A girl and her hat and suitcase

The girl would be my daughter, Angeline. The hat would be our thrift store find and the suitcase was picked up at a garage sale just a block or so from our house. When I bought the suitcase the fellow I was buying it from said, "Did you see that I have some other nicer suitcases over there in that corner??" I replied, 'Yes, I did see those, but I want this ONE'. I think that my daughter, the hat and the suitcase and I will have more fun together in the future!!!

Oh Christ, do not give me tasks equal to my powers,

 But give me powers equal to my tasks,

For I want to be stretched by the things too great for me.

I want to grow through the greatness of my tasks,

But I shall need your help for the growing.

E. Stanley Jones

This prayer really, really touched me this morning because I am so. so. just so needy. If I was only given tasks equal to my powers...I am not sure that I would even be asked to get out of bed in the morning.  When I heard the 'thump, thump, rattle, bang-bang' of my kids getting out of their beds this morning I felt tired, unable, weak and like, really... how am I going to do this again today, Jesus? My Bible was on my lap (barely open since I was just opening it as the children got up) and my eyes fell on this prayer that I have written on the inside cover. I knew that I needed power today, not of my own, but the divine power of Jesus. I do deeply desire to grow. But growing is often much more painful and harder than what we imagine it will be. I am so thankful for my heavenly Father who walks with me everyday and helps me in this growing process. I find so much rest in the fact that Jesus knows and sees my every need much more clearly than what I do and that He is always acting on my behalf. Today, I think He is carrying me. I wasn't even smart enough to realize that I needed to be carried. But He is carrying me.

thoughtless mistakes

You know the little line that goes something like, "things always get worse before they get better"....

That's what I am hoping will be true with my carpet. Someone (thanks, Jenn) gave me the clever idea of spreading coffee on the stinky area to absorb the awful rotten egg odor. Being a coffee lover, I jumped at the idea. Amazingly, my hallway had a wonderful aroma all day long. Not only was the rotten egg and vinegar smell gone, now wonderful, delicious scents of coffee wafted throug out the house. Last evening I decided to go ahead and sweep it up to see if the odor had indeed been absorbed or if it was still there only being covered by the smell of coffee. However, the coffee grounds did not sweep up very well. I was able to sweep up the top layer, but probably at least half of them had absorbed into the carpet themselves. It turns out, that it would have been a good idea for me to make sure that my carpet was DRY rather than still wet from the 5+ scrubbings that it received in the last several days BEFORE throwing coffee all over it. I guess the wet carpet made a nice absorbent sponge. So now. NOW. I have a nice, dark, ugly, obnoxious coffee stain in the corner. Just to prove that I am not making this sound worse than it really is.....

Now I do not really know what to do. I am tired of working with this particular corner of my house. I was able to see a lot more humor in the eggs than in this coffee stain. Any ideas for what would work to get a serious coffee stain out of carpet?? I am willing to listen and learn.  I am scared that more scrubbing is only going to extend the stain further out into the middle of the hallway. I wish that I could just dip that corner of carpet in a large bucket of soap/water until it was all washed out.  I am thinking of just dying the entire carpet with more coffee.

More than anything, I hate making mistakes. I dislike the loser like feeling that comes over me when I do something so stupid and so thoughtless.  And I hate the fact that I do not take the time to think/plan ahead. I run head long into this kind of stuff all the time without taking a few moments to perhaps *think* that maybe my carpet is still wet and that maybe it would be a good idea to save the coffee treatment for a dryer kind of day.

Growing in grace and carpet cleaning,

Shaunda

Recent work

I decided I like this kind of work. It's fun. Maybe work doesn't have to be such a dreaded word after all. I have not been keeping current at all with recent photos. Here's just a few of some of my photo shoots in the last half year.

My nephew, Michael.

Michael and Linda(his mom) were very gracious and patiently worked with me. I really messed up his pictures first time around due to lighting issues and this little trooper just flowed with the punches and we did a second shooting. The second ones turned out better than the first, but they still aren't the best pictures I have ever taken. It's a bummer because he really is such a cutie that he and his mom both deserve top notch pictures of this stage of his life. Maybe by the time he's 20 I'll have this lighting thing perfected and I can try to pay him back by taking great senior photos for him.

Karlin

If I keep taking pictures of all these adorably precious babies I am scared I am going to start getting baby fever.  I love the show of all the cute little expressions babies put on for me. 

with his mom and my friend, Larisa

This is an all time favorite of mine. I love it. I think I may have posted it before.

Pure cuteness!!

Marv & Cindy

These guys were so easy and fun to work with. They seemed to enjoy looking at each other more than at me, which was perfectly fine with me and made for some great romantic shots.

The Kauffmans.

I had fun working with Sheldon and Joann and co. because well...first of all they're just great folks. Secondly, they are in the same stage of life as our family so, presto, everyone is at ease. (I hope that they were, since I totally was!) The kids did amazing. Joann said that they often like to pretend that they are either the photographer or being photographed....so they seemed right in their element too.

Ellen.(you may call her 'Helen' if you do not value your own life)

It was a pleasure doing Ellen's pictures since she was so pleased with the results.  She says that these are the first pictures of herself that she actually likes. I am pleased because she is pleased. Oh, yes...Ellen is one of my friends, I should have mentioned that. We both enjoy the same kind of humor so we often spend a fair amount of time laughing at each other. We have serious times though too. An interesting fact about us....I am twice as old as Ellen. Yup. That's right. Makes me feel rather aged. This is the only year of our lives that it will be this way and this fact will change in just several days when Ellen rolls into her 15th year of life.

Simon, my neighbor boy.

This is just a snap shot of him, but I like it. He's cute and sweet too!

More to come in the future....if I ever find the time to post them!

burning calories...

I am pretty much all for any method of burning calories around this house for several reasons. I especially like the "easy, burn fast" activities. I like to burn calories myself so that I can eat and not gain weight. Also, it feels plain down good to burn calories(Ok, really...I don't like it that much in the moment, but it feels so wonderful afterwards. The cool down really is worth the work out for me!). I like when I see my kids burning calories because it means that perhaps their energy levels are about to come to a manageable plateau. So this morning when they pulled out the office swivel chair and starting spinning it at outrageous speeds I was actually sort of impressed. I was thinking to myself...what a good winter time activity to run off extra energy. I tried doing some footage with my camcorder but they were spinning and running so fast that I was only getting blurred motion. One person would ride while 1 or 2 others did the spinning. I was amazed at the speed and duration of each ride. They finally coerced me into taking a ride. I was on the chair for approximately 25 seconds when the room started to spin and I felt like I might topple off the chair. I tried to squeak out a "stop please" before I lost total consciousness. Of course it took them at least another 25 seconds to bring the spinning chair and mom to a complete stop. I threw myself on the couch because I knew that there was no way I could take any kind of solid step in that direction. Lucky for me, the couch was within in body throwing distance of the chair. My brain still felt like it was spinning inside of my skull and my stomach felt about ready to eject anything that had entered it within the last 24 hours. When I said, "I think I am going to puke", I must've sounded pretty desperately serious because PRONTO all 3 of them were standing by the couch pushing containers under my mouth. I really did think I was going to puke for a few minutes. Thankfully, as my brain and body regained some balance I began to feel better. Meanwhile Josh was standing by my side saying, "puck, puck, puck". The only side affects that I am experiencing at the moment is a headache and slightly upset stomach. Meanwhile. They are still going for crazy chair rides. Maybe I will not be so quick to jump for the next 'burn calories without sweating at all" gimmick.