sometimes He uses the little things to remind us...

Do you ever pray for the weather to improve, but not really believe it will make a difference?
When I was in college, I spent about 5 weeks in Western Mexico... Sinaloa, to be exact. That's the state that is parallel to the bottom of the Baja Peninsula/Cabo. Well, Hurricane Rick was forecast to hit that area really hard. So a couple of days ago, Hannah and I prayed that the hurricane would weaken before it hit land. I haven't been in contact with anyone I met there since I left, but I think of them and pray for them fairly often.

Last I checked, it has weakened to a tropical storm. Oh, me of little faith. Just goes to show that God IS faithful, even when our faith is weak. Sometimes just asking is enough. In fact, sometimes we don't have to ask. Jesus intercedes for us. How amazing is that?

Ok, yankees... do you want a laugh?

The biggest snowfall of the season has been forecast... 2-4" in our area, 6" just north of here. It should start tomorrow, but it's been so warm, if it accumulates at all, it will not be until tomorrow night.

I will confess, I cut my daffodil blossoms because I planted flowers to be able to enjoy them, and if they get too cold, they will wilt. I don't get dirt under my fingernails just because it's fun. They look pretty on my mantle, and smell pretty, too. I wonder how long it will take Bear to notice them in the morning and ask to smell them.

I'm trying not to get too excited. It's not like meteorology is an exact science, and it's not like the weather people have always been right. But it sure would be nice to use bear's snow boots and snow pants... maybe show her how to make an actual snow man. Of course, there was that big snowfall about 7 years ago, the one where the forecast was not all that big and we ended up with 7 inches and complete chaos on the roads.

storm central

tornadoes are rolling across the south... they've hit hard in memphis and jackson, tn, and our sirens our going. maybe tech mom will post about her adventures in the storm on her blog. surely some of princess' antics are blog worthy.

pray for everyone's safety. apparently there were injuries at union u. in jackson, a nursing home in jackson, and there have been multiple car/semi pileups on i-40....

so far baby bear is sound asleep in he crib, oblivious...
****
10:35 p.m.- i made the mistake of peeking at baby bear and she sat right up. so i took her into my bed, where we cuddled for an hour. we've just put her back down in her bed, and i don't hear anything, so that's a good sign. as we tucked her in, she was talking to her winnie the pooh figurine.

2 dorms were destroyed at union u., and some students are still trapped in the rubble. they THINK they are ok. it hits close to home, as we know many people who have attended there, and i went to college just an hour north of there.

one of the towns west of here was also hit pretty hard, but so far all of our family and friends are safe, as far as we know.

this is what happens when the weather goes into the 70's during the winter....

It's HOT outside!


The forecasters predict the temp will reach 104 today. By the time we returned from our stroll at 8:50, I was sweating buckets. None of that Southern belle glistening going on here. Baby Bear didn't even protest going inside...

My hostas look like they won't make it, and a lot of the verbena have died. My little potted rose bush has about 2 leaves left. The cherry tomatoes don't seem to want to ripen. (I did try picking off some of the green ones to see if the others would ripen.) Something thinks my black-eyed susans are really yummy. I did trim off the dead day-lily and calla lily leaves, and pulled out the celosia, which just looked kind of funky and bushy. The chinese lantern plant, which looked half dead in its pot when we returned from vacation, is making a comeback. We do have about 7 cantaloupe plants growing from when my nieces planted their seeds... I hope they mature before we get a frost. (Of course, it doesn't seem like frost will come anytime soon around here. But weather is a crazy thing.)

finally....

a rain shower! ok, i guess it was a storm since we had some thunder and lightning. it was short, but i think we got enough water to help a little bit. it came after the sprinkler had watered my lawn and flowerbeds this evening, so they should be in good shape tomorrow, also. don't want to drown my green babies.

Wordless Wednesday

Are we really in Memphis?

It's sunny, breezy and COOL! Warm enough to not need a jacket, but cool enough to enjoy a walk around the block. Baby Bear climbed into her umbrella stroller and chanted, "ride! please!", so we went out for a nice walk in the fresh air. It sure beat the trip to super-Walmart. We got what we had to and were in and out as quickly as possible. (I'm making chicken pot pie for dinner and had to get all the ingredients.) Some high school age kids were out messing with a car; I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought that their teachers were probably not missing them in class at the school I taught at for 2 years today. The idea of calling the police for truancy also crossed my mind, but I decided to give the poor teachers a break. If the kids were that rowdy outside, trying to teach them anything would have proven futile on a day like today.

Baby Bear is supposed to be napping, but I can hear her playing with her kitty and an old Pound Puppy from when her Daddy and Uncle and Aunt were growing up. I don't want to know what kind of pain the boys inflicted on their stuffed animals, though they appear unscathed. Anyway, she sounds happy, so why mess with a good thing? At the moment, all I hear is the lullaby from her wind-up giraffe, so perhaps she is going down.

