Just Because

Just feeling so thankful for my man.

A Girl Can Change Her Mind, Ya Know

There has to be a retraction made about my "current favorites" post from several days ago. Let's see....let me just start with the glorious Ped-Egg.

Apparently the package warnings and the friends who told me to "be careful" weren't fibbing about not removing too much of the nasty dead, hard, callused skin on my feet at one time. I have found out the hard way that I need to refine my Ped-Egging skills so that my heels don't have GAPING WOUNDS ON THEM! ouch.

Next, my nails au natur-al. For eight months I had fabulously natural nails that I kept at "just" the right length with a delicate light pink sheer strawberry polish. Felt so green. Well, something happened and my wonderful nails started peeling, not chipping, PEELING. For several weeks I tried my Miracle-Gro-For-Nails hoping the lovely natural tips would come back and be beautiful just like that previous months, BUT I got sick of the peels and begrudgingly went back to my fakes. Know what? LOVE THEM AGAIN! Just call me Fickle Franny.

And, last, but certainly not least is my favorite switcheroo of all. The razor. For Miss Nanny-goat. That little discovery was made in one night and posted about the next. My judgment was a wee bit premature. Let's just say that the fancy razor with the little strip of aqua conditioning goo doesn't go well with my already sensitive skin. Can you say "break-out"? I think I'll use the fancy-schmancy razor for my brillo-pad legs and use just a plain old blade to rid myself of the gotee and mustache.

Isn't being a girl so much fun!!?? ; )

This Is Just Strange...

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Three MEGA-celebs all three die with-in days or hours of each other.

Just strange.

Pray for their families to know God through their loss.

Do You Think Maybe We Should Actually Go To The Pool?

This was at my mom's house when PG and I were helping to care for her after coming home from double knee replacement surgery. Little Miss did lots to occupy herself. She is determined that we are to live in the country so she can waltz outside any old time and play alone without the worry of being run over or kidnapped. ; )

KST-Kindred Spirit Therapy

Do you have anyone who refreshes you? I have been blessed with several of these kinds of friends....Of course, HER but there's also HER and HER and HER.

When visiting MommySpice last week, my soul was refreshed. I felt like I had about 18 hours of therapy. The kind that can only come from being with someone who knows you inside and out. Thank you MS for the fun. I miss you terribly.

PandaPop and I are so proud of them: The SpicyFamily! They are the owners of an Auntie Ann's Pretzel Store. It is a lot of hard work, but they are doing great and I pray God's richest blessings on them!!

At the end of our week of caring for my mom PandaGirl and I had the chance to visit them. We have not seen each other in person in a year and a half!!!! That is horribly long when you love someone! Once we made it to their home---after stuffing ourselves silly with yummy soft pretzels---MommySpice and I let the girls go do whatever they wanted while she and I talked non-stop forever! Then we gave her blog a much needed make-over. The girls made cookies and watched The Wizard of Oz. Later that night after putting the girls to bed, we stayed up and watched High School Musical 3. Now, if you thought the first one was "cheesy and corny"---I have never seen a cheesier and cornier movie than number 3, BUT it was so fun!!!

It was hard to say goodbye to our friends, but we left refreshed and ready to get home to see our PandaPop whom we hadn't been with in a week!

These girls have both grown so much! It's hard to believe that they haven't seen each other in a year and a half. We are so thankful for the little time that we did get to spend with this family. We only wish that PandaPop was with us.

The girls were a bit hesitant to play together at first, but after about 30 minutes, they picked up right where they left off a couple of years ago. It's so hard to see them not really "know" each other when we mommies have such fabulous memories of our playgroup. A year or two apart for them is an absolute eternity at this age while just think of our time together as yesterday. For better pics visit the SpicyFamily here.

We had to go "count the cows" for our friends. There were about 17 of them, but the best part was when this black mama cow kept bellowing for her baby to join the rest of the group. It was so funny for her to call and nothing happen, but at the same time it was a bit sad knowing that she wanted her baby with her and was nowhere to be found. Finally after about 10 or 15 minutes, here comes Stormy (her calf) and Rebecca (great cow name, huh? lol!) romping up through the trees to join the small herd. PandaGirl "dropped" her flip flop inside the gate causing DaddySpice to have to go in after it. These countrified girls had a blast with the cows!

What's not to love about this darling pic?!
Thanks SpicyFamily!!!

Wii Love Daddy

I love this man.

He truly shows our daughter the grace, love, silliness, courage, chivalry, humility and integrity that I hope she will seek in a husband. He is human and not perfect, but I see him seek God and strive to be the man he has been called to be. He has taught me so much about parenting. About living.

PandaGirl cannot yet know how blessed she is to call this man her Daddy.

