In 2011 ...

… Roxy played in the snow for the first time.

… Jonathan and Chuck built an addition to our deck.  It was my idea and it was a good one, if I do say so myself.

…  Randy and I completed the project of putting up all the window valances and blinds.  Something that we never seemed to accomplish in any of the houses we lived in before this one.

… We bought my most favoritiest boat of our entire boating career.

… I tried vinegar pie.  It's kind of like pecan pie without the pecans.  The same only different.

… We went to Hot Springs and saw the famous bath houses.

… I showed Debbie that there are trees in the Ozark Mountains.

... Randy put Tom to work.

... We kidded, laughed and loved every minute of the time we spent with Jack & Teri and Jim & Marcia

… I learned in an expensive way that artificial nails aren't for me.

… Roxy met her first (and more than likely only) boyfriend, Charlie.

… I accidentally slammed the garage door opener rope thingy in the back car door (after I was advised (told) not to.  Lucky for me, my in-house garage door repair person was able to repair the damage.

… We had our downstairs carpeted and now it is so very warm and cozy.

… Roxy paws felt river water for the first time.

… I made many hummingbird friends.

… Randy and I seriously considered a sibling or two for Roxy.

… Randy disposed of an old new toy ... 

... and got himself a new old toy. 

… After four mini purges in the past five years, I finally took a deep breath and got rid of most of my old office clothes.  Just like a song, memories of office 'stuff' were tied to certain pieces of clothing.  Once I got started getting rid of everything, I didn't stop until every last bit was gone.  It felt good!

… Squish Baby gained a new brother.  Or sister.  It could very well be either.

… Randy and I became 'those people' who take their dog everywhere and thinks she is cute and adorable no matter what she is doing.

… We didn't move.  We didn't talk about moving.  We stayed put.  Thank you, God.

Have the BEST 2012 ever!

~ Dorothy

Girls Day Out

Roxy and I decided to hit the town and do some shopping before Christmas.  It was just one of those days where we both felt the need to get out of the house.

Our first stop was to see our friend, Miss Tammy.  Miss Tammy has been feeling poorly, but still had to go to work.  Roxy thought it would be a nice idea to try to cheer her up.  Besides, I owed her some money.  Roxy loves Miss Tammy and was very excited to go into an actual beauty shop.  She was very well-behaved while we were there and stayed (mostly) just inside the door on the mat.

Ah ... Christmas

What a beautiful and sunny Christmas Day.  Warm enough for Randy to consider digging out his shorts.  The kind of sunny that when it shines through the windows I realize how much dust and Roxy hair is everywhere.  Everywhere.  And I have Roxy nose prints on more than a few of the windows.

Princess Roxy spent Christmas morning sunning herself in her favorite spot ...  on a blanket in front of the garage.

'Twas The Monday Before Christmas

Our shopping resources are very limited in these parts.  I can honestly say that is the one thing that I like the least about living in a remote area.  Last Monday was a grocery shopping day and because I dislike immensely the WalMart in Mountain Home, Randy and I decided to drive all the way to Flippin to test the WalMart store there.

I was told by my friend, Tammy, that the selection was better at that store.  Really, I am just hoping for a few less older people racing each other with their shopping carts and a few more items on the store shelves.


Flippin WalMart ... how many times to I mumble that under my breath as I leave Randy and the cart behind and try to make it to the peanut butter in one piece?

O Tannenbaum

I have never been one to get really excited about decorating for Christmas.  I do love the holiday season and all that comes with it.  But the thought of hauling out multitudes of plastic bins of decorations to scatter around the house just to put them all back within a few weeks just doesn't appeal to me.

Until I am done.  Then I am glad that I spent the time to decorate.  I should say 'we' because it was a family affair.

Saturday Odds and Ends

Our Christmas tree sits naked downstairs, drinking up water like a sailor on leave.  I keep assuring it that we will get the pretty and sparkly trinkets on it soon.  I just haven't defined 'soon' yet.

What Goes On At Our House ... or ...

... I have way too much time on my hands.

Opps, I hit the wrong button on the remote again.
Really?  That was you?
Yeah, I had the remote upside down.

Sticky Ginger Squares

My domestic skills were severely tested the weekend before Thanksgiving.

My bread maker put out this poor excuse for a loaf of bread.

The Honeycrisp apples that I thought I had bought for Randy turned out to be something called Ambrosia apples.

A batch of cornbread that I baked mutated into something really nasty.  I found out later that I had used four tablespoons of baking powder.  The recipe calls for four teaspoons.  

Devoid Of ... Bereft Of ... In Need Of ... Color

The weather the past couple of days has been ...

... Blessedly beautiful ...

... Splendedly sunny ...

... Wonderfully warm.

That wasn't the case earlier this week.