Springtime is here again!

I hope I don't jinx it by saying so, but I am so glad to see the sunshine and be able to take Baby Bear out for a stroll without putting on a jacket! We also planted some daisy seeds in the front flower bed, sunflower and a perennial mix packet of seeds in the back of the yard, where it's technically not our space, but it's nobody else's yet either. The birds will probably eat them, but at 10 cents per packet, I'm not too worried about the investment. I think it will be fun if we do get sunflower seeds. Baby Bear was thrilled when a bird landed about 10 feet away from us while we were outside today, and I can only hope that if the sunflowers actually grow, we might get more birds as well. Three caterpillars caught her eye on the brick near our "chimney", and she kept trying to call them by name (something like cahpillah).

While we were "gardening", I noticed some bulbs poking through the mulch. If all goes well, we may see calla lillies blooming in a couple of months!!! I planted these last year; they came from a nursery and were leftovers from how a teenager from Bec's church youth group decided to earn money for a car, if I remember correctly.

bah humbug

we actually had snow flurries for about 3 minutes this afternoon. brrrr.... note to self: don't plant annuals before May 1st, or at least until after Easter. no matter how desolate and bleak the flower bed looks. tucking your daughter in at night is priceless. plants? not so much.

baby bear and i loved having company today. visit hannah-bear's cave to see pics. while ballerina and i were in card-making mood and baby bear napped, we also put together a couple of scrapbook pages. i think i'm on day 4 of bear's life now.

rain!

we're FINALLY getting a gentle Spring shower. our poor grass was turning brown, it's been so dry the past few weeks. i put baby bear in her saucer on our front porch, and she watched as i planted some seeds which were left as a marketing ploy by an area realtor. if they germinate and bloom, they will be forget-me-nots.

i figured the gentle rain would help them germinate and save me the trouble of watering for now. yes, i am that lazy.

breezes and bellies...

(not at the same time)

ok, okay... here you go! i finally got up the nerve to start up the old laptop... the one with the fractured screen that is connected to an old monitor that tech mom gave me... and the monitor is at least 2 feet above the keyboard. so now the laptop is a desktop. however, i didn't like linking to baby bear's blog via the word belly in the last belly-tag post, and i'm sure most of you didn't either... so i decided to suck it up and use the less convenient of the computers. (i know, i should just be grateful to have one, never mind two working computers! and i am!)

anyway, baby bear and i went out to the park today. days like today make me glad to be living in the south. while my sister and her family are driving north to where it's still winter, it was windy and warm here. no jackets necessary! the daffodils are in bloom (mine should begin opening tomorrow... if a pesky rodent hadn't eaten most of the bulbs, i would have a lot more in our flower bed). anyway, days like today also remind me of why we have chosen to stretch ourselves financially so i can stay home with our daughter. i would not want to be in my old indow-less classroom next to the ISS room, dilbertish office cubes or even the welcoming learning center with the foosball table for "success time" tutoring others' kids while my daughter was playing outside with someone else.

As promised, here are those belly shots....

"hiking" in the smokies at 26 weeks...

not sure when we took this, but I had to be farther along...

bec and me at her shower on 10/15/05- 10 days before babybear's birth

p.s. thanks for the blouses, crt!

tornado watch....

give me snow over this any day.

wish me luck...

i'm baking chicken in cream of mushroom soup with french's onions.... green bean casserole but replace the green beans with chicken. hubby's not typically a big casserole fan, but he likes chicken and he'll eat gb casserole. i have leftover asparagus to cook up, so i thought i would sautee it as usual, and then put some of the sauce from the chicken over it. i didn't want to torture hubby with the taste of asparagus baked into the chicken, when I was already taking a risk.

baby bear has apparently decided that she is too big for 2 naps a day. i feel sorry for the nursery workers at church tonight already. hubby and i are going to a meeting, and she'll be in nursery. she is jabbering away in her crib, sometimes fake crying, sometimes talking, sometimes quiet... it's been that way for 30 minutes now, and at the moment she is quiet. maybe she fell asleep after all. if i'm lucky. we played outside today... it is warm, sunny and breezy here. she chased her ball around the yard and wanted to jump off the cliff into the woods, but i stopped her. she also wanted to go make herself comfy on the neighbor's lounger on their patio. i didn't let her get that far either. she dug her fingers into the earth pot... nothing like recycled wisconsin dirt! as she did so, i realized they will need weeding and more soil if i am going to give potted veggies another shot. so far my luck has not been very good with potted tomatoes or peppers. it's a shame, because i LOVE both. the thyme in the herb pot is green, and we'll see if the oregano and basil come back. they did last year. i love fresh herbs. they make my limited cooking skills seem fancy. nothing like a little fresh herb sprinkled across the top to say "homemade". that's what my mom taught me. anyone else grow up with parsley sprigs and cayenne pepper sprinkled across their mashed potatoes just to be pretty? (besides bec, of course). or a dad who grew nastirtiums because they were edible (they taste like radishes, if you want to know)?

it sounds like bear actuallly went to sleep. Calm. QUIET. Aahhh... that's what they mean by the phrase sleeping like a baby.

