Ufo in Texas

I saw it with my own 2 eyes. I snuck into it and my friend Helen didn't get out of the car. So after snapping a few pictures of it, I saw Helen had found a bit of information about it so I started looking into it too.




Now here are a few links that will explain about this UFO.
Here are a few photos.



This one has an interesting video.

Happy Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving. There is so much in my life I have to be thankful for. I've got a great husband and two wonderful sons. I have two adorable dogs who greet me everyday at the door. I even "have" a cat I guess. My husband has started feeding the stray outside. I have a great family. I'm lucky to have a job that isn't affected by the economic downturn in the stockmarket. I also am grateful to have a second job that helps pay the bills also.

I have some really great friends. My friend Marybeth and I are supposed to spend our black Friday in our own little scrapfest. I can't wait.

I also have a wonderful friend Helen, who lives in Texas. When she knew my life was a bit stressful, she offers me a free ticket to come down to visit. He opened her home and her heart to give me a weekend of fun and a bit less stress. The weather was beautiful. Meeting her kids was a lot of fun. Her husband fixed a great dinner on Sunday of homemade BBQ pulled beef brisquet. Her house is new and beautiful. She's got a wonderful space that she's working on turning into a scrapbook room that when finished will be so inspiring and cozy.

Helen, I can't thank you enough for the wonderful weekend you gave me. She also sent me home with some delicious minty, chocolatey Austrailian cookies. I was nice and shared with my lunch group at school. They thought they very much tasted like Girl Scout Cookies.

I know there are so many things I have to be thankful for. There is so much God has provided for us and so often it is simply an afterthought. God has blessed us with such a great life and great friends. If we fail to thank him for his bountiful blessings, then we forget the whole meaning of Thanksgiving.

Thanks be to God for the wonders he continually provides.

So again, I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. It should be something we actually remember to celebrate each and every day.

Next projects

I'm a never ending source of next projects. I'm horrible about starting something and not ever totally finishing it. Like now, my hat, made with yarn from Finland is sitting 95% complete. I only need to finish those i-cords. That is if I truly feel I want them on there. I must think I do because I keep wanting to finish them.

I also have a sweater in process. I've lost interest in that for now; partially because I'm having problems getting the sleeves started and I don't know 100% how to connect them or that I'm sizing things correctly. I'm seriously considering taking another knitting class about sizing things properly and reading patterns.

For now, I've also got 2 new projects sitting on the back burners. One is this sweater. It's called the Amhurst cardigan. I also have yarn from Finland for this. It's all knitting so it should really go fast. I just am not sure which size to make it in. I think I'll take my yarn, and buy the pattern online, and take it to the knitting shop for a bit of help. I've been trying to find a knitting group but I just haven't yet found the right one for me.

I've also got this in mind too. This one was made by Lisa McGarvey at 2 peas in a bucket. I had a difficult time deciding what size I wanted mine in. 7 Gypsies first created a 2x3 altered trading card size (which is what the photo was) and now they have a 4x6 size. The 4x6 was more expensive by $10.00 but It would give me more room. I don't intend on using the photo sleves, just putting on the photos and the pages and the journaling. I've taken over 600 photos on my cruise and I want to squeeze as many of those puppies on as possible.

But until my Christmas journal is finished, I can't really start on either project. I'm having an all day scrapfest with my friend Marybeth on Black Friday! I'm so excited I just can't wait. I'm excited about all the time off in the upcoming future. I just want to sit and be creative. I guess I'll need to budget in the cost of printing all of my photos too. Maybe I'll start small just do one country at a time.

Until then, I've got Christmas shopping to do. I did accomplish getting 3 gifts today. I've got other ideas and that's the best part, I'll just be able to accumulate the money and make a big shopping swoop. I'm actually getting excited about also putting up some Christmas decorations. It will be simple again, but I can't wait to get the icicle lights up in the living room and warm up the cold, dark nights.

Well I've got pumpkin bread half made and now Don brought me the veggie oil I ran out of. I can get it made and in the oven so I can hopefully get to bed at a half way decent time tonight.

Not such a downer

Lately most of my blog posts, to me have been such downers. My life lately has been in a state of influx or turmoil, but althought today I was a bit lazy, it felt good to be lazy.

School is still school. Each day is difficult. God doesn't let me sit down on the job, especially on Fridays with no planning period, he continually pushes me to be better and be on my toes. I admit it, I have an extremely difficult class. I have a handful of great ones, they're all great in their own way, just sometimes I have a difficult time seeing the good for the bad. I have some difficult ones, and then there are some really difficult ones. The difficult ones are really quite needy.

