Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers (and to my mama who is with my sister and her husband and kids near Dallas)! My sisters and brother and I got Mom a (surprise!) ruby red digital camera just like mine! I know she's loving it (I sent it to her before her trip so she could have it to take pictures this weekend). (After I got mine and loved it so much, I told everyone else about it so my sister got silver ones for her and her husband. My brother is considering one.)

I think it would be neat if Mom would do a blog, too. I'd love to see what she is taking pictures of. She has a bird feeder right outside her kitchen window and she sees all sorts of wonderful birds come and eat from her feeder. She wants to get pictures of them and I think it would be neat to see her pictures. Especially if she has a bunch of pictures of birds or flowers or sunsets (because they are gorgeous out there). I guess we first have to show her how to download the pictures from her camera to the computer, but we could go from there to a blog. If she does, I'll share her blog address with you so you can see her pictures, too.

Hugs to everyone who needs some on this day.

Ant carrying sesame seed

We ate outside on the back porch at our patio table tonight. Chann picked up Arby's on his way home from running errands. We ate and threw the ball for Brownie and listened to the sound of our neighbors mowing (it seems like they mow at least once per week, whether it needs it or not). After we ate, I happened to glance down and noticed an ant crawling around with a seed. A sesame seed that must have fallen off the top of the Arby's roast beef sandwich onto the ground. The little guy was really muscling it around. I asked Chann to herd him for me (because he was headed home) and he did while I went and got the camera. Ants really aren't my thing (they come in my house, they die), but you've gotta admire a fellow who is trying to heft a sesame seed home for supper.

Fisher Price Little People Play Farm #915

This is what has I've been doing for the past few weeks. I've been on e-bay for my Mama to find and replace some of the Fisher Price toys we had when we were kids. She is turning one of her rooms into a "toy room" for the grandkids and she wanted classic Fisher Price toys.

This farm was one of my favorites. After being on e-bay and seeing what a huge demand there are for these vintage toys and how much they were going for, I decided rather than spending $80 and getting a farm with a barn, silo, a few fence pieces, and some animals, that I would rather piece the farm together and try to get her more for the money. Plus, when I'd play with it, I always wished I had more than just one cow, one sheep, one horse, one pig, and one dog. That's probably where I got a little carried away. By the time I got finished, I did save her a little money, but now she has three horses, five sheep, two pigs, five cows, and three dogs. More is better, I say!!!

Of course, now I may be looking at trying to get her one more silo because the second tractor and trailer don't seem to fit. And if I win a lot of circus animals tonight on e-bay for her, that has four more pieces of fence which would make another silo a necessity. Hah, hah, hah, hah. But wow, what a farm!!!

Our walk this morning

We went for our walk/jog this morning. Brownie and I sure enjoy it when Pooker goes, too. Pooker works such long hours and this is our time to be together and walk and talk for a little bit (when I'm awake enough to be coherent). We all walk together down to the trail, then he goes on ahead to jog. Buppa pulls me because she sees her DaDa running and wants to run with him. I have to remind her if she runs with him, there won't be any sniffing and I know she would sure miss her sniffing. Even then, she still pulls a little until DaDa is out of sight. We continue our walk, depending on how far Pooker is going to run. We try to turn around and start back before we see him coming so we can be near the end of our walk when we all meet back up. Sometimes she will watch all the men that jog by, wagging her tail in the hopes that it is DaDa coming. When she sees him, she lights up. Sometimes she sees him and we keep going so she can sniff as rapidly as possible (knowing once DaDa reaches us, we'll be heading back) until he gets even with us and says her name. Then she wags her whole body and bounds over to him so she can lick him and he can pet her. Other times, she spots him coming a ways off and runs towards him as fast as she can drag me, whole body wagging, until she can get to him and give her lick and get her petting. Then we all walk home together to start going about our day.

Fountain at Woodward Park

Pretty Yellow Flowers

Our walks

This is the path we almost always take during our walks.

This is what I see.

And sometimes we wander around down by the river.

On our walks, I find such interesting things to take pictures of. I'm not sure yet if we can go for our walk today or not as it is currently raining. I hope it stops so we can. I sure need it.

Interesting tree parts

Ye Olde Sun Spot

Looking for a home church

We've been to many churches, some for years, others for a while, but for whatever reason we haven't found a place where we could really belong. So we sometimes check out new churches, like this morning.

This one is close to home (which I like), decent service time, and the seating in the sanctuary is comfortable stadium style and no matter where you sit, you can see. We hadn't been there for even five minutes and my attention was drawn to the musicians (who were playing during praise and worship). They had the usual piano player, but also had drums, a fiddler, two horned instruments, several others I couldn't see what they were doing, and a guy playing the bongos. As I watched the bongo player, I got a big smile on my face. He was big and smiling and his face was filled with joy. He had the flow and skin color of a Jamaican. And he loved playing the bongos. He played with such grace and flair. So I watched him and I thought that surely in heaven, he would also be playing the bongos. And I thought how awesome it would be to be in heaven, swaying to the beat of those bongos, just praising Jesus, caught up in the moment and in the praise and in the joy. I continued to watch him, everytime he was playing, and I loved it.

The sermon was good--the pastor talked about living the same life on the outside that you were living on the inside. To stop putting on a show for the benefit of others, to make them think you are someone you aren't. After the closing song, I felt a certain vibration around me and I grabbed my purse and program and quickly stepped out into the aisle because I felt like I was about to get tromped on if I didn't move. And darned if the people didn't stampede down the stairs and to the exits. We kind of wanted to look around a bit, but were afraid to get out of the traffic flow for fear of being trompled. (Similar to trampled, but trampled wasn't quite the appropriate word for this situation.) I figure we can look around next time we go. A girl needs her joyful bongo fix. And I caught the sound of tamborines briefly, not during the music, but after several baptisms. I kind of like tamborines, too.