Chemistry

Has this ever happened to you? I hope not.

If you are in the mood to laugh...watch this.

Meet me at the corner...

of Tobi and Mac.

Yet another reason to come to Oklahoma.

If you look closely you can see water dripping off the sign, it rained again today.

Rain, rain....GO AWAY!!!!!

Well, it has been a very wet June. The first few rainy days were sort of fun to stay in the house, play games, do art, experiment in the kitchen but after a few WEEKS of rain we are all going stir crazy. We are all ready to get out and enjoy some sunny days. Instead of griping about the rain I thought I would use this post to try to think of some good things that have come from all this rain.

1. I have not needed to water my tomato plants at all, they are huge.
2. We have made countless trips to the library to get new books and have already reached all of the goals for the summer reading program. :)
3. Our five year old has mastered use of the mouse and keyboard and can navigate all around the Webkinz site.
4. Time to catch up with old friends on the phone, I love you all!
5. Cuddle time on the couch with the kiddos.
6. Sleeping in, due to no swim team practice.
7. Plenty of time to write blog posts. :)
8. Even more time to read blog posts.

I guess there has been some good that has come out of the rain, but all in all I am ready for the sun to shine.

Book Bargains

This seems like the week to tell you about all sorts of bargains. If you are a John Piper fan you will be glad to know that ALL of the books in his online bookstore are $5 today and tomorrow. Adam sent me a long list of books that he is interested in . You might wonder why he wouldn't just log on and buy these books himself. Well, both of us have one weakness when it comes to purchases. I love shoes and he loves books. So in order not to overdo things we have established accountability to each other in these areas. Neither of us are permitted to purchases shoes or books without consulting the other. I am also not permitted to buy music CDs either. I am notorious for buying the worst CDs for the one song I love. We have many CDs that prove this point. With itunes available this is no longer as big of a problem, I can buy that one song I love for less than a dollar. The whole shoe and book thing really deserves it's own blog post ...maybe soon.

So back to the book sale, it seems that any book available in Piper's online bookstore can be purchased for the next two days for $5. No gimmicks...just some great deals for some serious summer reading. I was just looking and many of these are hardcover books and some even include an audio CD as well. I guess there has been quite a buzz even amidst the Piper staffers, you can read his blog post about the hoopla.

If you don't even know who John Piper is, never mind...but he is worth looking into. If you were going to read just one Piper book I would recommend Don't Waste Your Life.

Are there any other Piper fans out there?

Movie Time

Last week I took the kids to the to see the new Nancy Drew movie. Emma is a voracious reader; however, it is hard to find new books for her to read.(If you have any book recommendations feel free to leave them in your comments.) I had been trying to get her to read a Nancy Drew mystery for a year or so. Whenever I can get Emma started in a series it is great because once she gets into it she will practically devour the entire collection. I am not sure where she gets this obsessive tendency? :) Well, when we saw the preview for the Nancy Drew movie I knew it would be a good motivator for her to read one of the books. I told her that if she read just ONE Nancy Drew book I would take all three kids to see the movie, less forty eight hours later she had read one and was starting another. Mission Accomplished. Just as I had promised off we went to the local movie theater, the movie was cute and we have a new Nancy Drew fan on our hands.


Well, that brings me to the point of my blog post. While we were at the movie theater something caught my eye. FREE Movies. Yes, I was thinking the same thing I thought when I saw the free Root Beer float sign, "nothing is free". Sure enough it is true. All summer at AMC theaters nationwide there will be free kids movies every Wednesday morning(except July4th, which happens to be on a Wednesday). Check out their website and enter your zip code to see where the nearest participating theater is. OK, so maybe these are not the newest releases, most of them are movies that have come out in the last 6 months or so, but if your kids are anything like mine they will watch the same DVDs over and over again. It will just a be a good reason to get our of the heat(or the rain) and enjoy the big screen. Plus at a price like this, you can actually afford to buy the kids their own popcorn and drink. :) I forgot to mention that for $3 you can buy a kid's pack with a small drink, popcorn and a small candy treat, PERFECT! For $9 plus the price of my diet Coke we are all set.

She loves her vegetables...

not just any vegetables, Veggietales that is.

This week it was the youngest set of toes' turn to make the musical selection. This was no easy decision for a five year old with a passion for singing vegetables. She finally settled on the "Jonah was a Prophet" song.

Laura has turned us all into Veggietales fans, we can sing endless silly songs and laugh and laugh. Our favorite is the Veggie Rocks album, some of the best of the Veggietales sung by Relient K, Superchic[k], Newsboys, and others. It is worth a listen.

Also for those of you die hard Veggietales fans out there, the sequel to Jonah is coming out this winter. "The Pirates Who Don't do Anything" will be coming to theaters everywhere in February of 2008.

