From Singing School

Singing School, you ask?  What in the world?

The short version (albeit not exactly accurate) is it is the Primitive Baptist version of Vacation Bible School.  Except that the purpose of the week is to help educate the kids of all ages on reading the shaped notes that are in our song books.  You don't have to be PB to attend, by any means!
This year, Poodle was one of the "big girls" in her class.  We're not sure if she'll spend one more year in the "little class" or if she'll move up to the "middle class" next year.  So I wanted to make sure I got her on video all 3 days that they performed for the big kids, just in case.  Tooter participated one of the days as well!

This first video is from Day Two (they don't "perform" on day one), and it is of them practicing their Do Re Mi's.




This next video is also from Day Two, and it is the "Thank you for making me" song. I'm not sure what I did wrong with the camera, but I managed to cut off both the front and back ends. Whoops!





And, the last video from Day Two is of "Only a Boy Named David".






Now, for Day Three. This is the day that Tooter was awake and in a participatory mood. It's just one video for the 4 minute performance.






And, lastly, Day Four. Please excuse the shaky camera and the constant reprimands to the Tootman. He was awake that day, but was tired by that point in the week and was pretty whiny. So, between his trying to climb into my lap, not sitting still, general fussy'ness and wanting to hold the camera, the video looks as if the camera person was attached to a hang glider. Oh, and he got to be so much at one point and I had to stop the video and continue it in another segment.
The video starts with Poodle and one of her friends, Abigail, doing a demonstration of "song leading". Poodle got a little off, but no worries!





So, here's the last part of it!

Father's Day Niceness

It was a wondermous day!  The day started, of course, by going to church.  It was hot as blue blazes as it has been here for the past week, but they were patient enough with Mommy to let me get a couple of shots before we left.

J and 2 of his kids - this man is truly a God-send to me and I'm so grateful to be able to call him the earthly father of my children.

After church, we came back to our house....  the plan originally was to have Robert and Audrey and J's father come over for lunch.  (My dad is still in bonny Scotland).  But, J's dad was working, so it ended up being just Robert and Audrey.  And it was wonderful!  We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and just sat around in the nice cool air conditioning.


Well....  not the whole time.  As hot as it is right now, kids still can't stand to be inside all day.

There was ball playing......

Hula-hoop'ing......

(And as you can see by the stringy, wet hair, there was some sprinkler jumping as well).....

MUCH water drinking......

(forgive the bad focus job on this picture).

And some poor, amateur photography.  :-)

I'm attempting to keep my camera on its Manual shooting mode so as to force myself to learn how to shoot good pictures.  Obviously, here, I'm overexposed.  It was so bright outside that I couldn't tell from my viewfinder that I needed to make some adjustments.  And, it was too stinkin' hot to spend too much time with the daylillies.


Overall, it was a lovely day with lovely people, and I for one enjoyed it.  Hopefully, the two dads that were there enjoyed it too!  At least the food was good.
:-)  And the cousins are SO digging being together right now.  Yay for FATHERS!!!!!

Conversations with Monkeys

Me:  Tooter, where's your right hand?
Toot:  Here!  (holds out his right hand)
Me:  So, that makes this your left hand, yes?
Toot:  NO!  That's my other hand!


Scene:
I'm in J's closet hanging up clothes, and Poodle comes running in, breathlessly, after having been at Walmart with Tooter and Jmk.
Poodle:  Mommy!!!  We're back!  And we got Cheetos AND chocolate pudding!  I just ADORE chocolate pudding!

(The "adore" thing made me laugh.  It's not a word I use regularly, and I haven't the slightest idea where it came from.)


Just for my own failing memory, I have to note that Sparkie has been getting the hiccups now for about a week.  Well, I've been feeling her hiccups for about a week now.  I remember, when pregnant with Poodle, that she would get emphatic hiccups every single day (if not multiple times a day) and it was just a "thing" with her pregnancy.  Tooter certainly got them, but not nearly as much as Poodle did.  So, it's just a milestone, for lack of a better word, for me to note when I start feeling the hiccups.  :-)

I have so many updates I need to give out for the family folks - pictures and updates from our swim lessons, videos from this past week at Singing School at church, etc.  And I will get around to those just as soon as......  um........  they add extra hours to a day?  Maybe?  Yikes!

