Hawk!

I took this picture when we were driving, and obviously edited the bejeebers out 

of it but I am really happy with how it turned out.

 Whatcha think? 

A Question About Short Hair & My New Favorite Book

^---Right now this is my favorite book.

Yes, it is a children's book and I am an adult but quite frankly, I don't care! A good book is a good book right?  Right, right! For the most part it lives on our fridge next to our new, neat-o globe. *4$ Thrift Store find! Woop! Woop!* All the short stories within it are written really differently than the Disney stories I grew up with, which is a really refreshing change! Some of them are just totally ridiculous but others are just so wildly original, I love it! Jared and I have been reading random stories before bed and something I have learned is to have him read every other page or he falls asleep almost instantly...

 -_- ...z z Zz... 

...which is rather discouraging when it took almost a week to read him 2 pages. I am not even joking.

He looks so sweet though, how could I be mad? However I think it might be a good idea to slow down on reading these crazy stories right before bed since it has been provoking some intensely weird dreams. I keep dreaming of bears. Bears. BEARS. BEARS!

And lastly as for my hair question...
So right now, my hair looks about like this.
Well, not really. My hair is really curly so this is after about 20 minutes of straitening. Everyday Single Day.
I don't know about you, but that is a lot more time than I want to spend on my hair every morning.
Any ideas on how to gracefully grow out hair with out looking like Napoleon Dinomite or Shari Lewis?

Hope you and an amazing day!

Go Play Outside!

 

--------------I love going on walks.--------------

She is doing so much better. 

We are all just taking it easy this week.

Spring Excitement + A trip to Wendys

I am really excited for Spring this year. I have started getting our garden ready and I love when all the flowers come into the shops! I am a sucker for bright colors I suppose.

After we went to the store we were feeling hungry and did not want to spend a ton and I really did not want to go to McDonalds or some place like that. Super Bowl Sunday just killed me. It was like I instantly gained weight from all the goodies, cheesey dips and snacks around me. I did not really need anymore of that crap food but we were feeling like burgers soooooo somehow we ended pulling a u-turn and eating at Wendys. 

First off, I noticed these little planter boxes by the drive thru. Pretty cool eh?

Next I was very impressed. We ordered from the value menu and my burger had everything a good burger should have. Cheese. Onion. Tomato.Lettuce. Pickles. +  no "What is this?" pieces in the meat. Awesome.

And what was even better was their fries. They actually tasted like potato! Imagine that!

So I haven't the slightest idea why Wendy's is not the leading fast food company. I left there not feeling like I need to sleep and shower or anything like that! I felt great! 5 Stars for Wendy's man! Hip Hip Hooray!

February Flops

Parmesan and Green onion Tofu.

How could this not be good?

It is a combo of 3 really great things, but this is one of the most horrible things I have ever tasted.

Worst of all, I did not want it to go to waste...

so I ate every painful bite.

This was a February

FLOP

Maps. (The most heart felt post I've ever written)

MAPS.
Maps.
maps.

If you are the kind of person who believes animals

 are worth less than people or that they do not have souls,

 this posts simply is not for you since

 I know this in my heart to be true. 

She is always there circling my legs, telling me about her day.
meow. meow. meow. meow. meow. 

Story of my life. 
Sometimes I even wish she would just leave me alone.

 Yesterday morning MerDock jumped on the roof and stomped around above our bed until he woke us up to let the cats inside, for their breakfast as usual. I opened the door and Mer bolted in. Maps was not waiting on the porch.  Something was wrong. My guts churned, maybe she was catching moles since that was her new "thing". No. Something is wrong. She would never leave. She is always at the door when Mer wakes us up. No, I am just worrying, I thought. I was sure of it. Then that "feeling" wouldn't leave.

 I made some food for Jared and I but a couple bites into it I just could not bare it. Something was wrong. She had not come to the door all morning and meow. meow. meowed as usual. I put down my sandwich and put a coat on. 

I looked under the cars and on the sides of the road. We checked on our roof and under the house.  Jared searched the trees and neighbors yards and we looked back and forth, up and down the street, going in and out of the house for hours.

 I took a drive hoping. Hoping she was okay and if not, hoping I would at least find her. 

