Sunday, September 28, 2008
Life IS good
Do you know what I love about being a Mom? Aside from the obvious- raising intelligent, compassionate, loving children. I love riding home from the playground with all the windows down, the sunroof open, the radio blasting and listening to my daughters sing all the words to 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot' by Pat Benatar. That's Lara doing her air guitar & Jewel on the drums in the first pic. I LOVE MY LIFE!
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Ain't no party like a Scranton party cause a Scranton party don't stop!
So- here it is! We've been waiting all summer for this night. My brother, Randy, and I had a Party Planning Committee meeting a couple weeks ago. The ideas started rolling out. We invited our "Office" fanatic friends and had a fabulous party. The guest list included: The Cochrans + Reed, Duggans, Giddens, Pettyjohns, Waxters & the Wileys. We are sooo blessed with such great friends.
Heath & LaFae Duggan were the trivia winners, Danny & Jaime Waxter were the door prize winners. I forgot to put the "c" in Schrute on the shirt and I freaked out when I realized the mistake. Sorry guys- I'm not worthy! The replacement shirt is on its way! Reed & I suspended a duplicate of Bryan's phone in jello (thanks Randy!) and then we taped his phone underneath the table where the jello was. We called his phone and the jello was ringing! Those are mini Dundie awards on the table. The season 5 premiere was AWESOME!
So- who's hosting the season finale?
Heath & LaFae Duggan were the trivia winners, Danny & Jaime Waxter were the door prize winners. I forgot to put the "c" in Schrute on the shirt and I freaked out when I realized the mistake. Sorry guys- I'm not worthy! The replacement shirt is on its way! Reed & I suspended a duplicate of Bryan's phone in jello (thanks Randy!) and then we taped his phone underneath the table where the jello was. We called his phone and the jello was ringing! Those are mini Dundie awards on the table. The season 5 premiere was AWESOME!
So- who's hosting the season finale?
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Monday, September 15, 2008
I'm gonna tell on you
Governor Sonny Perdue issued his antigouging order late Friday. Drivers who think they've been price gouged at the gas pump should save their receipt and contact the Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs:
In the Atlanta area: 404-651-8600
Outside Atlanta metro: 800- 869-1123
www.consumer.georgia.gov
Don't be a victim.
In the Atlanta area: 404-651-8600
Outside Atlanta metro: 800- 869-1123
www.consumer.georgia.gov
Don't be a victim.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Hair we go
Just after we moved back to Georgia in the summer of 2006, my sweet daughters decided to play "beauty shop" in their room. After they chopped each others hair off at the root, cleaned up the shed locks by hiding them and I stopped screaming.....we had to get ready for a wedding reception in Charlotte, NC for my cousin, Robbie. (that's sister of the groom- Deborah in the pic with the girls) I did everything I could to disguise their new "hairdos" to no avail. Until I remembered something we used to do at Girls' Camp to keep us busy and our hair out of our faces. I searched all over and found elastics to match their dresses and voila! Now I'm checking out all the cute little girls around with "smocked" hair and I'm thinking, "Wow- we were in style and we didn't even know it!"
Thursday, September 11, 2008
To forward or not to forward?
Oh my gosh! I love it! Ya'll know I don't forward emails, but this one was sent to me by my cousin, Michele, and she laughed out loud and so did I. At least one of these will make you smile.
Maintain a Healthly Level of Insanity-
1. At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sundglasses on and point a hair dryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.
2. Page yourself over the intercom. Don't disguise your voice!
3. Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.
4. Put decaf in the coffeemaker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine additions, switch to Espresso.
5. In the Memo field of all you checks, write 'For marijuana'
6. Finish all your sentences with 'In Accordance with the Prophecy'.
7. Skip down the hall rather than walk! and see how many looks you get.
8. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.
9. Specify that your Drive-Thru order is 'To Go'.
10. Put mosquito netting around your work area and play tropical sounds all day.
11.Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend their party because you have a headache.
12. When the money comes out of the ATM, scream "I Won! I Won!"
13. When leaving the zoo, start running towards the parking lot yelling "Run for your lives! They're loose!"
14. Tell your children over dinner, 'Due to the economy, we are going to have to let
one of you go.'
Ha-ha-ha :)
Maintain a Healthly Level of Insanity-
1. At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sundglasses on and point a hair dryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.
2. Page yourself over the intercom. Don't disguise your voice!
3. Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.
4. Put decaf in the coffeemaker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine additions, switch to Espresso.
5. In the Memo field of all you checks, write 'For marijuana'
6. Finish all your sentences with 'In Accordance with the Prophecy'.
7. Skip down the hall rather than walk! and see how many looks you get.
8. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.
9. Specify that your Drive-Thru order is 'To Go'.
10. Put mosquito netting around your work area and play tropical sounds all day.
11.Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend their party because you have a headache.
12. When the money comes out of the ATM, scream "I Won! I Won!"
13. When leaving the zoo, start running towards the parking lot yelling "Run for your lives! They're loose!"
14. Tell your children over dinner, 'Due to the economy, we are going to have to let
one of you go.'
