Bubbles is a goofy boy:
This is one of his other birthday gifts. Apparently he’s pretty excited about the prospect of going hunting in a couple of years. I was excited that I caught this silly expression on film (in a manner of speaking, anyway).
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
Today, Bubbles turns eleven. How in the world is it possible that my beautiful baby boy is suddenly eleven?
Startin’ ’em off young FTW.
Since this is his weekend at his dad’s, we had his birthday supper last night: Spaghetti with meat sauce and chocolate cake with chocolate frosting (and the Heath bits leftover from Tuesday night’s Pampered Chef party). After he opened his presents, we cleaned up and put the boys to bed before settling in for an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. It was a good night, and I hope his day and night today will be just as fun.
I love you, Bubbles. ❤
Do you have any family traditions surrounding birthdays? If so, share ’em below, and don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and check out her birthday pictures – you won’t regret it!
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
I was 17 when the twin towers fell. It was one of the scariest days of my life, and I was nearly 1100 miles away from Ground Zero.
I watched the events unfold that day on the news. I saw the first plane hit just before I left for school, and I spent the rest of the day watching the news – no one seemed able to turn it off. Everyone was in a panic.
Propaganda abounded in the days that followed – I still have a few things that circulated after the attacks. “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” is still a favorite song, and every time I hear it, I’m reminded of the days and weeks after September 11, 2001, when patriotism was at a high point and all my friends wanted to enlist to kick Osama where it counted.
But these stickers also hail from that era, as do the ones beneath them. And every last one depicts a peace sign, whether it’s one like in this picture or a frog holding up two fingers. I was afraid the attacks on New York would hurtle us headlong into a war the likes of which hadn’t been seen in sixty years. I feared my home would be the next target. I feared a lot of things, but I also prayed for peace.
Even at 17, I knew that not all Muslims are the same, just as not all Jews are the same, not all Christians are the same, not all Hindus are the same. Extremists and terrorists exist in all cultures, all religions, and we shouldn’t judge the majority of a culture by the acts of the minority. I hoped that my country would emerge from the ashes of that day stronger and more resilient.
Tonight, after supper was cleaned up and Bubbles had opened his birthday gifts…
Our annual family photo book arrived today, a day earlier than I’d expected. So to celebrate, here’s a picture from said album:
Cricket riding Daddy around the room proved easier to capture than a nice picture of everyone in front of the Christmas tree.
I use Blurb to create these books each year, and the quality is fantastic. (This is in no way a promotional post; I’m just really happy with the quality of their products.) I ordered the first one for our first wedding anniversary as a way to document the first year of our marriage; I wish I’d captioned those pictures, but I didn’t really get into the different layout designs and caption options until the following year. I looked through the 2013 book this afternoon after it arrived and was surprised by how much I’d forgotten about the events of last year, and how much the kids had changed.
Every time we take a picture that comes out particularly hilarious now, we tell the kids it’s going in the book. Of course, with Miss Tadpole the reigning Queen of the Funny Face and Cricket and Thumper hamming it up at every opportunity, that means I have my work cut out for me when it comes to choosing which pictures make the cut and which ones don’t. Still, it’s a lot of fun making these books, and the kids love looking through them year after year.
Do you do anything like this in your family?
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
If there’s one thing I love, it’s writing. Of course, I also love music. Put the two together and I’m a happy girl. 🙂
What’s that? That’s my pretty new necklace from our trip to Northeast Iowa over the long weekend and a brand new short story, inspired by today’s prompt on The Daily Post. I’ll post it just as soon as it’s finished.
But for now? Back to work. While the thunder lasts. 🙂
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
Bubbles had his very first football game. He spent most of it looking like this:
That’s him in the #40 jersey. They actually have two kids wearing #40, which made trying to keep track of the right kid interesting. But apparently the coaches plan on playing the older kids more than the younger kids (the team is for fifth and sixth-graders), which I think is dumb because we didn’t pay $75 to watch our kids warm the sidelines. They work hard in practice, too, and they have as much right to play as the older kids.
Are all players equally-abled? No. Lord knows Bubbles shouldn’t have been playing receiver during the game because he left his glasses off and he can’t see (well) without them. But the final score was somewhere in the neighborhood of 28-0 and at that point, what harm would it have done to let the younger kids play? It’s not like we were going to win.
So far, I’m not impressed. I hope things change. I hope Bubbles gets to play more. I hope a lot of things, but mostly I hope that we didn’t just throw $75 down the drain.
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
At long last (seriously, it’s taken a while), I’ve made Tuesday Daydreams: A Journal in Verse available on Smashwords. You can now read all my silly little poems in a variety of formats!
I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to this – I intended to do it shortly after initial publication two and a half years ago, but I never did. It was pretty simple, for the most part. And now I know what I need to do to get the follow-up volume ready to go!
With the Smashwords edition comes a new cover. I’m not sure I like it yet, but it’ll do for now, I suppose. I’ve added the new cover to the Kindle version as well, but it may not be live till tomorrow. As for the paperback…it’s sticking with the old cover for now.
So! If you’d like to get your hands on a copy, check out Amazon and Smashwords!
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
I’ve been cleaning my office.
These are two of the four tins stuffed full of notes that I saved from my high school years. I read through a few of them and couldn’t help laughing; my friends and I were big fans of writing in code, one friend in particular, and I’ve now lost the key to one of the codes we used to use. I found several notes written in said code and couldn’t read a single one. 🙂 There was, however, one note that utilized two codes, one of which I could read. Unfortunately, only one word was written in that code, so I now know who the note was about, but I’ve long since forgotten what it was about.
Good times, great oldies. Here’s to you, mis amigos! 😀
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
I spent a good half hour or so tonight walking up and down my road trying to get a good enough signal on my phone to upload a picture (more on why tomorrow, with any luck). Our internet is down and I was too impatient to just wait till tomorrow.
Naturally, then, my phone failed to cooperate. I finally got four (out of five) bars and it still wasn’t good enough.
I know – totally a first-world problem.
But, lucky me, my little walk wasn’t a total loss. It’s been raining off and on all day, so there’ve been plenty of clouds, and they make the most brilliant sunsets. I managed to get this picture on the way back home, as thunder rumbled to the south and the breeze filled my ears with the song of crickets and the scent of growing things filled my nose:
It was a calming walk. I should do more of that.
I should also wear proper shoes next time I venture out on my own. Slippers just aren’t meant for gravel travel.
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
Suddenly they all died. The end. 