It looked as though all the color has been drained out of my life.  Overnight the beautiful fall colors turned drab and dull.  It was dreary and grey here, well, it seemed like forever, and my disposition knows it.  I was lacking all kinds of motivation to do anything, but was able to find all kinds of motivation to do nothing.

Christmas Hopes

My very first step in getting ready for Christmas is to change the ringtone on my phone to 'I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas'.  It is not officially the Christmas season at our house until that happens.  Since it is just not right to start with anything Christmasy before Thanksgiving is over, changing my ringtone was one of the first things that I did yesterday morning.

I went through slightly over forty six years on earth before 'I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas' entered my life.  I don't know how I missed it, since the song has been around since 1953.  It it one of the happiest songs I have ever heard in my life.  It brings a smile to my face every time I hear it.

This Is Our Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day started out on shaky ground for me ...

... First thing in the morning, I spilled a full cup of coffee on my iPad and MacBook.  And all over the floor.  It is amazing how far a few ounces of liquid can travel.

... I put in two cups, instead of the called-for one cup of buttermilk in the blueberry scones that I was making for our breakfast.  I spent a fair amount of time staring into the mixing bowl trying to decide if I should double the dry ingredients or syphon the extra buttermilk out of the bowl with my turkey baster.  I chose syphoning.

...  I then spilled used coffee grounds all over the kitchen floor.  I dislike immensely cleaning up wet coffee grounds.

I was not about to let little setbacks get in my way of a thankful Thanksgiving.  No sirree, Bob.

Just who is Bob anyway?

On most special occasions, I make a special scone for breakfast.  As I said, this year it was blueberry scones with lemon icing.  And mimosas, we always have mimosas on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.

Link and Zelda Sittin' In A Tree

I picked up my shiny new, and very golden Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword game at GameStop on Sunday.  Even though the Seahawks were playing on national TV, I fully intended to commandeer the television downstairs and spend the better part of the day exploring the world of Link and saving Zelda. 

Have you ever heard the saying, 'We plan and God laughs'?

An Attitude of Gratitude

I am sitting in the living room on my end of the couch like I do every morning.  Randy is at his end, sipping Mountain Dew and reading whatever he reads every morning on the computer.

This morning he has made it to the news headlines and is up in arms about turkeys.  Mainly new government standards that allow turkeys injected with stuff to be called 'natural' because the stuff that they are injecting the turkeys with is 'natural'.

What's Cookin' Today?

I love cookies.  Absolutely love cookies.  Until last week, I didn't think that there could be any such thing as a bad cookie.

Little did I know.

It was one of those days where I just needed a little something sweet to give me a push in the right direction.  It wasn't the kind of day where I needed to wallow in a bathtub of sugar.  Just a day where something sweet would be nice.

Months back, I had made a mental promise to myself.  That promise was that if I was going to indulge in sugary goodness, I at least was going to make that sugary goodness myself.  In doing so, at least I would feel like I wasn't getting all the nasty chemicals and such that ready-made goodies contain.

For some strange reason, I had ended up with a box of Betty Crocker's Super Moist Party Rainbow Chip cake mix in my pantry.

For some strange reason, my mind went back to about a hundred years ago ...

Paths of Faith

Faith ...

... It is what I have when I turn on the faucet.  I know water will come out.  Unless our power is off, of course.  I am not likely to forget that lesson from last week any time soon.

.... It is what I have when I get into my car.  I know that I will have enough gas to get to where I am going and then back home again.  This was part of our wedding vows almost twenty five years ago:  Randy will always have clean and folded underwear in his drawer and I will always have a full tank of gas in my car.

Funeral For A Squirrel

A neighborhood squirrel met an untimely demise last Friday morning when he (or she) ventured into our local substation.  

I felt badly for the squirrel, I really did.  I also felt badly for our substation since the words 'significant damage' was mentioned by the nice lady at North R-Can-Sauce Electric Co-op.

To me, she really didn't sound all that optimistic for the power coming back on anytime soon.

What really bothered me was learning that without electricity we had no water.  Apparently, when the power goes out, so does the pump attached to the well.  My in-house electricity / well expert acted like I should have been fully aware of that fact.  

Unnoticed Gifts

The Faith Barista blog jam topic for this week is ...

What gift has God slipped into your life recently?

I have must have had a million of rough drafts for this blog.  Maybe a trillion.  Could be more.  I don't know what comes after a trillion, so I stopped counting.  I have, for days, typed, deleted, typed and deleted over and over again.

Good Things

Beautiful fall days.  That was yesterday ...  today, not so much.  It seems as though winter is telling us that it is just around the corner.

My New Hero

I can't dance, I am horrible at any kind of sport.  I can trip and fall over my own feet with hardly any effort on my part, let alone trying to throw a frisbee for Roxy.  I manage to injure myself playing Trivial Pursuit on my Wii.

