Video feature on your digital camera... USE IT!

I received an 8 GB flash drive for Christmas. As I was cleaning up my files and rearranging folders and whatnot so I could move them to my new flash drive, I found a really cute video of Frosty and Mocha from way back when I found Mocha. I was driving a bunch of kids home from summer camp when we stopped at a gas station near Waco. At the gas station, we found a homeless kitty that was just too adorable to leave alone. I ended up taking the kitty home with me and was looking for a home to put her in. While I was looking for someone who wanted a kitty, I kept her with me for a few days. This is a clip from when Mocha was living with me... How CUTE!!!

Update: This video was taken approximately a year and half ago. Frosty is now 2 and 1/2 and Mocha is a little over a year and 1/2. Mocha is living happily with a new best friend (who is also a doggy.. and who is ALSO Frosty's best friend!) and is being spoiled by her owners. Sadly, when I bring Frosty over to visit my friends and their dog, Mocha isn't too friendly and takes refuge in a secret hiding place.

Most digital cameras nowadays have a nifty little video feature on it. If you have it, use it. You'll be able to catch cute moments that you can cherish for the rest of your life. Use it - I'm glad I did. You'll regret it if you don't.

My first thrilling ride

Dear Diary,

I did it! I can now cross another thing off my Bucket List. I hopped on a motorcycle and went up to 85 mph on it.... and heck no, I wasn't driving! Don't worry, I was safe... as safe as I could be.

I have a close friend who has a motorcycle. He's on it often. Originally, I couldn't have cared less - but then I got interested and decided that I wanted to give it a whirl. I received a nifty dark blue leather jacket as a gift for Christmas that is just super cute and sexy. I bought myself a neat blue/silver/gold helmet. My jacket arrived almost two weeks ago. My helmet took forever but it finally arrived yesterday.

Tonight, my friend needed to go to Wal-Mart to get some last minute Christmas gifts. We used this opportunity to go out on the bike because now, since I have the appropriate gear, why not!? I was nervous at first. Anytime I try something new, I tend to get a little bit nervous. But I never let that get in the way. It was awkward trying to get up on the bike. The ride to Wal-Mart went smoothly, however, I was struggling with trying to stay in my own seat. Whenever the bike slowed to a stop, I would slide forward. When the bike sped up, I would slide backwards. Pretty scary at first.

Of course, I'm a total newbie to this kind of stuff. So I figure it'll take a few rides for me to find my "stability" and become more comfortable with the bike speeding up and slowing down. My biggest fear was (and still is) sliding and falling backwards off the bike as it's speeding up. But like I said, with a couple more rides and practice, I'm pretty sure I'll get over it and learn how to stay put. Anyway, the ride to Wal-Mart was pretty tame. It was exciting for me and a totally new experience but nothing happened (thank God). However, the ride back was a different story....

I guess my friend decided to try to spice things up a little bit. Maybe he was trying to scare me. Maybe he was testing my limits. Or maybe he's just a jerk. He sped up to 85 mph on the Katy Freeway. If a cop is reading this - this didn't happen, I'm lying. At the time, I had no idea how fast we were going. The posted speed limit is 65 so I had figured we were going 70 or 75. I remember thinking at that moment "wow, we're going kind of fast." Yes, I did grip a little tighter then. After we took our exit, my friend decided to start to weave back and forth within our lane. Fun? Maybe for him. But me - that just made me nervous. We had to slow to a stop at a traffic light. He decided to start playing with the brakes. Again - fun? Maybe for him, but not so much for me....

The rest of the ride was uneventful, thank goodness. Now, I don't want to come off as someone who gets scared or nervous easily. That's not me. However, I do have to cut myself a little slack. This was my first real ride on a motorcycle! That has no seat belts!!! On a freeway! With speeding cars! And I didn't freak out. No sir.

All in all, it was a unique experience. While it's not exactly as exhilarating as skydiving, it was a neat experience. I'm already looking forward to my next ride.

Signed,

A motorcycle passenger

Families and the Holidays

Every year, people go through the same routine. Around the holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas, everybody packs their bags and head out of town to visit families. Or they would diligently clean their homes and buy lots of groceries if their families were visiting them. If your family lives in the same town - and if you're married, or have two sets of parents - you'll cram your days with visiting everybody. Not only the holidays are for families, they're for friends as well. Everybody is hosting holiday parties left and right.

I had just attended a Christmas party at a friend's house just the other night. It was a pretty big turn-out. I saw lots of people that I knew all in one place. This was the first party in a long time that everybody showed up at. And excluding New Year's Eve, that was probably the last party for a while.

So the holidays, all the parties and people seeing families had me thinking. Typically, throughout the year, you hear about people visiting families and hanging out on special occasions like birthdays, mother's day and father's day. But it's nowhere near as much as people would visit families for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Right around then, everyone has "family" on their mind...

