Christmas is almost here. And while you are juggling getting last minute gifts, baking and decorating and making everything festive for the family, I hope you are able to take a minute and reflect on the good things that have happened to you over the past year. In uncertain times like these, it is hard to remember the things that you do have, because the bad things that may have happened to you are overshadowing the good. The economy being a mess, our troops fighting for us in other countries, many friends loosing their jobs and subsequently their home. It makes it kind of hard to remember the better part of your life.

Here are a few things that I am grateful for this Christmas:

It’s been a year now, since I had major surgery and had to spent the pre-holidays in the Hospital. This year I am grateful that I get to spend it here at home. I am grateful that I get to have another Christmas with my family.

My kids. I am so very blessed to have kids, that have grown into such wonderful young adults, with everything they had to endure while growing up, the odds were against them and they have beaten them.

My Job, it may not be a lot and it may be at times nerve wrecking, but I am grateful that I can still provide for my family, when many others cannot.

A roof over our heads. It may not be a lot, but it is still home.

Friends. I am grateful for the many friends I have, that care and are there for me when I need a helping hand. That will listen when I need to talk, that have a good advise, and that I can laugh with.

These are things that I am grateful for this Christmas, and no amount of presents can replace them. And I am certainly going to try not take any of them for granted.
So from my house to yours, have a merry Christmas and enjoy the little things that makes it all worth while.

Saturday I had to make a quick run to our local Party Store, were you can buy decorations and invites for Birthday’s, Weddings, well you guys get the picture. I was unsuccessful in finding a invitation template online suiting my need so I had to look for them at a store.

Anyway after I found them I proceeded to the check out and as I was waiting in line, a Dad behind me had found the novelty items and picked up a pair of goofy looking glasses. Silver with wings on the side, the kind you expect Elton John to wear, just a little smaller. He asked his Son if they made him look like a alien. His Son could not have been much older then 8 years old turned around and said ” you look like a idiot” and continued to bug his mother.
Okay, needless to say I had to turn around, bite my lips, look straight ahead in fear of busting out laughing. But I had to turn back around, as the Dad looked at me, and I just let loose. He started laughing and goes, well I asked. And I replied, that was your first mistake and continued to laugh through the check out and out the door. It made my day. The moral of the story, don’t ever ask your young kid for an opinion in public unless you are ready to be humiliated by your own child.

You know, the saying is, that when you are married for a period of time you get comfortable enough with your Spouse to share the Bathroom with him/her without any regards of what you are doing at that particular time. Well I hate to say it, but when I was married I never felt compelled to spent ” Quality time” with my then husband in the Bathroom. So maybe the so called experts need to re-visit this topic and re-evaluate their opinions.

But nowadays it seems like, I have lost any kind of privacy when it comes to me being in the Bathroom. Take for instance last weekend. I decided to take a bath in my midget bathtub, no offense to the short folks reading this, but my bathtub is made for 3 feet people and they gotta be skinny. I got claustrophobic while I decided to relax, because of the inability to stretch out or even move my arms. But that is besides the point. As I was saying, I was taking a bath, and in comes Puppy Ayla. She is smart, she knows how to open doors now. So she is right there with her face hanging over the Bathtub taking in the sights so to say and checking out the bubbles. Wonderful dog, no fear of the water. Next up is Tika, my daughters dog. Well she hates Baths, so she just hung out by the door. But wait that is not it, my daughter decided that it was time for us to spend some quality time together and told me to close the shower curtain so she could join me in my adventure of the midget bathtub and tell me all of her thoughts of the day and rummage through some products on the shelf. Helllooooo!! This is supposed to be me time, my time, my time to relax and get my head back to normal and not be afraid of being closed in. The only thing that is missing was the Cat. But he missed all the action since he was sleeping in a newly found spot a shoe box, he is bigger then the box, but that did not bother him, he is not claustrophobic.
Shower time I have an audience waiting for me, getting dressed is an impromto invite for making sure I dress myself correctly, I decided to ask for fashion advise, one woof is good, two woofs is bad and I am thinking of charging a fee now, but then what would I do with the doggie bones.

So my privacy has been non existent. Closed doors just get opened or barked and meowed at. So I just go and invite the whole crew with me and save myself the chaos that starts if I am not visible. Thinking of getting a hotel room when I want to be by myself, but then there be a 16 year old with 2 dogs and a cat looking for me to make sure I dress myself correctly.

