"The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together."  ~Erma Bombeck

• Farkle
• Yahtzee
• Uno
• Phase 10
• Chicken Foot
  
• Apples to Apples
• Crouquet
• Badminton

• Famous Last Words--invent new and funny tombstone epitaphs or dying breath statements. Laughter or groans let's you know how well you are playing.
  
• Paper Airplane Races--My children would create several paper airplanes, drawing fancy designs on them, and then they would race them. After a few races the bad planes were auctioned off to the other players, and then they would race all of their planes again. The person with the fastest plane wins.
• License Plate Capitol--When we see a license plate from a different state the person who can call out the correct capitol of that state first wins.
  
• Name that tune--We hum a few notes of a tune and everyone tries to guess what it is. The person who guesses correctly gets to do the next tune.
  

I don't like shopping. That's a big shocker for a woman to proclaim, but it's true. About the only shopping I can marginally enjoy is shopping for books. I'm seriously waiting for technology to become advanced enough that when I think of something I would like to have or need, the powers that be will check it against my bank account and if I can afford it, shcwoooomp! There it will be on my door step.

As that sort of technology is probably still a long way off, I'll settle for the plan my family just came up with--sending Dear Man, Eyebright, and Bluejane off to the store by themselves. The boys and I will stay home while the boys clean their room, and while I work, blog, or . . . read a book. In a few hours, all the things that I wanted or needed will be packed into my house. It's as close to the perfect shopping experience I can hope to get.

Not that I really haven't been writing though. I'm still keeping up with some news on Home Where They Belong, a few things over on the Company Porch, an article for the spring issue of TOS, possibly something for the summer issue, a tidbit here and there while testing out the Beta version of the soon to be new HSB, Blogging Basics, and mini-blogging over on Facebook.

Yup, I was suckered into FB, writing on walls, the Super Poke Pet, the 80's gifts, the Flair, the Scrabble games, I have been wasting time like you wouldn't believe. Work made me do it; I have to be available, relational, and interpersonal. In short, friendly to the customer. If you'll feed my pet, Miss Crumpet, I'll make sure yours gets a bath. How's that for friendly?

In other news, we've been reading up quite a bit on the country of Chile. How many of you knew that Chile offers complete homeschool freedom and that abortion of any kind is illegal? The more I read, the more fascinated I become. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever want to visit Chile. My idea of a dream vacation was going to Scotland. I'd still like to go to Scotland, but Chile has captivated me. We'll see if we ever get to go. Our families biggest travel was when we moved to Hawaii. Other than that, we tend to be homebodies. Mainly due to our bank account. 

At least I haven't been bored.  

I had just tumbled back into bed and Dear Man had stumbled his way into the restroom, in the wee hours of the morning, when I heard a noise coming from outside. I called to Dear Man, "I hear a strange noise."

"What does it sound like?" He called back.

If I could identify it, it wouldn't be a strange noise, but being an obedient wife I lay there a bit longer to listen so I could tell him what I "thought" I had heard. A wave of pity flooded over me as I heard the noise again. "I think it's a sick owl." I told Dear Man. For that is what it certainly sounded like, an owl with asthma, was hoo hooing outside my bedroom window. It was so close you could hear the resonance of the sound in the cold night air.

Dear Man found his way back to the bedroom without injury and then went off into the living room to investigate. After hearing the noise again, on each side of the house, my feelings of pity washed away and I quickly decided that we had been surrounded by a band of idiots, probably reject movie stars, who couldn't pass their auditions due to their poor hoot owl imitations. They were hungry and had decided to rob our house; calling to each other to say that we looked like an easy target.

Dear Man soon came back to bed and he didn't give his verdict on what he thought the noise was, which is most unusual for him. This led me to conclude that he has finally got a job with the CIA and they had been letting him know that on the morrow he would find his instructions in the hollow of the old dead tree.