I am an uncoordinated clod.

While I know the importance of it, I dislike immesely any form of exercise.  Over the years I have tried jogging and aerobics and have just come to the conclusion that the best exercise for me is walking.  Other than a good pair of shoes, I don't need any special equipment.  I don't need to go to a special place to walk, I can do it anywhere.  I am a huge proponent of 'intentional exercise', something that I learned from Dr Phil.  This means that Randy and I have come to a compromise as to how far away we park from the entrance to WalMart.

What's Cookin' Wednesday ~ Ummmm Pizza

Next to the apple, pizza just has to be God's most perfect food.  Pizza has most of the food pyramid all cooked up to ooey-gooey deliciousness.

I love pizza so much that I even consider a piece of toast spread with tomato sauce, sprinkled with some mozzarella cheese,  and then broiled for a few minutes a pizza worth eating.

I am not a pizza snob.  Christmas decoration and coffee snob, yes, pizza snob, no.

When I was a kid, Saturday night was pizza night at our house.  Back then, in the dark ages, there wasn't the plethora of take-out places to go to.  Besides, we weren't a 'going out to eat' type of family anyway.  Going out for pizza was a rare treat.  Remember Shakey's Pizza?  Ye Public House?  There was a window with steps where you could watch them make your pizza.  My parental units always had dark beer and I had orange soda, Debbie had root beer.  Oh, and the potatoes Shakey's had - mojo's.  Ummm ... to die for.

It's Incredible Too

I love video games.  Love, love, love video games.  I love to read about them, I love to collect them, I love to play them.

I also love, love, love game apparatuses so much that when I discovered that Verizon offered a PlayStation certified phone, I knew it was the perfect electronic device for me.

I researched it online the 'Randy' way, which means quite extensively, I went into the Verizon store to check it out in person, thought about it, penciled it all out on paper, thought about it some more, counted and recounted my allowance and then took the plunge and bought it.

Since I was no where near close to getting an upgrade on my current phone, the manager at the Verizon store in town helped me jury rig our account and I came home with a shiny new Sony Ericsson Xperia Play.

It's a phone!

It's a gaming device!

That's not it.

This Could Have Gone Very Badly

Colder weather has finally hit R-Can-Sauce this past week.  After a long, hot summer, and, up til now, a beautiful and warm autumn, cooler weather just seemed to be a dream.  That has all changed and we are even supposed to have temperatures that are at freezing tonight.  It all makes sense when I look at the calendar.  Or go to WalMart and see Christmas paraphernalia everywhere.

Good-bye summer

Good-bye hot weather

Good-bye flip-flops, shorts and tank tops

Six Things That Don't Mean Anything

I am on day sixteen of my self-imposed (again) exile from sweets.  Every night for the past fifteen nights, I have fought the urge to drive into town for a Blizzard.  Tonight is going to be no different.

Randy bought himself a new toy and I haven't seen much of him since mid-August.  I think he's in the garage.  Someone's in the garage - it best be him.

So Simple

If there is one thing that I am good at, it is makings things very difficult for myself.  It doesn't matter what I am doing, I will manage to make it more of an ordeal than it needs to be.

Take categorizing my pictures for instance.  I wasn't satisfied with any program on the market - even after spending a small fortune in software and apps - not to mention not only my time, but Randy's time as well, researching and experimenting with different programs.  Nope, there just wasn't any program that did exactly what I wanted it to do.

Arkansas Oklahoma Texas Oklahoma Arkansas

My, how time flies!  I can't hardly believe that it has been a month since Randy, Roxy and I made a quick trip to Texas.

And quick trip it was - one day to drive there, one day to fix stuff and tidy up the Plano house and then one day to get home.

Then it took the three of us two weeks to recover from the trip.

A Walk In The Park

Way back when, in July, Randy, Roxy and I took a couple of days and drove to Des Moines, Iowa.  Our Secret Squirrel Mission (SSM) took us directly into the downtown area of the city.

Being more country mouses than city folk, we weren't at all that excited about driving downtown.  We were pleasantly surprised to find that, compared to craziness that is North Dallas traffic, we had no trouble finding where we were supposed to go.

After our mission was completed, we harnessed up Roxy and took a walk through the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park.

The Sculpture Park has been open since the Fall of 2009. 

Do Something Nice

Today is a national holiday.  Yep, it is national 'Do Something Nice Day' today.  We have a holiday to remind us to be nice.

I didn't feel very nice this morning anticipating a call that I needed to make to Verizon to enlist their help in fixing an issue with my phone.  I had already taken my phone into the local Verizon store and the nice young man there, although very helpful, had no clue how to help me.

Hawgs and Dawgs

Sure signs that fall is here ...

Spiders ...

... Mums ...