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Families should be adored and appreciated. However, it has me feeling a little bit left out and bored. See, I have a very small family. Actually - I have family in Austin and Dallas, but haven't spoken to them in years. I have family in New Jersey and naturally, I'm just too poor and they're too far for me to see often. As a result, we don't keep in touch. So, the only family I have that I consider "family" are my parents, my sister and her two kids. And well, I see them... often.

I guess I should be lucky. I see them at least once a week. Back when I was working, I saw my mom everyday because she took care of my son while I was at work. So I guess whenever the holidays roll around, people are going "family, family, family..." and I'm thinking "so what?" Maybe this makes me a bad person. Maybe not. Like I said - I see my family... often. Probably more often than anybody else that I know right now. And if I don't see them, I talk to them - usually everyday.

I guess it's harder to appreciate something that you have if you're around it everyday. I guess part of my feelings towards family have to do with how I was raised. My family aren't very affectionate people. I've always known that my parents and sister love me - that isn't an issue. And my 3-year old niece is just crazy about me - she'd have to be ... I'm her only aunt! We just aren't the close, touchy-feely, sappy, hugsy-kissy types. So because of that, I'm very selective about who I'm physical with and aren't usually comfortable when someone gets a little too close. And no doubt, it has a small effect on how I am with my own children. But I try hard to change that....

Anyway, back to the point - so whenever the holidays roll around and people are spending all their time with families (again, nothing wrong with that), I feel left out and lonely. Sure, I plan on seeing my family on Christmas Eve. We have plans to eat dinner together. And I'll probably pop over again on Christmas morning to trade gifts and play with my nieces a little bit. But I'm sure that I'll get bored by mid-afternoon and will want to head home. However, there's nothing worse than spending Christmas Day alone.

So, let this be a lesson to anybody out there that will listen. For anyone who is whining about having such a big family, stop. Be glad you have family to hang out with. I, for one, wish I have a bigger family and have more things to do around the holidays.

Telling Stories Through Photos

(I apologize in advance for the formatting. I hope to get this fixed soon!)

I've always loved photos. I just hate being in them. Photos tell an amazing story of a person's life. Specifically, it tells what the person was like, what the person did and what trials/tribulations and happy times the person went through...

So I decided today I'd post some pictures and let them speak for themselves.

This is Logan's first year participating in decorating the home for Christmas. He was flabergasted to see fiber optic lights blinking in the tree

Here he is setting up the

Navtivity.

Christmas season wouldn't be complete without snow... in the north. Down in the south, it's quite normal to celebrate Christmas in 70-80 degree weather. We received a very nice surprise the other night - it snowed! Funny thing is, the next day - the temp rose back up to about 70 degrees or so.

This is our attempt at a snowman on top of my car. Becki scrambled around looking for twigs to use as arms and bits of grass for eyes.

See what Becki wrote on my car? Awww!!!!

After we finished with the snowman, we threw hard snowballs at each other...

Even Frosty joined us outside....(the dog, not the snowman)

It was way past Becki's bedtime so we headed inside. That was fun.... Mr. Weatherman, can we please, pretty please, have snow again?

I Heart Christmas

There's lots of things to love about Christmas. There's lots of things to hate too. When there's more things to hate than to love, I become Grinch-y (not to be confused with bitchy). The Grinch has become a well-known favorite as an antagonist who has hated Christmas for years. It just couldn't be understood by many why someone could hate Christmas as much as the Grinch did. But when you really think about it, the Grinch had the right idea.

The Grinch:

That's what it's all about, isn't it? That's what it's always been *about*. Gifts, gifts... gifts, gifts, gifts, gifts, gifts. You wanna know what happens to your gifts? They all come to me. In your garbage. You see what I'm saying? In your *garbage*. I could hang myself with all the bad Christmas neckties I found at the dump. And the avarice... [shouts] The avarice never ends! "I want golf clubs. I want diamonds. I want a pony so I can ride it twice, get bored and sell it to make glue." Look, I don't wanna make waves, but this *whole* Christmas season is [shouts] stupid, stupid, stupid!

As you grow up, you begin to lose the Christmas magic that you once knew as a child. Like me, you probably woke up one year and realized that the Christmas you knew no longer existed. Way back then, Christmas meant waiting for a jolly man dressed in red to come deliver presents. Christmas meant waking up bright and early to drag your parents out of bed so you could inspect what Santa had brought. Christmas meant happily seeing long-distance relatives and spending the holiday with them. Over the years, Christmas in its glory was replaced with long lines at the stores, rude people shoving their way to their destinations, and instead of gleefully giving gifts, people start to grumble about how much money they're spending to make others happy. Somehow, somewhere - people cared more about receiving gifts (and giving good, high-end gifts) and forgot about spending quality time with each other. When Christmas becomes something more of a chore, how could anyone like Christmas? Even Cindy Lou Who was starting to agree with the Grinch.

