life....take it as it comes... and hold on...

I just read my niece's blog and she had a neat idea on picking a word for the year. She picked "EMBRACE", as in embrace life, embrace the moment...etc.

I had to laugh because Oscar and I have a saying we've used for a few years and it is..(drum roll)...

"EMBRACE THE HORROR".

It's from the movie "Armagedon". We love that saying and to us it means to grab on to life no matter what it brings you and hold on tight for the ride, because it is going to be bumpy! You can probably guess that we have had teenagers, all boys, and believe me, we've embraced the horror many, many times! What would life be without that kind of fun?

100 things you didn't know about me...

I got this idea from my niece. Thought it would be a challenge. It was.

1. My favorite color is blue.
2. I'm NOT a huge chocolate fan.
3. I'll take caramel over chocolate any day.
4. I don't have a middle name.
5. My name is rarely pronounced right. (It rhymes with "sorry").
6. I sing alto.
7. I took "spelling" in college-loved it.
8. I don't care much for meat.
9. I am phobic about spiders. Want to hear me scream?
10. I really wish I could sing really well.
11. I love to wash dishes.
12. I like my toenails painted.
13. I don't like my fingernails painted.
14. I've played piano for Primary for over 30 years, among other callings.
15. I love to mow grass.
16. I don't like bbq sauce. I hate the smell.
17. I don't really like Halloween.
18. I love to watch tv at night in bed.
19. I wish I had become a track star sprinter.
20. I am hooked on decorating and how to shows.
21. My 10-key class in college was my favorite & I aced it!
22. I'm very sensitive. Poor Oscar.
23. I speak some German, but get so nervous I flub a lot. I do better talking to myself.
24. My favorite candy bar is butterfinger.
25. I've traveled to dozens of European countries.
26. I love to fly in airplanes.
27. I've always thought it would be great to play the violin.
28. I love playing the piano.
29. I wear my watch on my right wrist.
30. My favorite song is "Piano Man" by Billy Joel.
31. I love to type.
32. I once had 13 pillows on my bed.Four to sleep on and 9 decorative.
33. I lived in Renkum,Holland at age 5, my kindergarten year.
34. I lived in Vienna, Austria my 7th grade year.
35. I never thought I would be one of those people that jump up on furniture and scream if they saw a mouse. I am.
36. I love to write lists.
37. I hate to fold laundry.
38. I went to an "Earth, Wind & Fire" concert in college. It was GREAT!
39. I worked for a power company for 3 1/2 years.
40. I got to have brain surgery when I was 41 years old.
41. My chiropractor & physical therapist told me I was very flexible.
42. Looking at homes is a huge hobby of mine.
43. "I Love Lucy" is my all time favorite show.
44. I love a Baskins & Robins hot fudge sundae with mint chocolate chip and cookie dough ice
cream. NO nuts please!
45. I also love caramel on ice cream.
46. I go nuts when I see baby animals of any kind. I want to hold them!
47. I was a Camp Fire Girl when my mom was my leader. I never went beyond that short stint.
48. I love Fish and Chips from Red Robin.
49. I am a very picky eater, though in my old age I try a few new things now and then.
50. UGH!! 50 to go!! My best friend Sherrie Leavitt and I had twin pixie hair cuts in 6th grade.
51. I like purple pop and purple koolaid best. Chances are if it is purple I will drink it.
52. I am terrible at telling jokes. I can NEVER remember the punch line.
53. I love frosting, and eat it by the spoonful! Homemade, of course.
54. I have been known to eat powdered milk in the powder form. In other words, no water
added. Yum.
55. I admit I watch "Desperate Housewives".
56. I also love "Frasier".
57. Mashed potatoes and gravy are one of my favorite meals.
58. I learned to drive a stick shift on a foreign car (French) called a Citroen. The best car ever!
It looked like an upside down bathtub, so I got a lot of jeering when I drove it to school. HA!
59. I slept on a single size water bed without a heater for a couple weeks in high school. I
couldn't take the freezing cold any more and got rid of it.
60. I used to thoroughly, and I mean thoroughly clean and change my room around every week
and drag my parents down to see it. I vacuumed every corner and cleaned out closet and
drawers, and then sprayed it to heck with lysol. Wish I still did that kind of thing....to this day the smell of lysol takes me back...
61. I bought my first car, a Honda Civic, when I was 21. It was m&m green. I loved that car!
62. I am a night owl.
63. I didn't get my ears pierced until I was 19! My friend Cherrie Loski had to hold my hand
the whole time.
64. I took disco dance classes (yes, disco) with Cherrie Loski as my partner. Yes, it
was a little embarrassing to have a female partner. We kept switching off being leader.
65. I never gained over 25 lbs with any of my pregnancies.
66. I went to an all girls Austrian school in Vienna.
67. I love french fries with "secret sauce".
68. I smacked in to a sheriffs pick up truck--no damage to him, damage to my parents car.
69. I loved to "rake" my mom's white living room carpet for her.
70. I can still do a cartwheel. Probably everyone else can too...
71. I was in one play in my life and my one line in Southern drawl was "What was that?!".
72. I love to drive.
73. I don't like making phone calls.
74. I put in a new sub floor, and vinyl flooring in two bathrooms all by myself!
75. I love to paint. Walls, that is.
76. I am a clock watcher.
77. I am also a people watcher. I could watch people at a mall all day long.
78. Another favorite show of mine is Matlock. I love murder mysteries.
79. I hate clothes shopping. I am not at all good at it.
80. I love to dejunk , especially other peoples houses. That's fun!
81. I flew to Europe with family just weeks after 9-11. Yes, we were scared. The planes were half empty, so we had our choice of seats!
82. I used to play on the elevators at the Cub building on the WSU campus in Pullman.
83. While playing at the Cub, my friend and I crashed coming in and out of the doors of the ladies room and I wound up with 5 stitches in my head!
84. I am a good driver in snow. I learned on the hilly hills in Pullman.
85. I love to make things out of wood, like shelves, benches and frames. I have my own table saw, chop saw and scroll saw.
86. I like to weed gardens.
87. My favorite flower is the tulip, although I love many other flowers too.
88. I won a tv at my senior graduation party.
89. I have been shy my whole life. Not an easy thing to be.
90. The funnest thing I have done is travel to Europe with my 3 sisters!
91. I like pie better than cake.
92. I learned to ski in the Austrian Alps when I was 12.
93. I have a stick in my eye. Actually it is a spot of extra pigmentation, but people see it as a stick! A guy at college said "Hey, you have a stick in your eye!"
94. I grew up on milkshakes practically every night. Maybe not every night, but it is a fuzzy memory of having them all the time.
95. I have thin sliver lips. And by the way, the lip plumping stuff does NOT work. I am gullible.
96. When I was a newly wed, I was asked over the phone if Oscar and I wanted to trade mates. I thought he said "maids"and I told him I didn't have a maid. I was naive!
97. I never want to swim in the ocean. I am too scared of sharks.
98. I cook from scratch most of the time.
99. I love action movies. Since I have 4 boys and a husband, that is what we always watch! Our motto is "if something hasn't blown up or someone hasn't been shot in the first 5 minutes it's not a good movie!"
100. I haven't missed a single day of flossing my teeth in 8 years!