For now, sit back, pause my music player and take a trip to Nineveh.

Where are you?

We had so much fun with this last month we wanted to post it again. If there are any of you who didn't get a chance to sign the log book last month, now is your chance. Don't be a "lurker", we love to know who is reading our blog.

Reformed Luddite

I was once described by my tech-savvy brother as a Luddite. Of course I had no idea what this was and had a hunch it was not a compliment. Apparently the Luddites were a group of people that fought technology during the industrial revolution. I admit I DO NOT embrace change, it takes me awhile to warm up to new things, especially high-tech electronics. I remember when we first started talking about getting a DVD player, I thought a VCR was just fine..."who needs this new fangled contraption?" Of course we got one(or two) and now I can't image not being able to watch special features, skip scenes and replay my favorites.

Well this last week I had a Luddite moment. A few months ago we downgraded our cable to basic(and I mean BASIC) programming. We basically go the local networks, PBS, the Spanish channels and a few public access channels. With school out and the deluge of rain that we have had in this summer I decided we might need to upgrade for the summer months. I called the local cable company sure they would be excited to upgrade my service(read:take our money). Well, the guy on the other end of the phone was ready to sell all of the best new features in digital cable. This is when I broke out into a cold sweat and could feel my blood pressure rise. He informed me that upgrading to the digital cable would make much more sense and it would even cost less than just getting the expanded basic cable I used to have. He informed me that the technician would be out to hook it up bring me my new box and give me a tutorial and show me how to use all the features....whoa! This is when inner Luddite came out, I told him that I wasn't interested in anything that needed a tutorial. To sum it up, I ended up just getting the simple old fashioned cable.

To all of you non-Luddites, I know my fear of technology might not make sense to you. Am I the only one who gets a new cell phone, digital camera, or other gadget and feels overhelmed that you will never figure out all that it can do? The funny thing is once I get the hang of the new device, it usually enhances my quality of life . I guess that is the whole point. :)

Hey little bro, don't worry there is hope for me. After all I am sitting here writing a blog post on my new MacBook with my wireless mouse and talking on my Bluetooth ear piece, aren't you proud? Baby steps....

No Dumping

Have you ever seen the sign "No Dumping" and wondered why that would be necessary. I never really paid much attention to those signs until recently. After moving to Oklahoma these signs have almost become humorous to us.

First of all we realize that is NOT free to get rid of stuff. Our city is very strict about trash removal and there are not a lot of options for things that don't fit in your "legal" trash cans.

We have been doing some major trimming of branches, bushes, and other vegetation. When we first moved in we had to rent a flat-bed trailer from the base for Adam to haul off our various greenery. As he was driving down the road @ 45 mph with the trailer I think some of the limbs may have blown off in the Oklahoma wind. You may be surprised that Oklahoma had so many trees and that they actually needed trimming, I was. Rich, yet another reason to come visit... trees. :) I digress.

Well, a few weeks ago we were doing a little more trimming and had a dilemma. It was not enough of a load to rent the trailer from base but it was definitely more than what would fit in our two allotted "legal" trash cans. I am thinking this is when illegal dumping becomes an option. So I convinced Adam that we could cram all of these limbs into the back of our car and take them to the transfer station. He was skeptical and said they would never fit. Guess what? We did it. I thought you would like to see a few pictures of this. The kids said that the back seat felt like a jungle. :)

The other reason that I am convinced that people feel compelled to "dump" is the cost. I alluded to this a few paragraphs ago but you have to pay to get rid of things. With our original batch of limbs, we had to actually cut them which was a lot of work. Then we had to rent the trailer, load it, and then when we got to the transfer station we had to pay to get rid of them. Even with all of the limbs crammed into the back of our car we had to pay to dispose of them.

The trip to the transfer station was an educational trip of sorts. We saw some unique things.

As we looked into the backs of all of the trucks waiting in line to dump we thought of all the stuff that once was valuable to it's owner now was either broken, unwanted, out of style or otherwise undesirable.

Here is another picture of an interesting carload we saw beside us. I think this guy probably garbage for people, I should have gotten his number. :)

The other funny thing we saw as a Hummer H2 filled with junk unloading it. Illustrates another point, everyone has trash.

As we were backed up to the dumping zone, I looked inside the big building that hold all of this smelly trash, it really almost made me gag. I looked up and in the windows of the transfer station the workers had written inspirational messages in the soot that had built up on the windows. We enjoyed seeing their encouragement to all that came to dump legally.

I leave you with these few point that I learned from dumping.

1. We all have trash.
2. Purging is work and it costs.
3. We can turn a dirty situation into something inspirational.
4. Oklahoma has trees.