Green

GREEN

Green is now officially my least favorite color thanks to AL GORE!!! If I have to hear one more thing about being green I am going to be sick. Every TV program now has some sort of green message to help us earth hating mongers know how bad we are destroying mother earth. I thought I had heard it all until the other day when I saw the story about the woman having an abortion because she didn't want another person adding to the Carbon Footprint. ARE YOU KIDDING? She just hates it when people judge her for murdering her kid (her words) and the fact she wanted to be sterilized so she wouldn't have to have anymore abortions. She has no problem with lecturing a woman with a lot of children about the damage she is doing to the planet. I don't care if she gets herself sterilized in fact I prefer it to her murdering more babies. Even Kermit hates being green. It ain't easy being green.

Music Box Christmas

To understand the significance of the year my dad got my mom a Music Box for Christmas we have to go back to the prior Christmas.

Everything was going great me and my sister were tearing into our presents to see all the stuff we had gotten for Christmas. That is when it happened. My mom opens up a present from my dad. It just happened to be a pair of jeans that were way too big for my mom. Of course the next thing out of my moms mouth was do you actually think I wear this size of jeans. At this point my dad was totally screwed there is no good answer to this question. At that moment he uttered the words that came close to being his final words here on earth. I held them up and thought they looked like they would fit you. That was just about where the Christmas Joy ended that year.

So the following year he pulled me aside and said here is $50 buy your mother something nice. It is amazing at how much wiser you become in a year. No matter what I bought my mom would be happy because one of the kids picked it out for her. So I went shopping with my mom and my aunt Mae. The entire time I was looking for something to buy my mom. It never dawned on me to buy her a bunch of small things, I had $50 and I was going to buy something that was exactly $50. I finally found it. It was a Santa Clause music box. With tax and everything it would be right at $50. Now my mother and my aunt were wondering where this $50 came from. My mom thought I had taken it out of a cookie jar that we used to keep money in. It wasn't until Christmas morning that when she opened it up that me and my dad told her that he had given me the money to buy her a Christmas present. I don't know but I think that was maybe the start of her music box collection.

More Christmas Memories

I remember one Christmas we had just got our first VCR, again I don't know that we got it for Christmas but it was right around that time. Video A had just opened up in Marengo and you could go rent movies. I remember watching movies all Christmas break just sitting around in our pajamas. The only movie I can remember watching was Raiders of the Lost Ark. I still love the scene where the big boulder comes rolling down towards him as he is running for his life.

One of the first Christmas Memories I have is my dad bringing home a big box of stuff that Nestles had given to their employees for Christmas. It had different kinds of instant coffee and most important Nestle Crunch candy bars.

I do remember asking my mom if Santa Clause was real and she told me to go ask my dad. I did but I don't recall what he said, however I do remember already knowing the truth. I was pretty young when I figured it out. My sister would still believe if we hadn't ever told her. :) I think she figured she would get more from Santa than from mom and dad. She even seen the Easter Bunny once with her own eyes.

Fathers

"Grandchildren are the crown of old men, and the glory of sons is their fathers" Proverbs 17:6

I have just started reading the book "Raising A Modern-Day Knight" by Robert Lewis. It really focuses on the roles fathers play in their sons lives. At the same time I am watching society in general portray men as just stupid morons who stumble around not knowing what we are doing. Every commercial anymore the man is just an idiot and the mom/wife is trying to fix his mistakes while making fun of him with the kids watching. I am afraid the days of men being respected as fathers and head of the households are fading quickly. You might think I am joking but go to this site baby. It is a story about the British Courts ruling that a mother doesn't have to tell the father of her baby she is pregnant. She would like to give up the baby for adoption but doesn't want the father or grandparents to have the option of keeping the baby. What has the world come to that the FATHER has no say what so ever. It already drives me nuts that a woman can have an abortion with out the Fathers consent. I know there are men out there that don't care and would rather not be in the child's life or even worse encourage the woman to have the abortion. I believe the majority of these men probably have not had a good father figure in their lives. It is high time that Men need to stand up and take the rightful position as father/husband and start leading their families. It is also time that families respect their husband/fathers and expect them to stand up and lead the family.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

