New Blog Site!

After taking a very long hiatus, I have started blogging again. Shoe Momma no longer seems to fit, so my new blog site is, www.jennydalley.blogspot.com. Won't you come visit?

The Dance

The day after my brother-in-law's funeral, my husband and I joined my family at the park for my sister's wedding rehearsal dinner. I was there early hanging out with my family and waiting for Bob to get off work. When I saw him pulling into the parking lot I went to meet him. This song came over the park's loudspeakers as we were walking toward each other. When we met on the sidewalk we stopped and just held unto each other until even a little while after the song ended. This song has reminded me of my brother in law ever since.
This afternoon I heard George Winston's piano version on Pandora and instead of thinking of my brother in law, (it will be 10 years in June) I thought of my husband and I holding unto each other.
Today is Valentine's Day. Some friends have been living in the hospital for a few weeks after the husband was in a motorcycle accident. In spite of everything he has been through, he remembered to have roses sent to his wife and daughters. My boys and husband picked out flowers for me the other night when we were at Wal-Mart, but otherwise, we most likely won't do a whole lot, if anything. I am okay with that. But I am not entirely happy with other areas of my life that I seem to have become complacent with.
Why is it that when the status quo is generally acceptable, with money in the bank and healthy kids, we take things for granted? We don't depend on each other, or God, as much as when things are not so easy. Why, when things are tough do we work that much harder?
I have really been in a rut lately. The status quo is okay and I am feeling convicted. There is so much that I should be doing that I am not. I need to try harder. Work harder. Take advantage less. Be less complacent.

"Dance like nobody's watching;
love like you've never been hurt.
Sing like nobody's listening;
live like it's heaven on earth."

~~~ by Mark Twain

Menu Plan Monday

This is my first time linking to www.Orgjunkie.com. I think next week I will aim for side dishes, too. Happy Monday!

Monday - Meatloaf

Tuesday - tacos

Wednesday - I think we are eating at Awana

Thursday - Chicken thighs = hmmmmm, I gotta figure out what to do with those!

Friday - scrambled egg sandwiches

Saturday - Chicken taco salad (I made these last week and the boys dubbed it "Mama's Special!"

Sunday - Spaghetti

My Word for 2011 and Easy "Art"

I have seen Word Clouds of sorts on various blogs but until today I have never played around with them. Recently I discovered a wonderful website called Big Picture Classes. Ali Edwards is teaching a year long class utilizing the word you pick for the year. I think her word is Light. Kimmy's word is Intentional. My word is Action. I wanted to create something with my word that I can post somewhere as a reminder to me throughout the year.

I went to www.wordle.net, selected "create" on the top bar of tabs, wrote a bunch of synonyms for "action" that I found here http://thesaurus.com/, played around with the layout, fonts, and colors until I was happy, then I printed it. Easy-peasy! :)

It was so easy and fun that I decided to create some "art" for my living room!

Have you played much with wordle.net? I'd love to see what you've done!

Happy New Year!

A Social Network Christmas

I just had to share what greeted me on Facebook this morning. Such a simple and yet profound way of presenting Jesus' birth and the events leading up to it. Could you just imagine? I can so totally picture Joseph and Mary facebooking if Jesus' birth was this year rather than just over 2,000 years ago. The little flirtation at the beginning and the "so-and-so likes this" comments throughout the video were adorable. My boys and I have a joke about being "facebooked" when they do something cute or silly. "Don't put that on facebook!" is a common plea in our home. So imagining Mary changing her profile picture to include her new baby, friends' comments (hurtful & supportive), and Joseph typing out the name of his precious newborn, brought this amazing, life-changing, world-altering, prophesy-predicted Event that much more to life.

I just made my boys watch it with me. My 9 year old had to read some of the parts to his little brothers when I could not because of the lump in my throat.

My mother and I have had this silly unofficial contest of trying to make each other cry (in a good way) and as I hit the "Publish Post" button below I will be wondering how many of my readers will cry (in a good way).

Christmas Trees

A friend of mine wrote about Christmas Trees on her blog and as I was adding a comment I started remembering and writing all sorts of things about my past Christmas trees. My comment turned into a post. And here it is.

What is your ideal Christmas Tree? Real or plastic? Do you bundle up and head out to the wilderness in search of the perfect tree to cut down yourself or do you shop at a lot in town? White or green, if fake? Do you like colored lights or white lights? Are your ornaments predominantly homemade or store bought? Does your Christmas Tree have a theme? I have a dear friend who wants to have a Charlie Brown tree this year. I'd love to see that!

After about 8 years of fake trees, mostly with colored little tags at the base of the branches so you can tell which hole to fit them into, we are finally getting a real tree this year!

During our first several years of marriage hubby and I did not have much money. We rarely felt that purchasing a live tree was something we could afford so we used hand-me-down fake ones. One year my hubby and his brother surprised me with a real tree. We didn't have a truck but Dan did so he met us at a tree lot. The tree lot was next to the grocery store I was told we were heading to. Dan has been in Heaven for over nine years now. That December, seeing him standing there by those trees, is one of my favorite memories of him. He was always so giving.

I love the elegant look of white lights on a tree, but as long as I have kids in the house I just have to have colored lights. I tried white lights a few years ago but it just didn't seem as cheery.

Tinsel is not my favorite. Last year I purchased a couple of boxes of the silvery stuff with the intent of using it to hide the ugly little tags and other monstrosities on our ugly plastic tree, but I was afraid my kids would eat it and die, so I never put it on. My dad always liked tinsel. My mom always hated it. One year Dad threw tinsel on the entire left half of the tree. What a compromise!

I love my ornaments. I love unwrapping them one at a time relishing the memories of how they came to be in my home. There were a few years when I was single that I thought I wanted a cat-themed tree. Thus many of my ornaments are cat figurines. My husband grew up on a farm and my sisters used to tease him about farm animals so for a few years we inadvertently collected little sheep ornaments. Our poor trees have never been themed and probably never will. It just may be impossible to have a single theme when most of the members of the family have ADD. "Look, a squirrel!"

I did it!