Sundays Rant

Today is Sunday, and I have decided this would be a perfect opportunity for a rant. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to rant about but it should be good. Lets start with the definition according to Wikipedia:
#1)A rant is a speech or text that does not present a calm argument; rather, it is typically an enthusiastic speech or talk or lecture on an idea, a person or an institution. Compare with a dialectic.

#2)Rants can be based on partial fact or may be entirely factual but written in a comedic/satirical form.

#3)Rants can also be used in the defense of an individual, idea or organization. Rants of this type generally occur after the subject has been attacked by another individual or group.

For our purposes today, we will go with definition #2. Since I do not have a specific topic in mind and am feeling slightly weird, this definition will fit perfectly with this post.

Lets start with dryers, socks  and laundry. This past week I was fortunate enough to obtain the use of my brand new 8 month old dryer. I was totally excited about this as my previous dryer had broken and we had been hang drying our clothes. Have you ever used a towel that was hung dry?? Although this practice is more cost effective, it is definitely not more pleasant. I just told the kids if they wanted a little more loofah action to use a hung dry towel. I mean my goodness when I get out of the shower I would like a nice soft, fluffy towel not sand paper. I'm sure everyone feels the same way about this as I do. Anyway, I was saying my new dryer is awesome, its propane and energy star compliant ect ect, but the awesome thing about it is it DRYS! No more sandpaper towels, no more shirts that walk off the rack by themselves! Just wonderful soft, fluffy FOLD-ABLE clothes. I'm totally happy with my dryer. 

New dryer, sideways, dunno know why

 Now for socks. What is it, even with a new dryer, my socks are disappearing I just don't understand it. I have only dried about 20 loads and there is at least that many socks missing, still. I have determined that the culprit is the Sock Fairy. Oh I know you are saying to yourself, there cant be such a thing as a sock fairy but it is the only explanation I can find. The biggest disappointment in this is the sock fairy doesn't leave any money for the socks he takes. I mean jeesh if your gonna take the socks LEAVE SOMETHING! At least that way I can buy new socks to replace the ones he has confiscated.

On to, you guessed it , laundry. I had a friend post on Facebook about how their  laundry stack was as tall as a stool they had. I was like I have to use a stool to get to the top of mine. I just dont understand it, I did no less then 15 loads of laundry Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and I STILL have no less then 6 loads to get done. I said once I had to "get my laundry together" and a friend of mine told me I shouldn't do that because it breeds. I totally believe this as I have seen first hand the breeding habits of laundry. No matter what you do or how many loads you wash and put away, it is still an overwhelming, never-ending chore. I know throwing a load in is no big deal, but when you have to do it continually for 3 days straight and you only make a dent, there is something terribly wrong. I'm pretty sure we just have to many options in our closets, therefore it makes for oogles of clothing that can get dirty, although Im thinking the breeding theory seems to hold alot of weight at this point. Oh well, at least I have a washer and a brand new 8 month old dryer:)

My next rant will be on Sundays.  Almost every Sunday for the past 11 years we have attended the Fernwood Community Bible Church . When we first started there were 2 services and we went to late one because we had lots of little kiddies to get ready. The drawback for this is, we didn't get to meet or know any of the early service people, which was okay I suppose if you don't consider the church part of your family or only as a means to an end, you know like pew warmers, or just getting some fire insurance if you know what I mean.  We however have decided that the church body is part of our family and as such, wanted to try and establish relationships as much as possible. When we went down to one service, oh man, its was not a happy time for all those gotta have 2 services people. Just goes to show that Christians are sometimes totally unpleasable. I guess my rant on this is at people (church people in particular) who just cant seem to get a grip. What does it matter if we have one service?? And for goodness sakes why in the world does it matter if we meet at 9 or 10 or whatever time we picked. As long as your going and fellowshipping it should not matter what time the service is. Sunday is Family day for us, and we choose to spend it mainly with our Church Family which, my goodness people,  is only like till 12:00 noon. Now I know some of you out there may get offended thats okay it just means that you know I am speaking the truth. It does not matter what time you decide to go to church on Sunday, it really really doesn't. What really matters is if you choose not to go at all simply because you can not abide the time or that there is one service or its to long or whatever reason you may use not to go.

Alrighty then, I am finished ranting for the day. It sure does help to be able to get some of this off my chest while I'm thinking about it. Its been a pretty good day and I'm excited about the week to come,doing my taxes, oh yippee! Thats a whole other blog post though, so will let you know how that one goes.

