Lets Give Them Something to Talk About

This past week my entire family took a trip to Surfside Beach, SC.    After 16 hours in the car with 2 little kids…   we were going to make the trip worthwhile.   We met my parents and sisters and their families there.   IT was great.   The first day, Sunday, was the perfect beach day.   We went out and spent all day on the beach playing and building sand castles.   Monday rolled around and it was overcast and rainy.   The minute we got within 2 hours of the beach, Ripley’s Aquarium had billboards all over advertising their “live mermaid show”.   My girls LOVE mermaids.   My kids are 3 and 5 and have a small obsession with the little mermaid, and any mermaid or fairy show on Netflix.   The girls begged to see a mermaid, so on the yucky day, we loaded up and went over to the Aquarium.   After we waited in line and paid to get in, we asked when the mermaids were coming.   Their response was, “they are only here ...

I am working on editing my first novel.   I am very excited about publishing it, and very blessed to have someone much better that I am at grammar, who checked it for me.   Reading through it, I loved this part.   Sometimes I forget that God doesn’t want us to be a loogie!   So you are now going to be able to read an excerpt from my book…     Megan and I sat down and took inventory of the night and decided that we needed a girlie night.   We painted our toenails, talked about boys.   We talked about Paul, and a new guy that she met on the plane.   Oh Megan- she believed in Jesus but instead of walking the “straight and narrow” she preferred the wide and easy.   It had been a sensitive topic between us for years.   I would quote scripture to her and she would come back with God is a loving God and His son died for our sins- he died anyway, so why not live it up? The conversation usually went like thi s:   “Well M...

My oldest daughter turns 5 today.   FIVE!   How is that even possible?   Everyone tells you that time flies and to enjoy it when they are young, and I remember telling them that it was dragging by.   There were times that I felt she would never grow up and never really “treasured” the time, even when people told me to time and time again.   I felt like I treasured them, but many times I brushed those times aside.   I am not going to lie; the past 5 years have not been easy.   I have been overworked, lost sleep, sometimes bored out of my mind, adult interaction deprived and driven past a breaking point more times than I choose to admit.   While all that was happening, I also have been blessed beyond belief.   Little things that she and her sister have said and done have impacted my life so much.   Kids change the way that you look at the world.   When I was younger, I went on a mission trip to Mexico while I was in high schoo...

This past week I have been reminded how my life used to be.   Full of DRAMA…   At least, I sure thought that it was.   I could make anything and everything dramatic, and I did.   If I didn’t like my job, it was a full out ordeal that EVERYONE had to know about.   If I didn’t like my friends or family, same thing…   If I was extremely busy, or at least what I thought was extremely busy before I had kids, I had to make a huge deal about it.   I guess life hasn’t changed all that much, but my outlook on life has changed and therefore, my life is changed.   Life is always going to throw curve balls at us.   ALWAYS!   There is no way around this idea, it is a truth.   Life isn’t necessarily easy but depending on how we look at it doesn’t have to be stressful and full of drama all the time.   I used to be so stressed out until I realized, guess what – the world doesn’t revolve around me…   A novel concept I assure you. ...

Sitting in the car with my husband while getting the kids situated we witnessed a simple thing.   Two older gentlemen had been sharing a lunch at a fast food establishment, as they left the restaurant, the one gentleman pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, looked at it and then dropped it on the ground.   The second gentleman looked at him in horror.   The right look is worth 1000 words!   That second man chased down the paper, picked it up and deposited it into the trashcan, where it belongs.   I have no idea the relationship between the two men.   I have no idea what their life stories entail, but this made me think: There are two kinds of people in the world, those that don’t really care about what they leave behind and those that do.   How much easier is it to just toss something to the side that doesn’t seem important to us.   Ignore the reality of a situation.   That was just one piece of trash that man threw on the ground...

Car shopping is always interesting…   My minivan has 150k miles on it so we are looking into purchasing a new to us car.   You give the sales person a price and they always show you vehicles that are just a little above that price.   Then, somehow, you are looking at a new car that is on “sale” and way above our originally state price range.   Sigh…   How often do we do something like that in real life?   We have a plan, a course of values, and then we compromise a little bit, then a little more, and then a little more and soon, our values (or price range) are out the window.   We give a little with our morality, and then the next thing that we know; our original morals are out the window.   The world is like a car sales person, it is okay to do this, it is okay to do that…   For just a little more of this, you can be accepted here or there…   For just a little more compromise, you will get acceptance here or there….   S...

Duct Tape Fairy Wings…   That is right, I am reclaiming my title as the Duct Tape Diva!   It is funny how over board we end up going for birthday parties and celebrations.   The amount of money that people spend on weddings and parties, anniversaries and events that will only last a few hours.   I think I spent around 45 hours preparing my younger daughter’s birthday party and I will be on-course to do the same with my older daughter’s if I do what I am thinking.   What a first world problem.   Much of the rest of the world is just trying to make it to their next birthday and here I am, making a HUGE deal over my daughter’s 5 th .   Society has told us that so much is normal now.   A “cheap” wedding costs at least $10,000, although the average amount spent is ridiculously higher.   People spend so much on a short amount of pleasure.   Society gives us these norms, tells us our birthday parties have to be over the top, that girls’...