The Blind Boy

I love the message behind this story:

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: "I am blind, please help." There were only a few coins in the hat.

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy.

That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were.
The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?"

The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said, but in a different way." I wrote: "Today is a beautiful day, but I cannot see it."

Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?

Moral of the Story: Be thankful for what you have. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. When life gives you a 100 reasons to cry, show life that you have 1000 reasons to smile. Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear. Keep the faith and drop the fear.

The most beautiful thing is to see a person smiling. And even more beautiful, is knowing that you are the reason behind it!!!

4 years ago, today...

...we had baby Connor propped up against a bunch of pumpkins as we creeped closer to his first Halloween!

The good, the bad, and the ugly

I'll start with "the bad, and the ugly" by telling you a brief story:

Once upon a time, (three years ago, to be exact), someone stole a piece of equipment from Dan's company. Dan was recently alerted to it's presence on Craigslist and contacted the police, who pretty much told him they have more important thing to deal with.

**Really? Someone reports they've found their stolen property listed on the Internet, and you can't be bothered to help them recover it??**

It was listed FAR cheaper than it's actually worth, so Dan's bosses gave him the "okay" to just go ahead and buy it back, which he did. He bought it on his way home from work last week and had to bring it home with him until heading back to the office the next day.

Which brings us to "the good." Connor and Jared LOVE construction equipment, and thought this machine was about the coolest thing ever.

You can't really tell, but CJ's all seatbelted in, and he's obviously having a great time!!

Toothfairy Time!

Emily Grace wants to be The Toothfairy for Halloween. I set to work on a colorful tutu for her to wear, dug up the wings and wand from when I was The Toothfairy last year, and ordered her a long-sleeved white leotard (she'll wear white leggings underneath as well). I think the overall result is pretty dang cute! We'll foo-foo her hair up, and add a little tiara and hair glitter to complete the look when it's actually Halloween.





FYI, as gorgeous as the pink sparkly tule is (pictures don't do the color of the tutu justice), I will NEVER purposely use it again. It's stiff and hard to work with, and that's not even mentioning how much GLITTER ends up EVERYWHERE. AND. I. MEAN. EVERYWHERE. (everywhere). It also acts much more velcro-y than regular tule, so the whole tutu ends up in a jumbled mess rather quickly, which makes me sad because of how hard I worked on the darn thing, but Emily is SUPER thrilled with it, and that's what matters most anyway.

Fisher-Price Little People

We acquired our first Little People set when Emily turned one and we got her the zoo set. She LOVED it, and we quickly ended up with several more sets. Once Jared was born and was having his first Christmas and birthday, we ended up with a few more, and then Connor came along, and we ended up with yet a few more.

Little People have taken over our playroom.

Recently, several months had gone by and the Little People had gone seriously neglected, so I started to brainstorm what we should do with the sets (sell them on Craigslist? Give them to my baby niece? Donate them to Goodwill? ETC?). I hadn't really figured out officially what to do, when suddenly, Connor made the decision for me:


We're keeping them! For awhile longer, at least. Connor hooked several of the sets together into a little town, and sat in the middle for TWO HOURS, playing quite happily. Then he begged me let him leave them out so he could play with them again the next day. Which he did. And the next, and the next... We could certainly use the space the shelves by getting rid of the Little People sets, but I refuse to part with anything that will keep Connor entertained for that amount of time, even if several months DO go by between use! LOL

Layers are not just for cakes

As many of you probably know already, LAST March (as in March '09), I cut off TONS of hair and donated it to Locks of Love. The stylist that cut my hair ended up cutting it way shorter than I originally requested, and gave me a somewhat layered hair-do (there were basically two layers; short and shorter...LOL). People RAVED about my hair after the fact, but I was very unsure that it was really "me". Over the next few months it grew out a bit and was looking awkward (in that "not long enough to be long, but getting too long to be short" sort of way, and the layers were looking extra funky due to the in-between length), so in June, after Emily cut off and donated HER hair to Wigs for Kids, I went ahead and had the gal repeat the cut from March. MORE raves about my hair, but it finalized things in my own head that it was not a style I liked on myself and needn't ever repeat.