God Bless

The Awesome Lumix

This year  has been a study in life. Almost anything that could happen , did at some point or another take place. As our year draws to a close, I am reminded that even though things that are not so great happen, there are plenty of things that are fantastic that do. Through all the vehicle issues, the shed issues, the work issues, people issues, kid issues, friend issues and everything else that goes along with it, I can still find a couple high-lights to look back on in 2010. Two of my favorites are the birth of a friends baby girl and my best friends pregnancy. I am sure if I tried hard enough, I could find dozens of instances where God has blessed my family in one way or another.
Most recently would be the acquisition of a new digital camera thanks to my daughter and son-n-law in Australia. My cannon camera has been gong on the fritz for a while now, and my constant complaints of blur and battery replacement must have surely influenced their decision to impart to us such a cool gift .

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FH1

At first it looks like your average normal digital camera..don't let that fool you! It is a truly awesome bit of technology. First of all, everyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I drink lots of coffee. As a result I suffer from shaky hand syndrome. This syndrome does not help my  picture taking  in the least. Thanks to the Auto-Stabilization feature on my new camera and I can drink as much coffee as I want and still take pictures! This has me totally psyched as my syndrome was slowly dwindling away my ability to be able to take a picture that was not blurry thereby ruining those "once in a lifetime moments". Here is one such example:

Yes..this is Joshua flying through the air with the greatest of ease.

 Yes, I know you are saying to yourself right now, that's awesome! I was a bit to far away, so was a tad bit blurry unfortunately,  but it is one of those "one time only deals" because as you can tell he was jumping on my couch, and that isn't gonna happen again any time soon. Here is another one of Joshua.

Joshua..again

The only thing in this picture that is blurry is him. This picture was taken before I discovered the next cool feature of my new camera, Intelligent Auto Mode! No more do I have to try and figure out what setting will give me the best picture for that situation, my camera does it for me! Although I am not totally technologically challenged, IA mode is now my new favorite setting and as easy as a push of a button.

Picture taken, in the dark, of my tree in IA Mode.

 As you can see, even with "hand shake" the Lumix takes great closeup pictures in the dark even! Here is another one of the tree in IA Mode with the Flash Turned off manually.

This looked so cool to me..look mom no blur!!!

 Another wonderful feature  my new camera has are ..RECHARGEABLE BATTERIES !!! You got it, no more running around looking for double A batteries because the kids used them all for yippy little toys, and now we have to steal from one toy to make another one work! Just plug the battery into the provided recharging unit, wait till it charges and you are good to go! I can not tell you how many times I had to change out batteries in my old camera because the kids wanted to "take pictures" of "EVERYTHING". I did manage to almost kill the battery the first time around as I was busily playing with my new toy, but I still have some battery time left, so I will be taking more pictures as the day goes on. Thank you Ashley and Aaron for the awesomely cool camera, now I can accessorize!

Coals in my wood stove.

*Disclaimer: Panasonic had nothing to do with this blog post..and this is not an advertisement for Panasonic, however if you decide to go get a Lumix after reading this I'm sure they will be happy, and Im pretty sure you will be to.
May God Bless you and yours this coming year with every good thing from above!

It's Time to Rumbleeee! Wrestling 2010

So wrestling season has started (last month actually) in the Upriver area and this will be the second year that Joshua has participated in this most strenuous of sports. I began the year with high hopes of being able to go to most of the matches, as last year I was only able to attend one tournament and some of the practices. Don't get me wrong, I totally had a great time visiting my daughter in Australia (the first time I had EVER been out of the country), but I was looking forward to being able to cheer on Joshua for this years tournament season.

Having missed the first match of the season, we had already decided to go to the St Maries match the next week. I had determined there was no way anyone was getting me out of bed at 3:00 o'clock in the morning to drive 3 hours to get to Bonners Ferry by 7:30 am for weigh-ins. With St Maries only 20 or so miles away,  I didn't have to get out of my cozy warm bed until like 6:00 which suited me just fine. So I loaded up the kids and off we went. It was only Alyssa, Joshua, and I with Alyssa having signed up to help in the kitchen.

Any way, we got there in one piece, Alyssa rambled on into the kitchen, and I proceeded to try and get Joshua all signed in to wrestle. Last year my husband had done all this because I was gone to visit my daughter, so I wasnt entirely sure what to do. I had no idea what class he was in, so with Joshua in tow, I went from table to table several times trying to find out where he was supposed to sign in at. After a trip around the mats we finally tracked down the table for his class. Now I don't really know alot about wrestling so this is all pretty new to me. We did manage to get it all taken care of and off to the weight room we went.

