Babies everywhere!

So, remember back a few months when it seemed like all my friends were either having babies or annoucing their pregnancies? Well now many of those pregnancies are over, with beautiful babes now in arm....

Ruth & Sean from church (and from Caronport - she was Ruth Macintyre for those who may have known her) had a baby boy, Clive Michael a couple weeks ago.

Justin & Emily (also from church) also had a boy, on sunday - Liam Justin.

And Nevada & Chester (see Taiwan Music Teacher link on sidebar) had a baby girl over in Taiwan - Gemma Mei.

Beautiful babies, beautiful parents, and i LOVE the names these little ones have. Congrats to all the new parents!

dream

I had a strange dream the other night...

a bunch of us (anthony's fam, some close friends) were at Kadesh. In my dream, it was the middle of November, but the water was still open and it was about 15 degrees out, not terribly warm, but still good for swimming and playing in the lake.

There were 2 boats going, we were doing various water sports and just having a great time, when all of a sudden, Anthony came out of the water from riding behind one of the boats and he was freaking out 'cuz his leg had gotten cut off on the prop of the boat.

It was a clean cut, a slightly diagonal slice about 8" above his knee...there was no blood, it was just white and fleshy, kinda like a piece of shortening looks. Very clean.

I'm not sure how he got out of the water or was standing there on one leg with the remnant of his other just dangling there... i remember saying "well, where is it? Do you know where it is?" and thinking "at least it's november, it will be slightly iced and perfect for reattaching".

My mom was then like "oh wait, i think i saw the rest of his leg when i was just out swimming, let me see if i can find it again..." so she goes out into the water and in a couple minutes comes back with the rest of his leg.

So then he props it under where it got cut off, and goes about his business...within a couple hours the skin has reattached itself and it looks like circulation is returning to the leg...so he decides not to bother going into PA for medical attention.


Yeah, no clue where all that came from. but that's what my head spewed out while i was in dreamland.

brrr

I was out and about this afternoon putting up posters to try to recruit participants for the research study i'm running for Peter, and boy, did it ever get cold out there!

From about 2 pm until 4:30 pm, i could literally feel the temperature drop, i think it went down about 10 degrees in a couple hours. And the wind! Oh my!

I guess winter is officially upon us.

Phew

Party's over, and it was a great success. Mom had a great time, as did all the guests.

The house is mostly cleaned up, just a few more loads of dishes to run through the dishwasher.

Something i learned: make sure to serve decaf coffee at a 60+ party....most people were coffee drinkers, but few drank it due to the caffeine. Oops. Things i don't think about in my (relative) youth.

Also, the punch tasted funny to me, and i couldn't figure out why, as it's one of my fave recipes, and i had whipped a bunch up this fall and froze it for occasions such as this. Then, this morning i realized that i had served my frozen, unsweetened crabapple juice that was in the freezer awaiting time for me to turn it into jelly and syrup, instead of the yummy frozen rhubarb slush punch. Double oops!

generation gap?

So, we're having a 60th birthday party for my mom tomorrow, just a small thing with about 25 of her friends/family/colleagues.

My sisters decided it would be a great idea to gather "tributes" to our mom from these people and others, just little notes saying what they appreciate about her, what she has meant in their lives, etc. To me, this sounded like a great idea, and something not too terribly difficult for people to do, yet be able to contribute to something very nice and meaningful/special for mom's birthday.

What i didn't realize is how much of a struggle it is for many people to express those types of thoughts for a person. So many people have said "well, i'll try, but i really don't know what to write...." (including people very close to her who know her very well!). I know it's not because these people don't have an appreciation for my mom...she is a very giving person and has blessed so many people with her talents of baking, sewing, and just helping in general.

So then i got thinking, maybe this is a generational-type thing....i know many people my age and my sisters' ages that have no problem doing something like this, and i know friends of mine that could probably write a pretty nice tribute to my mom. But the older folks (my parents' age) seem to find this a very daunting task.....

Hmmmm.... what do you think?

craft time

does anyone have any ideas on where i could get a few sheets of that clingy film-type stuff that can be used to stick designs on windows?

Like when people put those pre-made "just married" or halloween designs or snowflakes on their windows, but just blank stuff, not pre-made designs?

And/or the stuff used to make temporary stick-on designs for auto customizing.....

If you have any ideas, please leave a comment. Thanks.

what an odd halloween

(i posted this on tues afternoon, but it got lost somehow....so here you are, a bit late).

Normally halloween is quite a big to-do at the U, especially in the Psych department....quite a few professors dress up every year, and normally there's a good number of students wandering the halls in various costumes. And of course, someone is inevitably handing out candy.

This year, i have only seen 2 costumes - one on a prof, and one on a participant of mine, and i have so far made it through the whole day without any tempting candy (which is not a bad thing!) it's just so weird, so much quieter than normal - pretty much feels like every other day. I'm not a huge fan of halloween anyways, but this year has just been different than previous ones.