Happy( soon to be) New Year!

My plans were to read more of Jane Eyre tonight. A classic novel that my husband bought me for Christmas and I am really enjoying. Makes me want to look up more classics, anyone have suggestions of their favorites? I may have read this back in HS, but right now its new again 🙂

Anyway I got distracted by trying to change the format of my site. As you can tell it hasn’t changed! I gave up! All I wanted to do was change the sidebar, put some things in different order but computer wasn’t letting me. I will say computer cause i am sure the operator was doing everything right! 🙂 NOT!

So I gave up and sat down to read under the lights of my tree, yes it is still up:) My tree always stays up til after New Year’s! Well I read something that stood out to me as something to share, can be what we strive for in the New Year 🙂 So here you go, a quote to end Tuesday’s thoughts with 🙂

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. With this creed I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime, I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last, with this creed, revenge never worries my heart, injustice never crushes me too low; I live in calm.”

This was stated by a teenager who was an orphan at a boarding school where the food was scarce, the water was putrid and , the clothes were shabby and some of the teachers were cruel.  What a great creed to live by, especially when faced with those circumstances!

2014 in review

Thank you to all my readers! When I started this in late August, I had no idea what would happen. I knew I just wanted to give it a try and I signed up for Writing 101 and well the rest is history 🙂 I can truly say that doing this blog is one of my highlights in life and I thank you all for following me. Happy New Year! Wishing you all the best!  You helped make these stats possible 🙂The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,400 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 40 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Tuesday’s thoughts!

If you hang out with the chickens, you are going to cluck, and if you hang out with the eagles you are going to fly!

Dr. Steven Maribel

I have always told my girls to choose their friends wisely. Choose ones that will make them a better person. I don’t mean at all to choose the ones who are popular,etc. I mean to choose the ones who are interested in you and who have the mind set to soar in life and the determination to put their best foot forward, no matter what!

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.

Chinese Proverb

I have always liked Chinese proverbs and this one made me smile. Hope it does that for you. I really don’t think it needs explained 🙂 Just keep working on keeping that green tree in your heart, no matter what.

What do you think ?

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Stranger.” I found this in their list of prompts and it struck a chord. Writing about an encounter that you had with a stranger that has stayed with you. I had an encounter with a stranger when I was in 6th grade…it was short, but has stuck with me. Was it a good or bad one? Tell me what you think

It was the night of my 5th grade band concert. I played the bells. Not the little triangles, but real set of bells that you played like an xylophone. Real big case to carry them in for my small stature. The guys were always at the door to help me, why do you think I played them, LOL! 🙂

The concert had ended and I was on my way to meet my parents. I had to go down a flight of steps and a old man asked if he could help me carry the bells down the stairs. I let him, and as I think back on it now, he really wasn’t that old, but to my 5th grade mind he was. We got down to the lobby where my parents were going to meet me, but they weren’t there yet. We stood by the doors leading to the parking lot and the darkness of the night. The man still stood by me and its the next question that at that time my 5th grade mind just thought crazy, now  haunts me to this day; “Would you like me to carry them to your car for you?”

Carry them to my car?? When the night is dark and I had no clue where my car was, and I knew he didn’t! I politely told him No Thanks and that my parents would be here soon. He left and my parents did show up soon. I kept to myself about the man, I forgot about it, but every now and then over the years it keeps coming back to me.  As I have grown  older and realized more about the unfortunate evil that is out there, my mind has wandered.  Was he just trying to be a nice man, or was there something sinister in his question and was my guardian angel at work? What do you think ?  I will never know, but I do thank my guardian angel for the role they may have played!

The Impulsive story :)

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Call Me Ishmael.” This was a old prompt that I thought I would have fun with. Will see what happens 🙂 It says to take the first sentence of a book you are reading and use it for your first sentence. The book I used is Jane Eyre. Hope you like it. I want to get in the discipline of writing every day so am starting my New Year’s resolution off a little early 🙂

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. The rain had been steadily coming down all morning and showed no signs of stopping. Her 3 year old sadly looked out the window and walked away pouting. Belinda’s mind raced with thoughts of what to do to help make that sweet, charming smile come back to her little boy’s face. The smile that lit up his eyes; lighting up her world.
A treasure hunt, that was it! She dug out her bag of goodies from her secret place and chose a little surprise. The Dollar Store came in so handy for little surprises for her munchkin. She hid it and went to inform him that he had a treasure hunt to go on. At first he looked skeptical, but when she gave him his King’s attire to wear, (his dinosaur robe) featuring the slayed dragons he bravely had attacked, his smile came out bright! He grabbed his saber,( it’s ok, its plastic)  to protect him against pirates that might be searching for the treasure too.

