a prayer request for some old friends

I love catching up with my old friends on facebook.  today I re-connected with a friend from high school and learned that a little over a month ago, they had a baby at 24 weeks gestation.  so I am asking all my blog readers to say a prayer for this family.  you can read more about their story at: http://thedadds.blogspot.com/

We're Not Laughing At You, We're Laughing With You

This week's thursday thunks are brought to you by Kimber, the color of doom, and the number 999.

1. You walk into a room, someone turns and looks at you and laughs. What do you do?
   cover my face
   
2. You find an egg, take it home and keep it warm. It hatches. What type of dinosaur is it? Do you keep it and name?
   triceritops, we would keep it until it gets too big and call it tri-horn
   
3. Which superhero would you want to be related to and why?
   wonder woman because she rocks
   
4. A drunken sailor comes up to you on the pier...he begins harassing you in a most repulsive way....what'll be your defense?
   I am who I am
   
5. Entering a CLASS A piano bar, you're encouraged to sing atop the grand instrument...you grab the microphone and sing.....
   "all by myself"
   
6. If you were a character in a Dr. Seuss book/movie, who would you be and why?
   mr. brown from mr. brown can moo can you? because my last name is brown
   
7. If you have just been called to be a substitute in the Winter Olympics for your country (apparently everyone else was busy), what sport(s) will you compete in?
   curling
   
8. Did the audience from the piano bar in question #5 applaud when you were done with your song?
   no, in fact most of them walked out and left during my song

way-back wordless wednesday -- childhood photo

Christmas is OVER

I remember growing up as a child how excited I got for Christmas and how it was always a bit of reality shock when Christmas was over.  now it seems to be the opposite, I am stressed out leading up to Christmas and always a bit relieved when it is over.  I started thinking about that this weekend and realized that I really enjoy the way that michael and I celebrate Christmas with the kids.  santa does not come to our house and we only buy gifts that can fit in the stockings.  which means no presents to wrap, no three-page long wish lists for santa, and there are only a few gifts to get and receive.  sometimes I think that our kids may be missing out by not having the big Christmas and santa, but they get plenty of gifts and they don't seem to be traumatized by not getting gifts from santa.

our Christmas traditions

I thought I would share with you our Christmas traditions:

• we only exchange gifts that will fit into stockings and everyone in the family gets involved in putting gifts in each others stockings
• santa does not come to our house
• we get to open our stockings on the last morning we are in town before we go out of town for Christmas, usually a couple of days before Christmas
• on the morning that we open stockings, michael makes my mom's recipe for strawberry toast for breakfast
  

no thunks

there are not going to be anymore thursday thunks for the rest of the year, what am I going to blog about on thursdays?

sunday six

the big brown chair

so I'm part of this group called project 52 and each week we have an assignment to take a certain type of picture. this week our assignment was "It's your private place. The place you go to and hold nothing back. Where you're most vulnerable yet most safe. It's home." my thoughts immediately went to the brown chair in our bedroom. when we moved into our house, one of the first things we did was put a chair in our bedroom, it used to be the big red chair that I inherited from my parents. I had fond memories of that chair growing up and it served us well for many years. then a few years ago, we passed the big red chair down to my sister and got this nice leather chair. to me, this chair and the gorgeous man sitting in it are home!