Strange Birthdays

Yesterday was the yearly anniversary of my 29th birthday and it was an odd day indeed.

To summarize: I missed church, sort of lied to my mother, skipped a birthday gathering, and spent most of the day on the couch knitting.

Yep.

See, what had happin'd wuz little Tooter spent most of Saturday night crying, clutching his throat, not sleeping and developing a seal-bark type of cough.  (No, he doesn't actually have croup - his chest colds start off sounding that way and then turn into "normal" coughing after about half a day or so).  Anyway, by the time he woke up Sunday morning, he was running a decent fever so that we were able to brilliantly deduce that he had.....  drum roll.......  a cold.  Yippee!  In all seriousness, I really am grateful that it wasn't anything more than a cold, but he's oh-so dramatic about any type of illness.

So, I skip church to stay home with him and Jmk takes Poodle.  My folks, sister, and youngest brother all left for a week and a half in Scotland yesterday, and my Mom was calling from the various airports letting me know that they made it here and there.  She would ask how church was and ask how the kids are and those types of questions, and I would just.......  not tell the whole truth.  It's not like Toot was really sick, but if I had told her he had a cold and we had skipped church, she would have been all worried for no reason and there was no point in all that.  Heck, he's already acting like he feels fine today, although he's still running a low-grade fever.  And, then, Jmk's sweet mom planned to have us all over to her house after church for a birthday celebration.  SO....  (because Poodle cried when we told her we might not go to SueSue's) Jmk took Poodle and I stayed home with the Tootman.

Toot is really quite pitiful when he's sick and Mommy can't be more than 3 feet away from him during the worst of it.  Else there is much whining and gnashing of teeth.  So, I sat on the couch, watching Disney channel with him and knitted on the wee lass' baby blanket.  When I wasn't actually holding the poor, pitiful little man.  (In his defense, those seal-bark coughs do hurt in the beginning).  It was a quiet, pretty relaxing day, to be honest.  Plus, Jmk came home with roast beef, potatoes and carrots, rolls, chocolate pecan pie and brownies from SueSue's!  YUMMO.  And, you know what - as unorthodox of a birthday as it was, it was a quiet, relaxing day overall.  As busy and noisy as my life usually is, to have a quiet, relaxing day was actually a very nice treat.  Not a bad way to spend a birthday!

And, even though I had to send Poodle off to Singing School at church with another family this morning, we should all be able to be there tomorrow.  Because except for the little bit of fever (and the coughing and such), you'd never think Toot missed a single beat yesterday.  Ahhhh, the resilience of kids!  Now, to keep him relatively calm during the day today so he doesn't over do it.....  good luck to me!

It's 4D Sonogram Time

I had a regular OB checkup today and scheduled the "for fun" 4D sonogram for this morning also.  First, the checkup was fine, weight gain is... ahem... no longer an issue (ha!), blood pressure is fine, all is good.  She's measuring approximately 3 lbs 5 oz which is on target.  Basically all is good!  Praise the Lord!

Mostly today's big fun was the 4d sonogram.  It was fun to watch her open her mouth and eyes in "real time".  She is still lying sideways (which is remarkably uncomfortable, btw), so we're hoping she'll turn and get head down soon.  I couldn't decide which pictures to include, so I just put all of them in there for the grandparents and aunts/uncles.  I really think she's definitely going to have her daddy's nose, but I'm back and forth on the lips.  Some pictures look like mine and some look like his.  I guess we'll just have to wait a couple of months to see for sure, huh?  (Like it really matters - as long as she makes it here healthy, LIPS aren't much of an issue).  Overall, I think she's a keeper.  :-)

Mentally Cleansing? Really?

From the June 2009 of Good Housekeeping magazine,
A quote from Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay:
"Men should always change diapers.  It's a very rewarding experience.  It's mentally cleansing.  It's like washing dishes, but imagine if the dishes were your kids, so you really love the dishes".

lol.....