That's right I said it and according to an after Thanksgiving survey released by the Rasmussen Reports 67 percent of Americans prefer Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays. They said that the results were the same between men and women but it did differ between Republicans and democrats. 88 percent of Republicans prefer Merry Christmas while only 57 percent of democrats prefer the greeting. I don't understand why retailers go out of their way to please the 33 percent. I would think you would like to keep the majority of your customers happy. I think it probably has to do with the fact that the 67 percent don't make as big of a fuss over Happy Holidays as the 33 percent does over Merry Christmas. Now that I think about it, it actually makes sense to me because most of the democrats I know are big donkey whiners. Ha Ha I personally prefer Merry Christmas even if I am a perpetuator of the big "Santa Lie". :)

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope that everyone had a good Thanksgiving. We just finished our third Thanksgiving meal. At least they were all on different days. I heard that the average Thanksgiving meal was 3000 calories multiply that by 3 you have one stuffed turkey. Believe it or not I actually tried to buy another container of Chocolate Mousse today, thank goodness they were out. CAN YOU SAY PIG!!! As we were driving I was thinking of my past Christmas memories. I thought I would share some over the next few weeks.

Today Chandra drug me down to the thrift shop and we went by the store that my mom and dad bought our first computer. I don't remember if it was Christmas but I know it was cold. I still remember the smell of the store. It smelled like computer paper and vinyl disk with a little electrical smell added in. We were buying the Apple IIe computer which was just amazing at the time. It had no memory but it had two floppy disk drives. The printer paper had holes you lined up so that it would feed through the printer right. It had a word processor on one of the disk. There was no such thing as spell chek. :) They bought a book on how to program in basic and I read that thing from front to back and could do anything in that book. Which wasn't a lot but it taught me the basics of programming. It cost about 3 times what the computer I am now using cost. I don't remember it ever crashing like these new more up to date computers do.

Parenting

Christian Parents

The above link takes you to an article about what Christian parents are buying their kids for Christmas. It ends with saying parents are afraid of standing up to their kids and losing their approval. I haven't ever been one to worry about my approval rating. I am sure it is going to go down over the next few years anyways. I have told my kids that what ever you put in your head is there forever. Unless it is the answers to your Chemistry final, but to be fair those answers were never really in my head to begin with.

People Drive Me Nuts

Click on this link below to read about the company who forgot to put eggs as an ingredient on their label of egg nog.

You would think people would have enough common sense to figure that out. I am so tired of having to hold everyone's hand all the time. Grow up and figure this stuff out on your own. If you are too stupid to know that eggs are in egg nog then I think a little natural selection isn't all that bad. Another thing I don't believe we should have to print it in Spanish either. Not that I have an opinion about it. :)

Egg Nog

Dirtiest Jobs

According to MSN's new survey of dirtiest jobs Farrier ranks number 3. They also tell what they think the salary is for a farrier, I will tell you they are way off on that statistic. They also write the salary is with benefits and bonuses. There are no benefits and very seldom does anyone give you a bonus(tip), because they think they are paying too much to begin with. Now you might ask how do I stay so pretty and neat while doing one of the dirtiest jobs, that is a mystery for the ages. :)

Oinkle Jonny

My nephew Andy started calling me Oinkle Jonny a few years ago and it stuck like mud to a pig. Courtney would call me uncle Jonny and did it so much that Lexi actually called me uncle Jonny for a while. I finally got her to call me daddy Jonny and then back to just daddy, although I didn't mind daddy Jonny. Today Little Winnie called me uncle Jonny. I am just hoping that she doesn't start calling me oinkle Jonny.

Miss Winnie has been sick with that hands, foot and mouth virus. She is now starting to feel better. Chandra took her to the Doctor today and she said that it looked like she was starting to get over it. The doctor also told Chandra that in a week or two not to be surprised if she lost some of her finger nails and/or toe nails. This is funny because a few years ago one of the other kids brought this home and I got it and about a week after having it I lost some of my finger nails and toe nails. They all grew back and looked perfectly normal but me and Chandra just thought that I was a freak of nature. I told her there is something just not right about losing your nails. The Doctor said they have found this is pretty common anymore after having the virus.

Pirate Winnie

Here is Winnie down at WDW dressed up in a pirate hat. She is really growing up fast. Just these last few weeks she has been saying a lot of new words. Today she said Chandra. I asked her where is Chandra and she pointed to her mom and said mommy. I asked her where is Jonathan and she pointed to me. Then I asked here where Winnie was and she pointed to herself. She has been saying please and thank you for a while. She will say baby, potty, dog, NO, mine, sissy, here you go, ice, cold, Donald Duck, Mickey, Pluto, Goofy, and tonight she said spaghetti. Her favorite words are candy and Mommeeeeeeee. Nothing is safe anymore. If she can't reach it she will just move a chair to get to it. She can open any door we have. Don't you dare try to stop her because then you will see the red head come out of her. I am sure there are a bunch of words I left out but that is all I can think of now. It is just like over night she began to talk where we could understand her. She has always had something to say ever since she was born we just couldn't understand her.

