Update: On Miracle Baby Samuel Born With Thanatophoric Dysplasia, Turns 5 years old!

Update Samuel Turned 5 on Aug 2, 2010 and is still doing awesome things. He now is in school, well the teacher comes to him, but still really cool. He uses switches to operate his computer and toys.

Other More Recent Pictures from about 2009 to present (11/2010) not in any order.

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(new update: of 11/10/2009 A few weeks ago Spirit FM 90.5 aired their story. Here is the audio Story/ Interview that aired)

8/2/2009 Hey it has been a year now since I wrote this. Samuel turns 4 tomorrow Click here to see my new post and new pictures

Click Here to Read A News Article on Samuel and Watch A video done by Catholic News Agency

Checkout Samuel's Newest Update 1/16/09 His Trip to Disney & Sea World

8/1/2008 Update on Baby Samuel

He was born a Thanatophoric Dwarf. It is Also called Thanatophoric Dysplasia. It is a condition considered incompatible with life. Only 3 have ever been known to survive into early childhood. Well Samuel is going to make number 4. Samuel Turns 3 years old on Saturday and miracle of miracles he is breathing on his own off the vetillator for short periods of time. Another thing, according to doctors he was never suppose to be able to do. Check out his website where his mom keeps a journal. Feel Free to Sign his guest book and wish him a very happy 3rd Birthday. I know he and his family will appreciate it greatly and please keep them in your prayers.

Yeah to Samuel and his Family.

This is Samuel.

Samuel's Website

Welcome to Samuel's WORLD PREMIER YOUTUBE Video!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_Q92MC8plU

Hope you enjoy it and laugh along!!

Tags: long-term thanatophoric survival, living thanatophoric dwarf, thanatophoric dwarf turns 3, laughing and happy child with thanatophoric dysplasia

Day at The State Fair & Cracker Country

(Click on the above picture to learn what a "Cracker" is.

Just a beautiful Day in The South spent at the State fair and Cracker Country.
I am an original "Cracker". My Dad's side of the family came to Florida long before it was a state and is one of the original Florida Pioneer Families. (I know: I have the genealogy and a certificate that says so. ) My Dad's side of the Family originally settled in Clay County. :-)

My New Washer and Dryer

My new washer and dryer. They are both awesome, but the dryer is phenominal. I have never had a dryer that dried this fast. My bed spread was dry in 34 minutes! In my old dryer it would have taken an 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Lighter loads use to take at least an hour. I guess in 20 years I never had a good dryer and assumed that was just the norm. This dryer dries faster and things are dry in less time than it takes to wash a load- I use to always have to wait on the dryer. Oh and another cool thing instead of a beep at the end to let you know the wash or dryer is done it plays a little tune. Ok I am in washer and dryer heaven :-)

This is my utility room. I purposely did not take a picture of the yucky concrete floor. Hubs is in the process of tiling it- Ok so far he has only borrowed a special saw to cut the tile from a friend and done some measuring but I am hopeful by the end of the month to finally have a floor in the utility room plus some new shelves and a folding table. If it gets finished I will post pictures of the newly remodeled utility room.

My Orange Tree in December

Hi my friends, I know many of you are gardeners and homesteaders. I am neither, but I do have my one Orange tree in my back yard. I basically neglect it but I think hubby did actually fertilize it once or twice. Other than that the poor tree is on its own. So while many of you are under a blanket of snow I have lovely oranges on my orange tree. Oh and My doggies- Sadie the Min Pin, and Roxie the Maltese. :-)

Pride is the Opposite of Loving Your Neighbor: My thoughts on spritual pride.

Wow Wow Wow my insight for today.

I needed to write it down before it disappeared from my mind.

I was contemplating the sin of pride and had an "a ha" moment. I was reading and this popped out : Pride is the opposite of loving one's neighbor. I never actually thought of pride like that before. Pride = a desire to be more important, more special, or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self. Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor. Hmm this led into my thinking about spiritual pride (which I have been and still am guilty of from time to time). I truly never equated pride with not loving my neighbor. To feel superior and/or spiritually superior to anyone is pride. The feeling I am special or better than you because I am a Christian or a better Christian than you or I am a more faithful Christian, or I am more pleasing to God because I do this or that, is not just pride but it is hating your neighbor. Even the thought, "I'm saved but I am not so sure about you" is very prideful and presumptive. Ok sorry for the sermon, I didn't mean to be preachy or anything just my "a ha" moment.

I also realize it is almost impossible to be completely humble and not the slightest bit prideful. I certainly am very prideful in many areas. Pride and humility are on a sliding scale and as one increases the other decreases. The best I can hope for I think is to keep them in relative balance and hopefully not let pride completely take over.

