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New Challenges for a New Year

1/18/2015

Every year on January 1st, we make resolutions or declare changes that we would like to accomplish. Sometimes these changes are self inflicted things like starting a new diet or healthy habit. More often than not, these changes are good for a few weeks or a couple of months, then we are back to our old ways.

This year my challenge is a bit different. I have found myself with an empty nest after my youngest daughter has decided to move in with a friend from work. My husband travels a lot for work and I am "home alone"! This year I will be discovering how to maintain my healthy eating habits and cooking for one. You may laugh, but this is really a challenge for me. I have always loved cooking and enjoy serving my family healthy dinners. I have always enjoyed the way that they rave about how delicious a meal that it was.

I am learning how to shop for one. I have already thrown out more produce than I actually consumed. Produce stands and Farmers Markets have things prebundled in baskets or bags and there is no way that I can use it all before it goes bad. I suppose I could if I ate the same thing everyday. That is way too boring! It is difficult to find a place that will sell you one handful of green beans, one handful of carrots, one half a bundle of asparagus and the list goes on.

On the other hand, this empty nest syndrome does have some positive advantages. There is much less laundry and house cleaning to do. There is more time for gardening. There is more time for just doing whatever I choose to do. Which may or may not get me into trouble! It could make me lazy or I just might write a novel. Time will tell.......

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Don't Give Up! Dreams Do Come True!

8/4/2014

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I know that you have heard this a million times! Don't Give Up! It does not matter what it is that you are trying to accomplish, you can do it. It may not happen as fast as you want it to, but if you keep trying you will succeed.

I know that you want to lose that extra weight or you really desire that promotion. It will happen, if you keep working in that direction. Just keep doing the things that will get you to where you want to be. Be happy while you are working towards your goal and it will make the journey much more pleasant. A positive attitude goes a long way in achieving your dreams.

It would have been so easy to quit trying to adopt a child ,after so many that did not work out. But I was determined! I never gave up! And we ended up adopting, not just once, but twice! Wow, dreams do come true!

It would have been easy to give up on my daughter's education, after being told that she was "slow" or "special"! But I did not give up! She is truly "special" but not in the way that they meant! She has grown into a wonderful, giving adult! See, dreams do come true!

It would have been easy to give up when the doctor's said that I had a 15% chance of survival. But I was not giving up and I was determined to stay happy and look for ways to be the best that I could be. Even if I did not survive, at least everyone would remember me as a happy, positive person that did everything that she could to survive! I am still here, so dreams do come true!

It would have been easy to just stay obese! That was not who I wanted to be! I kept on trying to lose the weight. I was lucky enough to find a product that helped me, and I was determined enough to actually remember to take every day. I learned to eat healthier and guess what? I lost that weight! Dreams do come true!

Whatever you are struggling with, whatever your goals may be, YOU are in control of making those dreams come true! Yes, God wants you to help yourself, too! He expects you to do your part! What are you doing to accomplish those dreams?

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Oh, You Dirty Rat!

8/3/2014

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It is common knowledge that I love my back porch! My family even got me this sign to hang on my wall. It is where I go first thing in the morning and where I go before I call it a night. I love listening to my fountains and to the birds singing so sweetly. I love seeing my rose garden and smelling all of the flowers. It is just so relaxing and calming. It is my own little slice of heaven! At least it was until the last few weeks. I have noticed little droppings of a critter. I have heard little noises that is like a squeaking mouse or a rat! I hear noises coming from the baskets that hold my small gardening tools and gloves. Of course, this was only happening at night, when I was by myself. Allen has been working nights on a commercial remodeling project. I would tell him about it when he got home in the morning. Naturally, he could not find the critter.

Well, the other night, as I was sitting there contemplating life, I heard the noises again. Then all of a sudden, there it was! A rat! He had come to dine upon the dogs food. Not only was he helping himself to the food but he also helped himself to the dogs water bowl. I thought I had better get a picture to show my husband. You know I would not want him to think that I had lost my mind.

I was torn between the feelings of fear, disgust and a little of the "oh, isn't he cute and adorable"! That did not last long! I realized that he was not alone. He had brought his mom and dad, brothers and sisters with him. I think that he also had all of his aunts, uncles and cousins, too! My husband was not going to believe me! He was going to think that I was exaggerating! But I was not. I tried to get pictures, as they would take turns coming to get the dog food. But as soon as I would click the button, they would be gone. How was I ever going to convince Allen that we had a real big problem?