I got a new boy last week. I thought he was slacking off, making excuses. I called mom and she told the secretary that he is lazy. Well the word lazy didn't translate well because she meant slow. She graciously came in the next available afternoon and we had a 30 minute meeting. Through a bilingual teacher I found out that he was involved in an underwater accident that involved him being revived. He's got a brain injury from lack of oxygen. So now I've found myself trying to help another child who needs more than I can truly give. I know I can help him, but with 5 discipline issues and other low students there isn't enough of me to go around. I don't have the special education background I need to help way too many of my students. So I know God has put him with me for a reason, maybe to test my patience, or push me to be better at modifying and differentiation. Maybe because I have the littlest bit of knowledge about special education and the fact that he needs it and I'm the one to finally help him and his parents. I don't know, I just know that working with this boy is going to make each day a bit harder.

Anyway, I mentioned this post wasn't going to be such a downer. I have to say I'm trying to say "no" a bit more often and "yes" to myself more. Like today, I could have stayed home all day, wrote bills, laundry, graded papers, cleaned my room, and a bunch of other things, but I went out and ran a few errands, that weren't too tedious (like buying 6 yards of fleece for a school Christmas project and a trip to Archivers.) Picked Don up, went and ate a quick bite at Wendys and went to the grocery store. For as long as it's been since we've been to the store and it being a Saturday, we were there, back, and had it put away in about an hour and a half.

I've also been putzing around on the computer for a while tonight. But when I got online, I gathered up my bills and put through some online payments. then I decided to throw in a bit of laundry so I don't have to do it tomorrow. I also bought some songs from Itunes with some leftover money from a giftcard I had. Don was out with friends for dinner and he came home and heard I was poking around on Itunes and realized I was bored. Yep, bored is right. I don't want to sit and watch television, or grade papers. I want to sit and scrapbook the Christmas journal from a Christmas past so it gets done. I want to start on another project. The photos from my European trip. I figured I can grade papers tomorrow night. I also could sit and knit on some i-cords for my hat. I think knitting is why my little finger hurts a lot and it's really just starting to feel better. I know that's an excuse.

So I have a bit of time before I will go to bed. Have to wait for Brian to get home and then I'll turn into a pumpkin.

So on that note, I hope you can see that I'm a bit more positive and then there are a few things I'm just not dealing with much related to Brian so that relieves a lot of stress and pressure from me.

I should try to get a few things put on Craig's list tomorrow. I'm sure someone might like to buy the 3 coats I'm going to try to put up. They're in really nice shape. Cross your fingers!

I long for Copenhagen

I was just finishing reading my last post and looked up at my header photo. Oh how relaxing it would be just to pop into Copenhagen and just chill out. I'm sure it would be a real chill considering they are much further north and it's mid November. Can you believe it's really Mid November already? I can't. We picked grab bag names last night while at my mom's for her birthday. A bit early for her day, but it was the only open weekend for most of us.

On another happy note...I'm headed to Texas in a little over a week to see my friend Helen! I'm so excited to go. I hope the weather is a bit warmer than it is here and definetly a bit cooperative so I don't get stuck anywhere. I found a really cool project I'd like to work on but it would involve having a lot of stuff (as in scrapbooking) around and all my pictures from Europe edited. I know that isn't really going to happen. It's something I can keep in the works. I'm really not supposed to do any other projects until I get my Christmas Journal finished. That's according to Marybeth!

Speaking of my friend, Marybeth, I went to have a few hours of scrapbooking with her yesterday. I accomplished 2 things. One I finished a frame my sister asked me to make for my nephew. Second I accomplished one page in the Christmas journal. I know it doesn't sound like much but we sat and gabbed a lot about politics at the beginning. Then after getting one project done, we had a snack. I brought some banana bread I baked and a delicious Honey Crisp apple. Then we goofed around when we started discussing my new bra. We also set the date for our next scrapbook day. We'll be scrapbooking all day the day after Thanksgiving! I'm so excited, I just can't wait. I don't know if I'm more excited about scrapbooking, spending the day with Marybeth, or just being off for 5 days in a row! Anyway it's all good.

