I've had a Facebook account for a couple of years now but have never used it. I just didn't like all the privacy issues involved. The other day I thought why not give it a try. So I did. I tweaked my account the way I wanted it. Once I was comfortable with my settings I decided to connect with family, current friends and a few old friends. Unlike Twitter, Facebook is considerably more personalized, or at least it is for me. I'm looking forward to exploring yet one more form of social networking!
Garden Gnome
Friday night we rode with friends to go to a community fish fry. When I went to get into the truck afterwards the wind caught the door sending it slamming into my leg. By the time we got back to their place it looked like I had a second knee over my tibia about 3 inches down from my actual knee. I immediately started icing it. As the swelling continued, I decided to go to the hospital for x-rays. Despite the horrendous swelling there were no apparent breaks although the swelling may be hiding a hairline fracture so if the swelling doesn't decrease over a 72 hour period I have to go back. I'm doing sitting with leg elevated and icing. Thank goodness for the pair of crutches that are helping be get around when I have to. With a bit of luck everything will heal nicely and I will back to my normal self shortly!
Garden Gnome
This has been a rather funny week spent somewhat under the weather but not all out sick. 'Tis the time of the year for sickness to be going around so I've been relying rather heavily on a few natural remedies. I've brought out the steam inhaler, upped our Vitamin C and Zinc, been making a lot of green tea and ensuring we get that magical 64 oz of water daily. In fact, a new thing we are trying is drinking 1 - L (about 32 oz) of water first thing in the morning to help clear toxins from the body before even having a cup of coffee. The body is a miraculous thing that if given the proper nutrition will heal itself. So meals have been healthy, homemade focused on high nutrition. This plan of attack seems to have halted whatever I was coming down with without having to resort to OTC medications. Natural remedies really are the way to go if at all possible!
Garden Gnome
©2006-2011
Early last week the weather predictions were for a huge snowstorm set to hit our area late Tuesday evening. Tuesday morning cancellations had already started. The snow began falling here in the early evening. It was a fine snow but appeared to be accumulating. My husband had decided to close the office on Wednesday so was a bit disappointed to see pavement on our driveway Wednesday morning. Here our driveway had been plowed! The road conditions were reported to be quite treacherous low visibility and large snow drifts due to the high winds. We had received about 30 cm of fresh snow overnight so drifting was rather significant. By lunchtime the wind had died down a bit so my husband decided to go into the office. The roads were not as bad as expected although he experienced nastier roads on the way home. The roads stayed nasty on Thursday and Friday with drifting snow. Overall though we faired nicely during Stomageddon 2011. Our utilities were fine, our driveway got plowed a couple of times and we enjoyed nice home cooked meals so all was well!
Garden Gnome
©2006-2011
I hope you are enjoying all the pictures from our vacation. There's lots more to come but I thought I would take a break to announce one of our kids' new websites, MysteryPile. This is not a blog but rather a website that is very much mind provoking website complete with a forum for active interaction. As part of the mission statement "We crave to know and crave to learn the ways of our ancestors and how their trials built the foundations we live upon today." So if you have a minute or two drop by and say hello. Say hi from the Garden Gnome :)
It's funny sometimes looking back to see how you got to this point. I can remember the excitement at spending hours and I do mean hours of watching code as the little one leaped for joy when a little white dot danced across the screen. This meant the code so carefully and painstakingly entered worked. Well Mom and Dad were well behind the little one but we finally splurged and bought our first computer in 1989. It came with Internet in a Box and oh my gosh I was hooked! It wasn't long before I set up my very first website, very much blog style. At that time is wasn't as easy as using a blog host though as every thing was done via html. One day, I was so frustrated I asked the little one how to do it. With a characteristic grin, the reply was "I could do it for you or you would learn more figuring it out yourself". Well there you go, a chip off the old block and definitely something I would have said myself. So I learned html and every once in awhile when the going is a bit tough with coding, those words come back and they serve me well. Kids have a wisdom that you can learn from if you are open minded enough to listen.
Garden Gnome
©2006-2011
This past week has been one of discovery mainly blog related. I have decided to make a few changes on all of my blogs. All of this will be behind the scenes spanning a month or so per blog. This is being done as a major improvement overall, one that will give me significantly more control over my blogs. For the most part I hope to keep the look and feel of my blogs so readers likely won't notice much of a change. They will notice one quite apparent change although that too shouldn't be too painful. In order to make these changes I have been doing a lot of research so that I can make the changes systematically and as pain free as possible. My gosh there is a lot of material out there to digest! Each day I have discovered something new, quite often one more way to improve my blogs. Through discovery I am learning a lot about the behind the scenes workings for blogging! It has been a very interesting week.
