critter?!

I have a love/hate relationship with yellow. It is a super cute car. It gets great gas mileage. However, it tends to get angry at us regularly. We treat yellow well too! We have spent bunches of money on you. This time it's anger caused us to tow it into the repair shop. (thank goodness for insurance!) The word is, that this time's anger may have been caused by a "critter."  Critter, what did we ever do to you, to cause such distruction to our yellow? I sure hope they find your corpse in the motor, if that is the reasoning to this trip to the repair shop.

rumble women

‘Trümmerfrau (literally translated as ruins woman or rubble woman) is the German-language name for women who, in the aftermath of World War II, helped clear and reconstruct the bombed cities of Germany and Austria.


Between 1945 and 1946, the Allied powers, in both West Germany and East Germany, ordered all women between 15 and 50 years of age to participate in the postwar cleanup.’
- Wikipedia

I have wondered about the post-war clean-ups for a while. who cleaned up the damage? where did they put it? did they re-use materials or start over?

exam free

Erin has been home with me this week. The dreaded HS exams were last week and this week. If the students didn't have an exam, then they didn't have school. Erin's were back to back last week, making it unnecessary for her to go to school. It's been fun to have someone around the house.

by the fire

Toto isn't the only wardling enjoying his new pet bed and spot by the fireplace.

new ride and helmet

breaking dawn

Over the Christmas holiday, I took the girls to see Breaking Dawn. I really enjoyed it, but think that Miss P should've stayed home. She loves the Twilight series, but this one, especially the birth scene was too much. I sat beside her and covered her eyes. The highlight for Libby was seeing the Hunger Games movie trailer. Erin just loved the film. Good times with my favorite girls!

new calling

Clyde and I have new stake callings @ church. To be honest, I cannot remember the official job title. However, it is kinda like activity specialists for the youth. Ok- it is that, not like that. Our first duty was to handle the decorations for the tri-stake New Year's Eve Eve dance that went down last night. After 3 nights of decorating, it looked like this...  

Yes, that is a vintage 1940's parachute filled with probably 500 balloons, mainly blown up by me. I never knew I had that much hot air in me!! We added twinkle lights to everything. We had sparkling stars and lights to the entire gym . We even rigged the parachute to drop the balloons out. Thank goodness we knew knots and that Clyde isn't too terribly afraid of heights.

The night was very successful, even though some kids were smoking in the men's bathroom. Who would do that in a church??
Happy New Year!