more fun...

I got to babysit my grand baby, Avery, and was trusted to give her a bath! It was fun, and she was so good. She is such a good little girl. We get to see her fairly often. Boy, does it bring back the memories of being a mom with a baby. It's a lot of hard work!!

fun

Craft night at the Boyce's was fun. Ashley (Scott's Ashley) and Tiffany, (David Fackrell's wife) came over and made some fun wooden words.


Oh look, here are Ashley and Scott right now...so how do you like your wooden words, Ashley?

BRRRRR!

Baby its cold outside. We got about 4-5" of snow last night. Poor Oscar has been shoveling snow for 3 days. And did you know that some people just can't drive in the snow? I'm glad I grew up learning to drive in the snow. I have a lot of funny memories trying to get up our steep hill in Pullman and pulling in to our drive way and sliding into the junipers, or sliding all the way back down the hill. Now we live on a very flat street.

Guest room...come and stay!

I wanted to fiddle with painting plaid walls, and a color other than blue, since my whole house is blue...so I chose apple green. This is a guest room I did a while back. It was fun, but the taping and leveling of the plaid was difficult to do as one person. (I now know why I always wanted a twin....oh, I have one...((Oscar)) ...hahaha). But I digress. So, I held the blue tape in one hand and the level in the other hand and used my head and teeth to get it all to stay on the wall at the same time. I also had to use some of that math that I thought I would never use after High School. But you'll be proud of me; the curtains are twin sheets that were $3 each at Walmart!! Now THAT math I like! I could never buy that much fabric for $3. I'd like to tweek it a little, maybe add a shelf or something on the big wall, and I am trying VERY hard not to sneek something blue in there! Therapy anyone??

Bye bye summer...

Before snow comes I wanted to see my window boxes like they were this summer--not all withered and brown as they are now...

...and the stone wall we
put in. A big improvement
over the old wood. Do you see "stalker kitty" on the
steps?

My dad was here a little while back, so we captured a four generation picture with Scott and his new baby, Avery. My dad is a proud 91 and Scott is 22 and Avery is about three weeks old here, and I am somewhere in between!! I never thought I would get a four generation picture, so I was really happy when we did. Life is good.

A little mishap last week...Oscar's truck got a boo boo. So.... I guess it is totaled. It's been a tough month. We had just put a new transmission in that truck. Rats. Well, that's how it goes sometimes. No one was seriously hurt. That we are thankful for. We cleaned it out and said goodbye. Now for all the paperwork....

Sad day

It was a sad day for the neighborhood kitty. The cat that always sunned itself on our porch and mewed at our door was hit by a car. She belonged to the neighbor across the street, but the cat didn't like them, so she spent all of her time at our house and another neighbors house. She was nearly 15 years old, so she was quite old, but we will miss her. She has curled up on our porch for about five years or more. We nick named her "Stalker Kitty" because she was always here and always following us around. She even kept me company while I gardened. Even an occassional mouse was left at our door. Goodbye stalker kitty. We will miss you. :(

Carter is doing really well in California. He is in Gilroy right now. Gilroy is the Garlic capitol. They grow a couple thousand acres, at least.
I think that boys will be boys, as this picture depicts.

But, as you can see he takes every opportunity to be happy and have fun.
We are excited for him and the work he has done so far. Carter is on the right in the top picture, and on the left in the bottom picture.

WELL......

Well, here I am, sitting at the computer, nearly three hours now making this new blog. I hesitated a long time in getting a blog, mostly because I thought I would never have anything fun to write about, but I had some encouragement from my niece, Cory. She helped me over the phone for nearly two hours today getting it all set up. She was great! Thank you Cory! Now, I look at this blank page and think...there's nothing to say that will interest anyone. So I decided I would keep this just so that I will write down some things I want to say and remember about me and my family. A journal of sorts, on the computer, the one device that I don't usually get along with very well. But as of this very second we are friends. Me and that nasty little computer. If it will only do what I say and cooperate, everyone will live another day.

Now, what should I start with........