Garden Gnome
©2006-2011
We held our larger family Christmas celebrations yesterday as we were at our vacation home during the holiday season. The week was filled with preparations and excited anticipation! We kept our fingers crossed hoping for good traveling weather for the kids. The big day came with the first to arrive parents of oldest and youngest grandkids. The grandkids were so excited to see us so there were lots of hugs and kisses! Next to arrive were parents of our middle grandkid who was also quite excited to see us along with the cousins. We sat around chit chatting enjoying a wide array of our tradition family holiday treats like kibbeh, crab meat dip and crackers, crudites, cheese tray and hummus with pita bread. The little ones amused themselves playing, eyeing up the presents and helping themselves to the snacks. Finally our youngest kid with significant other arrived. The much awaited for moment of present opening was upon us much to the delight of the little ones! Oh my gosh we had so many chuckles to the point of tears in our eyes. The little ones are just a hoot! After the present opening we sat down to a sagging table (actually 2 large tables pulled together as there were 12 of us) loaded with our turkey feast. It was just an absolutely wonderful family get together!
Garden Gnome
©2006-2011
Now that we are back at our primary residence after being on vacation with a home base of our vacation home for a month, I'm taking some time to go through all the pictures I took. There are a lot of them, 1,793 to be precise. It is such a blessing that we have so many pictures to remind us of our first extended stay at our vacation home! I have plans to share some with family and friends as well as readers of my blogs. Some will be used to create a digital scrapbook. I feel very blessed not only at having the opportunity to get out of the cold for a period of time but to also have brought back such great memories.
Garden Gnome
©2006-2011
I'm sure by now you have figured out we were recently on vacation. We left our primary residence on December 8 traveling south to our vacation home then northeast to visit a couple of kids before returning home on January 9, 2011. Essentially we were gone for a month so I have lots to blog about some of which has been peeking out at you even while we were away. I had internet during our stop-overs, amazing internet at our vacation home and the kids so am kind of noticing just how crappy my internet service is here but hopefully that will change soon with the house up for sale. Anyway, I thought I would give a brief synopsis of our vacation so you will have an idea of what to expect for posts in the coming days or weeks.
The first week of 2011 was eventful yet quite pleasant. We spent the first part of the week soaking up the sun knowing we would be back in the cold and snow soon enough. Mid-week we said our good-byes to our vacation home friends once again until our next visit. Pointing Lucy in the direction of a couple of our kids where would spend a couple of days before making the final leg of our trip home. It had been a wonderful extended vacation filled with family, friends and great food. We had been very blessed to enjoy such a great time!
Garden Gnome
©2006-2011
Our vacation home neighbours asked if we would be interested in going a Tuesday night buffet they liked going to and we accepted. The buffet was roast beef and chicken with the extras. It was nothing fancy and at $10.95 each, definitely not expensive but the food was good. Aside of the food the only other cost for the night was for drinks. The buffet was held at a former Holiday Inn in two very small banquet rooms that had the divider open to form one larger room. There was a bar to one side on the front corner beside a tiny stage. There was a small dance floor in front of the stage and I do mean small. The crowd was small numbering about 50.
The entertainment started after dinner so we settled in to enjoy what we thought was only going to be karaoke. After a few singers things started to liven up well beyond our expectations. McKinley & Beggs, a well known Florida country duo came on to play a set. They have been the opening act at Silver Springs for George Jones, Charlie Daniels and Merle Haggard as well as others. Jack and Jerry Calhoun (Twin Brothers) who frequently appear at the Grand Ole Opry played a set then Jack performed a few songs himself. When he came out to perform, we went around the room handing long stem roses to all the ladies. Ken Brady of The Original Casinos and now lead singer of The Casinos performed several number and gave me a signed CD! Eddie Snyder sat at the table next to ours with Dawn, station manager to 4 radio stations. Richie Merritt performed a couple of songs as well. There were other famous singers in the room as well.
I'll tell you, I was in seventh heaven and then some! I could not believe we actually were able to enjoy all this amazing talent and not only that chit chat with the entertainers as if we had known them forever. They were so down to earth and friendly! The entertainers get together to just do bit of performing and networking so don't charge for the entertainment on Tuesdays. No one knows who will show up to perform so it varies from Tuesday to Tuesday. In addition to the free Tuesday night performances special events are scheduled on select Friday and/or Saturday evenings with a seating cost of $10 per person and additional $10.95 for the optional dinner.
Talk about an amazing night!
Garden Gnome
©2006-2011
Many people declare their New Year's resolutions each year. They make a long list of resolutions that usually are broken by the end of the first week of the new year. The problem with making resolutions is they set you up for failure right off the hop, then you feel horrible for breaking them and not living up to those expectations that you get discouraged and give up trying. I don't make New Year's resolutions. Instead what I aim for is to make the new year a better year than the year before. With that comes the realization that I need to work on making myself a better person but nothing is ever cut into stone. I just work on it. What about you? Do you make New Year's resolutions?
Garden Gnome
©2006-2011
Here we are celebrating the first Sunday of 2011. We had a blessings filled 2010 and survived those happenings that weren't so much of a blessing. We grew though our experiences, laughed a lot, traveled a lot, and enjoyed our family and friends. We are looking forward to seeing what blessings are in store for us for 2011. I'm sure like the many years that have gone before us, 2011 will have many blessings!
Garden Gnome
©2006-2011