That said, I spent the next year (and a little bit longer) afraid to have anything done to my hair at all. As a result, the style grew out to a length I was much happier with (it could be easily pulled back into a ponytail, for one thing), but the ends were getting really dried and scraggly, and the two layers were still rather awkward. I finally made up my mind to be brave and have something done. I went into the place I've been taking the boys for around two years now, to the same gal that does their hair, and told her I needed the ends cleaned up, the existing layers dealt with, and was very firm that I wanted to keep enough length when all was said and done that I could pull it back into a ponytail without needing clips and bobbypins and whatnot. She went to work, while I nervously sat there hoping for the best.

She took 2-3 inches off the main length, gave me feathered layers in front that start a bit above my shoulders, and then gave me very subtle layers through the back. MUCH more "me", I have to say!!


The best part is that it actually looks better air-dried over blow-dried, so I've just bought myself and extra 10-15 minutes in the morning! WOO HOO!! Or maybe the best part is that for less than the price of the cut I DIDN'T like very much from another place, I was able to get both Connor and I done...and I liked the end result! Sara had better never retire becaue I don't know what the boys and I will do! And I'm totally taking Emily there from now on as well.

I ♥ Jack Johnson!

Dan and I drove nearly 3 hours to The Gorge Amphitheater over the weekend in order to see Jack Johnson. I had never been to The Gorge before, and it was AMAZING. GORGEOUS view as you sit on the grass (you can see a bit of the view in the picture below), as if that wasn't enough, the sun was HOT, the sunset was beautiful, and laying under a clear, starry sky listening to JJ sing live was just, well, it was awesome!


We arrived with about 20 minutes to kill before the main gates opened. We stood in a HUGE (HUGE!!) long line to get in, but it actually went quite quickly. Dan immediately got himself an extremely over-priced beer, while I filled our water bottles up at the hydration station. We scoped out the food, then found a place to sit. We chose to be off to the side where the grass was broken down in little "platform" type rows, instead of just being a big steep slope like in the center. It was PERFECT. Dan chatted up the people around us for awhile, and then headed up to get me an over-priced guitar-shaped margarita. I got a text from him about 10 minutes later stating that JJ had come out onto one of the little stages about ten feet away from him in line and was doing a mini show.

NEXT TIME I'M STANDING IN LINE TO GET MY OWN MARG!!

He took a picture on his cell phone, but hasn't emailed it to me yet so I can use it in my blog post...

Vee Avi started her portion of the show pretty much right at 6pm. I'd never really heard of her before, but she really has an amazing voice. Very clear and pretty, and I really liked the mellow style.

G Love and Special Sauce (more people I'd never heard of!) came out next, and put on an upbeat show. They were kind of rappish, which isn't really my thing, but I rolled with it and enjoyed the experience well enough.

After the sun had set and it was getting dark, JJ came on stage and the crowd went NUTS! I wish I could tell you what he opened with, but I've forgotten (too many good songs were played to keep them all straight!). A few songs in, towards the end of one of the songs, he suddenly just sort of mumbled/hummed a bit of the verse, and I had to laugh because it was clear to me he'd just forgotten the words!! ha! I'm honestly shocked it doesn't happen more often. They sing so many songs, sooooo many times over the course of their careers; I can see getting lost in your thoughts while you're singing and forgetting where you were... The crowd was totally forgiving and cheered even harder for that song than the previous ones. He thanked everyone at the end of the song for not boo-ing him for forgetting the words. LOL (A friend pointed out that at least we knew for sure he wasn't up there lip-syncing!).

For not being the type of person who enjoys going to concerts, I will admit to being quite apprehensive about driving across the state to sit outdoors for hours on end in a huge crowd, but it was amazing! Being off to the side on the grassy layers meant people weren't crowded in nearly as tight as on the more main hill, and I didn't have to stand around for the whole concert like you would at a concert at Key Arena or something along those lines. I got to lay on a blanket, snuggled up to my husband, under a beautiful starry sky, and listen to the relaxing, yet upbeat tunes of JJ. I can't say enough about how good of a time I had! Dan's truthfully not all that into JJ (he insisted we get tickets because he figured it was a show I would enjoy and he really wants to get me more interested in attending concerts with him), but even he commented SEVERAL times throughout the night about how awesome it was.

We'd also been a little "worried" about how long it would take to get out of the parking lot after the concert was over (parking was FREE, btw!!), but it was all very well-organized and we cruised out with no problems whatsoever.

It was a great day/night with my hubby, and I'm so glad we went. Thanks for the awesome show JJ!!