My word for 2012

I chose the word appreciate for my word of the year for 2012.  It is easy to say you appreciate all that you have, we do it all the time.  However, I wanted to be more cognizant of the many aspects of my life that I never fully appreciated.
In looking back, I tried to appreciate the gift of each day we were given.  So many bad things happen in the work or your time just runs out.  The ability to recognize each day as a period of time to use for anything we wish is something I tried to be more aware of and not just let my time drain away.
I don't think I have been as appreciative of the people in my life as I wanted to be.  My husband, children, grand children and friends all are part of what makes me grateful for my life.  I try to be flexible with the traits that make folks who they are, but I still have those moments where I mentally stomp my feet and shake me fist.  The problem is me, no one else.
I am certain that I have pretty well learned to appreciate my home and my circumstances.  I don't need a bigger house, or new furniture or a different car, I like what I have.  Envy, is less a part of my life, and what there is of it is usually gone in a flash.
Last of all I have learned to appreciate my faith.  I can talk to people more readily about what I believe.  I used to feel like a fraud and that I was just talking about stuff I didn't really know, but I appreciate the gift of confidence.
My word for 2013 is learn.  I am 65 years old, but I still don't know a lot of important stuff.  I am going open myself up to learn and change if necessary.

Children's Christmas Program 2012

We went to the Children's Christmas program at church tonight.  It was cute as always.  The theme was telling Christmas stories at a sleep over.  Wyatt got to reprise his role as Joseph this year, he still is easily distracted, but he remembered his lines and did much better in general.  Andrea and the other smaller children just came up to sing, but they added much to the cuteness level.  After the program, the fellowship committee served breakfast which was really tasty.  If you hadn't been in the holiday spirit before you would have been after watching these kids.

School Picture

School photos are just not the same as they used to be and that is not all bad.  Wyatt brought his picture package home last month with this picture in it. Me, being the elderly person that I am could not figure out why there was a regular sized black and white photo and the long skinny colored photo. The skinny photo was to odd a shape to fit in a wallet.  Nicole had to say "Mom, that is the way it was meant to be."  Once she said I could see what it was supposed to be, not to bad at all, and Wyatt took a good picture. I did this layout Friday night at the monthly crop at Across Time and Page.  I have been seeing pages where the paper was torn, layered and rolled a lot recently and wanted to try it.  I like it, but I think I am going to try it a couple more times to see if it can be refined a bit more.  The main problem is that the rolled edges aren't going to stay standing up when I put it in an album, but it is still a cool technique. 

The Christmas Season

We actually started thinking about Christmas earlier than usual this year.  I normally have a mental block about shopping before Thanksgiving.  It just does not seem like the right thing to do.  However, when we went to Dallas last month we stopped at Ikea.  That store has more gift ideas than you could ever use,so we started our shopping then.  Then I refused to leave the house on Black Friday and shopped online.  A few more gifts purchased, the rest was easy after that.  The result has been that we are a lot less stressed and I think we have been pretty practical about our gift purchases. 
However, that does not mean we won't submit to the temptations of last minute purchases.  It is just the way we are.

Andrea as stylist, artist, vandal

Andrea was busy yesterday too.  However, her efforts were not cheered like Wyatt and his tooth.  I had allowed her play with scrap paper and children's scissors in the scrap room.  While I had been keeping an eye on her she seemed to be obeying the rules of only cutting paper and keeping scraps off the floor.  However, I had to leave for a while and Ray took over the watch.  However, he had to take a call and during the time his attention was not  focused on Andrea she decided to cut her hair.   She is totally unrepentant about the act even though she knew it was not a good idea.  She hid the cut hair under a table skirt as if we would not notice it was not longer on her head.  As a good measure she started to cut the skirt off one of her doll's dresses when I came in and confiscated the scissors. 
As Ray said yesterday, "What goes through a three year old girl's brain that makes her decide that taking a whack off the side of your head is a good idea.?"  Especially after an adult had told her and had her repeat back. CUT ONLY PAPER.  I don't imagine we will ever know.  I just remember my thought process in past usually came out later as "It seemed like a good idea at the time."  Oh, well.  Andrea has an appointment for a hair cut today to repair the damage.  I would say another cut little short bob is in her future.  Her mother will probably feel the worst about it, she was hoping to grow out Andrea's hair long.  At the rate we are going that might be when she is twenty three.

Wyatt's first tooth

Wyatt lost his first tooth yesterday.  As everyone knows, a tooth in the hand is only the end of a drama that had been going on for more than a week.  Wyatt first announced the tooth was loose.  Then he made daily reports of how it is wiggling, how maybe it was sore, maybe it wasn't. There were a couple of failed efforts to use the loose tooth as an excuse to avoid tasks and paying attention. Grandma made the required suggestion that she should just go ahead and pull it out.  Wyatt did the expected shriek and ran away.  It is so much fun doing this stuff even though it is nothing new.  Finally, the tooth lost its grip on Wyatt's gum and came out while he was asleep yesterday.  Of course the grandparents had to see it, so the tooth was brought over in a little box to be displayed and photographed.  Wyatt knows his grandmother too well.  The photograph was why he insisted the tooth come to our house.  Wyatt's first tooth went home again and under the pillow for the tooth fairy. Wyatt was not convinced he wanted to Tooth Fairy to take the tooth, he thought he should keep it as a memento. I am interested in finding out what teeth are going for these days.