Suddenly, I had an idea! I would video the little critters! The video would be the proof that I needed! I can not believe how many there were! The video was shown to Allen first thing in the morning! His mouth dropped open and he was speechless. He got out the big shop vacuum and started cleaning up under the bakers rack and around the old desk that sits in the corner. He opened the drawer on the desk and two little mice scampered away. Mice not rats! Then he moved the curtains that I have on the sliding patio door. We never use this door and it is an eyesore, so I covered it! Oh, my goodness! Rats were going everywhere! Big rats, little rats and medium sized rats. They all ran to the garden through a hole that they had chewed through our screen. I had never even noticed the hole because of all of the plants!

I wonder why the rats only went after the dog food? They did not even touch the big bag of bird food. I have about six bird feeders throughout my garden and I love feeding them. Is this a common problem with gardens? Do they just prefer dog food?

I do not know if my back porch will ever be a place of solitude for me again! I do not know if they will come back. I put out some natural deterrent called Ron's Bug Be Gone. It says that it will keep away mice, rats, squirrels and opposums. It contains clove, thyme, corn and wintergreen oil. We did put one rat trap in front of the hole in the screen. It was empty this morning, so maybe the Bug Be Gone will do the trick! This stuff does smell wonderful. I wonder where they went? Will I find them in my garden? Should I go buy some more of this Bug Be Gone and cover my garden with it? I never dreamed that we would have such a problem! What would you do?

Below is the video that I showed my husband. Watch it if you dare! Warning, it may give you nightmares!

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What Makes You Smile?

8/2/2014

4 Comments

What makes you smile? Everyone is different and we all smile for different reasons. Some of us smile when we see happiness in others. Some of us smile when we see something beautiful. Sometimes each of us has a different sense of humor. Have you ever just smiled at someone for no reason at all? It is amazing, to watch the effect that smiling has on those around you. Try it!

One of the main things that makes me smile is helping others to feel better. It does not matter if it is sharing a kind word or sharing a hug or a smile. When I help to relieve someone's pain by giving them a massage, this is sure to make us both smile! I love that I was able to help them. It is a very rewarding experience to help take someone's stress away and replace it with a real genuine smile.

I know that my smile is much bigger these days because I was able to lose 51 pounds with the help of Skinny Fiber. I feel so much better without all of that extra weight. Feeling Better = Bigger Smile! A bigger smile means that I can help more people by sharing my smile with them. You see where this is going? I was so impressed with my own weight loss that I decided to become a distributor of Skinny Fiber. When I help others to lose their weight, they get bigger smiles, too! It is a great big cycle. Now, they are smiling. I am smiling. Everyone that we see gets one of our smiles and the cycle continues!

If you are like me and you love to help others, then perhaps you would love to join me. I would love to help you learn to help others to lose weight and gain a big smile! I love happy, smiling people! Here is my link to happiness! www.getslimwithskinnyfiber.com

Whatever you do in life........do so with a smile!

And Share Your Smile With Everyone!

Lovely Thoughts for a Lovely Day!

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Hello August!

8/1/2014

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Goodbye to July and a Great Big Hello to August! I plan to Love Every Moment! We are enjoying this cooler weather this morning. It feels more like Spring or Fall, not the first of August. It is a busy month for me. Today I am so excited to be meeting friends for lunch. These are very special friends that I have known since grade school. I am talking about friends that I have known for about 45 years. Now quit doing the math! I know that I am no spring chicken! It is amazing, that it does not seem to matter how many years pass between our visits and that we can just pick up our friendship like we have never been apart.

Next week my oldest daughter and I are going to Las Vegas for a Skinny Fiber convention. Neither one of us has ever been before. We are both so excited. We will be driving from Texas and we will get to see many sights along the way. We have never seen the Grand Canyon or the Hoover Dam. It is about a 20 hour drive, so we will be spending one night in New Mexico.

The next week is my 27th Wedding Anniversary! I still get butterflies when my husband walks into a room. I think that I love him more today than I did all those years ago! It does not seem possible that I have known him for over 33 years. How lucky could I get!

May your day be filled with the wonder of life!

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Lovin' Our Fur Babies!

7/31/2014

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Meet our oldest fur baby, Max. He is about 13 years old and was a gift from one of the other parents at gymnastics. It had been a few years since our old dog had left us and I had sworn that we would not get another one. I get so emotionally attached to these critters and I did not want to go through that again. Well, you see how that worked out! I was sitting on the bleachers, watching my daughter and one of the parents came in and handed me this little Chihuahua . I always said I would never have a Chihuahua. Never say never! I was hooked pretty fast. He is rather large for a Chihuahua, weighing in at about 11 lbs. Our dog groomer has always called him Cujo because of his temper. He is a mess, but we sure do love him. He is very attached to our youngest daughter. When she gets married next year, I am not sure if he will go with her or stay with us!

