Banned Book Week

Reason - He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself. John Milton
Censorship - Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. Potter Stewart
Tolerance - Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance. Lyndon Baines Johnson
Truth - If we want truth, every man ought to be free to say what he thinks without fear. Erasmus

'via Blog this'

My Daughter is Moving Out

About a year ago, my oldest daughter met the love of her life. A short time later, he was living here. Next Friday, they will be moving into an apartment together. Yeah! Sorry, but I am ready for my kids to be grown ups. She is almost 26 and it is time.

Now her 22 year old brother just needs to find employment that is not dependent on his dad for construction jobs. It is really tough for kids (young adults) to find work when they have a learning disability. It seems that most places want you to do the online applications and if they have those psychological questions - forget it. I feel that if he could met with someone and talk to them, it would help.

Trying to save a plant

Last summer at this time my Mother-In-Law passed away at the age or 84.  In the process of clearing out her apartment (thank goodness she moved out of her 4 bedroom house of 40+ year, or we could still be working on it) my husband and I took several of her house plants.  I thought they would be fine in my house and we didn't have any house plants.

I have discovered that I am not a house plant person....at home.  The tend to get ignored until the leave are drooping or curling in. The house is one the dark side and since we are gone all day the curtains/blinds stay shut to help keep out the heat. One of the plants we took was a large, healthy Christmas Cactus.  Now due my busy schedule and not really paying attention to it, looks horrible.  I have taken it to my office, since I have a large window and it will get the light it needs.

Hopefully, it can be saved.

Wedding Dress Shopping

My oldest daughter is getting married in September of 2012.  I asked her if she wanted to go and just look at wedding dresses.  She made an appointment at David's Bridal today.

Y's wedding is a pirate themed event since she and her fiance are involved in a pirate reenactment group. The consultant was awesome, she thought it was great to have a theme.  Y tried on 6 or 7 dresses and I took pictures of 5.  My Blackberry only has a minimal camera and no flash so bar with the photos.

Dress 1 - Gorgeous but very heavy

Dress 2 - we added a touch of color

Dress 3 - she liked the bottom

Dress 4 - Very nice, light and airy

Dress 5 - also light and airy

Dress 5 - with a touch of color

This was fun.  Did I buy one?  Hmmm. Not allowed to tell.  I will get post more as the planning progresses.

Where has the time gone

My life has been really crazy the last few months and I just realized I have not written anything since March.

Next week my youngest daughter is going to senior high church camp for the Southwest Conference of UCC in New Mexico.  After I put her on the bus, my husband and I are going to take my dad's 92 Winnebago and going off by ourselves - no kids.  We have been married for 28 years and it is so nice to be able to go places and not worry about the kids. We don't know where we are going yet; he has to figure that out.  

I have been cleaning the Winny most of the day.  Even with the AC on it is still 90 degrees inside.  I am scrubbing all of the surfaces to get the dusty, grimy smell out.  A couple of years ago, hubby took it to a job site in Bagdad, AZ and it was very dusty.  He has also taken it hunting a couple of times and those locations were also dusty.  I have used it to store my pink tents I got for my Girl Scout troops and sleeping bags in between camping trips with my troops.

I am so looking forward to getting out of the valley of the sun.

Having Connections

My dad is retired Air Force and this weekend Luke AFB had their biannual Luke Days Air Show.  He suggested my husband and I go with him and his wife.  My husband was planning on going anyway so I said sure.  As we sat in traffic on a single lane road miles from the public parking lot, he basically said "screw this" and headed towards the Glendale Air Park thinking we could take a shuttle from there.  We were driving towards a different parking lot and spied a sign "Base housing use Kachina, Military ID required".  Holy crap why didn't this occur to us before - my dad and his wife have base privileges and military IDs.  So simple, no parking fees, no large crowds, no having to sit on school buses.  We were able it catch the base housing shuttle and were dropped off right in front of the flight line.

We wandered around and looked at some of the plans they had on display.  They had the new F-22 doing a flying demonstrations - man that is an awesome plane. It almost seemed to hover at time and then would go super fast over us.  There were some other flying demos, stunt planes and a group of 4 planes flying together, one from WWII, Korea, Vietnam and current.  The WWII plane was probable going as fast as it could and the F-4 was going as slow as it could, but they all stayed in formation.

My dad and his wife stood in line to go into the C-5 and got to see inside th cock pit.  It took them like an hour.  My husband and I met up with a couple of his friends and looked at the B-52. About 3:20 the Thunderbirds http://thunderbirds.airforce.com/ took off for their show.  All I can say about them is OMG talk about flying skills.


When we left, we just had to walk about a mile to where the car was parked (the shuttle was full and we figured it would be faster to walk). Coming over the bridge where the car was parked was an MP asking for military IDs from everyone - just doing their job.

When Luke Days comes again in 2013, I am going to see if my dad will take my son, he always wanted to go.  We would just start earlier in the day so we can see all the shows.

