Today when I was putting away laundry, it occurred to me that it’s almost that time of year when I need to pack away winter clothes and see if I have enough spring / summer clothes for the kids in the right sizes.  And, since I’m going to have another little bundle of joy, I started thinking about what I already have in the way of baby clothes…  Since this is my 4th girl, I have plenty of pinks and purples.  However, I really do need to check if any of these clothes are fitting for a July baby – I’ve never had a summer baby before!  Come to think of it, my girls were born in December (winter), May (spring), October (fall), and now, July (summer) – giving me miracles for every season!  We are so blessed!

Since #3 arrived not even 2 years ago, I still have ALL of her baby clothes, and my friends at the time were so nice to throw me a baby shower, even though she was #3…  I think it had something to do with my friend Sue insisting baby #3 (Disney) was going to be a boy, but it was very thoughtful of her at any rate.  This next part is weird, I’m warning you…  The problem is, all of my baby clothes are in the basement, and I have put myself on strike from going in the basement for awhile…  It’s a long story, but I probably won’t be ready to go down there until the end of summer or fall – it’s just not something I want to deal with these days…  maybe I’ll go into it in another post.  So, I guess I’m going to have to bribe my husband to dig around in the basement to find all of our newborn baby clothes in time for me to wash them and see if there’s any shopping to do before our new arrival.  The good news is, since it will be July, I shouldn’t need too many clothes off the bat…  some onesies and blankets will do it until fall, and maybe by then I will be basement-ready!

Last weekend was quite eventful: a wonderful performance of Murder with a Silver Spoon at Orchard Hills followed by a gathering to watch a movie. I have seen parodies and spoofs of the suspense movie The Ring on television almost since the movie was released in 2002. WOW…. it is that old and I had yet to see it?! I have always enjoyed a good suspenseful film and this is definately a very strange one. You really need to pay attention and not drift to catch all of the nuances.

Naomi Watts plays Rachel, a young journalist who investigates the mysterious death of her niece. At the wake, Rachel overhears a group of teenagers discussing a video which a number of students watched 7 days prior to mysteriously dying… all at the same time on the same date. After watching the video herself, Rachel begins to see the exact images which were on the recording. These images lead the investigator on a race against time to prevent not only her death but also those of her young son and his father.

Perhaps the most mysterious character in the film is Rachel’s son, Aidan (David Dorfman). The child seems to have a very eerie connection to the mystery. He draws pictures of people’s deaths days before they occur. It is almost as if you expect him to utter the much quote phrase “I see dead people.”

Several pieces of trivia about The Ring caught my attention. Primarily the fact that the movie is a remake of the recent Japanese film, Ringu. Also, the movie was directed by Gore Verbinski who directed the “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy.

The Ring is an intriguing suspense thriller which holds the viewers attention. Although it does have one scene of (I’m sure and would hope) simulated animal endangerment, it is relatively devoid of gore. It is a fairly intelligent mystery.

Normally I teach first weekend of the month at one of the morning services, but this month for some reason they have me down for next weekend instead. Of course I did have a surprise last night as I wrote. Today there was no leader problem either, just a normal day. For some reason though the boys are more rambunctious at the second Sunday service than Saturday night. I suppose it is probably for the same reason I tend to have more energy in the morning myself. The lesson if I didn’t say was an introduction to the book of Judges. The kids were taught about the cycle that happened seven times in Judges and still happens today. When we get comfortable we tend to forget God and sin. Once in that trap, it leads to suffering. As we suffer we remember God and cry out to him to help us. He hears our cries and saves us, bringing us back to him. Unfortunately the cycle starts over from there. The message we got in the main service was part of the series on family first aid. It was about wrestling with God just as Jacob wrestled with God. While God could just crush us when we choose a path other than that which leads to Him (read: sin), He chooses instead to be gentle and let us wrestle a bit. However, no mistake is to be made on this: He leads us, His children, to a place of submission so we get back on the right path. The message can be heard here:

This Week’s Message

Okay, they didn’t go missing they just got sick, but “when teachers get sick” didn’t quite have the same ring to it. Besides, they were missing tonight because they got sick.

