Celebrate Life

Do you ever feel like celebrating just because you can? Get out the good china, light some candles, prepare a special meal and make a cake! Ooops.... can't forget the wine coolers or maybe frozen mixed drinks?  That's what I'm going to do for some personal things in our life that we'd like to celebrate! You can use any excuse to have a celebration. Look at today for instance.....people are celebrating Super Bowl Sunday. A bunch of guys running around in tights, rolling all over each other and patting each other on the butt for a job well done. If they can celebrate that, we can celebrate anything. ;)

Adorable Granddaughter Pictures.

Found these cute pics on one of my daughter's Facebook page. The one in pink is Mercedes who is my daughter Kayla's little girl. The other one is Cassidy and her Mom is Kristene who is my second oldest daughter.

 

 

My Wednesday Ramblings.

I am sitting in this nice, warm, cozy house feeling bad about the people who are not so lucky. Yesterday I went to the little grocery store down the road and the cashier was talking to the customer in front of me. She had to throw all her food away and had to stay in a hotel because she had no power. The cashier had to throw all the food  in her fridge away as well. From the sounds of it these people have been living in this state all their lives so I ask myself why they do not have a generator? A bad ice storm like this one hits every year or every other year so they should be prepared. There could be reasons they don't have one such as they don't have enough money. After this however I would not want to be without one. 

Yesterday, all the ice on the trees melted. Yup, in one day. It disappeared as fast as it came. All day long it crashed on the roof and on Russell's trailer which is next to the window where my computer is. I was worried that more tree branches were going to fall but only small ones did. Now we have quite a mess to clean up in the yard. I tried to walk out back to see what the damage was but could not go out there without icicles falling from the trees on my head!  The front yard is a mess as well. Russell parked in the grass in a different area than he normally parks and got stuck and now there are more trenches there. The whole front yard pretty much needs to be redone. I will be so glad when we get that driveway put in. What a difference it will make. 

I can't believe how fast January flew by. It really is like they say.....the older you get the faster time seems to go by. Don't blink....you might miss it. One day our kids are babies, the next they have babies of their own. You look back at the past and say...I wish I could change this or that but you know what? There's no reason to change a thing. You know you did the best you knew how to do at the time and everything in life happens for a reason. EVERYTHING. There are no mistakes. When we do wrong, we learn from it. Even if we don't realize it until years later. There's not point in looking back at the past with regret. It can't change anything at all. We knew exactly what we were in for before we came into this life just as we will in the next one.  


Here's something that has been on my mind. I feel like I had a horrible childhood. Abused, neglected and unloved. Well....my kids are going to have issues as well. But...so will their kids. There is no perfect life. No perfect parents, no perfect kids. All we can do in life is do the best we can. I like what Maya Angelou says.....When we know better, we do better. It makes so much sense to me. Life is a journey of learning. It all leads to enlightenment.....when we all finally remember who we are...part of the ONE.  I like to call it the Universal Energy and we are all part of it. There is no separation and there never will be.  Do you feel this oneness?

Peace to y'all.

Crystal World

Here are some more pictures that I have taken. This one is looking outside at the icicles hanging in front of the window. Some of them are about 3 feet long.

Here are the icicles from the outside.

Here is the ice covered tree on the side of the house.

  This tree is in a neighbors yard.

  

There are broken branches all over the yard like in this picture.

  

This branch fell on Russell's trailer.

  

Here is my ice covered clothes line.

A small tree in the back yard.

 

Broken branches hanging from a tree in the back, over our roof.

  

Another tree in the back.

 

This city was hit quite bad by the ice storm. They say it was hit the worst in Oklahoma. Everything was shut down on Wednesday around 11:00 am when the power went out. Everything was closed. Russell had to drive on the icy roads to a nearby city go get extra gas for the generator. We lost power for about 28 hours. I did not have work on Wednesday or Thursday and did not go to work on Friday since the roads were treacherous and they said not to drive. The city is a mass of broken tree branches and downed power poles and lines. We were lucky to get our power back fairly quickly and I think that is because we are close to town. My friend *S* at work still does not have power. She lives out in the country and has a wood stove for heat but no water because without electric, her well does not work. She had to cook on her wood stove and get water from the creek to bathe. She doesn't know when her power will be back on but I hope it's soon. 

With our generator, we were pretty much able to live as normal. There were times when we'd have to unplug the fridge and freezer to use the microwave, or the vacuum. There were and still are cords all over the house. I don't want to remove then yet because we are due for more freezing rain. It will be easy to set up the generator if everything is still in place. After the power came back on we lost it again temporarily and when it came back on, we lost our internet. It just came on a little while ago.  I hope it stays on and the power as well.