I love this man.

Happy Father's Day, PandaPop.

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Happy Father's Day to my own sweet, funny, lovable Daddy, too!

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Happy Father's Day to my beloved brother!

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Happy Father's Day to my wonderful father-in-law!

Sweet Podiatry!!

Oh where have you been all my life Ped*Egg???

My heels have never been prettier and I have no idea why I am just now jumping on the "get-rid-of-the-funky-calluses" band wagon.

I have purchased a life-time ticket.

Here are a few more of my current favorites. I haven't done a post like this in a long time. Maybe you like some of these, too or maybe I'm introducing you to some new passion for life that you just can't live without. Either way, this information is useless and takes no brain cells....just the kind of thing I need right at this moment. ; )

I don't think I'd be able to work-out as faithfully as I do without my Purple Princess.


I don't care if they have disguised yuckie old prunes as a hip new snack. These dark chocolate covered treats have to be the best thing we've discovered in our life-time. No, really. We buy four bags a week. (They are the cheapest at Wal**Mart.)

My lovely-girly-razor for my lovely-pushing-40-gotee.

Don't laugh.

No husband wants a nanny-goat for a wife. ; )


Amazing flat iron that my stylist got for me at cost this year.

Do I really need one more food item to be tempted to eat....the whole pan...with a big glass of milk? Words do no justice for this little combo. MMMMM.

I'm loving the digital scrapbooking stuff, but I have to use up all my gobs of hands-on scrapcrap....I mean supplies that are stuffed in bags!

The picture speaks for itself on this little baby.

Generic Value Products: the knock-off brand of Paul Mitchell's stuff. Love the Super Skinny*Serum.

Hmmmm....not really going to elaborate on this one too much right now. Just suffice it to say we have several of these little guys waiting around our house. ; )

I have worn fake nails for many years. Hated having to re-do them all the time. This past year I forsook my old acrylics and grew my own with this awesome stuff!

Just saw this movie the other day. Beautiful artwork and a wonderful lesson taught.

The Batman is all around our house! PandaPop's 40th birthday is at the end of July and his favorite superhero has always been Batman so we are having so much fun getting ready for a party!


Now don't you feel more complete adding my fickle favs to your mind? Have a great weekend!! ; )

Divine Paintings

These pictures were taken last week in Central Texas from the backyard of my parents' home in the country with my Canon Rebel XSI. I noticed around 8:30PM that the sky was looking VERY orange. You know, that eerie, but-a-really-cool-storm-is-coming kind of sky. It was so breath-taking! It reminded of pictures I've seen from Mars.

I DID NOT touch up these photos in any way so what you are seeing is exactly what I was seeing at the time. Amazing.

God's hand is so gracious. So perfected in His art. I miss out on these spectacular events most of the time, because, sad to say, I've become "citified". I haven't lived in the country since 1992. Some day, though. PandaPop loves it just as much as I do, but for now we are called to do what we are called to do and that requires us to live in the huge metropolitan area of North Texas. Love all the city conveniences, too!

I'll post more from my past week's stay while taking care of my mom and visiting with old friends when I can get unpacked and the house cleaned a bit. It seems as if summer is just now starting today---in mid-June! LOL! ; ) For now, please revel in the beauty of these luscious Divine Paintings.

What a Year!

***This is a long post, but a good catch-up.

Our little Kindergarten cutie has grown so much this past school year! PandaGirl has really done well and we are so proud of her. I can't believe we have a 1st grader! Honestly, where did the time go?! I know I've lost most of my blog reading crowd since I haven't been able to blog much since last summer nor have I had time to visit much of anyone, but hopefully I will be able to rebuild some fun cyber-friendships that I have missed so much.

I thought I would share some pros & cons of my "year" as a working mom. First, let me preface with how crazy our life got in August of last year. We found out we had to move a couple of weeks before school started. We scrambled around to find a house all while I was busting my rear doing all the needed things I had to do in getting my job as well as the dread we had knowing how hard it is to move houses not to mention the added costs.

I was overwhelmed to say the least.

Then throw in the fact that I hadn't worked full-time in five years, obviously never worked FT as a mother and I hadn't been a practicing speech therapist in TEN years! I felt like a tiny lamb thrown to the wolves when I started work! My "supervisor" was ten years younger than me. All the hard copy paperwork I had ever done was now computerized meaning I had to learn the ropes with no real training to do it on top of the district's email system to learn. I was on multiple campuses, fumbling around to figure out where I was supposed to be and what the heck I was supposed to do and no one really cares for the speech teacher anyway because, by law, we HAVE to see the kids for whatever they are in for---so there wasn't much smiling nor friendliness going on like I was used to in ministry events---and while working in middle schools, taking kids out of crazy schedules is just HARD. Before I took the job I had already committed to teaching 6th grade Bible Study on Sundays at church as well as be the head of decorating for a HUGE women's event at church to be taking place in November. All this while trying to move houses and wondering how my sweet baby was doing in Kindergarten. Oh--did I mention that we were also pursuing an adoption from Haiti?

