"Pretty Pictures..."

Legos:




Zach and I worked very hard on our little shack.

NBA All-Star Weekend:


Lincoln Tower in downtown Dallas and yes, this is for real.

Can You Find The Faces?


Had to boil water to make a bath for the kids due to our lovely water heater deciding when it wants to work and when it doesn't. If you look closely I swear you can see faces and ghosts.

How Do You Make A Smoothie?


I think it involves not wearing a shirt.

No rhyme or reason for this post. Just a collection of odd pictures taken here and there. Sometimes a little disorder is just what the doctor ordered.

"I'd Like To Make Myself Believe..."

..that Planet Earth...turns...slowly...

And seeing what I bought recently, you'd know exactly what I mean:




OMG this is the coolest thing I have ever watched EVER! What took six years in the making resulted in a view of our wonderful world in a way virtually no one has ever witnessed. Plus, I was able to convert them to MP4 so my iPod Touch could play them! They could have put some uber-high security limit but chose not to. I had no idea how hard it was to live in a desert...or Antarctica...or in a cave...but these animals seem to find a way. Will have to figure out how to get some screenshots on here but you wouldn't believe me if I told you. The saddest one for me was From Pole To Pole. To see what polar bears have to go through just to survive is awful. Now I'll admit that when Noah Wyle came on the television and talked about how polar bears are facing extinction, I was one of probably many who said "Ehh...they just kill people at the zoo, so what's the big deal?" But my attitude seems to have changed some. The male polar bear goes off to find food for the mom and pups and once the winter ice thaws, he has to swim until he finds some. Even though they are graceful swimmers, they can't swim forever. When this particular one finally did find food, it was in the form of sea walruses. Weighing about half a ton each, the polar bear tried to attack some but couldn't even break the skin. In turn, several of them ended up goring him to death with their tusks. Was really hard to watch.

Global warming. Wonderful thing, isn't it? Are we contributing to this? Many say yes, some say no. All I know is that any plastic I might throw away I toss into the recycle bin instead. Plastic does not biodegrade: it photodegrades. Difference? You bet. Photodegrading simply means it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces but never goes away. I bet it would be for the best to recycle it when we can.

To sum up...it's never a bad thing to be educated.

"It's A Bird...It's A Plane..It's..."

SNOW!!!

Yes, for the second time this winter, the wonderful city of Arlington Texas has been blessed with snow. But not just a little snow. Eight inches! It's leaving me speechless, which if you know me, is no easy task. Here are a few pix:


We built a snowman!! A behemoth at 4 ft tall!


Emmy was throwing a chunk of snow at me as I took this. fortunately, she remembered the golden rule which is never hit me with snow ever.


This was from the 4th floor of my office. Usually you can see the junkyard they have out there, but today it looked like a winter wonderland.

Plus, my work and Cari's work let us go home at 12pm! Which would have been great except my windshield wipers ecided that when they get cold, they refuse to work. So I'm driving down the freeway squinting through the available space I have that isn't being pummelled with snowflakes the size of quarters! But it sure it good to be in my nice warm home right now.

"100 Memores?"

Can it be done? I've always wondered if I had 100 memories I could recall that fast. I also wonder if anything incriminating could be revealed as a result. I'm trying not to re-visit previous times that have appeared on here. So here we go for 100-96:

100. When we lived in Canada we were at some bluff. Dad and I were kicking the soccer ball when it went over the railing and down almost to the waterline. I climbed down the entire bluff and retrieved the soccer ball. Of course, four minutes later it got kicked over there again...sigh

99. Dad and I rode our bikes down to some store when I was about 8. On the way back, I found $5 on the sidewalk. Best day ever.

98. In 2007 at Pharmacare we had an ice cream sundae day and afterwards there was all this ice cream left over. Well, I took some home. The next day the lady in HR was hopping mad that someone took it. She never found out who it was.

97. In 9th grade I was going to my locker at the end of the day and found $30 right next to it on the floor. Again, best day ever.

96. In 1999 I went to Maryland for a vacation for my birthday. They have this pier with all kinds of stores and on my first day there me and and the friend I went to see hung out. Weather was so nice.

All I can muster for right now.

Lately I've come to the conclusion that worrying about anything is just a complete waste of time. There are so many things we just can't control fully and for each one of those there is something else that is so insignificant that it merely gets forgotten...swept away with time. Unfortunately, Cari is exactly the opposite. Sometimes Emmy will go to school in clothes that may or may not match. Better believe I hear about it. My thought is, who is going to care a month from now? No one. I say, let Emmy choose the clothes she wants to wear, and if it looks a little silly, so what? We put so much emphasis on accomplshments and careers but we seems to forget that nothing on this Earth is permanent. We're born, we live, we die. In fact, Dear Abby had a letter from a woman who called herself "49 and Counting" who didn't want anyone to celebrate her turning 50. No one can avoid it, so why not celebrate it? Anyone who has grown kids will tell you that time goes by in an instant. My kids are only 8 and 4, but I know that time is coming when they will be on their own, so I try to create memories for them that they can re-live with their kids someday. I guarantee you, people who have died no longer worry about any problems they had while they were alive. Only when we reach the Kingdom of God do we really become "alive".