Lookit! More free stuff!

That last giveaway was too much fun and so easy to do that I decided to host another before I open my Storenvy shop.  


This time it's a pair of glass, beaded earrings in a really lovely plum color.  This is one of my favorite pairs, actually, so I made two.  One for me and one for the giveaway.  They really catch the light, don't they?  

So, if you think they're as totally bitchin' as I do, enter to win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway





Good luck!

ETA:  Congratulations to Laura!   Thank you for entering.  I hope you enjoy your new earrings.  :)
 

Oh, Internet, how I've missed you!

You may have noticed my absence as of late.  Believe me when I say you were not abandoned by choice!   It was an act of God.  Or Mother Nature.  Or Gaia.  Or Thor.

Last week, we had a teensy little rainstorm.  It didn't bring us lower temperatures or a break in the humidity or even enough of the wet stuff to bring an end to this drought that is wreaking havoc on the crops in the Midwest.  It did bring lightning.  Lots and lots of it.

One of those bolts with many volts struck the pine tree in our backyard.   My oldest daughter and my husband saw it happen.  They were standing out on the back porch, watching the light-show, when suddenly the world became very bright and deafeningly LOUD.   Both were shaken, but not hurt by the strike, thank God.

With the lightning striking so close to the house, we suffered a bit of damage to our electrical stuffs:  the computer went kerblooey and the Direct TV box in my room will no longer turn on, and now the ceiling fan in the kitchen has decided to up and die...in this heat.  Great.  So now I'm forced to do the dishes only during the hours when the sun is up...and burning a hole through the kitchen windows...with no moving air to cool me.  *sigh*  What to do...

You don't want to read my complaints, do you?  You want pictures.  Of course you do.

I don't know if I have to explain too much about these photos, but you can see that the lightning bolt more than peeled the bark from the tree.  The bark pretty much exploded from the inside out, actually.  There is a split down the length of the trunk. How deep it goes, I don't know, and I hope it hasn't compromised the tree too much.  We like that tree.  It's been here way longer than we have.

Enough digressing.  Pictures.

Ground to point of entry.

This is at least twenty feet up the trunk
and where we thought
the lightning first struck the tree.

But when you step back a ways...

See where the shadow ends way up there?

THAT's where it hit.

 Side note before I let you go...

 

Did you know that when lightning strikes a coniferous tree, it can totally barbeque certain pine cones but leave others untouched?  Something about the sap and the path the lightning takes...I dunno.  Apparently sap is a great conductor of electricity.  Yikes.


But hey!  It's great to be back!   Now tell me everything I missed! 

My Parenting is so full of WIN.

My children recently had their semi-annual plaque scraping and professional tooth polishing appointment.  Even scheduled early in the day, we spend most of our morning there.  Three kids, three cleanings, one oral hygienist...Yeah.  It takes a long-ass time.  

 We came prepared, having brought a backpack filled with crayons, coloring books and reading materials, but it was the Mancala board that got the most use:

Mancala Tournament: Hour Two

By the time the last child was released with healthy teeth and gums, we were nearly starving.  I promised to feed the heathen spawn, so we headed to McDonald's.  (Where else can I poison my family for under twenty dollars?) On the way there, the girls decided that British accents were just what our boring old car ride needed.  The next twenty minutes on the interstate were very entertaining.  Did you know that anything and everything is not just funny in a horribly exaggerated accent, but freaking hilarious?

The fun didn't stop when we reached the drive-thru at McDonald's.  

While I wasn't savvy enough to order the food in my semi-convincing accent, I did greet the cashier who took my money with an enthusiastic "Ello Guvn'a!" making Madison nearly shoot a snot rocket at the windshield trying to stifle her laughter, while the two in the back brayed like donkeys.

Having still not had enough fun, we kept it up all the way home, the hilarity of the situation causing the two smallest campers to increase their volume with each word they spoke.  Finally, I had to ask them to bring it down a notch, saying, "You know what, guys? I don't think they yell everything in Great Britain. I can't recall the last time I heard someone announce: "IT'S TIME FOR TEA!"

Just then, the high pitched, and overly affected voice of Samantha piped up from the back of the van and yelled, "MERRY CHRISTMAS, BITCHES!!!"

I'm still trying to decide whether that's a parenting fail or a parenting win.

 

Which do you suppose it is?

 

 

(If you are guilty of grinning at this, please share it with your friends.  If you thought it was a ridiculous waste of your time, share it with your enemies.)

 

 

Show me your box! Your mailbox!

Sugar Daddy and I are getting new storm doors put on the house soon and our new front door will no longer have a mail slot in it.  Mail carriers like to have a hole to stuff the bills and junk mail into, so we're on the lookout for a super-cool mail box for the side of the house.

While I'd like to see something like this...

I'm not above taking suggestions, if you've got them.

So tell me...

What can you picture here?