This week’s giveaway winner is Angie who said:

Sometime between Thanksgiving and the start of December we write names of loved ones on slips of red and green paper and make a Christmas paper chain that matches the number of days left until Christmas. Each evening at supper time, we remove the next chain and pray for the person/people on that slip of paper. We enjoy praying for all of our loved ones and the chain is a wonderful visual of the amount of days left until Christmas. The last slip of paper always contains the name “Jesus” and Christmas morning, as we eat breakfast, we thank God for the precious gift of His Son.

I’ve sent her an email requesting her info.

I’ll be writing the post about the next giveaway in just a few minutes, so hold your breath check back in a bit.

Yes, Karen, we do eat tamales and chili on Christmas day.  And we listen to Jose Feliciano play his guitar and sing Feliz Navidad.

Now, I bet y’all don’t know that I play the guitar.  Malagueña is one of the pieces I know and I play a respectable rendition.

Maybe I’ll perform it for my children while they are eating their Christmas tamales.

(Karen is rolling her eyes now!)

(Kim is wondering if she knows me at all.)

(Jose can play a tolerable Malagueña.)

Here, have a listen.

Just in case nobody ever told ya, yes, MENOPAUSE STINKS!  And yes, as a matter of fact, I did mean to use all caps.

I won’t go into great detail, but I’m pretty sure that the younger 4 of my children held a meeting today to determine if  they all saw my head spin all the way around on my shoulders.

And the really cool part is, there is no rhyme or reason for any of the crazy, mixed-up, over-the-top emotional roller-coaster nonsense.

For instance, I cried at lunch time today, because my son poured me a glass of buttermilk instead of regular milk!

Don’t get me wrong, it was g-g-gross, but tears?  Come on!  I’m a big girl.  You would think I had better things to occupy my energies.  Like…

…arranging all the fans in the house so they will blow at me from all angles, at the same time.  Yeah, the furnace is on and it’s cold (in a Texas kinda way) outside right now.  But, I have my own climate part of the time.  You know, like that little girl in the movie Firestarter, when her hair started drifting upwards?

I know the children think I could ignite a pile of cinder-blocks by just lookin’ at ‘em.

So, fair warning.  Menopause STINKS.  You will need kleenex.  And you should warn the children about the hazards of serving the wrong beverage.

Oh, and buy stock in Lasko, ‘cuz you are totally gonna want some fans, yes, even in the winter.

And no, it has nothing to do with one pink line or two.

I got my blog updated today.  Not the blog itself, but the version of WordPress that I’m using.

So, I have lots of new things to learn today about how to use my own dashboard.

I know it doesn’t look any different to you.  Well, except for that pesky Linky window that was happening earlier.  If that starts up again, please let me know.  What a nuisance!

Here’s the test.  My old dashboard had quit letting me upload images.  Just stopped one day.  Oh we found a couple of ways around it, but it had become a thorn in my side.

So, this is my first post on the new, improved, upgraded dashboard.  I’m cautiously optimistic.  Here goes!

YIPPEE!!!

I love to crochet. Crocheting is not compatible with Pirating.

My back is only slightly better.  Sitting in my chair is the only position that resembles comfort.  Since sitting is very compatible with crocheting, I crochet.

Here is the little cutie I made today.

The Squid reminded me that I do, in fact, know how to use my crochet skills for Pirating, after all.

I know that some of y’all, ok maybe most of y’all are having cold weather, but today in my shower I had an encounter with a summer-time creature.

Now, my normal course of action, when confronted with creatures I do not wish to pet or observe, is to holler for a Pirate.  Circumstances being what they were, that avenue of relief was unavailable to me at that time.

The possibilities for this tiny enemy to work his evil were manifold.  Remember where I was?  And why I was there?  And the fact that I am suffering some sort of lumbago or something that is making it painful to stand up?

So I had to get creative and figure out a way to deal with this varmint all on my own.  And swiftly, before anything HAPPENED!

So, since I already had some hot water going, and since bees are cold blooded (they are cold blooded, aren’t they?) I figured that a scalding hot blast from the Waterpik might just do him in.

He was in the track of the window when I let him have what I hoped would be his own personal death shower.  I was either gonna cook him or drown him.