Well that's the story of our interesting week! Hope your week was a good one.


****Thank you April for the very inspiring piece of writing you sent me. It shows intelligence and creative writing style.  Very eloquent.....You never cease to amaze me. :)

Lost Power

We just lost power. I'm on Russell's laptop which is on a battery back up and that will just last a little while. We have gas heat and lots of candles. Russell is trying to figure out how to rig up the generator to run the fridge and freezer. Before we moved here there was an ice storm where they lost power for a week in this city. Hopefully it won't be that long. Well gotta get off here.
Have a good day.

Ice Storm Pictures

We are having an ice storm. There are icicles on the trees, it's raining out and it's supposed to turn to sleet in an hour or so and then probably snow. I just hope we don't get too much snow. Here are some pictures I took with my new camera. It's a Sony Cybershot and I'm pretty happy with it but I really want another camera that has a better zoom. This one will do for now. Hope y'all have a wonderful day! :)

This and That

This is a picture of some of the stuff in the bakery that I make at work. I guess Russell wanted a sample of it and asked me to bring some home. Can we say fattening?????

Here is Russell caught in the act. Washing dishes. What a nice guy. I love when he does this and he does it quite often and I don't even have to ask him. He says to me, it's the least I can do since you do the cooking.

WORK UPDATE.
Things are a lot better now that the manager who was causing so much trouble has been told to back off and has been reprimanded. When people stick together as we all did, things can get done. She was basically told to leave us alone. It's been very peaceful at work and I hope it stays that way. What a difference. 

Recycle, Reuse

I think it's a good thing to reuse things in day to day life. Here are some half gallon size jars that were pickle jars and now I use them for canisters. I've been using these type jars for years and I think glass is a lot better than plastic for storing things.

The following is not a very good picture but it's a large cabinet or armoire that I am redoing. The doors were broken and Russell and I glued them. I'm painting it black and putting on new knobs and hinges. So for very little money we have a piece of furniture that's real wood and not that fake pressed wood. I'll put on some better pictures when I'm done. This item was in one of the rental houses that Russell was working on and was going to be thrown away.

 I've got some containers and I'm going to start recycling. I used to do it all the time in NM but have not done it in years. We don't have pick-up for recycling products here but have to drop them off. Still, it's something that needs to be done.  I'll be writing more about this subject as time goes on. 

Hope y'all have a wonderful day. 

Happy Birthday

Happy 18th birthday to Russell's youngest child, his son. It's been a long time coming. It always amazes me that some kids (like my oldest daughter) make it to their 18th birthday considering the way they choose to live their lives.  Anyhow......it's nice of you to support your Mom now since she can't handle working at this time. That's a lot of responsibility as well as your upcoming marriage. Good Luck!

Stressful

Things continue to be stressful at work. There is just not enough time to do what I need to do and I feel bad that I have to leave my work unfinished. Today I got off at noon which was an hour earlier than my normal time so there was no way I could finish. A certain manager who has been disrespectful towards me and others in our department will have action taken against her tomorrow but I don't know how that will turn out yet. I'm off tomorrow but I'll be going in there in the morning to give my dept. manager my written statement. A friend in the bakery *S* is most likely going to quit because of the stress level there and a lot of things that have been going on. She's makes working there fun and if she does leave, it won't be the same without her. I just hope it doesn't come to that. All the women in the bakery are super nice and it's like having another family. :) I would like to continue to work there but without all the conflicts. 

I think that the next major thing that is going to get done around here will be to have a concrete driveway put in. There is one on one side of the house where Russell parks his car. This is under a carport. I park my van behind him since he does not use his car very often. He has to park his work truck in the grass on the other side of the house and it's a muddy mess! There are big ruts in the grass and it looks terrible. They get worse and worse every time it rains.  I think it will be nice that he doesn 't have to drive in trenches.


Well aside from this stuff, not much else is going on. We lead a simple life. We will both be glad when he is no longer on call 24/7 at work. He can't really go anywhere or even go out of town. It kinda limits what we do. 


The weather is cloudy with a chance of meatballs. haha.....I love that book and always used to read it to my son. Seriously it's going to be in the 60's and even a couple of 70's for the next week. Sounds good to me! Lower heating cost. Yayyy!


I'm going to post on my diet blog as well. Here's the link. http://celticspiritdiet.blogspot.com  Check it out.


I hope y'all are having a wonderful peaceful day.