This is beautiful!!!

This actually made me teary. First of all, I love this song. This girl is 12 and the look on Simons face is one of a kind for him. In the first shot of him when she starts singing, he looks dumbfounded! Then he's just mezmorized through the whole thing. Wait until you get to the end and her dad hugs her...wow!

Drinking Beer Doesn't Help

Another gem from a friend of mine who knows how much I love redneck images. This one was titled "What does an idiot look like"? Hello! Spencer saw it and goes, "Well, they're drinking beer so that doesn't help"! LOLOLOLOLOL

Slip-N-Slide

Remember the good 'ol days when we used to lay the Slip-N-Slide on the front lawn and either hook the hose to it or turn on the sprinklers? Doesn't this picture just scream summer? I remember playing on the Slip-N-Slide at the Mendoza's house and wishing it were about 3 times as long as it was. It was bright yellow and when you got to the end you just stopped, as you did a face plant into the grass. What fun memories. Well, today I got to re-live one of my favorite childhood memories...minus the face plant, thankfully. We had a Primary activity at the church this afternoon. When I got there with my kids and Vicki's, there were these two humongous yellow pieces of plastic laying down the side of the grassy hill and someone running a hose down them. At first I thought, "Wow, how cool, the kids are gonna have a blast!" And they did! And so did all of us adults! What a sight we must've been to behold. The kids played until we had lunch, then they did water balloons, and then straight back to the Slip-N-Slide. In the meantime, us adults are sneaking around trying to surprise eachother with a water balloon in the back, or face, or trying to dump water onto each other. It was 100 degrees today, so we didn't mind getting a little wet. Uh-huh...we were soaked!! Completely! The next thing I know, I find myself and 4 other ladies going head first down the Slip-N-Slide and straight into the muddy water at the bottom of the hill. How did this happen? An hour earlier I was trying desperately to avoid any child with any amount of water on themselves or in a cup. Once we got up off the ground, we noticed the looks on all the kids faces...they were delighted!! They were hystarical with laughter! Thier Mom's/Leaders soaking wet...clothes, hair, all of it! It made me think of how often we don't enjoy life like they do. The unabashedly, full-on, who cares how we look kind of fun. We had so much fun today...I want to say we adults had more fun than the kids. Not possible. Even today, nothing compares to the memories of childhood. When you're a kid, it's a first time experience with everything. My kids have never seen a Slip-N-Slide, I don't think. Watching them enjoy one of my favorite memories was priceless.

Lemon Heads

K, we all remember doing this when we were kids. We usually used orange wedges, but hey, whatever blows your skirt up, right?? We were a Olive Garden for Laura's birthday dessert...cheesecake, of course...and these two were gutsy enough to use lemons...no sugar added...and neither one of them even flinched!

Abbey & Jackson

How old is your brain?

Check out this site to tell you how old your brain is...and no cheating...the idea is to only do it once! LOL

Instructions:
1. Click start
2. Wait for 3,2,1
3. Memorize the numbers position from smallest to largest
4. Click the circles in that same order

You'll understand it once you get there...


http://flashfabrica.com/f_learning/brain/brain.html

Why go to church?

Why go to Church? If you're spiritually alive, you're going to love this! If you're spiritually dead, you won't want to read it. If you're spiritually curious, there is still hope! A Church goer wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper and complained that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday. 'I've gone for 30 years now,' he wrote, 'and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 sermons. But for the life of me, I can't remember a single one of them. So, I think I'm wasting my time and the pastors are wasting theirs by giving sermons at all.' This started a real controversy in the 'Letters to the Editor' column, much to the delight of the editor. It went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher: 'I've been married for 30 years now. In that time my wife has cooked some 32 ,000 meals. But, for the life of me, I cannot recall the e ntire menu for a single one of those meals. But I do know this.. They all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife had not given me these meals, I would be physically dead today. Likewise, if I had not gone to church for nourishment, I would be spiritually dead today!' When you are DOWN to nothing.... God is UP to something! Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives the impossible! Thank God for our physical AND our spiritual nourishment! When Satan is knocking at your door, simply say, "Jesus, could you get that for me"?

Building Cathedrals

I love this story...I've read it a few times and each time it gives me renewed faith in myself and my devine calling as a Mother...

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I'm on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I'm thinking, 'Can't you see I'm on the phone?' Obviously, not. No one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I'm invisible. The invisible Mom. Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this? Some days I'm not a pair of hands; I'm not even a human being. I'm a clock to ask, 'What time is it?' I'm a satellite guide to answer, 'What number is the Disney Channel?' I'm a car to order, 'Right around 5:30, please.' I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated sum a cum laude - but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She's going; she's going; she is gone! One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England .. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, 'I brought you this.' It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe . I wasn't exactly sure why she'd given it to me until I read her inscription: 'To Charlotte , with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.' In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work: No one can say who built the great cathedrals - we have no record of their names. These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished. They made great sacrifices and expected no credit. The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything. A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, 'Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it.' And the workman replied, 'Because God sees.' I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, 'I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does. No act of kindness you've done, no sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can't see right now what it will become.' At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong, stubborn pride. I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on. The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree. When I really think about it, I don't want my son to tell the friend he's bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, 'My Mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table.' That would mean I'd built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, to add, 'you're gonna love it there.' As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we're doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.