That was the plan….. however,  he only stayed submerged for about 3 seconds.

Do bees get angry when you nearly kill them and don’t really do the job?  I didn’t wait around to find out.

I started hitting at him with shampoo bottles.  Why do all shampoo bottles have rounded edges?  Even on the bottom?  He was in the corner between the window glass and the track the window slides on.  And just how much force can you employ when striking the bathroom window with shampoo bottles before setting the critter free through a brand new escape route?

As it happens, shampoo bottles weren’t the only available weaponry.

Hooray for acne wash and it’s pointy, upper edge!  I have no idea if I smushed him or dissected him.  And I am not going to investigate!  But he didn’t crawl back up outta that window track full of water!

On a regular, back ache free day, I prefer incident free showers.  On days WITH crippling back ache?  To quote The Squid, “Four million, trillion, google plex that!”

pssst!  In this photo he’s makin’ his Pirate face. 

I have Thanksgiving on my mind.  Do you think it has anything to do with the 6 loaves of Pumkin Bread I just put in the oven?  Those are for breakfasts this week.

But, I digress.  I was thinking of holiday traditions.  I have a bad memory, so, traditions are my friends.  Anything I can do over and over and over that my children will enjoy (and therefore remind me  if when I forget to do it) has Holiday Gold written all over it.

• So, what kind of traditions do we enjoy on this ship?  Well, when all the Pirates were little powder monkeys we used to make a turkey.  No, not to eat, yuk!  A paper bag turkey.  These are so fun to make, and you can’t mess it up if you tried.
• Now that the Pirates are a little older, I have time and energy to do a little more in the kitchen on Thanksgiving, so I am making the dinner rolls.  Yes I did used to buy them already made.  Who has time when there are tiny little pilgrims and injuns running all over the house?  But now they look forward to some mundo delicioso dinner rolls on Thanksgiving.
• That and the Cowboys game.
• But one tradition that is here to stay for all eternity is the cranberry sauce shaped like a can.  Oh yes, my Pirates and The Princess think they have died and gone to heaven when they see that crazy-jiggly side dish.

OK, so what we have here is a short list of easy to accomplish traditions.  The thing that makes them so special is the regularity, the rarity and the reiteration.

• Regularity - just the fact that you do it every year.
• Rarity - I’m pretty sure that the grocery store sells that jiggly wonderfulness all year ’round, but I only serve it on the Holidays.
• Reiteration - You have to tell the children that you are doing it again this year and remind them that you did it last year.  Well, when they’re little ya do.  When they get to be6 or older they remind you.  It’s beautiful!

Easy Holiday Traditions - Works for Me!

If you have children you might want to check out Help for Growing Families.

I remember turning 10.  I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever done.  You know, two digits being so much cooler than one.

Fast forward many, many years.

I was around 37 and had little Pirates all over the place.  I felt like things were always going to be that ______ (fill in the blank with your choice of the following, crazy, frantic, tiring, noisy, smelly, difficult).  Oh, I knew that it wouldn’t always be that way, but most of the time I was just too busy to believe it.

Fast forward ten more years and we get to the present.  (Yes, I realize I just told you I am 47 years old.  I am the only woman in North America who doesn’t care about telling my age.)  Anyway, here we are and things are so much easier, most days.  We still have lots of fun, but mostly it’s of a different sort than it was ten years ago.  This is great, we are in a great stage of family life.  I really can’t recommend homeschooling enough.  Start early and stay late.  What I mean is, life long homeschooling is best.  Start from birth and don’t give up when they get to be teens.  Home trained teens are a real joy to be around.

Now, let’s look at what’s in store for the next ten years.  All of the children from Cannonball Jack and older will be grown by the time ten more years pass.  The Cap’n and Calico Zak may well be married and be fathers already.  After all, they’re 16 and 14 right now.  Billy Bones will be 22 in ten years.  The Squid and The Princess will be about to turn 19 and 16.  Yikes!  Too many unknowns to even ponder, really.

What about the next ten after that?  All the children may be married and have several children by then.  Who knows what all the Pirates will be doing for a living by then?  I’d like to think that The Princess will be a lovely homeschool mommy by then. Who knows?

Who knows?  God knows, and I have peace in Him.