What a difference a couple of days makes...

Baby Bear and I went for our first walk of the season. She roamed the front yard, stopping to pet the shrubs and crocus blossoms. Our daffodils are getting taller, so in a week or so, we should have blossoms. Oh, and just because I am in the south, does not mean I will tarnish the daffodil name and call them buttercups. Buttercups are a different yellow flower, one that I used to pick near the woods down the street from my house as a little girl. While the color may be similar, daffodils are much taller and have larger blossoms.

After Baby Bear pet the green stuff, we walked two houses down before she asked to be picked up. So we returned to the house, where I put her in the stroller, and we went for a real walk. We passed 3 other moms who were out and about in the warm, sunny and fresh air. One was talking on her cell as she pushed her little girl, one was holding her 3 month old son with one arm and the dog's leash with the other, and the other was speed walking with her stroller and looked too young to be a mom. Maybe she was the babysitter.

Perhaps we can go buy some more flowers to plant this weekend. The crocus bulbs are pretty, but our yard could use more color. Anyone want to dig in the dirt for me? Just kidding, I find it rather invigorating... until I have to scrub the dirt out from underneath my nails. Even when I wear garden gloves, some dirt manages to creep in through the tiny holes and paste itself into my skin.

The problem with road trips...

is that you can never do everything you want to, especially if it's just for a weekend. We've had a good time relaxing here. Hubby and Computer Guy trekked out in the snow yesterday to run a few errands, as well as window-shop at the sporting goods store. I find it funny that hubby actually window shops for his toys more often than I go clothes shopping. That's probably a good thing, though.

Anyway, other than going to church this morning, we've hung out at home. I am so thankful we have family with whom we can just relax.

Next time we head North, we'll have to plan ahead and get together with Grace's gang. That would be a fun adventure. I'd be calling her kids by their pseudonyms. The energy level would be close to nuclear, but in a good way. (Well, assuming the kiddos cooperate, of course.) Thankfully we make it up this way a few times a year, so when the weather is nice, it will be easier.

So here I sit, with crt's laptop on my lap and hubby has ours on his. The kiddos are in bed. Thankfully it sounds like Baby Bear has gone to sleep on her own. We do hear an occasional thump from one of the older girls, but that's normal around here.

winter retreat...

While some might long to retreat from their winter wonderland this weekend, we have opted to retreat northward to experience true winter weather. Baby-bear slept very little on the drive up to her older cousins, and she has already had a grand time being chased by Monarch and Purple Princess, chasing Jessie (the fat cat that doesn't do anything), pushing Purple Princess' old little tikes trike, and climbing the stairs. the older girls try their hardest to keep her downstairs, but our little one is quick.

We were surprised by how far north we had to drive before we saw any snow accumulation... but the beauty of the ice on the trees and the crystals glistening on the ground was worth the wait. The interstates and main roads are clear, and even the neighborhood streets are relatively passable. I find it refreshing to experience a taste of true winter weather... and if it is going to be as cold as it has been lately, we might as well get to see the snow (and play in it, even if it's for a mere 5 minutes or less). We even saw a couple of men ice-fishing on a pond near the interstate. I haven't seen a pond that frozen since... well, definitely since before we move to TN from the MidWest when I was in high school. Perhaps Baby Bear will fall into a snow drift tomorrow (we won't let her sstay there, don't worry.)

Starting last night, Baby-bear has been around her relatives, and I am so grateful. I have fond, ye distant memories of our drives to my cousins' in PA when we were little, including our dog, Gabe playing with their dog, Sheba. (I had to be younger than 5, since Gabe was hit by a school bus when I was in Kindergarten.) Anyway, I am glad she had time with Juliana last night and this morning, and now she gets to be overwhelmed by the exuberance of her older cousins.

It looks like they're expecting more snow tonight.

What a difference a week makes...A few crocus bloomed last Friday...

.. and this is what we awoke to this morning.

I had to laugh at the weather forcasters this morning. The night before last, they had predicted 2-4 inches of snow in some places. We had a slight dusting. Last night, they said some places might have up to an inch in accumulation, as though the chance was slim. Yeah, weather forecasting is an exact science... I'll believe that one.

Schools were closed today. The roads were fine by the time we took baby bear to the doctor for her well baby check.