After filling out papers all summer for adoptions, online job applications, housing applications, got-the-job-filling out papers, homestudy paperwork, work paperwork....I was SICK TO DEATH OF FILLING OUT PAPERWORK!!!!!!!!!!

I WAS S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D!!!

Within the first six weeks of working I saw myself falling apart, but didn't really know what to do about it. By Thanksgiving, we were settling in our house and work was "somewhat" coming along better, but the adoption thing was NOT working out at all. Too many details to get into on this blog, but just suffice it to say that we were broken-hearted several times over in our attempt to adopt from Haiti. We never really went into at the time with very many people, but the final straw that made us pull out of the program was after we were told there were twin baby boys that we could "officially get a referral" on, got our hopes completely UP and then found out they really weren't available. This is on top of three other little boys in Haiti that made us hopeful and didn't work out.

At that point, PandaPop was done.

Done. Done. Done.

I was so angry and hurt. We were out a few thousand dollars and a ton of emotions. People had given us money on the "Chip In" widget on our Kaleidoscope blog as well as some friends here at home and I was feeling so guilty about that, but we didn't do anything wrong. Though PP was "done" I just absolutely couldn't get it out of my head and heart that God was NOT done with our family. However, I didn't have any solutions either. Every single time I believed God had "led" me to some new way to add to our family, it didn't work out. We got so sick of telling our friends over the past four years of how the adoption we were currently working on "didn't work out". I even waivered in my faith and questioned if God was just teasing us with so many friends getting pregnant or leads seemingly from Him and then just not panning out.

Towards the end of November, right before we got the news about the twins not being available, we had to go to the doctor again for new physicals. We went to a new doctor who did all kinds of blood work on us. We got the results of that testing after we found out that we weren't going to Haiti. She was our same age and flat out told us to "grow up" and eat like adults. If we continued on our same path of unhealthy eating we'd both be diabetics within five years. YIKES!! She got us on a regimen and we took it as a wake-up call from the Lord to focus on our health and not so much on adoption. Since then PP has lost 40lbs and I have lost 30lbs. I still have about 30 more to go, but am loving that extra weight being GONE!! I am actually enjoying exercise now and I am NOT an athlete of any sort! LOL!

There is so much more about our journey this past year with adoption, but now is not the time--I want to leave the computer and go read. ; ) I will do another post soon about what the Lord is doing with our PandaFamily. We are very excited. There ARE plans going on right now for adoption and it is nothing at all what I thought in my little head. Adventure is on the way! Scared out of my mind, but excited to see God's hand unfold something amazing and wonderful for our family, too.

As far as working full-time goes...I griped a lot about that job, but the blessing of the money that came from it, the precious students I got to meet and pour myself into, the people I met along the way and the sheer experience of getting out of my Christian bubble and living among people who either hate God or have no care about Him at all was all worth it. I hated almost every step, but through God's grace and my precious husband, I made it!

Believe me, I DO NOT understand how people work full-time AND have multiple kids who are involved in extra-curricular activities and keep sane. Maybe that's why people seem so ticked-off and rushed all the time. I found myself being so agitated and short-circuited all the time.

The part I'm sad about is that my spiritual life stunk. No matter how much I tried to "get it together" I was just always tired, always felt like nothing was getting done and always felt rushed.

Start the day at 6:00am, rush, rush rush--pick up PandaGirl at 4:30, get home, check emails, get dinner ready (or go out!! I would be so tired that we'd go out, eat gross food and spend too much rather than eating at home!), baths, read, blah, blah, blah, get the kid in bed, work-out...maybe, shower, hit the pillow and then start all over again the next day.

THAT IS NOT HOW LIFE SHOULD BE LIVED!!!!!!!!!!!!

I so wanted to be at my spiritual "best" even through less-than-stellar circumstances. I would remind myself of our blessed life as compared to the little girl we sponsor in Africa who has nothing really or about all the people losing their jobs recently or even several dear friends who have been battling very fast growing cancers (one who went to be with the Lord just this very morning leaving behind a husband and two teenage boys). Reminding myself of every gracious thing God has done for me would get me back on track and I could focus for a little longer. I even tried starting Beth Moore's Esther Bible Study....HA!...there was no time for that! (Again, I seriously don't know how people do it!) I need to mention also that we had a small group at our house on Tuesday nights and Wednesday nights PG and I had dinner at church with PP or else we wouldn't get to see on him on Wednesdays and then would run to the grocery store for weekly groceries since there wasn't really any other time to do it. Our weekends were always full with some thing or another. (And can I just say that THE worst time to shop at Wal**Mart is on a Sunday evening around 5:30?!!! OH MY WORD! Not a good idea). Back to the spiritual...I am grateful for my God who loves me despite my weaknesses. In fact, He says in His Word that when I am weak, HE IS STRONG. Praise You, Lord.