This precious angel is named Gabby. We found Gabby outside of the massage school that my oldest daughter attended. It was on a very busy street and I could not just leave her there. We opened the car door and she jumped right on in. We took her to the local animal shelter and dropped her off. They will euthanize them after 3 days. Needless to say, we were there to adopt her on the third day! She is a Shepard/Sheltie mix and is probably the sweetest baby that we have. She walks us to the gate every day just wagging her tail. She is also the only one that has never had an accident in the house. She is definitely an angel and really belongs to my oldest daughter. They live in an apartment, so she lives with us. Gabby is about 9 years old and weighs about 65 lbs.

This is our youngest little stinker! Her name is Destiny Grace! Who ever heard of such a name for a fur baby? She is the most rotten of them all. She can run around in circles and she can dance on her hind legs. She is a mess. She gets into everything and often gets herself into the strangest predicaments. She loves everybody and everybody loves her. She is just so blasted cute that it makes it very difficult to stay mad at her for her many accidents and her mischievous behavior. She is a five year old, Shih Tzu. She is about eight pounds of pure energy.

I have a full house for someone that said that she did not want any more dogs! I suppose that this big heart of mine speaks louder than my brain. I would not trade them for the world. How about you? Do you have a soft spot for the fur babies?

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The Good Ole Days!

7/30/2014

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Nearly 50 years ago, I lived in the back of this store. My parents were the hard working owners of Sauly's Grocery & Market. They worked from six in the morning until eleven at night. It was the only store in the area that had a fresh meat market. The store was more of a small grocery store with convenience, instead of just a convenience store. They carried milk, bread, cereal and vegetables, in addition to cigarettes, cold drinks and candy. In the back of the meat market there was a swinging door that led to our kitchen. Our home consisted of a large room that was our kitchen, living room and my parents bedroom. Then there was a small hallway that led to a bathroom and our bedroom. My sister and I shared a room and it had a little alcove, about the size of some walk in closets. The alcove was my baby brother's room. It was big enough for his baby bed and that was it. The window behind my bed opened into a small enclosed area that stored empty coke bottles and milk bottles. The door to that room was in the back of the store.

I am sure that by today's rules and regulations, that we would have never been allowed to live in the back of the store. In many ways, this was a much simpler time. I was the oldest child and I was almost 5 years old. It was my responsibility to watch out for my little sister and my little brother. My sister was about 2 and my brother was almost 1. My parents were just on the other side of that swinging door. I do not really remember going out into the store very often. We did have babysitters in the evening hours. They made sure that we had food to eat and helped with diaper changes, but they were usually in school during the day.

Did we get into a little bit of mischief? Perhaps! I can remember one time that my little brother painted our coffee table with his poop and he used my toothbrush for his paintbrush! My mom threw away the table and the toothbrush. I did get a new toothbrush, but we did not get a new table. I can remember getting in trouble for sitting in the parking lot. I was not in trouble because I could have gotten run over, but because I was sitting in a puddle of oil from someone's car. I know that the walls of our bedroom held a lot of art work done in crayon. No paper, just bare walls that we had colored on!

As their business grew, they hired more people to work in the store and mom got to stay with us more. It was only a few years until they bought a house. It was a nice, new, three bedroom brick house with two and a half bathrooms and a two car garage. It was a big change from our meager living quarters in the back of the store. My parent's hard work paid off and we survived an awesome adventure of living in the back of the store.

What adventures did you have as a child that would not be tolerated today?

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Enjoying the Simple Things

7/29/2014

6 Comments

What a beautiful day! I love waking up in the morning and going to my back porch. I love to sit and listen to the water falling in my fountain and hearing the birds singing their lovely songs. I love the smell of the roses that drift to my nose from the soft gentle breeze. I enjoy the way the sunlight dances upon the trees, creating shadows upon the lawn. I do my best thinking at this time of the day. This is when I give myself a daily pep talk. I feel so wonderful and thankful to be given another joyous day. I want to share this inner peace with everyone.

I know that we are bombarded with ugliness everyday. I know that there are wars being fought all over the world. There are so many conflicts going on all around us. I know that some people will not ever understand what inner peace is. Many people believe that everyone that does not believe the same thing as their own group of people are wrong and that they should be punished for believing something different. I realize that many people go through life just being angry. What I do not understand is WHY?