In the weight room, my composure started to crumble, not that I was all that composed to begin with, just what little I had went out the door in a hurry. For the previous week I had Joshua on a "diet" of sorts to make sure he would come in below 65 pounds. For some reason I had it in my mind that he would be in the same class he was in last year. Needless to say this did not happen. We stripped him down and put him on the scales and he came to 64.2 pounds, I was like good job, he is under 65 yippee! Unfortunatly, this year, he was put in the Schoolboy class and the lowest weight class on the paper was 70 pounds, at least that was my impression. Knowing nothing about wrestling, and only looking at the paper, I assumed he would be wrestling kids from 70 to 75 pounds, thats like 4 pounds up to 10 pounds more than he was, I was not happy. I was like are you sure he is in this class, there isnt anyone under 70 pounds for him to wrestle? Then I made the huge mistake of saying outloud, to the weigh-in coach, with my son standing there, "he is gonna get clobbered". This is not a very good confidence buidling comment for young men, and was only the first mistake I made for the day. I immediatly marched over to where our coach was and proceeded to complain outloud to him about the unfairness of the situation, that was mistake number 2. Our coach just happens to be the pastor at my church and now knows that I do not handle sports well.
Yes, for years now I have harbored the terrible secret that all though I am not a sports fanatic, I do tend to get a little, intense, for lack of a better word. Well the secret is now out,  I am a maniac when it comes to my kids and sports. Maybe this is why I have a tendancy to "Just Say No" when the kids ask me if they can play some sport all thier friends are participating in. It has been easier this way. I remember a couple times during baseball season with Caleb, when Im sure they would have asked me to leave if I hadnt calmed down a little. I do not do sports well, this is why my husband wont let me watch football, which is the only sport I really like. I spent the rest of the day in a bit of a tizzy, Im glad our coach was working the mats and the kitchen so he couldnt see my attitude most of the day. It didnt stop there though, not only did I get upset about things with my kid, I got upset about things for our other team kids also. I have a tendancy to be somewhat protective of the kids who are on the team, I did that during baseball also. You would think after my baseball years I would know better then get involved in sports again.
Well, we sat there most of the day, as Joshuas class is almost the last class to wrestle, so I had the whole day to sit and stew and be perturbed. I am truly surprised Brian didnt tell me to go home at some point, I would have if I were him. Finally they call Joshuas weight class, I have no idea how I understood what they were saying as the person speaking in the microphone seemed to have it half way in his mouth everytime he spoke. Reminded me a bit of Charlie browns teacher. They had thier little meeting and out they came, and I missed it all. I missed his first match because I couldnt find him in the crowd (see picture above). When I did find him it was all over and he had lost, then I thought he had wrestled without a coach and was upset again. I stomped my way around the mats and found Brian of course, once again proving that I do not handle sports well.  My attitude had deteriated to the point where I think I actually wanted to smack someone. This is not a good place for me to be. Not that I would actually do that or anything, but the feelings were there for all to see.

Anyway, everyone knew I was upset now, not that I was trying to do that or anything. I was not gracious or kind or sweet or any of the things God would have me be, so I determined right then I would be better next time. Joshua was immediatly affected by my poor sportmanship and I was not feeling to good about myself either at that point. We waited for his next round of wrestling, I followed him to the room, then watched for him to come out so that I would know where he was, then followed him to the mats. I made sure he had a coach, and proceeded to explain to him that he needed to kill the other guy. Not literally, mind you, just no Mr. Nice guy, this isnt practice, this is not play time. I dont know what came over me, John was very patient with me and I moved out of the way, which is very hard for a maniac sports mom to do. Joshua didnt win that match but at least he didnt get pinned that time. I was very proud of him.

By this time my husband had shown up to help with moving the mats after the tournament and I was able to get a little balance, not much, but a little. He can be a stablizing force for me when no one else can. He kept me calm for the most part the rest of the time I was there. I only had maybe 2 more episodes after that, both of which my husband pointed out to me, where not good for Joshuas moral or confidence. He walked into his last match already feeling defeated because of my attitude. I tried to change it but the damage was already done. I determined that I would not do the same thing at the next match in Kellogg, and for the most part I was ok. I did have a minor melt down when we went in to weigh him and they made us get out of line to clip his nails, which I thought were fine. That took another 20 minutes to get done, so I walked out with a bit of an attitude, again. I don't know why I cant just be mellow about this stuff. My husband calmed me down mostly and I dont think I had any other melt downs that day, I was rather intense though and worried about everyone elses kids getting to the mats ect. but for the most part I handled the Kellogg match much better than the St Maries match which is a very good thing.
Our next match is in Sandpoint, one of those get up at 3am to get there by 7am  matches so we will have to see how well I handle that. Hopefully I will just sleep through the whole thing and not have to worry about being a bad sport or getting upset. My husband handles these things way better than me, and Joshua will benefit from his calming influence. My prayer will be that I will be more supportive and less uptight and that I would be able to encourage my son to do the best he can and have fun. I think I should probably pray before I leave the house next time, and not wait till I have a fit. I hope my son will forgive me one day and be able to walk away from this experience with alot better attitude then I have had so far.