Ha-ha-ha :)
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
My first time
Well- I just was so proud of the made-from-scratch custard (I used my double boiler for the first time) and meringue. It's my first totally homemade banana pudding! Thank you Paula Deen. Now, don't ya'll wish you were coming over for dessert?
Sunday, September 7, 2008
July 2008 trip
We've had some trouble with our home computer and are trying to save things off of it. I wasn't sure if we could get these pictures of our summer trip to NJ & PA. But we did....so here they are. We decided to go with Bryan to NJ for the week and just hang by the pool. After doing so for one day he calls me from work to tell me that if we can stay 2 extra days then we can go to his company picnic on Saturady. Ok- sounds good. So we got to take the kids to Philadelphia as a stop-over and then to Hershey Park, PA. We walked all over the city of Philadelphia listening to stories about this great nation. At the end if you get all your stickers before 4 pm they you get a coupon book for free stuff around the city. So much fun packed into one day.....and you can do all of it for FREE! We highly recommend it! What a trip.
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Friday, September 5, 2008
Is there a monster in your midst?
This article written 28 years ago could have saved me years of guilt and concern if I had known of its existence before 2 months ago. The words finally gave me a voice to the feelings I've been having off and on for a long time. I found comfort in their simplicity. For all those ladies out there who feel like you sometimes can't show the real you- that time has ended.....that's the only you I want to know:) Gin
Monster in Our Midst
Cynthia Thorley Andreason
Winter 1980
After long hours of consideration and investigation, I have decided that we are living with a monster in our midst. Should I describe this monster? It is large, has green scales, a long tail, a big belly and flared nostrils: a basic Walt Disney dragon – huge and frightening but a little bit comfortably familiar – comfortable enough, obviously, that we tolerate its presence with a minimal amount of complaint.
Who is this dragon, and where did it come from? I call it “The-Way-Things-Are-Supposed-To-Be,” and I think that we’ve collectively given birth to it over many years. As a teenager, I was fiercely determined not to be like all those other girls who were snagging boyfriends, fully determined to marry them either shortly before or after graduating from high school. Even so, on the eve of my twenty-third birthday I sat with my sympathetic roommates, wondering what had gone wrong – I was supposed-to-be-married. Then there was my friend, the new Relief Society president. Once quite vocal about the importance of molding programs to meet individual needs, she now extolled the virtues of the homemaking meetings she had previously refused to attend because they didn’t meet her needs, since that was what she was supposed-to-do. Or there was the ward I once lived in where everyone very, very impressively fulfilled charitable duties well into the second mile, but none of the women were close friends. By their own admission they were afraid to let people find out what they were really like – the inside just might not match the supposed-to-be. For years, I wasn’t absolutely sure of the dragon’s existence. I only caught glimpses of its shadow and sometimes felt its fiery breath upon my neck. But one day, during a particularly trying period at school, feeling that awful presence strongly, I turned around very quickly and caught the dragon full face. Rather than relieving me at all, I was terrorized by my discovery. I became fully aware that something other than my own consciousness and feeling was governing my life. I became aware that I was essentially living two lives – the real me and the supposed-to-be me.
I felt for awhile that I was very alone, but as the problem of my dragon-terrorized life came to obsess me, I began to notice some interesting things. Other women also bore testimonies made up of a combination of stock phrases from the Church vocabulary. I heard others answer questions with the expected answers that didn’t quite ring true as having been cycled through their own hearts and minds. I began to suspect that other people were being intimidated by the dragon, too. A few exploratory ventures on my part into the world of saying-what-I-thought tended to confirm my suspicions – a few people would want to talk privately to me about what I said, while others were appalled to the point of speechlessness that anyone would say such things in public.
I immediately began looking around for some chauvinist or institution to blame, but could find no tangible culprit of widespread-enough influence to be responsible for the whole mess. I was not ready, however, to take full responsibility to any one individual. The dragon was hatched and growing large long before many of us were born. But it is still growing – it grows every time I let the dragon decide what I’m going to say or how I’ll act. It grows every time one woman encourages another, however subtly, to react the way she’s supposed to rather than the way she really feels.
When I described the dragon above, I referred to his Walt Disneyish appearance. I did that for a definite reason – that being that its comfortableness is part of the reason it hasn’t long since been banished from our midst. It is frightening to live without a structure to support us, and the dragon has provided the most readily available, if far from the most positive, support for many of us. It is also terrifying to hear someone truly express the depths of personal agonies and angers, and the dragon has successfully squelched in many the impulse to express these feelings.
Monster in Our Midst
Cynthia Thorley Andreason
Winter 1980
After long hours of consideration and investigation, I have decided that we are living with a monster in our midst. Should I describe this monster? It is large, has green scales, a long tail, a big belly and flared nostrils: a basic Walt Disney dragon – huge and frightening but a little bit comfortably familiar – comfortable enough, obviously, that we tolerate its presence with a minimal amount of complaint.