So when I arrived at church tonight there were already about five kids waiting outside the door. Not a good sign as I was a few minutes late myself and someone more punctual than myself should have been there. I checked the kids in and waited for other leaders to arrive. And waited. Eventually Steve, the one in charge of the kid’s ministry, popped in and informed me that the one set to teach the lesson tonight called in sick and asked another leader to fill in for him. And she was, up until about an hour and a half before the service, then she called in too. Now this was a bit unusual, and ordinarily Steve would then fill in since it was so last minute, but tonight he had other obligations, so the duty of teaching the lesson passed to me. Well, I didn’t study the lesson beforehand knowing I wasn’t on for this weekend, but I could do this- I’ve done it before. Hey, I’m a sub, remember? Thinking on my feet is normal practice :). So I had to miss the game time and study the lesson. No biggie- just another game of dodge-ball and I’m usually doing drama at this time anyway (we’re off this month). Oh, I guess I should mention that another leader finally arrived and handled the game time. So anyway, They got back up, sang a few worship songs while I kept on studying, and ready or not I had to teach. It didn’t go too badly but when we broke off into small groups (well smaller than the large group anyway, there were only the two of us after all ;)) a couple of the boys mentioned they thought I was boring. Sigh.

Fortunately the other leader saved my ego and said she thought the lesson went well :D.

If you haven’t been to the site imdb.com and you like and/or watch movies, I give you permission to take a break from my blog and visit it now:  imdb.com

This site has everything about pretty much every movie:  a list of the actors and crew involved with clickable links so you can see where else you’ve seen them if they look familiar or where else to find them if you like their work, trivia about movies, quotes, discussion boards, and much more.  They also have a movie rating system for users, so you can see if a movie is going to be worth the time to watch it according to popular opinion.  Imdb lists keywords for movies, which I’ve often thought would make a fun game.  I’ve posted some below for you to try.  These are the keywords imdb has listed for some popular movies – I will give a hint – all but 2 are movies made pre-1990.  Keep in mind that I didn’t choose these keywords; imdb chose them for whatever reason and some can be quite strange!  Let me know if you would like additional hints, I can give you genre, actors, or just random hints, happy guessing!

1. Punch / Kiss / Muscleman / Eggs / Fistfight

2.  Bikini / Used Condom / Champagne / Broken Window / Brother Brother Relationship

3.  Coming Of Age / Controversial / Fantastic / Wish / Wish Fulfillment

4.  No Opening Credits / Tragic Incident / Talking Animal / Copyright Infringement / Falsely Accused

5.  Planet / Concert Scene / Box Office Flop / Laser / Physicist

6.  Miniaturization / Shrinking / Remake / Sword Fight / Toy Soldier

I hope you’re not getting the wrong opinion of me – I’m really not a big fan of email forwards…  it’s just that I get so many.  I don’t religiously forward every one to everybody I know.  And I am certainly not superstitious and don’t believe that I will get bad luck for not forwarding emails.  But occasionally, I will follow the directions on a forward, or sometimes I even pass it on to my friends and family because I find something cute, fun, or just a little bit entertaining.  One popular forward is the “4 Things About You” forward.  I’ve recently received this one for the umpteenth time (wish I had been keeping track), but I don’t mind since filling out questionaires about yourself tends to be fun, I don’t know why…  maybe to get a chance to think about your favorite things and put them in a list?  Anyway, I’ve decided to post my answers here: 

A) Four jobs I have had in my life:

Mommy

business owner

receptionist

office manager

B) Four movies I would watch over and over: (I’m just gonna put my favorites even though I wouldn’t watch them over and over – Forrest Gump is just too sad, but it’s still my favorite even though I haven’t seen it in years)

Wizard Of Oz

As Good as it Gets

Forrest Gump

Nanny McPhee

C) Four places I have lived:

Warrenville, IL

Lincoln, NE

Pioneer, OH

Wheaton, IL

D) Four TV shows I watch:

The Office – writer’s strike is OVER – can’t wait for new episodes!!!

Lost

Dr. Phil

Friends / Everybody Loves Raymond reruns

E) Four places I have been:

Orlando, FL

Washington, DC

Idaho

California

F) Four people who e-mail me (regularly):

Sue

Vickie

My mom

Elizabeth

G) Four of my favorite foods:

gyros off the spit

saganaki

spaghetti

cheese

H) Four places I would like to be right now:

home

somewhere warm

at a zoo

at an animal park
 

I) Four friends I think will respond:

Elizabeth

Jamy

Vickie

MB

J) Four things I am looking forward to this year:

The birth of our 4th daughter

having 4 kids

warm weather

the Cubs season

Here is my own review of the Thursday, February 29 episode of Lost:

To sum it up quickly, see title of post.  This show is intriguing, yet if they don’t start answering questions soon…  I don’t know what I’ll do.  I’d still watch it, but only to get answers to the thousands of questions the writers have put out there over the years…  That is, if I can actually remember all the questions…  there are literally hundreds of loose ends, with at least 5-10 new plot twists and story lines opening EACH WEEK!  Stop it already!  I am a busy person with a terrible memory!  Now that that is out of the way…  on to the actual synopsis of the latest Lost episode.

*WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD – DO NOT KEEP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED MOST RECENTLY ON LOST!!!*

First, let me refer you to the tvguide.com Lost blog – they do a great job and I really recommend reading their blog every Friday after the show airs.  Although I must say that the person filling in this week is not nearly as insightful and clever as the person who normally writes the blog, so if you don’t like it, I would suggest reading it another week when the regular writer is back: https://community.tvguide.com/blog/TV-Show-Blog/Lost/800062566

This episode actually opened with the answer to a question!  Albeit, it was a question only raised last episode, but still a step in the right direction – Sayid and Desmond are alive!  But, immediately following this revelation, we were introduced to 2 MORE CHARACTERS – Omar and Kearney – and YET ANOTHER plot twist – time travel!  I have to admit, the time travel aspect was interesting, if not confusing, but at least they answered some of the questions they raised about it this episode – they tell us what year Desmond is traveling back to (1996) and why he is time-traveling (exposure to radiation).  Unfortunately for Desmond, others who have traveled thru time in the show met an unfortunate demise – RIP Eloise and  George Minkowski, Desmond’s roommate on the ship.  Of course we will have to wait and see what Desmond’s fate will be, as that is yet another unanswered question at this point.  But Thursday’s episode was remarkable in that it showed (fast-forwards NOT INCLUDED!) the FIRST time any of the island-dwelling characters have gotten off the island!  Way to go Sayid and Desmond!  Unless, of course, the ship is a bad place to be – we don’t know what the ship is yet because that is an UNANSWERED QUESTION!

As always, we had some time for a bit of subtle comic relief this episode, such as the moment when Penny’s father said “Walk with me.”  to Desmond so they could have a chat, but then the scene cuts away, and he is in a urinal – it’s no secret how he feels about Desmond!

The tvguide blog likes to pose some questions to viewers at the end, so here they are with my answers in CAPS.  Since this week’s blog was written by a replacement writer, the questions are not nearly as thought-provoking, witty, or well-written as they usually are:

1. Was Penny expecting Desmond’s call? It wasn’t clear if Present Penny remembered Past Des’ promise.  TO ME IT WAS CLEAR SHE REMEMBERED HIS PROMISE!  SO SHE HAS BEEN LOOKING FOR HIM FOR 3 YEARS EVEN THOUGH SHE DIDN’T REMEMBER HIS PROMISE – UNLIKELY!

2. Why would Faraday need a “constant”?  MAYBE HE WAS JUST PARANOID AND WANTED ONE IN CASE – I WOULD!

3. Does Miles still have that grenade in his gob?  WHO CARES – MILES WAS AN A-HOLE!

4. Are Sawyer and Kate still in bed back in New Otherton?  AGAIN WHO CARES – THOUGH I BET THE ACTORS WHO PLAYED THEM WERE IN FOR A SURPRISE WHEN THEY READ THE SCRIPT THIS WEEK AND WERE NO WHERE TO BE FOUND – ALSO JIN, SUN, HURLEY, CLAIRE, LOCKE, MICHAEL (where IS Michael, anyway?!?) ETC, ETC.  THAT’S WHAT THEY GET FOR HAVING SO MANY CHARACTERS IN THE SHOW!!!  UNFORTUNATELY, IT’S NOT THE ACTORS’ FAULTS!

5. Where was Ms. Hawking? I missed her.  WHO IS MS. HAWKING?

Now that that’s out of the way, here are the questions I have about this episode:

1.  How does Desmond know what Daniel looks like in 1996 at Oxford?

2.  How come Penny doesn’t look any different between 1996 and 2004 – what is her secret?

3.  If Penny was so fed up with Desmond, why was she looking for him for 3 yrs. (since 2001),  even though he said he wasn’t going to call her until 2004?

If you are an avid watcher of the show, give me some feedback!  Let’s pick our brains and come up with some insights and possible answers to all these questions!  They have said that they have put the show on a timeline – meaning, they know when they want it to end, so they are writing it so that ALL (so they say, yeah right) questions will be answered by the time the show is finished.  My husband thinks maybe what the show is about is that the island is pergatory, and that when someone dies on the island, they are going to Heaven if they’ve passed their test, or ahem, the other place if they haven’t.  It had certainly seemed this way at times, and this is a good theory, but I don’t think it’s going to be that biblical in the end.  Especially after this last episode, I’m starting to think the island is about time travel…  maybe it will turn out the Oceanic survivors were only missing for a matter of hours or days…  all we can do at this point is hang on tight and wait and see!

What do YOU think?!?