She was nowhere to be seen. We went on our last walk down the road and back to the house, arms linked and tears streaming down our faces. There was such a horrible silence. 

 

I just wanted to find her. I could not bring myself to ask Jared what he thought. After all, we were both thinking the same thing and I knew it. She was gone and we would never see her again. After all, cats don't come home when they are hurt. They just don't come back. 

Several hours and a hundred tears later Jared decided it would be best to keep his mind busy. He started working on inoculating jars of grain to grow some more pink oyster mushrooms. I sat in my room starting to let it sink in. She had gone back to God and the little turd did not let me say goodbye! I just remember Jared saying right before we went to bed, "Look at those huge golden eyes." I looked over, but I had seen 'em a thousand times before. I smiled even though I felt the house growing emptier. I was betting she was happy. And how lucky was she? It was like she leveled up and was here for wayyyy less time than me! Not fair! haha :*)

...here is where the whole story turns around...

Jared was growing tired, I mean man! we were wiped out.

So he grabbed the keys to go get us some energy drinks.

MAPS! She was barely hanging onto the lattice connected to the house. 

I grabbed her and squeezed her SO HARD! She screamed and I put her down. I thought she just did not want to be held. She collapsed in the door way. Her body did not look right AT ALL. 

Instead of running to her food bowl she layed with her stomach buldging in all the wrong places, back indented and back legs looking twisted. I tried to move her to a pillow and she screamed.

She was really hurting.  Internal damage? Broken Spine? Legs? What's wrong? Oh I wished she could talk.

I have never been one to pray much unless I was giving thanks for the beauty of the earth and life around me, or if I really wanted someone to feel God's presence. I feel like the universe and God's plan are all set and that is that, so I have never treated God like Santa and asked for anything for as long as I could remember. Even as a child I felt that was very wrong. 

But oh how I prayed.

I prayed all night over her little tummy. Sometimes she would even stop breathing. 

I just did not want her to hurt anymore but all I could give her was time. 

Time to do whatever she needed to do. 

Since we could not move her we slept in the living room. I slept on the floor right next to her. My back and hips now hurt like mad but it was worth it to not leave her alone. I woke up about every 30 minutes. I knew she was not in any fit shape to get fluids or anything like that. She could hardly keep her eyes open and her little heart was beating so fast. I did not even try to get her to drink or eat. But I was NOT going to leave her alone. I texted one of my best friends and she said she just knew God was taking care of her. This gave me some comfort but I still was so saddened. However, at least she came back. What a miracle?! And how on earth did she end up on the roof when she could not even walk or move?

As I laid with her last night waking up all the time to make sure she was still breathing, at one point MerDock flew by out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to get a drink from their bowls. All of the sudden with all her might she stood up on her wobbley legs and her mangled looking belly hung below. She slowly pulled herself to the food and water and drank and ate! Then, a few minutes later falling asleep next to me again. A bit later I awoke to her slowly pushing herself to go to the back door. This meant she had to go potty. I was SO HAPPY for this moment! haha.

So far today Maps has been resting, not moving much but still much more alert. Her tummy looks back to normal as well. She is still in pain but I think she is healing. Just a bit ago, I called her name her ears perked up and she said "Meow!" 


Just what I wanted to hear. ♥

February Flops

Have you ever seen these beautiful hanging balloon decorations?

http://artperspective.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/wedding-spheres/

They look easy enough to make...

But I tried to make paper mache out of whole wheat flour, which I quickly learned does not work.

And what makes it worse is I was trying to be extra fancy and make hearts out of them using 2 balloons + red and pink yarn. It made sense at the time. But I still don't know why I did not wrap the yarn around instead of just piling the yarn on top. The "whole wheat glue" looked a lot more like vomit then everyone else's. I guess I should have stopped then. Oh well, I know how to fix it for next time. I think I will put them in my classroom in pastel colors for Easter/Spring, until then, this was a 

FLOP

Dates # 6 and # 13

Date # 6  Go to a local sporting event. 

We had the honor of going to one of my little sister in-law's basket ball game last night.

( Sorry, no photos for that one!) and...

Date # 13 Romp around the great outdoors and have a photo shoot.