I couldn't sleep for the rest of the night wondering how on earth he was going to get the instructions, because that tree is on someone else's property, and Dear Man would surely be caught trespassing. I don't know if I'm cut out to be the wife of a CIA agent. Worry doesn't suit me and I'm not very good at lying, so what would I tell my friends if Dear Man has to go to Turbekistan to retrieve intelligence vital to saving our nation from socialism?

It's cases like this that make me wish I slept with ear plugs.

Have any spare nails lying about the house? You might want to have your children gather them up, find a spare board, and see what they can do with them. Depending on how many nails they find and how big a board they've got, it could keep them busy for HOURS! Take a look at this example.

Now that's art I can appreciate.

You can find more of this artists work, in toothpicks and cork here.

Announcing the winner of this contest is LOOOONNNNGGG over due, and in order to stop the guilt feeling that eats at me daily to get this thing done, I'm taking a break from my hectic life to finally announce the winner of this lovely popcorn gift set.

All of your answers were so fun to read! As soon as I can, I will compile all the answers and give you a report. Quite fascinating!

However, a winner must be announced before I'm called a charlatain and a cheat. So, here she is, the winner, the winner, the winner is . . . sistersaraspoetry! Congratulations! I hope we get to see a picture of the popcorn bowl at your house on your blog.

Thank you everyone for participating!

If, for any reason you have fallen into the nest of madness over at Twitter, you can find me occasionaly balancing on a twig, fluffing my wings, and debating if flight is a good thing or not. Well, as a sage rat I'm not fluffing my wings, or even pondering flight, but go with the theme here people.

I really don't get Twitter, even after starting my own, uh, twings, tweets, twoodles, whatever they are called. Why on earth do I or you want to know if someone is doing their laundry? If you want to know what I'm doing, why not come to my blog? No post means I'm really busy, tired, or lost in emotional upheaval. See a post, then what's in it is what's on my mind and what I want to share.

Still, everyone I've spoken with says having a Twitter account has helped their business or blog. So, I tweedle. . .twaddle. . .twit. . .ah, I just put notes up over there.

Time for a little reflection of 2008.

• My oldest child graduated high school (Homeschooled all the way)!
• Dear Man got the greatest job ever (then got laid off at the end of the year).
• Dear Man finally got his Airframes and Powerplants license
• Went camping several times, had a blast!
• No one I know died (in 2007 three people I loved dearly passed away).
• My children are older and wiser
• Dear Man and I have been married for 19 years. (While he is not perfect, neither am I. That makes us a matched set.)

Now for my New Year's resolution. Usually I always just say, "I resolve to be a better person." That usually covers anything I may want to improve in myself. This year though I'm going to say, "May my life bring more glory and honor to Christ." It doesn't narrow it down any but it's a narrow path to walk. 

I hope each of you bring more glory and honor to Christ as well. While I have some major concerns about this coming year, I still have hope and will stand firm on the promises of God.

Abiding in the Vine! 

I'm a complete and total craft clutz.

I've never been very good at crafts, I even bang my head on the desk when something in the curriculum says, "craft project." Not that my children have ever minded all that much, they never understood why we were wasting time cutting out colored circles and squares and gluing them to a piece of paper anyway. Obviously, the project is supposed to reinforce something they are learning, but all of us would just rather point to the object and say, "Yup. That's a yellow square. It's bigger than the pink square. Now let's move on to a good book with lots of woe and mayhem."

Here it is, Christmas again, and we are rather tight with funds this year. Not that we've ever been rolling in dough, but this year is probably the second tightest Christmas budget we have ever had. So, I thought I could do some simple crafts. S-I-M-P-L-E. Bluejane tried to warn me. 

The first craft project on my list, that I actually started, was a homemade memory game, the idea of which I got from Nancy. After some trial and error, I got my cards printed and cut out. I took them down to my local office supply store to have them laminated because I wanted them to be hard like a driver's license, just like Nancy's. I paid nearly double in laminating alone then what it would have cost me to just buy a memory game from Stuff Mart. Then, the lamination didn't work all that great and I was't the one that laminated them. That's just the way it is with me, my own crafts fail in other people's hands. (Don't worry, Nancy's turned out fine, if you love doing crafts, I'm sure it will work for you too.)