Yeah.  Um, okay.  I hope he said all that with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.  But I suspect that he was serious.  So, in an effort to be a good blogger, I will translate the above for you:

"I have changed enough diapers to understand the mechanics of it, but only enough that I have been able to romanticize something that is not in the least romantic.  In fact, I'm so out of touch with reality that I don't even have the good sense to know that reading to a child is a rewarding experience.  Singing with a child is a rewarding experience.  Teaching a child is a rewarding experience.  Praying with a child is a rewarding experience.  But, changing diapers, on the other hand, is nothing more earth-shattering than basic routine maintenance and doesn't get anything "cleansed" but the little baby po-po!"

lol..... man.  As we say down South - bless his heart!

Freedom.

Earlier this week, I found out that a friend of mine left an upper management position to take a less-busy position with another company so that she could be with her family more.  So she could have more control over the structure with her family life in general.

::applause for the bold move::

And then yesterday, during the 5 minutes of GMA that I happened to catch, I saw this report.  Now, I realize that a lot of the flex-time that employees are able to use these days is thanks to the increase of viable communication outlets through web-based services.  And fast internet connections.  iPhones and Blackberries.  Web conferencing.  Etc.  30 years ago, flex-time wasn't this doable of a thing.  Now, some companies are taking advantage of this new freedom.  And good for them if they can do it!  And it got me to thinking and thinking....

I also just finished reading the latest Imprimus issue that Hillsdale College puts out.  And that got me to thinking some more......

Obviously, freedom has limits of rational sorts.  For example, I wouldn't be terribly interested in a doctor or a dentist who wanted to provide his or her services via web conferencing.  But as our world changes, so does the way we provide goods and services to each other.

Yay!  This is a good thing!

As long as WE are the ones doing the providing.  There is not one person out there who thinks that the government is going to be better at running GM than the GM execs were.  And look what a mess THEY made of things.  If you really, really want to be sure a package arrives on time - are you going to send it via USPS or via UPS or FedEx?  Honestly?  How often do you choose government services over private services, when a choice is available?  Be honest with me - if you could choose between a "free" clinic and a private doctor, who are you going to choose?  Why?

But, yet, there are so many people who genuinely believe that having the government involved in our private health care decisions is a good idea.  And, I'm not even talking specifics here.  I'm talking about the broad idea of freedom.  To have the government "do it" for us will mean less money in our pockets.  That's less freedom.  It will mean less choices regarding what we can and can't do.  That's less freedom.  It WILL mean someone else gets to make decisions for you, even though you are perfectly capable of making those decisions yourself.  That is less freedom.

I will admit, unhappily, that there are those who don't care much about freedom.  Because, with freedom comes extra work and responsibility, and they don't want it.  And I'm sorry for that.  But, please everyone, please think about what freedom means.  For a lot of working women, it means the opportunity to live their lives as completely as they want.  They can run a major company and still be able to be attend school functions with their kids.  Technological freedom is making it more possible.  But the minute we give up our freedom to make decisions, even the hard ones, then we give up our freedom to manage our own lives.  I know there are a lot of "things" to consider about how "everyone" can have access to good health care.  But having the government decide the who's and the how's and the why's is just NOT gonna work.  I mean, come on.

We can't bring everyone's quality of life to the same common denominator.  Unless everyone goes down.  We can not create a classless society.  Matthew 26:11 doesn't talk about this exactly, but it does bring up a point that we can't avoid.

I just want to urge anyone who is on the fence about this kind of thing to think about the ramifications.  Please.  Taken from Mark Steyn's Piece:

If you're a business, when government gives you 2% of your income, it has a veto on 100% of what you do. If you're an individual, the impact is even starker. Once you have government health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state has to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place. That's the argument behind, for example, mandatory motorcycle helmets, or the creepy teams of government nutritionists currently going door to door in Britain and conducting a "health audit" of the contents of your refrigerator. They're not yet confiscating your Twinkies; they just want to take a census of how many you have. So you do all this for the "free" health care—and in the end you may not get the "free" health care anyway. Under Britain's National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it's appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of "lifestyle choices." 


I just find the whole idea of incompetent people in Washington, D.C. making decisions about my health care choices completely absurd.  Sort of like trying to imagine those legislators building cars.  They won't do that well either.  Just watch.

And I'm done for now.  I just had to get this off my chest and out to the universe.  Please read the Imprimus piece if you get a chance.