The Return of... Pod-Molly!

Now, my 13 yr old daughter, Molly has never been remotely organized, (and of course, she gets it from her mother)....so this was a nice surprise. She has rarely gotten out of bed for school on her own, in fact, we have usually had to yell up the stairs numerous times to rouse her each morning...and then you never knew if she was actually going to get up and catch the bus. Well, for whatever reason, the night before St. Patrick's day, she wrote this on the white board in our kitchen:

And she's been using this check-list daily, ever since then, changing the date and info each night. She's been getting herself up every morning, and has not missed the bus even once during that time. I used to have to bring her to school at LEAST once a week. Ray brought her to school this morning, but that was only so she could pick up some stuff for a lunch for her field trip today. Otherwise she's gotten on the bus every morning before 7AM. This is huge for her...and a welcome change.

She's made some other steps in a positive direction too. Last Friday night, she offered to babysit for free for a young couple, so they could go out with us. She did say that "free will offerings" would be accepted...but I'm pretty sure she was joking. She also decided to join the Youth Drama Team at church, which I think she will really enjoy. She's always been a natural drama queen actress, and a very good narrator. I can't wait to see the skits they will put on.

I'm very excited about these positive changes in my daughters life, and I hope that she will keep up the good work! Good job, Molly!!

A Fair-ly Good Day

I did update my fair food blog earlier, but I thought I'd let you in on some of the other things we occupied our day with...other than eating.

The day started out on a positive note. As soon as we got to the ticket booth, (where Ray was about to buy two adult and one child's ticket), a complete stranger walked up to me and handed me a ticket. He said, "Here, I have this extra ticket, tell him to buy just two, not three." I barely had time to thank the nice gentlemen, because I had to catch Ray before he had paid for our 3 tickets. We ended up getting in the gates for the price of one adult ticket ($11), and one ($5) discounted "kid's day" ticket. Wow! Thank you Lord! That was a blessing. The lady at the gate didn't question Molly's age either. She really is only 11...but since she's already 5' 8" and starting to "develop", most people assume she's 2 or 3 years older than she really is. Molly really wanted to go to the state fair this year for one particular reason. She had seen a percussion group called "Sheltered Reality" at an art camp that she attended this summer at one of our local churches. This is what they look like:

They had just started playing when we got there this morning around 10:30 AM. They were not far from the entrance, so we found them and sat down to watch. They were kind of loud...but very fun to watch. They're very precise in their drumming and choreography skills. They also have a positive message to give to the kids. Molly not only sat and watched the first show, (during which they invited audience members to come up and be guest drummers with them)...but she wanted to stay for the next show, which was to start about 10 minutes after the first one ended. Since Ray and I did not necessarily want to sit through another hour of this, we gave Molly my cell phone and stayed in the area...but did a little wandering through nearby buildings etc. I was a little nervous about doing that, but she wasn't going anywhere. She was enamored by them.

I'm pretty sure their music wasn't the only reason Molly wanted to sit through the next show ... I'm guessing she was also somewhat enamored by this guy. It's just a feeling, she'd never admit it, but if I were her age I'm pretty sure he's the one I would have picked as the cutest.



This year, we did remember to go check out the "Miracle of Birth" building early in the day. The last time we went to the fair was also on the last day, and by the time we got there, the animals were packed up and gone. Here are a few pictures of what we found in there:

These cute little piggies were less than 24 hours old. There were 13 of them in the litter. How would you like to take care of that many squealing babies all at once?

These sweet little twin lambs were born at about 3 am on Labor Day morning. One was 8 lbs and the other 8.5 lbs. That's about the size all of my kids were. Of course, I had mine one at a time.

They actually ended up being the last babies born in the birthing barn during the fair this year.

Next, I took a picture of some turkey chicks, where I overheard a man say, "I heard this is where all the chicks hang out!" Clever.

How long do you suppose it takes for these little guys...

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...to become these yummy drummies?Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Next, we went to the DNR building, where every year, an artist gathers "found objects", (junk), in the rivers and makes some sort of a sculpture out of them. That made for a pretty amazing looking "creature"this year. It looked like some giant ant, ready to take over the world.

Then they had a list of things that you were supposed to find in the sculpture. Here's Molly marking them off. If you found at least 11 of the items, you got a prize. She found 16. She got a cool poster for her effort.

At 3:00 we headed back to Baldwin Park for the last "Sheltered Reality" show (at Molly's request of course). She had decided she was going to be brave and get up on stage with them this time! That should be fun to watch. It was... except, just before she went up there, some rude lady sat down on a bench in front of us...and opened her huge umbrella, obstructing our view!

Some people just don't think. Yes, it was hot out and an umbrella for shade would be nice...but it sure doesn't help the people sitting behind you to be able to see what they sat down (before you) to watch!!! Thankfully, Molly ended up standing just to the left of the obtrusive umbrella so we were able to see her.