Yes I am on vacation. A vacation that I actually look forward too, even though it is spent with 130 kids for 5 days and other Band Parents that chose to do the same. So you might say, that I am crazy. Vacation means no work, relaxation, good times.
Well we don’t look at it that way. Yes we do work, yes we have 130 kids to watch over, but we get to see these kids come to together as a Band, we get to know them better and we enjoy them. Yes, sometimes we get to a point were we say kids are icky, but if I personally look at the Seniors this year, I can go back and remember them when they started as Freshmen. And it brings up a lot of memories and it makes you proud and sad in the same time. For me this year it is bittersweet. Alex is a Junior, and next year she will be a Senior, a point I thought in years past she would not be, she tried to quit band several times, but the Directors and I would not let her. If we would have let her, she would surely regret it next year.

Anyway, we also have fun. The group of Chaperones that goes, has a great sense of humor. If you don’t have that, then you are at the wrong camp. Kids look at us and think we are weird. Directors have denied knowing us, and also threatened to sent us home if we were not to ship shape up ( of course they would not do that) or even joined in. And we also get yelled at from the Podium to keep quiet, kids love that when they Chaperones get told to knock it off.

It is always amazing, to see the kids take a piece of music and charts and get it all together. The talent they possess is absolutely astonishing. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer for some to realize what it means to be in the Big Red Marching Band and the Tradition that comes with it and the responsibility until they walk out the doors, march down the road to the football field and see the crowd that they have to perform for. Then it hits them..WOW…this is what all that hard work was all about. And it is even sweeter when they walk away with Trophies from a Competition.
The hardest part is when we loose some kids, because they choose not to continue with Band and quit. Lot’s of kids in this program don’t have the support system or structure at home, and every year we hear it over and over at the Senior Bon Fire, that this Band is their family, that this is were they made best friends, and helped them through their problems they have to face in their Lives. That this made them strive for better grades, to make them a better person, and when you hear this coming from someone that came in with a defensive attitute, thinking they know it all better, you know that something was done right and you hope they stay on the right path.
So yes my vacation time is spent at Band camp and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Go Big Reds!

My daughter went to Cedar Point for a couple of days and returned yesterday. Well the good daughter that she is she brought me back a present. I always tell the kids not to buy me anything, I rather see them have a good time with the money they get from me or they bring themselves, but she did it anyway. See how much she is not listening?
Anyway, my daughter has been reading my blog here, and well she likes it. At least that is what she is telling me. But one of the blogposts triggered her impulse buy.

Remember awhile back I wrote about the disappearance of my coffee cups, and how I realized my Mom was the guilty party in this, because she threw some of my older mugs out? Well welcome the new addition to our household.

Going to love drinking my morning coffee from that one!

So here I am with 2 driving Teenagers, well my daughter is almost legal to drive, she just has to take her Drivers test and then she is fully licensed. And you always hear the horror stories from other Parents, of how their kids take the car and bring it back home with an empty tank.

So yesterday I let my Son keep the Car, so he could run some errands and take care of a few things that he needs to get done before he returns to Campus in a couple of weeks.
He went shopping for a few new clothes, got his Instrument fixed at the High school, went to a bike store to turn his bike in to get repaired and so on and on.

At 4 pm sharp I walked out of work and there he was waiting for me. Nice! Did not have to call him and ask him if he forgot to pick up his mom at work. And then get this!! ” I put 10 bucks of gas in the Car”. If I wasn’t sitting in the seat when he said that, I think I would have fainted. $10 he put in, of his own money. WOW. I was amazed. So that is when I marked the day red on the Calendar to remind me of it.

But needless to say I spend more on him after, because we went back to T.J Max for a couple more things he wanted and I paid for it. It wasn’t too bad, it was stuff on sale, so he didn’t break me.
But I can say, when a Parent tells me that their kids never put Gas in the car, that my Son did!

Yes, we have a new addition. Her name is Ayla and she is a 8 week old Australian miniature Shephard/Chocolate Lab mix. My daughter decided I needed something to keep me company with, and got me the puppy as a surprise.

At first when she told me that she got a puppy, I was not really happy about it. Frankly I was mad at her. I don’t want another thing to take care of. But when she came home with her, I was like oh my God. She is such a cutie.

We have had her for a week now, she is getting the Potty training idea now, she stands on her hind legs by the front door and whines to be let out. The one thing we still have a problem with is that she has not taken to the cage yet very well, that she stays in at night. She will be alright for a couple of hours, but then starts the howling and crying and carrying on. I am hoping after this week, it will be over and she is used to it, we are a sleep deprived family here.

Our other Puppy  Tika, has after 2 days accepted the new puppy, and now they are playing together. Trust me Ayla has no fear of the bigger dog, she jumps on her and races after her just like a full grown dog would.