Would people look at life differently if they were told that they only had a 15% chance of survival? Is that what made me seek the beauty in life? I do not think it was that. I think I have felt this way for many years. I think that maybe my feelings were magnified with my cancer diagnosis, but these same feelings were always there!

I know that I am rambling. This is my blog and I can do that. You do not have to read it but I hope that you do. I hope that you search for that magic place that helps you to gain some inner peace. A place that just makes your heart sing! A place that brightens your thoughts and that makes you feel calm. May you continue your day with a song in your heart.

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Get Off of The Roof, Grandma!

7/28/2014

2 Comments

Grandma 2009 at age 90

I have told you stories about my Grandmother on my Dad's side. She was sweet, kind and loving. She told awesome stories and was multi-talented. Today, I will share stories of my Grandmother on my Mother's side.

She did not write stories, she lived them! She is about the total opposite of my other Grandmother. This Grandmother will not hesitate to put you in your place. She will tell you exactly how things are (in her eyes). It does not matter if your feelings get hurt. If you are overweight, she has no problem telling you. If you disagree with her, then you should probably leave. She has a temper and is not afraid to show it.

She is 94 years young and is currently on hospice. We tried having a live in caregiver stay with her, but that did not work out. She fired them! She does not want anyone to stay with her. She had to stay at an in-patient facility for one week when she did that. The doctors said that she could not stay by herself. The in-patient facility tried to get her to sign papers that said that she had to have someone stay with her 24 hours per day. She threw the papers at them and said " I don't tell you how to run your business and you can't tell me how to run mine!". Never mind that she is now confined to bed and a wheelchair. She is very head strong and will not be told what to do.

Just to back up what I mean by head strong or stubborn, I must tell you the story of the gutters. This was before the wheel chair. She was still very active at 90. We had discovered that she would climb up on her roof to clean out her gutters. We were horrified that she did that. What if she fell? Well, we finally got her to promise not to get on the roof. Guess what she did instead? She climbed on a ladder and took the gutters down, cleaned them and then put them back up! She also was still mowing her 3 acres of land every week. It was not unusual for her to cut down a tree and move it with the riding lawn mower to the back to be burned. She was one tough cookie!

Even now, she manages to get herself up and into her wheelchair all by herself. She resents anyone's help. She still owns a car that she will not part with. She can't drive anymore since her stroke last Christmas, but she said that she will one day. Scary thought! None of us has the power of attorney, so that means that we can not override her decisions. Good thing the battery in the car is dead.

She is now living in an apartment and has sold her home with the 3 acres. She hates it! She tells us daily what a mistake that was. That she would have been fine if she had stayed in the country! Whenever I take her to lunch at a little diner, she will look around and say "There is nothing in here but old people!" Never mind that she is at least 30 years older than everyone else in the diner.

I wonder where I get my stubbornness from? Do you have a similar story about your Grandmother?

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What Were They Thinking?

7/27/2014

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Burpee Hallett Saulsman Circa 1920

Fannie had a Burpee and Burpee had a Tootie! Oh, my! What were they thinking? I have always loved the stories that my grandparents would tell of days gone by. I would sit for hours , while my Grandmother would tell of growing up in Rochester, New York. She told of how her mother would take out life insurance policies on each of their nine children. She would pay the premiums each month and then, when they had financial difficulties, she would pick whichever one had the most cash value and cash it in. Then she would promptly purchase a new one to replace the one that she just cashed in. She told of how it did not matter how poor they were, that if a stranger knocked upon their door, she would invite them in and give them food at their kitchen table. I have always had a very strong connection to my family. It was only natural that I discovered that I love researching our family tree.

My Grandfather's Dad and Grandparents came to the United States from Nova Scotia, Canada. On this line, my Great-Great Grandparents were named Rueben and Fannie Saulsman. They named their only son, Burpee Hallett Saulsman. I would love to find out where they got his first and middle name. Were they family names? Were they names of friends? Can you imagine the teasing that he would get if he were around today?

Well, Burpee married Edith Marion Mason and they had a daughter named Eleanor that they called "Tootie". They also, had my Grandfather and named him John Hallett Saulsman. Anyway, this is how "Fannie" had a "Burpee" , who had a "Tootie" happened!

Do you have any crazy names in your family tree? I would love to hear about them!

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<<Previous

New Challenges for a New Year

Don't Give Up! Dreams Do Come True!

Oh, You Dirty Rat!

What Makes You Smile?

Hello August!

Lovin' Our Fur Babies!

The Good Ole Days!

Enjoying the Simple Things

Get Off of The Roof, Grandma!

What Were They Thinking?

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