First clue : He was told that its VERY COLD!! Ahh, was that a piece of paper inside the freezer? Yes, it was and ” Help! For now it was getting very hot!”

Ran to the stove and colorful paper awaited him pleading with him to save him from the big dinosaur! Off he raced to his toy chest to find his T Rex, and YES the paper was in his mouth!

“OH NO, I don’t want to take a bath!” He looked at his mom with a sheepish grin and ran to the bathtub, spying a note right under his rubber ducky. “It’s time for something sweet!” He jumped up and down,  for sweets he loved and off to the cookie jar he went.

OH NO, the cookie jar felt empty but he heard something bouncing around inside. He opened the lid and saw a wrapped gift. “OH MOMMY!! I FOUND IT!!” Belinda’s heart danced as she saw her boy’s smile that stretched wide. He hadn’t even opened it yet and was already delighted. Opening it up he pulled out a little Bob the Builder figure. “YAY” he shouted and gave Belinda a big hug as he raced off to get his building blocks, he needed to get to work building a  house.

Belinda watched him run off and looked out the window at the rain still coming down in sheets. That’s OK it might be a gloomy day outside, but the sun was shining in her heart!

Another Friday’s 6 word story!

One less fish in the sea!

Was just thinking more about my nephew and had to add this one yet…So hey you got a special treat 🙂 2 stories tonight 🙂 If you didn’t see my first one…it has to do with my nephew too 🙂 He proposed to his girlfriend and she said YES! So I am sorry to the single girls, another totally, awesome and handsome guy is off the market 🙂

Friday’s 6 word story!

LOVE brings SPRING to the HEART!!!

This is inspired by my dear nephew and his sweet proposal to his girlfriend.Excited for a 2015 wedding 🙂 And now in honor of them my husband and I are watching a Christmas movie called, Will you Merry Me 🙂

Feeling cozy….

I am sitting here in my COZY robe that my daughter bought me. It is so SOFT that I may just have to wear it all day tomorrow. 🙂 We go to my sister’s tomorrow to be with all my family, I should text her and ask if robes can be the proper attire. Ha!

What is really making me warm tho, is not only the robe, its my heart. Warmth came as I woke up to my daughter nudging me saying its past time to be up! As I went to wake my husband who turned out to be faking that he was sleeping! Warmed when I came out to the girls in happy spirits talking about what they thought the big gift was and who it was for. We stopped putting names on gifts, fun to watch them try to guess whose is whose. We use different colored wrap to distinguish them.  I am warmed by the hugs my daughters have given me today, the smiles on their faces as they opened their gifts. The love they showed me through the gifts they picked out for me. My heart is warmed by my husband and how he made a CD for me. A CD that I had written down after hearing it on Pandora and really liking it. I didn’t realize it was out of print. So he took the time to get the songs as MP3’s and burn them to a CD and print out a cover for me. He is thoughtful like that and it always warms my heart.

My heart feels  cozy as I  watch my daughter and husband on the couch watching a new DVD, that she got him. Seeing them work together on setting up her new telescope and seeing her joy as she got a close up look at the moon. She wants to go into Astronomy, so I was thrilled at finding this gift for her at a bargain price!!

Warmth creeps in the heart as my daughter questions me about how many of those freshly baked cookies are gone?? Did I eat them all? No, I didn’t 🙂

Most of all, my heart is warmed by the precious love of God’s son, who’s birth we celebrate today! May that warmth spread to your heart  and bring to it an eternal smile.

Merry Christmas my friends!

Merry Christmas Eve!!

I hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful Christmas Eve tonight and that the celebration will continue to be wonderful tomorrow! I have been blessed by the new bloggers I have become friends with and as always am thankful for my old friends and faithful readers too! Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and peace and joy in the New Year!!

I wanted to share a poem that was in the Christmas card that I got from my Aunt, I liked it so much I told her I had to share it on here 🙂 Hope you all enjoy it!

The older I get the simpler my holiday preparations become, the closer I feel to old friends as I write Christmas cards….The older i get the more I cherish the oldest ornaments, the more fondly I remember Christmases past.

The longer I hold onto a holiday hug…the more I realize Christmas is a matter of the heart and the tighter my throat grows when I sing “Silent NIght”.

The older I get the more I enjoy giving than receiving….the more I try to see Christmas through the eyes of a child…the longer I sit int he glow of the Christmas tree….

The more wondrously beautiful the Christmas story is…the deeper my awe of God’s infinite love….yes the older I get, the more I love Christmas.

Tuesday’s Thoughts

Well its 10 minutes before Midnight so I better get Tuesday’s thoughts posted 🙂 Sorry for the delay! Go fly and be unstoppable just like these quotes say! Greatest thing you can do!

What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, What if you fly!

She was unstoppable, not because she did not have failure or doubts. But because she continued on in spite of them!