Our cat well, he hasn’t taken to her yet. But he will once she is done with the Puppy stage, he did the same with Tika. Right now he just bats his claws at her,when she gets all over excited and tries to play with him.

We will loose the rabbit though. But its for the better. We have a friend who’s relatives have a farm and they breed Bunnies. And since our Bunny wants to get it on with the Cat all the time, it would be a great place for him to  excercise his sexual freedom. He will have a pen to run around in, and not be cooped up all day in a cage like here. So it will be better for him and we can always visit him.

I will post every so often an update of Ayla and her little escapades growing up.

Yes I was watching the Antique Roadshow the other night, and as always it is interesting to see what people find and have as heirlooms, and it makes you wonder if you ever come across anything that might be worth any money.

So this Lady had a painting that she wanted appraised. It was her Mother’s and it really did not look like it was something you would hang in a Art museum, couple of Boats on the Ocean, I could paint the same honestly, but probably won’t achieve the same amount of money then this painting did.

Anyway, the appraiser was telling her this was this Artists early work, he just had started out, because his paint strokes and stuff have not been refined, and since he turned out to be a great Artist later on, his Rookie Picture is worth about $100,000 to $115,000.

And there came the Bleep. It was so funny, it was not a long Bleep, it was a normal Bleep to cover up probably 1 word which was if I would guess Shit. She continued to sit calmy in the chair and shook her head and smiled.

Now I had to start laughing to myself, which frankly I do quit often, and pictured myself finding out I have a great piece of art there and it is worth a large sum of money.  Well there would be bleeps for about 5 minutes straight, and I would not just sit there and look at the thing. I would be giving high-fives to the audience, hugs, and celebrate. I’d be clutching the Painting or whatever it is , and not let it out my sight and would make sure that everyone in that room knows that I got the money.

What I am looking forward too is the Episode that they will have on in January, of the person that just had something appraised at $1.4 million. I just read that online, it is the largest appraisel this show has ever done. I would like to see what he did when he heard the amount. Pass out?

I am not going to re-hash everything that has been said and written about Michael Jackson. All I know is that I respect this man for his artistic Performance, who has brought Millions of Millions of people together to fight Hunger, to care and to enjoy music and dance like it was meant to be.

Generations after Generations have enjoyed his music and that even includes my Kids. My Son who is fortunate enough to be in the Michigan State Marching Band, had the pleasure of performing a Michael Jackson song at one of the Halftime shows in November of 2008.  He said that this was one of the best shows that this Stadium enjoyed and he is proud to have been part of it. The Band performed Thriller, and I know by now it has been over played everywhere, but this is not the usual performance. This is 300 Band members coming together and making it happen.

Thank you Michael for letting us have your gift, your Talent to enjoy, rest in peace and don’t stop till you had enough.

A man walks into a restaurant with a full-grown ostrich behind him. The waitress asks them for their orders. The man says, ‘A hamburger, fries and a coke,’ and turns to the ostrich, ‘What’s yours?’ ‘I’ll have the same,’ says the ostrich.

A short time later the waitress returns with the order ‘That will be $9.40 please,’ and the man reaches into his pocket and pulls out the exact change for payment. The next day, the man and the ostrich come again and the man says, ‘A hamburger, fries and a coke.’ The ostrich says, ‘I’ll have the same.’ Again the man reaches into his pocket and pays with exact change.

This becomes routine until the two enter again. ‘The usual?’ asks the waitress. ‘No, this is Friday night, so I will have a steak, baked potato and a salad,’ says the man. ‘Same,’ says the ostrich. Shortly the waitress brings the order and says, ‘That will be $32.62.’ Once again the man pulls the exact change out of his pocket and places it on the table.

The waitress cannot hold back her curiosity any longer. ‘Excuse me, sir. How do you manage to always come up with the exact change in your pocket every time?

‘ ‘Well,’ says the man, ’several years ago I was cleaning the attic and found an old lamp. When I rubbed it, a Genie appeared and offered me two wishes. My first wish was that if I ever had to pay for anything, I would just put my hand in my pocket and the right amount of money would always be there.’ ‘That’s brilliant!’ says the waitress. ‘Most people would ask for a million dollars or something, but you’ll always be as rich as you want for as long as you live!’ ‘That’s right. Whether it’s a gallon of milk or a Rolls Royce, the exact money is always there,’ says the man.. The waitress asks, ‘What’s with the ostrich?’ The man sighs, pauses and answers, ‘My second wish was for a tall chick with a big butt and long legs who agrees with everything I say.’

It just goes to show, you got to be careful what name you use to get a woman. You get what you wish for. Thanks to a fellow quality geek for the funny today.