It is also way too easy for me to spot the spiritual pride of others, probably since I have been there and done that. I also think that pointing out the spiritual pride of others is a way of being prideful too. It is kind of a catch 22, so I need to stop myself when I find I am doing that, which is all too often. I can look back and say wow I have come a long way in this area looking back on 20 + years and I need to remind myself that others may be struggling with their own spiritual pride and they will grow and improve in the area too. I need to be concerned with my spiritual pride and progress alone, take out the plank in my eye.

Is anyone truly scared of global warming?

In light of many global warming demonstrations today- I want to ask - Who is really afraid of global warming?

First off I am a skeptic of man-made global warming. If the earth is truly warming, I don't think it is simply because of carbon dioxide- I think, if it plays a role at all, it is insignificant to natural causes. See article:
Global Warming - Is Carbon Dioxide Getting a Bad Rap?


I will admit that I am ignorant of the science, but I learned in school that carbon dioxide is what the plants breathed and then gave off oxygen. I think carbon dioxide would be a boon to plants along with global warming. In warmer climates is when there was the greatest diversity of species too.

Secondly I really am not scared at all. - If it is true, then things will just shift. One economy or area may collapse but others will reap the benefits. Some area may become desert but other areas new bread baskets. People would move and economies would shift. Not all that scary to me. I am just not getting it. Hmm maybe relocation to Canada or Siberia LOL

I am much more terrified of global thermal nuclear annihilation.

Although I am not truly concerned about global warming, I am concerned about reducing pollution. I want to breathe fresh air. Reduction of pollution is simply a good idea on it's own merits.

Just throwing this out for conversation since this blog, is a bit slow, but I am also interested in others opinions. Is anyone truly scared of global warming? Why or why not? My mind is open to the topic and my opinion is always subject to change.

What Was In Your Lunch Box? Childhood memories of the 60's and 70's (80's and 90's welcome too)

   This just pooped into my head and I will write more when I get back from running errands. While making my grocery list for this week I had a flash back to my childhood. Those wonderful metal lunch boxes, glass thermoses filled with milk, pudding cups and fruit cups that were in little metal cans with pop top lids. Those were the days. I remember boloney sandwiches with American cheese, tuna salad sandwiches and PB&J's. I believe I had a Partridge family lunch box in '71. I would have been in first grade. Metal lunch boxes and glass thermoses had a distinctive smell.

    Please respond in the comments with your childhood lunch box memories. I am feeling nostalgic. Now I know some of you are too young to remember metal lunch boxes. Some of you may only have memories of vinyl lunch bags. That is O.K. , lunch box memories of the '80s and '90s welcome too.

So What was in your Lunch box?

Belinda is Going To be on Dancing With the Stars

I was and still am a big fan of the Go-Go's and Belinda Carlisle. What can I say. I am still stuck in the 80's. I last saw the Go-Go's perform in 2003 and Last saw Belinda perform in 2005.
Premiere of Dancing With the Stars is March 9th

"When I see a Britney Spears video, I just think of a bunch of old men,bordering on pedophiles, sitting in a marketing room and deciding what's sexy."
Belinda Carlisle 2001
In Time Out New York

The Sunny South In January

This is the beginning of strawberry season here.

Hubby and Son working on the Jet Ski

Home Management Binder- My Schedule -- Under Development

Ok another attempt by me at better home management by once again working on a type of home management binder in the quest to find something that works for me.

I am not a schedule person, but I have discovered that as a Stay at Home Mom I do need some kind of schedule or plan else I don't make good and productive use of my time. I am a procrastinator and a time waster.

One of the smartest things I have learned from my engineer husband is to get the machines up and running. When the machines aren't running at my husbands plant it means less productivity. The machines can be running while you get other things done.

My Early Morning Schedule

My early morning schedule consists of getting breakfast or having breakfast options for hubby and the boys. I get up first and help my special needs student get dressed. I also pack everyone's lunches however the boys do help with that. Everyone makes their own beds and hopefully keep their bathrooms tidy. I'll check tidiness of bathrooms later in the day.

After everyone has had breakfast, is dressed and off to work or school. I am going to sit here and have a cup of coffee, (ok I don't do coffee, it is actually a diet coke) and typing this post I am going to do the following (hopefully);

My Morning Schedule:
(I will have to see how long all this takes and adjust accordingly)

1.Unload and load the dishwasher
(I was lazy last night and didn't quite finish cleaning all the dishes. Yes I left a load over night.)

2. Load the washing machine with a towels load and get it going.

3. Start dough in the dough maker for rolls (I am only going to use half the amount of butter because I think my roll recipe is too rich for every day.)