I can't post again for another week and a half. I'm going out of town to spend some time with my mom who is recovering from her double knee replacement surgery.

Didn't I say that I was going to go read a bit ago? I guess I got distracted. That's happened a lot in the past year. But that's another post entirely...if I remember to post it. ; )


The picture below is where my heart loves to be: right in the middle of ministry events with PandaPop, free to do what needs to be done with my family and being the best mom and wife I can be.

Bless you for sticking around to see what happens next. ; )

I Hear the Fat Lady Singin'!!!!

The speech job is done and I feel FREE! Wahoooooooo!

Tick Tock--Tick Tock!

It's ALMOST OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you have followed me ANY this year, you know that me and working full-time have NOT worked very well. There have been many blessings, but WHEW--the toll it's taken on me has been...I'll save that for another post in a couple of weeks. For now, I'll just post a few things for a quick catch up and will post more in a few days. Tons to do to finish up the school year.

I so wanted to do a post yesterday about how it was 20 years ago that I graduated from high school: June 1, 1989. Well, that just came and went and I didn't even get to post about it. Guess, I'll save those pics and wonderful words for a later post, too. So, until I have more time...



I was blessed to be a sponsor on PandaGirl's end of year field trip to the zoo at the end of May. We have a FABULOUS zoo near and we were only there with about 100 other school buses. ; )

PG's school mascot is the tigers so how appropriate that when all the other animals at the zoo were hot and tired choosing to sleep out of sight, that these GORGEOUS tigers awake, stretch and proceed to put on a show for all of us spectators. There were six huge tigers showing off their stripes for us. I couldn't help but think about Alex from Madagascar doing his "thing" for the crowd and if the tigers were doing what they were doing all the while talking about us humans once we left. LOL!


PG chose this shockingly bright colored ice cream at the zoo along with her friends. Who knew it would turn her poop ROYAL BLUE??????? Seriously! She comes running into to the other room to find me and is yelling, "MOM! My poo is BLUE!" I go and look to just to make sure she hasn't lost her mind and sure enough....Royal Blue Poo. I gave it the Royal Flush after a good laugh....and, of course after calling PandaPop upstairs to stare at the Blue Poo, too.

I sent these beautiful flowers to my mom in the hospital who had double knee replacement surgery a couple of weeks ago. I stayed with her over the Memorial Day weekend. As soon as I got home (two hours away) I ordered some PINK to brighten up the awful hospital room. She just got home today and is doing great. Hard road, but she is a trooper and is making wonderful progress.

Our church hosted a Pajama Party last weekend for moms and daughters in the preschool/kindergarten department. We had a blast with our friends and were so darn precious in our matching outfits! I'm not really bragging to be ugly, it's just that when something comes together so perfectly---I just have to shout it out! PandaGirl's favorite thing this year has been the D*isney F*airies with Silver Mist, the water fairy being her favorite. How perfect are these with Silver Mist (representing PG) and T*inker Bell (representing me)?!!?

Even if I do say so myself, I think PG and I are just the CUTEST in our matching PJs!!! I found these PJ tops on clearance at Wal**Mart for just about nothin', got us some matching hot pink bottoms, made ourselves some totally precious hot pink flip flops with ribbons (one which had the D*isney F*airies!) and did our hair up in the sassiest pink bows. LOVE< LOVE< LOVE< this!!!

Mine and PandaGirl's bed seemed to be the center of attention. I don't know why. Maybe because it was the largest bed in the entire fellowship center standing at least two feet off the ground and covered in blankets and several pillows??? LOL! I was told we were like The Princess & the Pea. Hey, after 17 years of ministry with PandaPop, we learned a LONG time ago that you do not have to "sleep"...term used loosely...on the hard floor at retreats, camps and such. You learn to take things to avoid complete stiffness in all joints from a tiring night of trying to find some way to comfort your old bones on the floor. Air mattresses are our friend.

PG and I made our darling pillow cases the night before our party with fabric markers. It was so much fun and I LOVE them!

At 7:30AM on a Saturday morning after a week with little sleep...even food takes on a new look. ; )


I am sooooo looking forward to blogging regularly again and visiting old cyber-friends!!!