The subject of this post, my friends, is the result of an email forward I got today.  It’s one of the stupidest forwards, yet somehow irresistable at the same time.  I posted it below if you want to try it.  I didn’t have the nerve to bother my friends with this at work, so I decided to post it on my blog instead.  Imagine my surprise when I got an email from a neighbor my mom had like 4 years ago (I somehow got on her forward list) with a subject of: “I love an ipod because I think I need some serious help.”

This is funny, and silly but fun..keep it going..Type the sentence you end up with, in the subject line and forward to your friends… Pick the month you were born: January——-I kicked
February——I loved
March——–I karate chopped
April———-I licked
May———-I jumped on
June———-I smelled
July———–I did the Macarena With
August——–I had lunch with
September—-I danced with
October——-I sang to
November—–I yelled at
December—–I ran over

Now type out the sentence you made, in the subject line and forward to your friends. 

Trying a different theme.  The other one didn’t show italics, just two ways to show bold type…

Erm… Running into what?? It sounds like I mixed up two topics here… Well as to the second, since it’s the least interesting, the position I wound up subbing for was art. After patting myself on the back for actually arriving a little early for once I ashamedly dragged my tail out the door and over to the school I was supposed to go to. Okay, though that scene has actually happened before, this one wasn’t my fault. Really. You see, many of the specials positions in this district are itinerant, or traveling jobs. That is, the teacher works out of two schools. Having been burned before I meticulously checked, and rechecked both the message (“special instructions”) the teacher left and the online system so I would really know where I was going. Real– okay, enough of that word. Anyway, the message told me all about how there was a student teacher and I would leave the teaching to her… yada yada. Been there, done that. No school mentioned. Check. Over to the online system, looked at the school, check. Go to the school, sign in, drop my lunch off, pass over the store-bought bagels someone brought in, go to the art room, and… another teacher is there who says she has the room Friday mornings. Check in with the office, and sure enough all my careful detective work is shattered when they (now) inform me the teacher I am subbing for works out of a different school on Fridays. Oops… Sign out, collect my lunch, pass over the bagels again, travel to the other school which is fortunately only five minutes away hoping all the while it wasn’t one of those schools that closes their parking lot when the buses start to arrive (seriously), fortunately again find out it is not, check in, put my lunch away, pass over… wait- Panera bagels? Grab bagel, go to art room, carefully verify with student teacher that I am indeed in the correct place this time, then finally take my coat off and plop down with relief. Hey, at least someone brought good bagels over here. 🙂

So, it turned out there were eight classes to teach: four 5th/6th, and four 3rd/4th. Apparently all classes except kindergarten are multiage at this school. Well, the 5th/6th classes were in the middle of a project involving Crayola®-clay animal pots and acrylic paints. Yes, they looked better than that just sounded (most of them…). I of course assured them that yes, the olive green and yellow plaid shirt I was wearing was on purpose because I hate it and don’t care if it got messed up in art. Through all four periods unfortunately it didn’t. I guess with three wins (“fortunatelies?”) I was bound to lose one.

The 3rd/4th grade classes started a new unit on movement. No, this wasn’t PE or performing arts. Movement as portrayed on the canvas. They even got to draw a little, well, er, two of the classes did. Such a crime- art class and some didn’t even get to do art! Well, that’s unit introductions for you.

Okay then, until next post.

Wait, I’m forgetting something aren’t I? Yes, really (didn’t I ban this word earlier?). “Running into” doesn’t actually refer to the movement, as they weren’t allowed to draw people today anyway, only objects. Drawing people and showing their movement is apparently for more advanced students, more advanced than 8-10 years anyway. And besides, I had to have added the church category for this post for some reason.

In this case “running into” refers to me running into someone I actually knew from church. No, not really (that word again!) running into him, adults don’t run in school rooms now, do they? So anyway, It had been a couple of years, and memory for names and faces isn’t exactly one of my strengths, or even neutral features (you know where I’m going with this…). Apparently his memory was only slightly better as I just “looked familiar” like maybe someone from camp. I one upped him and said “church camp?” still not recognizing him. Then he one upped and gave the name of the camp and his name. I of course pretended to recognize him before he said his name (secretly grateful he said it, reall- truly recognizing him only after he said it). As it turned out, he was the one student from my cabin I spent a week with (yes I truly am pathetic…) and never saw again after that summer. There were two like that the following summer, but at least I knew I wouldn’t see them again when they told me that the one was from another church and the other was a friend he invited to come with him. Anyway, since you have suffered through this entire post I will provide an obligatory picture of my cabin from that year, but you will have to just guess which one he is. All I’ll tell you is he isn’t the one on the right (that would have been a really (sigh) big 5th grader). The one on the right was actually my junior counselor (I was the adult counselor). I of course am behind the camera, so no picture of me- sorry! 😛

Note: The thumbnail picture is not so good, so click on it to see it in it’s full glory!