Thanksgiving Dinner

We had our first Thanksgiving Dinner this evening. :) I always enjoy the traditional Thanksgiving meal. The more of them I get the better. We went to Chandra's parents for dinner. Everything tasted great!!!! Miss Winnie enjoyed the deserts the best. She was running around raiding the candy dishes. All of us played a couple of games of uno and rummikub, which is always fun. Lexi and Jag are starting to get old enough to enjoy and participate in the games. There are always a few references to the Christmas Vacation movie while eating. I am looking forward to more Thanksgiving meals!!!

Relatives

I am already related to one of these space cadets and soon the other will be a relative. :0

SUPER....

Back To Work

Well I am back to work. It will be two weeks tomorrow that I had surgery. I trimmed a few horses last Tuesday and that was a little to soon to be working. I was alright until I tried to rasp the feet and every muscle in my stomach came alive. I was able to do 6 horses on Wednesday, took Thursday off and did a full days worth of work on Friday. I have been shoeing every day this week and feel pretty good. My stomach is a little tender but it is tolerable. I went to the surgeon on Monday afternoon for him to take a look and make sure everything was healing like it should. He said I looked great. He said I should be able to go back to work in a few weeks. Actually he said to use my own judgement and as long as it wasn't hurting me I should be good to go. Now I am just trying to catch up on some of the horses I missed the last few weeks. It makes me laugh because everyone says you need to take it easy after you get my horses done.

Winter

It is beginning to feel a little like winter time. I am ready for some cold weather. I have broke out the union suits and have been wearing them the last few days. Don't worry I always make sure the back flap is closed, well most of the time. When I bend over and feel a draft up the rear it reminds me to close up the flap.:) The kids were discussing how they were going to build their snowman today on the way to school. I told them I didn't think we would be getting enough snow today to build a snowman. They were just happy to see some flurries. I received my first Christmas gift from one of my customers this evening. It is the hoof pick pictured below. These are typically used to clean out the horses feet, but I don't think I'll be using this one for that purpose. I just love this time of year. I am not burning up while shoeing, there are no flies and people give me gifts. How much better can you get.

Parent Teacher Conference

Tonight was our Parent Teacher Conferences. I was a little tentative to hear what Jaguar's teacher was going to say. I was pleasantly surprised with what I heard. Jaguar is doing great!! He is really good academically and socially. We asked now does he get in trouble for talking a lot and she said yes. She said he is a very loud talker but he has been toning it down since the beginning of the school year. She showed us a paper of his hand writing and it was very neat. The other night at dinner he was sounding out words and we would ask him how to spell another word and he would spell it for us.:0 It just sneaked up on me that he was starting to read. I was so anxious for Lexi to read at that age.

Then we went to Lexi's conference. I never seem to worry about what they will say about sweet little Lexi. She is doing great. She is doing well academically and socially also. She wanted to show me her locker. She has a picture on Winnie, baby Hudson, and Courtney in her locker. Jaguar could fit into the locker so me and Lexi kept shutting him in there.

Just wait until they have to deal with Winnie.

Halloween

Here are the kids in their outfits. Jag was Batman, Lexi was a pirate, and Winnie was a pumpkin. Winnie didn't know what to expect at first but she soon realized that there was candy behind every door she went up to.

Jackpot!!!
The kids really got a lot of candy. You can see that I already have my hand into the pile eating some of their candy.

New Experience

We always get a kick out of going to Ryans on a Friday or Saturday evening to watch the people. It is like a farmer throwing slop to the pigs. Heaven forbid they bring out new fried chicken because I am right up there with them fighting and snorting my way to the front. :0 )

Today I got to see another great thing. It was a big bin of Halloween candy marked down 50% at Walmart. People were diving into this bin up to their waist just to get the candy they wanted at the bottom. The more people that surrounded the bin made the other people that was watching think they were missing out. I, of course, wanted to dive in and get my nerd candy and Chandra yelled at me in mid dive and said we didn't need anymore candy.:( I definitely fit right in with the Walmart and Ryan clientele.