2011 Cookie Sales done

My troop of older girls (7th grade - 10th grade) has wrapped up our cookies sales.  We only had 3 girls selling cookies this year and did 4 cookie booths at the local Fry's grocery stores and ended up selling 949 boxes of cookies.  Not too bad.

Next weekend, I am in charge of an encampment in Prescott, AZ.  We have 182 people coming.  It is going to be a great weekend.  Then I am taking a weeks vacations.  Boy am I tired.

Girl Scout Cookies

Yesterday bright and early I, along with a team of volunteer, took delivery of 67,260 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies for the 54 troops in my area.  We sold 14% more in our presales this year.

5,605 Cases of Cookies

Sorting into Troops

Next weekend, if you are in Arizona, look for Girl Scouts going door to door through neighborhoods with cookies in wagons.  Cookies are still $4 per box and most of the money stay in Arizona.  The troop gets a percent of each box and Council gets some.  This money helps with the upkeep of our camps and pays for program.  

Cookies booths at the grocery stores start on Friday 2/25 and run each Friday, Saturday and Sunday until March 20th.

Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?

White Tail

I was at the Girl Scout camp Willow Springs in Prescott last weekend.  After dinner on Saturday, when we got back to our cabin unit, K & E told us to be quiet. When we looked between the two cabins we saw a herd of white tailed deer grazing about 100 feet away - maybe closer.  It was about 5:30 or so and getting dark.  I was amazed on how the really do blend in with their background.  Here is a shot of them watching us watching them.

Old Pictures

My Junior/Cadette Girl Scout troop is participating in our council's World Friendship Day event by learning and presenting information about Panama.  This event has between 800 & 900 people attending. Between December 1968 & sometime in 1972 (I don't recall when we left) I lived in the Panama Canal Zone on Howard AFB.  I was even a Girl Scout during that time.  Because of this event I vent to my mom's and scanned all the photos she had from when I was in Panama.

While I was going through my mom's box of photos, I came across some great pictures of my parents and my youth.

My mom & dad in high school

My mom & dad before kids

Me and my sister 1963 or 1964

Me and dad 1960

When I look a the amount of pictures my mom has it makes me kind of sad compared to the amount of pictures my husband has from his youth.  Even though I don't have as many pictures, I just love these.

Listening to Music

My husband work for Tower Records for 13 years in the 80's and early 90's.  Because of this we have an extensive vinyl and CD collection.  Since we moved in 2004 our vinyl has been in boxes waiting for a record rack to be built.  In our old house the records were on shelves 6 feet wide by 6 feet high and it was full.  We have 42 feet of CDs in the open now but still have boxes that have not been unpacked.

Last weekend I decided to clean the house and listen to music.  I did this the weekend before, but didn't write down everything I was listening to. Some of it was: Toto, Genesis, Kayak, Mike Oldfield & Neil Young. I thought it would fun to write down everything I was listening to so here is my list: 


Saturday 1/15/11 Round 1: 

• The Roches-A Dove
• Concrete Blond-Boodletting 
• Camel- Nude
• World Trade - Euphoria
• Shawn Philips- Second Contribution.

Round 2: 

• Simple Minds-Life in a Day
• The Bears-Rise and Shine
• Klaatu-Klaatu
• King Crimson-Lizard
• Crash Test Dummies-The Ghosts that Haunt Me.

Round 3:

• Porcupine Tree - Up The Downstair
• Tangerine Dream- One Times One
• Tim Finn
• Icehouse-Icehouse
• William Tell-You Can Hold Me Down.

Round 4:

• Steve Hackett - Defector
• Porcupine Tree - On The Sunday of Life
• Ian Brown - The World is Yours
• Chris de Burgh - Into the Light
• Robin Trower - Victims of the Fury

Sunday 1/16/11 Round1:

• Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
• Hot Tuna - Pair A Dice Found
• Jakko M. Jakszyk - The Road to Ballina
• Crack The Sky - From The Greenhouse
• Crosby, Stills & Nash - Live it Up

Round 2:

• Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire
• John Martyn - Sapphire
• Yes - Chase to the Edge
• Rush - Dreamline
• Jethro Tull - Crest of a Knave

Round 3:

• Marillion - Misplaced Childhood (this album has the song my youngest daughter is named from - Kayleigh)
• Mike Oldfield - Ommadawn
• ELO - Time
• Fanita Tikaram - Everybody's Angel
• Moody Blues - Octive

Round 4: 

• Evanescense - Origin
• Kayak - Night Vision
• Dan Fogelberg - Netherlands
• Eric Clapton - Journeyman
• Blood Sweat & Tears - 3

Round 5:

• Rodger Waters - Amused to Death
• Nicky Skopelitis - Ekstasis
• Simple Minds - Life in a Day
• Adrian Legg - Guitar for Mortals
• Sally Oldfield - Playing in the Flame

It has been great exploring all this music.