A Sign...

...that you have a lot of girls living in one household.......

.....my dryer lint collector!

Can someone explain this phenomenon to me?

The "phenomenon" I am referring to is that of driving at a speed that is LESS than the speed limit. Now, I am not on a rant or anything of the sort...I truly am baffled and confused as to what motivates someone to drive LESS than the speed limit. When I get in my car (even with as much as I love my car), my goal is to get from Point A to Point B in the least amount of time as possible. I usually am pretty good about obeying traffic laws and speed limits, so I am not advocating driving over the speed limit. If the speed limit is 45 and you are in front of me going 45, we are all good. It's the people driving in front of me that are driving 34 in the 45 mph zone that I just don't get. Now this may be because they enjoy the time spent in their car, sunroof open, their favorite music blaring, breeze in their face. While the time spent in my car is listening to The Backyardigans and my children screaming (not singing) the words to the songs, smelling old french fries and possibly an ancient sippy cup with milk in it that we can't seem to find under one of the seats, referreeing the fights in the back seat over the cheap McDonald's Happy Meal toy, all the while trying to dodge getting hit with Goldfish or a shoe. So maybe I just answered my own question and it's possible I just figured out why it is that my goal is to get from one point to the next as quickly as possible and we don't share that common goal, so maybe what I'm trying to say is if you're one of the people that participate in the "phenomenon" I am speaking of it would be so kind of you to snap out of your happy, zen place for one short moment to get over to the right and let me go around you so that I can get to my destination in the shortest time possible. Trust me, this small act of kindness would be so greatly appreciated by the drivers that don't happen to be enjoying their car time as fully as you do.

...so maybe I ranted a little.....hey, isn't this what a blog is all about? 

Future Stars

Say what you need to say

I first heard this song at a church a while ago, and I fell in love with it. It's a John Mayer song and it's on the soundtrack of the movie The Bucket List. I think it spoke to me especially, since I am not always the person to say what I need to say. Now, I'm not talking about saying whatever is on my mind and not caring about the other people involved. I just mean that I don't always express my feelings when I should. I am learning how to do that and luckily being married and having children is helping me along the way. So I was actually trying to add this song to a post last night, and I couldn't get it to work, so I gave up. Then this morning at church, this song was played again! I couldn't believe that the morning after I was trying to add this song to my blog I would hear it at church. Well, actually I can believe it, because that's how God works...especially with me. It's probably because I'm a little hard headed and set in my own ways, that He definitely makes things crystal clear for me when He's speaking. I love it when you know for sure God is speaking to you and it's so clear what He is saying. So I thought I would share this song for those who have not heard it, and for those who have, to challenge you to "say what you need to say."
Click here then you will have to click the link on the middle of the page to play the song. I still can't get it to play directly on the blog, but it's worth the few clicks to get to.

Cinderella

This is a video Marty & MacKenzie made for our church. They played the video in the middle of the sermon a few weeks ago. The sermon was about really living your life in the moment you're in and not always thinking about tomorrow. Sometimes it's really hard to have that mentality when you have small children. You're always thinking, "Well when they're finally out of diapers, things will be so much easier." and "When they can just feed and dress themselves, things will be so much better." I know this mentality well, because it is easy to slip into thinking like that when you are performing the mundane every day tasks of raising little ones. It takes a conscious effort on my part to remember to truly "BE in the moment" with them and not be looking to what's ahead. This song and video is just a great reminder of that.

7000 Pool Floats

We are in the process of getting ready for the Home Shopping Network, and a few days ago we got a delivery. The Instaflators are being packed together in a package deal with a pool float to be sold on HSN. You know the whole, "You get one Instaflator....but wait, you actually get two! No, we are going to throw in two more! And that's not all...you're going to get a pool float too! All this for the low, low price of......" So, we are providing a pool float in the package, and we had them delivered to our driveway. There were 250 boxes of floats, each box weighing 40 pounds. They took up three pallets. Usually when things get delivered in pallets, you would use a lift of some sort to get them from the truck to where you are going to store them. The truck driver said he thought he was going to a warehouse, not a residence, so he did not bring a lift since he assumed the "warehouse" would have one. Well, needless to say the Miller Warehouse does not have a lift. So, Marty and the truck driver, who was a really nice guy by the way, had to open each wrapped pallet and individually unload each individual box onto the end of our driveway. It was quite a chore. Then Marty had to take 3-4 boxes, load them onto a dolly and wheel them into our garage/storage facility. Amazingly he managed to cram them in our garage along with the girls' Power Wheels, bikes, helmets, scooters, games, teepee, ride-on toys, all of Marty's tools, and chests, and STILL have room for his precious car. Hopefully after HSN and the infomercial our garage will be empty! Just one more step in our journey of The Instaflator, I thought I would share. 

It's Official!

We are officially going to be on the Home Shopping Network! Most of you know about my husband's venture, but for those of you who don't, here it is in a nutshell: My husband, Marty, and his Dad came up with an invention that they have been working on getting into the market for the past two years. They took this idea from a concept in their heads, all the way to a patent pending product being manufactured in China and being sold in small pool stores around the US. We got word recently that the Home Shopping Network was interested in having the product on their "Outdoor Summer" program in May. They have now worked out all of the legal issues & logisitcs, and it's official. It looks like it's going to be me actually selling them live on the show. There will be a HSN host and I will be the guest host on with them, so I can demonstrate how the product is used. Right now we have 2 ten minute segments on 2 days. The days we are scheduled to be on are May 10th & 12th. We're not sure on the time slots we have, (they may be 3:00am) but I will keep everyone posted when we find out, so you can tune in if you're awake! We would appreciate your prayers for us during this time. If you think about it, please pray for successful segments and that we would sell out of the product we will have there. If you have not seen the invention and would like to check it out, you can see a demo on the website here.