I Got My First Award!! And An Announcement That May Cost Me...

Wow! I was so surprised the other day when I learned that Denise gave me The Lovey Award! This is my first award and I am thrilled!

Now here is the disclaimer for the award:

"These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find friends and be friends.They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships will be propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly- written text into the body of their award."

Eight? I don't even know if I know eight people... but I'll try.

Okay, let's see

A. B. M. (don't know if you want your real name out there...) at Domesticated.

Alli at My New Life. Hey maybe you'll start blogging more now, as in more that one post!

Chris at Just a Girl
Cynthia at An Accomplished Woman
Jen at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam
Jill at Controlling My Chaos
Kimba at A Soft Place to Land
The gals over at Like mother, like daughter

Okay, Phew! That wasn't as hard as I thought!!

Now for my announcement that I hope will not make you stop following me... I am taking a six week hiatus! Please don't leave! The Lenten season will start tomorrow with Ash Wednesday, and lately I've been realizing how much all my blogging time is taking from my family. So, this year I'm going to give up blogging (and possibly the internet as a whole - except email...) as my Lenten sacrifice. I really do have so many posts floating around in my head, but I think this is really something I need to sacrifice. I am looking forward to all I hope to accomplish during this time as a result of not blogging, but I will be back come Easter with, hopefully, a better sense of how to balance my time in this virtual world and my time with my family. In the mean time I have added a button to my sidebar, so you can email me, if need be. Okay, there, I said it, so now it has to be done. See you at Easter!

Yes, Yes, I Am Actually Alive!!

And yes, I do realize it has been over a week since my last post... I Am So Sorry!! We have gotten ourselves mixed up in a complete bathroom renovation, and boy this 69 year old house had some surprises in store for us! On Tuesday night the Mr. took out the vanity and toilet and took down the fake tile look cardboard stuff. The wall behind the board was not salvageable so he ripped out all the plaster from four feet high down to the floor. On Wednesday we put up drywall and I spackled while he was at work. Wednesday night and Thursday he fussed with putting the toilet in which is where things started going south, I will get to that in a minute... Also on Thursday I went to order the sink, which as luck would have it was going to take "around a week" to come in. Sheesh!

So, I don't know what the people were thinking when they "fixed" the bathroom before, but they somehow thought that having a flange on the toilet wasn't necessary. Yeah, the (rusty, corroded) bolts were cemented into the floor and the wax ring was just sitting directly on the floor! Furthermore, they fitted some new pipe into the "poop hole" and cemented it in but didn't make sure it was level while the concrete was setting, so the pipe was crooked. So when the Mr. brought home a new flange and put it on it wouldn't sit level, and he couldn't shimmy it to where it was level because then it wouldn't sit flush with the floor. He got a metal bit and for the next three days, between working at his real job, getting three hours of sleep per night and me shoving food in his mouth so he wouldn't have to go through a two hour decontamination process just to get dinner in his belly, he was grinding the metal pipe to the point where he could fit the flange on correctly.

YAY! Or so we thought... After correcting the ID10Ts slap job of getting the toilet (they just kept reinstalling the original toilet, by the way... BLECH!!) in, the Mr. put in our new Lowe's toilet, which went fine until he put the tank on the back. Hmmm... it wouldn't fit. The bowl was right against the wall, literally touching the wall, so the tank couldn't fit, the bolts to attach the two together wouldn't even match up! URG!! Well, after yet another trip to Lowe's we found someone who actually knew what he was talking about! He said that we needed a toilet with a 10" setback (which is the distance between the wall and the bolts in the floor) which is something most people "nowadays" don't know about. Of course, Lowe's and the other big box home improvement stores don't stock that kind, but he could order it for us and it would arrive in three to ten days (Lets see, it's Saturday, and I've had to shlep down to the basement to pee since Tuesday, what's another week-and-a-half) OR we could try some small plumbing stores, one of which was the store where we ordered our sink. YIPPIE!! So we run right over to that store only to find out they were closed on Saturday and Sunday.

Well, at 8AM this morning I was on the phone calling this store, but no one answered. Wait 30 minutes. Called again. Yep, they have 10" "rough in" toilets. They probably have a couple in stock. They'd cost around $125.00 - less than we paid for our Lowe's potty. Told the Mr. and he jumped out of bed and ran (well, drove, actually) over there. An hour later he was bringing our new toilet through the door! Then he bathed really fast, dressed, grabbed his lunch and ran off to work. So, maybe with a little bit of luck and a lot of prayer I will at least have a potty up here before I go to bed tonight. I guess I can keep dreaming about my inspiration bathroom:

Psalm 18

The LORD is my stronghold, my fortress, my rescuer,
my God is my rock where I take refuge.
He is my shield, my saving power, my mainstay.
I call on the LORD, worthy of all praise,
and I am saved from my enemies.
In my distress, I called to the LORD and
from his temple my God heard my voice;
my cry came to his presence, to his very ears.
This is why I will praise you, LORD, among the nations,
And sing psalms to your name.