Friends

A couple of weeks ago Ray and I went to Arlington Texas for the weekend.  This was one of those "just because we can" trips.  In the simplest sense we went down to have dinner with two of my friends who I scrap with every six months and meet another friend who I have known for  eight years, but never met in real life. Sandy Tygar also known as Tigger flew to Texas just to visit with friends.  It was amazing to meet her, Sandy is a talented artist who started as a scrapbooker like me.  She has just gone so far beyond that now. 
Sandy enjoyed another benefit of her week in Texas.  Her home in New Jersey had been without electricity for two week before she came as a result of the hurricane.  She was lucky that power came back on just  before she went back home.
On Saturday we went over to Frisco and went to the Ikea store.  We found some gifts for Christmas there and just totally enjoyed looking at all the stuff for sale there.  Ikea is an experience each time you go there.
We spent Saturday night in Oklahoma City.  We stayed in the guest quarters at Tinker.  We went to Shawnee to the Grand Casino and donated money to the Indians.  The casino has some pretty good restaurants so we enjoyed that.  Sunday before we headed back home we did some more shopping at the outlet mall.  After so many years of dismissing Oklahoma City as boring, we are enjoying going there.  It is closer than driving to Kansas City too.

The Viet Nam Memorials

The Viet Nam War Memorials create the strongest emotional response it me.  It has be the fact that is is "Our Generations" war.  People we knew served and died in this war.  You visit the wall and the names of all these young people are there.  People who died before they were really adults.  People who left children and wives and families behind.  I look back at it now and I still ask Why?  I am not sure.  We didn't conquer some evil enemy.  We now get along with the communist government, people vacation there.  Refugees who immigrated here go back to visit families with out incident.  I just don't know.  I do know that the memorials that honor those who served and not the war are the most meaningful.

Shanksville and the Pentagon Memorials

Both of theSeptember 11th memorials are striking in their simplicity.  At the Pentagon the victims are ranked in age order with the little three year old girl on the plane being the first bench as you come in.  The benches are oriented to show if the person was on the plane or in the Pentagon. The angle of the lines is the direction the plane came in to hit the Pentagon. The number of benches in each line gets greater and greater and then starts to get smaller again until you reach the last person, a 71 year old  retired military man on  the plane.  You can see on
the wall of the Pentagon where the repairs have been made.

 At Shanksville, the site also follows the direction the plane came in to crash.  There is a wall listing  the names of all the people on the flight.  At the end of the wall is a gate and a mowed pathway leading out to the place the plane came to rest.  Only family members are allowed to visit the actual spot.  There is a boulder and personal memorials there.  The two memorials are so effective and to me each had a different purpose.  The Pentagon memorializes the innocent victims of a horrific act of terrorism. The passengers did not know what their fate was going to be.  The Flight 93 Memorial is different.  It memorializes the innocent lives lost, but more importantly to me, it recognises the courage that ordinary people possess.  That people will take action despite the hopelessness of the situation, and while their lives were lost many others were saved. 

We were so grateful to have  been able to visit both the memorials. 

First Grade

This is what school pictures look like this year.  I thought there was something really stupid done when I first opened the package.  Why was the picture black and white?  Why was the color photo so skinny?  It turns out this is how Nicole chose the pictures.  Dumb me!  The pictures are not bad, they just weren't what I expected.  He is still a very cute little guy.

Christmas Cards

Tuesday evening, November 7th we will be making these stamped Christmas cards at Across Time and Page.  All of the cards are simple enough that they can be made in larger numbers to send out at Christmas.  I think my favorite is the glitter striped Christmas tree.  In fact I think I may be a glitter junkie.  Call the store and take the class.

Halloween

 

Halloween always starts around here when we take Wyatt and Andrea out to Bergmann's to choose pumpkins.  Choosing pumpkins usually means running around yelling and choosing five or six different pumpkins before settling on the one they want.  We don't go to the maze yet, but that may still be in our future. We also go up to Wyatt's school for the Halloween parade.  The kids are so wound up and the noise level is so high the adults are exhausted and the kids are just getting started.  This year Halloween fell on Wednesday night so the biggest part of the candy gathering came from Trunk or Treat at church.  Ray really got into decorating the back of the Durango and kids were appropriately impressed by his work.  They went down the street once they came home.  Now just to eat all the candy.

Museum of American Indian

The American Indian Museum started out as an optional visit, but we had extra time on Monday after the Capitol Tour and were able to go after all.  The museum is very modern, but allows the traditional styles of the various tribes exhibits to shine through.  Jim and Phyllis were not as interested in the museum as we were.  We all decided that this might have been a result of the fact that Native Culture is not a presence in Ohio as it is in our part of the country.  We could have spent much more time  and I would go back to visit again. 
I had read  line about the restaurant in the museum.  It was named one of the top museum restaurants in the US.  The food is all based on native foods and recipes.  There were eight stations reflecting the different tribal regions.  Each of the regions had interesting dishes.  I was intriqued by the salmon dinner from Northwest, but we all ended up with Indian Tacos.  Since we eat those every now and then we weren't being all that adventurous.

The Capitol Building

We had tickets to tour the Capitol Building on Monday.  We also had passes to visit the House and Senate Galleries but they were not in session, so all we got to see was the main part of the Capitol.  The tour was very interesting but sort of rushed.  You are given head sets and the tour guide talks to you through them.  The Rotunda is beautiful with tiles on the dome and sculptures all though the Capitol.  There are also sculptures from each state representing what the state feels is its essence or a noted citizen.  I especially liked the astronaut from Colorado and King Kamehameha for Hawaii.
My complaint is that we were not allowed enough time to look at the architecture and art.  It is pretty much an in and out tour.  But I am glad we were able to go.
I almost forgot the story about Ray and the coffee.  When we were about done looking at the exhibits and were going to leave Ray insisted that we had to have a cup of coffee. I was blowing him off when I finally realized that it was important to him to do this.  We sat down next to a couple visiting from Australia who were doing the quick tour.  So now Ray has had his coffee in the Nations Capitol Cafeteria.