I thought she did a very good job keeping up with them. She said it was really hard to do, and that she kept messing up...but I didn't notice. I was proud of her. I have about a 3 minute video of her performing with them, and if I can figure out how to open it I'll post it here one of these days. Right now, I don't think I have the right program to do that on this computer. At the end of the show, since it was their very last show for this year's fair, they invited Sean Emery up on stage to join them. Sean Emery is a sort of Robin Williams-esque sort of character, who has entertained on the same stage for years with a juggling, unicylce and comedy act. That was rather amusing too. At one point he was on his knees balancing the cymbal stand on his chin, while others were hitting it. We came back for his last show at 5pm. After that we headed toward our last stop of the day, which was the Butterfly House. On the way there, we meandered through the fine arts building:

Someone had incredibly made this US map out of indivdual pieces of wood. It was really beautiful. There were a lot of cool exhibits in there, but this one was probably the most interesting:

Those are all rolled up one dollar bills. Nothing was glued down, they were just stuck in this metal grid thing. As we studied this piece of "art" we had to wonder if the border had at one time been completely solid, or if the artist had done it this way on purpose. I figured no one would be mean enough to steal from the letters...but how many would have been tempted to snitch a couple from around the border? We also wondered if they had a camera on the exhibit, documenting the whole thing. If so, it is sure to appear on Dateline or at least You Tube in the near future.

Finally, to our last destination of the day, we sat down and enjoyed watching the butterlies flutter about landing on people:

Ray found a new friend immediately. There were some butterflies who's wings were a beautiful blue color, but the blue only showed when their wings were spread open. I was trying to capture that with my camera, but they were not being very cooperative about it. Here you can see a little bit of blue.

Some people were literally collecting them and putting them on their person. Molly thought it would be a good idea to set a few on her purse while she was in there. She found one that was extremely cooperative.

This one was obviously a show off! It stayed that way on her purse until she finally took it off and gave it to someone else when we left.

Other people were sort of accidentally collecting them. This women walked around for the longest time with a butterfly attatched to her derierre. I guess he was a "butt"erfly? She ended up with one on the top of her head, and a few more on various body parts all at the same time.

Here's Molly posing for one last picture with her little friend, before she said goodbye to it. After that, we hitched a ride on a free trolley that makes the rounds through the fairgrounds, and rode that all the way to the gate. By that time, my feet were killing me, so I was very thankful not to have to walk several blocks to the parking lot. All in all, we had a pretty good time, and hopefully made some memories for Molly, that she can look back on in the future. Some day, she may even get over the fact that we would not let her bring her BFF, Liz along for her to hang with, so she had to spend the entire day with her parents. Aren't we cruel? Parents can be so embarrassing!

A Tribute to My Sis

This is a picture my sister, Patty and me. Patty fought a brave battle against breast cancer for at least 2 years, but in the end, the Lord took her home to be with Him. Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of her death. The picture was taken almost 6 years ago at our parents' 50th Anniversary party, which turned out to be a little over 11 months before Patty passed away. Patty was a wonderful Christian wife and mother of 11 children...yes, you read that right, 11 children. At the time of her death they ranged from almost 4 years old to 21 years of age.

She was a year and a half YOUNGER than me, but was always the one I turned to when I had questions of a spiritual nature, even though she was my little sister. We all miss her greatly, and I still have moments when I think I'll just call Patty on the phone and ask about something that I'm sure she'll know the answer to.

Here is a picture of her husband, Randy and ALL of their children, taken about a year after her death.

Shanna, (standing next to her father in this picture), joined the Army after graduating High School. She spent a year in Iraq, and is now stationed in Alaska. She is also the mother of Patty's first grandchild, Ja'lyn, who turned one year old 3 days ago and sadly, never got to meet her her wonderful grandmother. Happy 1st Birthday, Ja'lyn!!!

Their oldest child, Tonia is now 26, Shanna will be 22 this Thursday, and the rest are as follows: Thomas is 19, Isaac 18, April 17, Sarah 15, Zach 14, Christina 13, (yes, there are 6 teenagers!), Zion 12, John Jacob, (JJ) is 10, and Isaiah will be 9 in May.

Yesterday, our pastor was preaching about how we all need to let ourselves be emotional at certain times in our lives. It brought me back to exactly 5 years ago, (which coincidentally was also a Sunday), when I went to church just hours after the call from my mother that my sister was gone, and bawled throughout the entire service. I was certainly being emotional then. I also remember that my cousin, Channing and his wife Dawn were there for the service, and Pastor Tom told me that morning that my cousin had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior that very week. I told Channing the sad news about Patty, and added that I was sure she was jumping for joy over his salvation, up in heaven. Patty was all about spreading the Gospel and trying to get everyone she knew saved. I miss you Sis, and if you have any "pull" up there, could you possibly arrange for me to have the mansion next to yours when I get there?