Sweets For The Sweet

Everyone must be feelin' the love of St. Valentine! I have found so many great giveaways out in blogland. Now, since it is St. Valentine's Day tomorrow I guess I will be generous and share my findings...


First, because this one ends tonight, is Pink and Polka Dot. Beautiful jewelry and part, half to be exact, of the proceeds goes to a worthy cause.

Denise is giving away a twenty dollar giftcard to Target. Now who can say no to that??

The Nester is giving away a *fabulous* (I'm going to start putting asterisks around that word every time I use it!) set of art prints! Comments are at 220 and counting, ladies!

And for the grand finale (drum roll please): Jeanne Winters is having a giveaway in honor of her one year bloggy anniversary. This one is big, big, BIG!!!

Now, just because you read it here doesn't mean you have to go enter.

Oh, what am I saying, GO ENTER! I never win anyway, so what could it hurt??

What The...? Wednesday

*This title was ripped off from Denise at There's Always Room For One More.*

I meant to post last night, but that post is still not ready, and also I was dozing off at 10 pm - even though I had a second cup of coffee at 4 that afternoon. Whoa, this 6 AM wake up is rough...

Anyway, this morning I was over at SITS reading the featured blog which triggered a crazy memory. The Mr, the girls, and I were at a pond a couple of streets over feeding the ducks (and geese). Now, of course, we weren't the only ones there. There were three people congregating about a hundred feet away from us when a police officer pulls up and walks over to them. He kept talking to them and we were trying not to pay attention to them and continued to feed the ducks (and kick the geese away from eating my children).

I had seen out the corner of my eye some seek, black thing pop up out of the water and quickly back into the water. I said to the Mr, "I there is some huge animal under the water, " so we start throwing some food into the water. Soon we see the animal's back cresting the top of the water and then his head pops out to get the food. The Mr said, "I think that's a badger!" We both kind of chuckle, then the "badger" turns to swim away and his tail crests the water. The Mr gasps because that was no badger tail. "What is that," I ask him. "That is a rat!" is his reply. No. Way.

We were talking a bit louder than normal, and I'm noticing that the group with the police officer is glancing over at us, so we walk to another side of the pond about fifty feet from where we saw the "rat-from-you-know-where" to continue to feed the ducks. We toss some food to the ducks who are eagerly awaiting the provisions when we notice a sleek black shadow cresting the water and swimming among all those ducks. The Mr has decided that the badger-rat needs to go see Jenny Craig and avoids throwing any food in its general direction. So, spawn-of-Satan-rat gets mad and jumps toward the pond's edge to try to show us who is bossy boss around there. The Mr yells, I scream and try to save my unsuspecting children from being devoured, and Mr Policeman and posse scurry over to see what's going on. Then the police officer (who, I am certain, must think we are a family of mental patients) starts patrolling the water's edge to get a visual on the target. We soon see the sleek black shadow of Satanrat off in the distance in the water swimming, undoubtedly, back toward his lair, muttering, "I'll get you my pretties! And your little dog, too!"

Monday Memories

I wasn't sure what to write about today, so I just thought I'd share some of my favorite experiences. I don't know if I've mentioned before, but My husband and I had the most fabulous (there's that word again) honeymoon ever. We went to Rome. I really don't know if there is anything that can compare. We would love to find a way to move there. Anyway, here are six of the over four hundred photos we took:


Saint John Lateran. We actually didn't get to see this beautiful church until our last full day. Everytime we were able to get there they had already closed for the evening.



Raphael's Tomb. The artist is buried inside The Pantheon.



Another church, Saint Mary Major. Stunning!! The piazza we are standing in is where I was able to snap the photo of the little boy in my header.



Our first glimpse of Saint Peter's Basilica. There are no words to describe...


The Roman Forum. The history here is amazing. It's so humbling to realize how small we are in the whole span of time.


The botanical gardens. We got some amazing shots here. Even for the beginning of March it was beautiful.


I am trying to scrapbook our memories from this trip, but it's so hard to not include absolutely everything. Right now we have the pictures in two huge albums.

Our Masterpiece

The Mr caught this yesterday while I was taking a bath! Isn't this precious!!


What a masterpiece!

She is actually asleep, and she stayed that way for quite a while. She wasn't happy when she woke up, though because her hand fell asleep...