for the Holiday's. We go maybe once a year because of scheduling issues and family issues. This time was the worst experience to date.

The Lord kept telling us to get a hotel room and not stay at his parents house. I wasn't convinced especially since my medical bills all came due in December. I knew we just didn't have the extra but Scott insisted we had to this time. Low and behold it definitely was the Lord. When we arrived in NY we walked into chaos and dysfunction. To try and not go into any gory details lets just say unknown to us my husbands parents have 3 families living in their home besides themselves and his youngest brother. 6 adults, 5 children, 5 dogs, 4 cats and a big mess. Then across the street where his sister is supposed to be living her soon-to-be ex-husband is now taking up residence. He is violent and abusive. Every time she had to take the kids over to their father some one had to walk with her for her protection.

Well, things were just plain ugly the entire weekend. It finally culminated with an act of violence against one of our boys. Unfortunately Scott's sister's son has seen too much violence between his mother and father and now lashes out in anger towards others. For some reason he targeted DK for the weekend. DK did great about coming to us when the young man began to beat on him but DK reached his limit Saturday morning. Our three boys were playing nicely with one of Scott's good brothers (actually all Scott's brothers are really nice to our boys) when the cousin decked DK in the mouth. That was it. DK turned and cold clocked the young man in the face. This is were it got ugly though. Scott's brother was wrestling with the boys while this was happening and was not able to see what transpired. Scott's brother-in-law walked in on the situation and only saw DK hit his cousin. Scott's brother-in-law punched DK in the side of the head.

We were in the other room cleaning up breakfast when the brother-in-law came in looking for ice for our nephew and told us about our "bad" child. Well, I flew into the other room and found out the whole story. It didn't go down pretty but Scott's family sure knows now not to touch one of our kids ever again. Thankfully the Lord held my tongue enough not to be vulgar or mean but I sure laid it out there what I thought of the situation. So did Scott he just said I gave it a bit more with passion.

Needless to say we came home directly and are very leery about ever going back. DK is doing well. We prayed with him last night and the two other boys because they were ready to throtle their Uncle for what he did. Scott and I needed some prayer too because we wanted to retaliate also but what is that showing our kids...violence for more violence. Part of Scott's family is defending the brother-in-law and part of his family is standing with us. The hard part is the level of violence that entire family lives with on a daily basis. They truly believed that the Uncle was just disciplining. In my book that's not discipline at all.

It's truly sad. We now have lost the little bit of family left that we had because of their choice to live in this violent and dysfunctional lifestyle. Honestly, they are destroying themselves and everyone around them. The dysfunction is so far reaching in to Scott's family. DK had a great revelation from the Lord last night that satan took over Uncle A's heart when he hit him. DK said the Lord told him that he could forgive him because he is not fighting Uncle A. but satan inside of him. We told DK that is actually written in the Bible. Here our little guy forgave his Uncle and prayed that Jesus would enter his heart instead. What a difference in our lives compared to the violence we witnessed over this past weekend.

So today we are all on the mend. We are kind of morning the loss of our biological family and the trust that was broken this weekend. We are however rejoicing in our spiritual family. You just don't know how much that means to us. We feel more love and safety in those we know in the Body of Christ then the families we were born into. I'm tired now.:-( It's been a long New Years weekend. Not the way we wanted to celebrate a fresh, new Year.