4. Start Dinner in the Crockpot.

Da Da
All the Machines are Going.

5. Exercise - this amounts to my walking tape. It is only a half hour. I have to start somewhere.

6. Shower/ Dress/ makeup (Only included so I can calculate a time frame)

Hmm what next?

7. fold and put up laundry that is sitting in the living room.

8. Work on a needed organization or deep cleaning project
Today will be to tackle the dismantling the Christmas tree and putting away rest of Christmas decorations.I took down all the out door decorations and lights yesterday.

9. I am guessing it will be about lunch time now. Fix healthy nutritious lunch for me.

10. Make a batch of cookies so I have a supply for lunch boxes.

11. Finish rolls up throughout the day, attending to as needed.

12. Straighten family room and spruce up kitchen.


OK That is all I have so far for today.
Now that it is such a nice list I guess I should follow it.

Please share tips and ideas.

The Quintessential 80's movie list

For Amanda (And anyone else who stops by)

The quintessential 80's movie list --Created by Me
I am an 80's junkie- I graduated high school in the 80's, Went to college in the 80's, Met and married my hubby in the 80's, Had 2 of my 3 children in the 80's. (I have indoctrinated my kids with all things 80's so they have seen most of these with the exception of the rated R ones. Well except my daughter who is almost 20 has seen the R ones)

How many have you seen?

What would you add?

Any Way Here's My List
(They are not in chronological order - I'm too lazy to put them in chronological order. They also are not in order by favorites. They are in the order off the top of my head.)

1. Fast Times At Ridgemont High
(Because my English teacher, believe it or not, had us read the book. This movie came out during my senior year in high school. I knew a person like every character in that movie. I also like the movie because it is one of the few movies that I have ever seen where a character from that movie has my name. One of the cheerleaders in that movie has my name.)

2. War Games - The movie that started Matthew Broderick's Career

3. Footloose --- Sarah Jessica Parker before she was famous

4. Splash-- The movie that started Tom Hanks Career

5. The Breakfast Club (Because the whole movie takes place in a school library- talk about a cheap movie to make- but again brings back memories of high school in the 80's)

6. Sixteen Candles

7. Terminator

8. St. Elmos Fire

9. Gremlins

10. Blue Thunder

11. Star Trek 2 The Wrath of Kahn

12. Star Trek 3 The Search For Spock

13. Star Trek 4 The Voyage Home (My personal favorite)

14. The Empire Strikes Back

15. The Return of the Jedi

16. Ghost Busters

17. Raiders of the Lost Ark

18. The Last Star Fighter (Not a block buster but very cute)

19. National Lampoon's Vacation

20. National Lampoon's Christmas vacation

21. Ferris Bueller's Day Off

22. Lady Hawk

23. Working Girl

24. Mister Mom

25. Batman (The one with Michael Keaton)

26. The Money Pit

27. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (Before Keanu Reeves was cool)

28. Back to the Future

29. Back to The Future 2

30. Back to the Future 3

31. Top Gun

32. The Princess Bride

33. Willow

34. ET

Added by Commenters

35. Valley Girl added by The Prodigal Daughter

36. Adventures in Babysitting- Added by Rachel

37. Weird Science-- Added by me

38. My Step Mother is an Alien-- Added by me

39 Crocodile Dundee- Added by me

40. An Officer and a Gentlemen

41. The Karate Kid

42. Arthur

43. Airplane

44. Pretty in Pink- added by the Prodigal Daughter

45. Three Men and a Baby

46. Blade Runner

47. Die Hard

Added by Jessica

48. Girls Just Want to Have Fun (another SJP one with lots of dancing)

49. Top Secret (probably obscure, but Val Kilmer is in it)

50. Real Genius (another Val Kilmer one... VERY eighties music, hairstyles, etc.)

51. Spaceballs

52. Dirty Dancing

Added by Anonymous

53. THE GOONIES! Your forgetting The Goonies!

Added by Tia

54. Some Kind of Wonderful

55. White Nights (I know I mentioned this one on "that other site")

56. Mask (yeah, I'm an Eric Stoltz fan)

57. Aliens!

58. Bull Durham

59. When Harry Met Sally

Added by Cathy

60. Ice Pirates

61. Lethal Wean

62. Lethal Weapon 2

63. Beverly Hill's Cop

64. Trading Places

65. 16 Candles (Wow how could I have left out 16 Candles- Sorry Don that was an oops on my part)

Added by Don

66. Where the boys are 84

67. Vision Quest

68. Roadhouse

Added by Me

69. Hard Bodies
(No I actually have never seen it- But it played at the movie theatre I worked at in '84 and I remember the line being out the door Hmm maybe I did peek in and saw bits of it? I have a bit of deja vu )

My Church

Pumpkin Creations 2008

My Current view and opinon on celebrating Halloween.