When Christmas becomes a chore (and it sometimes does - simply for the fact that people care about how expensive the gifts are), it loses its power to be a holiday when friends and families can get together and just simply appreciate each other.


I had started the holidays with a small grumble. Thanksgiving was never my favorite holiday. It wouldn't make the top 5. I never cared for the Thanksgiving meal either. As the end of November arrived and December was just around the corner, I thought to myself, "Here we go again." I went shopping on Black Friday to get some good deals. To my amazement, there weren't any long lines and everything was still in stock by the time I arrived at the stores. I guess you can blame the economy. I got all my shopping done in a day. I had all the gifts wrapped a week later. So far, so good. However, I wasn't feeling the Christmas spirit. I was counting the money I had spent - down to the last penny. I was more concerned about how much I could buy with so little money rather than thinking about what would mean the most to the people that was receiving the gifts. I was concerned about getting my shopping done and out of the way.

I had just finished the Christmas play at the church over the weekend. An annual item on my Holiday To-Do list. This year was quaint. Small and simple. And actually quite enjoyable for the most part. Another thing to cross off my list....


I received my very first Christmas present a few days ago. I had known it was coming so I was allowed to open it when it arrived. I waited anxiously for a week and when it finally arrived, I was giddy. Finally, I felt like a child opening presents on Christmas day.


So now, I am looking forward to opening presents with my children. I am looking forward to seeing other people open gifts I got for them. I am remembering what it's like to be around people that I care about and share the happiness in exchanging gifts. While our gifts wont be extravagant this year, it'll be packed with thoughtfulness and that's the best kind of gift.

So when you're feeling down and need some holiday cheer, become reacquainted with Cindy Lou Who and the Grinch.... and it wouldn't hurt to take a lesson or two from them.

When people take on too much

There is such a thing as being conservative. And it's not a bad thing. Apparently, some people don't understand the meaning of the word. I'm not referring to religion... I'm referring to being smart about how much you can handle and saying "no" when you should.

One of my many pet peeves is people who take on too much, thinking they can accomplish everything, and end up doing such a bad job on most of them. I do have respect for those who love to roll up their sleeves and be involved in their cause, taking on different tasks to help make things a success. Sometimes it's necessary. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's smarter to just delegate responsibilities.

I do recognize those who feel the need to do everything on their own. Sometimes you just can't trust others to do a good job and feel that you are the best person to do it - so it's just best to do it yourself. I've been there and done that. And I still do it. Maybe I should work on my trust issues and allow other people to help me out when I need it. Maybe you should too, if you have the same problem.

And there are others who take on too much simply for the fact that they can't say "no." Perhaps they're afraid of disappointing other people. Perhaps they're afraid of being criticized or deemed lazy if they did not say "yes" whenever people asked for help. People like those need to understand that they're not a total failure if they feel that they aren't up to the task or feel that they wouldn't have time for it/do a good job.

I have been dealing with several people at my graduate school that are just oh, SO busy and apologize fervently for not returning my emails for days. "I'm just so busy" is the common excuse among them. Yes, I understand that they're busy, but being in the profession that they are - working closely with students (ahem, or they're supposed to be) - they should know better than to leave a student hanging for several days before getting back to them.

I don't mean just an email asking a casual question. I'm talking about advising to get ready for internship and graduation. I'm talking about actually giving us our grades instead of making us wait 8 weeks for it. Yes, 8 weeks and I'm not exaggerating. And if a student asks you a question about an assignment a week prior to the date it's due, do NOT wait until the day before it's due to answer.

At the moment, I am trying to get my student teaching set up for the spring. I have been in contact with the school district and we are both ready to move forward - however, my advisor is pretty much non-existent right now. He isn't answering my emails so all I can do right now is just sit and wait. I did just find out that I possibly may not even qualify for student teaching because my advisor failed to check in with me and let me know that I was supposed to do this and that beforehand (like filling out forms that was due at the beginning of the FALL semester)... things I was not aware of. I would expect that an advisor would work closely with all his students to make sure they are progressing well in the program. If I received some sort of schedule of things to do and due dates, I would have done them. I have heard nothing of this requirement until just now. I blame the advisor.

If, in fact, I find out I cannot student teach because of this, I am going to give my advisor hell. I'm going to try my best and do what I can to get my foot in the door because I am determined to student teach in the spring.

So here's a word of advice - Doing more doesn't mean you're a better person or you're pleasing more people. If anything, doing more than you should could mean you'll do worse. So instead of doing a fantastic job with one or two projects, you could be doing a really horrible job doing 4 or 5 projects. And by doing a horrible job on all (or some) of your projects, you'll just get poor review from your peers. And so finally, by attempting to please everyone, you've actually disappointed a few.