I've also found a new organizational tool for me. I found a desk divider that has 3 drawers, two mail slots and a top area. I've gotten my bills mostly organized into it along with stamps, calculator, and other odds and ends I need to write bills. Before now, they were just stacked in a pile on the corner of the dining room table or on the chest in the dining room. I have also been trying to file right after I finish writing the bills. I still have a couple of smaller piles I need to work though but it's slowly becoming an organizational tool that is working for me. Since I took over the bills, I found that if I write bills and pay them online once a week that I manage better. It was a disorganized mess when I took them over. I'm so glad that I got worked through the stuff while I was off over the summer because it makes things a bit less stressful during the school year.

So any big plans for Thanksgiving? We're not sure what we'll be doing. I'm sure we'll be doing something with my mom. My sister will I'm sure do something with her husband's family, my brother and sil will be in Florida, and that leaves us, mom and my dad. I'm not sure what he'll be doing though either. Doug will be home probably the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. NIU is playing Navy on that Tuesday. A big ESPN2 televised game and he'll take his free student ticket and go. Both teams are close to his heart. I'm sure now that he'd prefer NIU to win because that's his school, and my cousin no longer plays for Navy.

Have you got things in order for Christmas? We drew grab bag names last night at my mom's birthday. I got someone and Don got someone, but we didn't get one another. That was against the rules since we will already buy for our spouses. We should be getting lists out by the 15th. I've already started my list for what I think I might want to buy for Don and the boys. I've got ideas for my younger nephew, and sure my older nephew will want a gift card to somewhere. Trying to think of something fun to make for a friend at school as we always exchange something small or homemade. Anyone have any cute and fun little ideas?

Ok, I have to blame this on Marybeth yesterday. I've started listening to Christmas CD's. They are relaxing to me and I thought it might help me relax a bit. The radio station WLIT will start playing Christmas music 24-7 on November 20th. They even have a countdown clock on their homepage!

Ok, I've chatted about a lot of different topics. Can you tell I'm trying to avoid sitting and writing a final test for a book for the college students? As much as I like that class, it's getting difficult because it started with 8 students and now we're down to 7 and if they don't all show up, it's just a really small group that is hard to keep focused and teach. They are learning but it's hard to do groups or partners.

So here's hoping you have a great week, and I am able to get some work done, things done at school and get rid of some stress. It's been bad this weekend, it's going down my back where it usually stops at my shoulders. I need to find someone who can get me in for a massage.

Toodles peeps!

I can tell I'm still stressed

Do you know when you are under stress? What is your typical response to stress? Well mine is junk food, mostly candy. So mix being under way too much stress and Halloween candy and you have a true problem. I've been eating way too much chocolate candy. I've also been drinking hot chocolate and eating chocolate frosted long john doughnuts. I feel totally out of sorts with my diet.

This was another stressful week. I go to work, my class has a lot of stressful students, I go to the college and that is another bit of stress because I worry am I really teaching the students useful reading strategies, then I was observed this week. Then I come home to my family. Although this week has been a bit better, with no yelling, we have my mom's dog while she's in Paris. I also have college tuition hanging over my head. We also had another IEP meeting and did get a few things cleared up with that. I hope things are on the downslide of stress.

One great thing that has come about is that my good friend Helen McCain is willing to host a stressed out friend for a long weekend. I've never been to Texas, other than a lay over at a Texas airport, so she's invited me to stay with her. She actually said, "stay as long as you want," but I really think that if I just permanently moved in and camped out on the couch for months would wear out my welcome! LOL! I'm so excited to go and tour around the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. I really just want to bum around and avoid as much stress and thinking as possible. I hope the ticket issue will work out for when I'd like to go.

Another bit of a stressful situation is the fact that report cards are due on Monday by 9:00 am. I'm so far away from getting those finished that I'll probably be working on laundry, bills, and grading & report cards for most of the day tomorrow.

I really just want to go hang out with my friends and do anything that avoids thinking. That is not really a good thing, the avoiding thinking, but I know that I'm exhausted and trying to avoid anything that is stressful. It is probably a mechanism my body is using because I'm either depressed or I'm trying to avoid being depressed. I'm hoping a good long weekend away will help me snap out of it. I'm truly anxious for Thanksgiving and that long 2 weeks of winter break. It can't come soon enough. But having that come means more stress of the holiday season and shopping.

Well that's not worth thinking about tonight. Tonight is for trying to get my things done and changing clocks. Maybe that extra hour of sleep will help snap me out of my funk.

Sending hugs to my friends and family.
Ciao!