Woo-Hoo! Better Late Than Never!

Guess what we got today? Yep. SNOW. BEAUTIFUL, GLORIOUS, BREATHTAKING SNOW! I am beyond excited! I've been begging the heavens for snow since November. Okay. So maybe since September. Whatever. The point is, the fantastic white stuff arrived today and I was happy to be here to welcome it. Can you see it slanting down? This was taken earlier in the afternoon.
This one was taken at about 1:30. The boys had just gotten home from school and Jake just had to walk on the sidewalk in the backyard. Before he stepped on it, it looked like frosted glass. After he stepped on it, it looked like a bunch of slush.
Click on this picture to enlarge and you can actually see Jake getting pelted by the snow and ice. (Punishment for ruining my pretty looking sidewalk!)

This was the view outside our front window at about 4:00.
No, people. This is not Sydney the Wonder Dog. It's a little deer statuette that we have out back in one of our flower beds. He looks cold, huh?
This is the flagstone patio we have in the back yard.
And here's the saga palm. I'm thinking maybe the saga isn't such a big fan of the snow. It's looking a little...frosty, eh?
And this is my favorite picture of all. This is one of the little lights that we have hanging on the perimeter of our back porch. The way the water melted and re-froze makes it look like a nipple. Sorry. But it does. Who says Mother Nature can't be funny sometimes?

Personal Note to Susan:
So tell me something, Susan...doesn't this look like the most wonderful place in the whole wide world to live??? Say yes. Then pack your bags and come live near your BFF. I've already got the coffee brewing for you. ha!

More Therapy, er...I mean, Scrapbooking

I had a wildly narcissistic urge to do a book featuring pictures of me from the past. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that. I feel like I should be doing books of my loved ones rather than of myself. However, having said that, I also have to say that it was, surprisingly, pretty therapeutic to do. I used 15 pictures of myself, taken between 1965 and 1996 and put them into a 6"x4" chipboard booklet. The picture above shows what the cover looks like. Above is the inside cover page and the first picture.
I made little envelopes and tags for each page and wrote something about each picture on the tags.

I didn't include a picture of each page, but you get the idea, right? The pictures weren't all that thrilling to look at, but I found that remembering what was going on in my life at the time they were taken was somewhat...enlightening, to say the least. I realized several things. The biggest of which was that somewhere along the way, I forgot that life was about more than paying bills and disciplining kids and trying to please people. I realized that I have gotten into a strange little habit of focusing on everything that's wrong in my life and have stopped enjoying everything that's right. I'm telling you people...stop spending your money on a therapist and start scrapbooking. You'll find yourself swimming in a veritable ocean of mind-boggling epiphanies about your life and the path your life has taken. lol You'll also probably figure out that all those times you've worried about this or that have been moments wasted! Now before you all start thinking I've turned over a whole new leaf and will be leading the International Choir of Sisterhood and Love in a rousing rendition of Kumbaya, let me assure you that ain't gonna happen. I expect I will always be a little bit surly, especially when it comes to politics, celebrities and other great injustices of the world. (Hey, some things will always cause me to rant and rave and no amount of warm and fuzzy feelings will change that. I mean heck, I've been trying to improve my outlook on life, not trying to channel Mahatma Ghandi!) Let's just say that I'm making a humongous effort to acknowledge my blessings and embrace the good in life. Because, as I said on the inside cover page of my little "me" book, I don’t want to spend any more time wondering if I've lived the best I could. I want to know I did.