I then had to cut out my cards from the laminated pages. It's not easy to cut straight when the lady didn't put them in the page straight. Not even my big craft cutting board could manage it. So, I went and bought a big die cutter, for 40% off, thinking it would just whack them right out. Not so. I had to coax, wheedle, and cry. After hours of cajoling, all the squares were cut out but they were now as sharp as thowing stars, so I had to round the corners. My husband finally had to take over because I coudn't even wield a corner rounder properly. After it was all said and done, I discovered I was missing a piece.

Moving on to the next project, I thought I'd make some homemade candied nuts. How hard could they be? Some egg white, sugar, (white and brown) cinnamon, and of course the nuts, in this case pecans. Everything was going great, right up until I burned them. Yes, I did go and stir them around and check them from time to time, it's just that between one time and another it had been far too long for the nuts.

You've probably heard that when it comes to gifts, "It's the thought that counts." I've also heard that, "The road to a fiery climate is paved with good intentions." It would seem that these two sayings are opposing each other. Today, while pondering if I had good thoughts or good intentions, I realized that good thoughts are for those who at least tried, yet failed to some degree or another. Good intentions, on the other hand, are those things that would be the better choice and that you planned to do but never followed through with. Like making promises you don't even try to keep. Not that we should make any promises anyway, but you get the idea. I hope so, because it all made sense to me when I thought it.

It would appear that I am the kind of person that should really like to make abstract art. No rules, no directions, just throw some bits on a board and call it, "Wayward Woman," or some other ridiulous title that is supposed to make us feel empathy for the lost in a way that would embrace their lifestyle instead of turning them back on the straight and narrow. Anyway, what else can I do with 23 memory cards and a batch of burnt pecans? The problem is, I don't like abstract anything. It makes my skin feel funny as if something unseemly was trying to hold my hand. Oh, and don't try to tell me to just toss card #23 and use 22 cards instead. It was a special memory game and it had 24 cards for a reason. 

If I try to do another craft again, someone please stop me before I do serious harm to innocent craft supplies. 

A couple of years ago I hosted a poll and contest because I wanted to get a good look at a slice of the bloggers here at HSB. I've decided to host this, very unofficial, poll again because back then there were only around 5,000 blogs on HSB and there are now over 21,000!   

So here's what I'm wondering: 

1.  Why did you start a blog? 

2.  What did/do you hope to accomplish with your blogging? 

3.  Have you found that you don't post as much as you did when you started?

4.  If yes, why not?

5.  How important are comments to you?

6.  Do you ever find yourself wishing people would not always leave comments that agree with you?

7.  Do you comment on other people's blogs a lot, sometimes, or very little?

8.  What determines why you don't post a comment on someone else's blog?

9.  What determines why you do post a comment on someone else's blog?

10.  Do you have more than one blog?  Where?

11.  Do you read random blogs either off of random blogger or friends lists? 

There you have it.  Eleven simple questions.  Post your answers on your blog and sign up with the Mister Linky below using the direct URL (permalink) to your poll answers post. As I have this blog's text selection disabled, you can copy the poll questions from HERE.

You must be at least 18 years of age and live in the U.S. to enter. (Unless of course you just want to do the poll, but I'm only mailing the prize to someone over 18 and lives within the U.S.) Be sure to mention why you are putting the poll questions and answers up on your blog and link your readers back to this post.  After a suitable period of time I will post the results.  Don't worry, I won't post names.  This poll will be used for absolutely nothing that I know of, except to satisfy my own ample curiosity.   

As incentive to get people to answer these questions at all, I will have someone randomly choose a human blogger from the entries.  The winner will receive this family popcorn gift set. I absolutely love enamel ware, it reminds me of my grandma.  

This poll and contest will close on Jan. 16th. 

I'm waiting!