     I have said this before but I really think the attitude that Christians shouldn't celebrate Halloween is generational and really a new thing. A lot of Christians my age don't have a big problem with it. I am in my forty's and I remember being a kid in the Late 60's and 70's and everyone celebrated Halloween. It was celebrated in school and even at churches. All churches --Fundamentalist Baptist included. My best friend went to a very large Fundamentalist Baptist church and they celebrated Halloween. It was a benign fun holiday where in the 60's people made homemade treats and shared it with their neighbors. Halloween parties for adults and children were very common. No one had a problem with it. The Fundamentalist Church my husband went to as a teenager, use to have a very well known haunted hay ride. You had to listen to the gospel message before the hay ride but it was still a Halloween haunted hay ride with all the scary trimmings. 

        Then in the late 70's you had the Halloween candy scares. So then, no more homemade treats only wrapped candy. It really wasn't till the mid to late 80's that there began to be a backlash of Halloween in the Church Communities. Even in the 90's when we were attending a Southern  Baptist church and my daughter was going to a Southern Baptist school, they still dressed up, but the kids couldn't be in scary costumes. During that time when we were young adults and young parents, we wrestled with do we celebrate Halloween or not. We had Christian friends that ran the gambit from pretending to not be home, to telling neighbors not to visit their house, to passing out tracks with the candy. Well frankly all that to us is silly now and doesn't make for good neighborly relations. 

     My husband and I both had great fond childhood memories of Halloween. It was very much a family neighborly time. It only has the meaning you give it. Frankly it is fun. Scary is fun, and it is a way to poke fun at things that may scare you. Just because some people use the day for evil does not make it evil for everyone. There are evil people doing evil things every day of the year. 

     We have no issue anymore with Halloween. We are in a very dense family friendly neighborhood. We get close to  100 trick or treaters each year (I know because I make up the treat bags). We get so many because our neighborhood is very family dense but also because there is a house at the end of our street that plays scary movies on their garage door and passes out full size candy bars and sodas. Our house is on the way to his house. We have become the house known for our cool pumpkin carving. It has become a family tradition and my daughter was over last night to carve pumpkins. I'll try to post some pictures on my blog tonight of the pumpkins. She was even teaching her friends at college how to carve pumpkins. Ok I apologize for such a long rant. Just my 2 cents. Sorry for being so long winded.

I am Spoiled and a Wimp! I need Air Conditioning!

 On this blog I have stated that I live in the South East US, but I am sure I have left clues as to what state I am specifically from and the observant person could probably pretty accurately guess.  Well if I haven't already, I am probably going to give it away in this post.

      I could not have lived in this state 60 years ago when the majority of people who lived here still didn't have Air Conditioning. I am a complete wimp. Our AC  broke on Friday. Not the whole thing but the blower motor thingy. So hubby said we couldn't run it until we get the replacement part. That will be tomorrow Tuesday-- Hopefully!! It is over 90 degrees and very humid and it is the middle of October. It isn't the hot summer months of June, July, or August it is October!  All windows open and ceiling fans going and it is still hot, hot, hot. How did people use to do it? No wonder this state didn't really become populated till after the 1940's. No wonder people go back north in the Summer. It is just too hot. Now on my Dad's side of the family we go back several generations in this state. How did the pioneers of this state do it? I can't imagine wearing long skirts and petticoats. OK I now understand the need for huge hoop skirts!! Air circulation. Part of the problem I realize is that houses are no longer built efficiently for cooling. Old houses had tall ceilings, breeze ways and lots of windows. and faced I think north. I am a spoiled wimp. I can't stand it. I'm hot sweaty and at night can't sleep even with a fan blowing directly on me. Funny I'm fine when we go camping and can endure the heat, but in my own home I just can't stand it. Maybe it is a psychological thing. The house is suppose to be cool. OK thanks to anyone reading this for letting me rant. One more day! I know I can survive one more day without AC. 

    Have a great day all and for all of you in the North who are enjoying beautiful crisp cool Fall days I am truly envying you right now. Enjoy it.

My House- A Mini Tour

Some of the blogs I have been visiting have been giving tours of their homes. So I thought I would put up some pictures of my house. I actually would have put up more but I dropped and broke my digital camera.

My Kitchen: Dirty dishes in the sink and my husband's stuff on the porch cluttering up the view from the window. And I guess I should at some point clear off the clutter that is on the fridge.

The Master Bedroom
I love my antique Victorian Bedroom Set which is over 100 years old that we inherited. What I don't like are the vertical blinds that don't go with the room at all.


My Living Room and Dining Room at Christmas