Who is this dragon, and where did it come from? I call it “The-Way-Things-Are-Supposed-To-Be,” and I think that we’ve collectively given birth to it over many years. As a teenager, I was fiercely determined not to be like all those other girls who were snagging boyfriends, fully determined to marry them either shortly before or after graduating from high school. Even so, on the eve of my twenty-third birthday I sat with my sympathetic roommates, wondering what had gone wrong – I was supposed-to-be-married. Then there was my friend, the new Relief Society president. Once quite vocal about the importance of molding programs to meet individual needs, she now extolled the virtues of the homemaking meetings she had previously refused to attend because they didn’t meet her needs, since that was what she was supposed-to-do. Or there was the ward I once lived in where everyone very, very impressively fulfilled charitable duties well into the second mile, but none of the women were close friends. By their own admission they were afraid to let people find out what they were really like – the inside just might not match the supposed-to-be. For years, I wasn’t absolutely sure of the dragon’s existence. I only caught glimpses of its shadow and sometimes felt its fiery breath upon my neck. But one day, during a particularly trying period at school, feeling that awful presence strongly, I turned around very quickly and caught the dragon full face. Rather than relieving me at all, I was terrorized by my discovery. I became fully aware that something other than my own consciousness and feeling was governing my life. I became aware that I was essentially living two lives – the real me and the supposed-to-be me.
I felt for awhile that I was very alone, but as the problem of my dragon-terrorized life came to obsess me, I began to notice some interesting things. Other women also bore testimonies made up of a combination of stock phrases from the Church vocabulary. I heard others answer questions with the expected answers that didn’t quite ring true as having been cycled through their own hearts and minds. I began to suspect that other people were being intimidated by the dragon, too. A few exploratory ventures on my part into the world of saying-what-I-thought tended to confirm my suspicions – a few people would want to talk privately to me about what I said, while others were appalled to the point of speechlessness that anyone would say such things in public.
I immediately began looking around for some chauvinist or institution to blame, but could find no tangible culprit of widespread-enough influence to be responsible for the whole mess. I was not ready, however, to take full responsibility to any one individual. The dragon was hatched and growing large long before many of us were born. But it is still growing – it grows every time I let the dragon decide what I’m going to say or how I’ll act. It grows every time one woman encourages another, however subtly, to react the way she’s supposed to rather than the way she really feels.
When I described the dragon above, I referred to his Walt Disneyish appearance. I did that for a definite reason – that being that its comfortableness is part of the reason it hasn’t long since been banished from our midst. It is frightening to live without a structure to support us, and the dragon has provided the most readily available, if far from the most positive, support for many of us. It is also terrifying to hear someone truly express the depths of personal agonies and angers, and the dragon has successfully squelched in many the impulse to express these feelings.
The blame cannot, then, be placed on any one person or even any one source. I am not responsible entirely for that dragon’s existence in my life, and neither is any other person entirely responsible for its existence in his or her life, I am responsible, though, for the nourishment I provide it and for the acquiescence that I give to its existence. Every time I gush about the spirituality derived from a meeting that I traditionally daydream through or refer to my “good husband” in phrases that we hear over and over, I make it a little bit harder for someone to see around the dragon to the person – the soul – on the other side whom he would really like to communicate with.
I’m not sure that we can completely kill the dragon – I really don’t know. I’m not sure that enough of us want to yet. For me, the first step was realizing that it existed. From there it was easy to move to a conviction that it was not good for me. But to this day I’m awed b y the power and influence of the dragon and its ability to pull me again and again into its clutches.
I have learned, though, that inasmuch as I differentiate carefully between my feelings and those of the dragon, it is easier for me to consciously choose to act as I wish, rather than to react to the dragon’s ominous rumblings. I don’t know if it is entirely possible to eliminate the dragon, but I’m up for stopping the inadvertent feeding of this beast and for working towards relationships which are unfettered by this monster in our midst.
I’m not sure that we can completely kill the dragon – I really don’t know. I’m not sure that enough of us want to yet. For me, the first step was realizing that it existed. From there it was easy to move to a conviction that it was not good for me. But to this day I’m awed b y the power and influence of the dragon and its ability to pull me again and again into its clutches.
I have learned, though, that inasmuch as I differentiate carefully between my feelings and those of the dragon, it is easier for me to consciously choose to act as I wish, rather than to react to the dragon’s ominous rumblings. I don’t know if it is entirely possible to eliminate the dragon, but I’m up for stopping the inadvertent feeding of this beast and for working towards relationships which are unfettered by this monster in our midst.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
What time is it? Field trip time!
The kids had a fun day at the Fernbank National History Museum. The two exhibits are the Polar Bears and the Penguins. Jewel even dressed up like a penguin. Do you know why polar bears don't eat penguins? I didn't know either.....it's because they never meet. Penguins live in the Antartic and polar bears live in the Artic. Fun stuff! We "Walked Through Time in Georgia" and learned all about this great state. Home school rocks!
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