Lianne's Little Corner

Saturday DH got home from Florida. Things went well. He really liked the hospital and the people with whom he interviewed. They didn't offer him the job yet, but he's feeling confident that they probably will. I thought I had accepted Florida. And until yesterday I had. With no really enticing prospects in other places, Florida seemed, well, Ok. But yesterday DH was looking through some other job listings, and found a position for a youth pastor at a church in...**sigh**...Colorado Springs. He sent out his resume right away, and now we sit and wait. With that hope, of course, I find myself all the way back at square one about Florida...absolutely hating the idea of it. It was never my first choice, of course. I loved the idea of Laconia, NH. But alas, it wasn't meant to be. And now I'm feeling very negative about CS, because I really, really want that! I love working with youth, and I loved CS. DH was so sweet. He's so sick of the cold weather, and I can hardly blam...

I'm glad it's Friday. I'm exhausted. I was up far longer than I should have been last night, writing. With DH gone, I didn't feel the need to rush to bed once the kids were down. Mistake. I have a doctor's appointment this morning at 9:20. I wasn't worried about staying up late because I thought I could just go back to sleep once the kids left for school. Serves me right for not looking at my appointment card BEFORE I decided to stay up. I thought the appointment was at 2:20 for some reason. Must have gotten it mixed up with my appointment on Tuesday. Ack! So now I'm dragging. But maybe it's a good thing it's early. I can go in and get it over with, THEN come home and go to bed. We had a little excitement yesterday when I took DH to the airport. It was raining and snowing, and then just snowing, and we were afraid his flight might have been canceled. It was. Not because of the weather, I'm not sure why it was cancelled. But the bigger problem was...

I am about to run out the door this morning to take DH to pick up a few travel size toiletries, then drop him off at work. This afternoon he's heading down to Florida for a day long (tomorrow) interview with the hospital folk who are looking to hire him. It's not quite official yet, but it's starting to look more and more like Florida will be our next stomping grounds. I'm still for Colorado Springs, but we go where the jobs are. And most importantly, of course, where God leads us. And it seems He's leading us to Florida. He could always close the door. I'm aware of that, but it doesn't look that way. And God has worked in my heart about going to Florida. It's still not my first choice, but I've accepted it, and I'm thinking of all the positives. We'll only be 23 miles or so from Key Largo where we spent our honeymoon. And I absolutely loved it there back then. I wrote yesterday. Over 2000 words. :) I was very happy with myself. But today I n...

It's funny how things come about that put our lives into perspective in a whole new way. Well, I can't speak for anyone but myself. I had a busy day on Monday, my first "real" day back after my trip. And if you read my post on Monday, you know I was whining about having to be back to normal. But yesterday I was going through my email and I found one from a lady who has suffered some very real loss recently, and though she's talking about it, she's not whining. The lady is Darlene Franklin, a member of my writer's list, ACFW. She lost a daughter to suicide, and as a means to try to heal, she's blogging about it. So check out her blog in my list of blog links. Post a comment if you have a moment and the inkling to do so. I know it will mean alot to her. Reading of her loss and her grief, and the grace with which she is dealing with it was very humbling to me. I've lost a loved one, my father, when I was sixteen years old. Cancer. But I've never l...

Maybe I should have posted this yesterday since it was closer to Sunday, but I really wanted to complain about being home instead. lol. Anyway, I posted back in July about my disappointment with how no one seemed to care about the 4th, and how disgusted I was with the commercialism going on when it should have been a day to celebrate out country's independence. So imagine my shock, surprise, marvel when we went to dinner in a restaurant at the mall and everything was closed! Well, not the restaurant, but the stores were closed. Or most of them, anyway. Barnes and Noble and Sears were open. But nothing else. Even Bennigans was closed, which surprised me since it's a restaurant and almost everyone in town was out for lunch. I know many commercial places close for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I didn't think they still closed for Easter. I was very pleased, to say the least, and filled with hope that not all is lost in America after all. :) That said, while we were eating ou...

We're home, now, and trying hard not to be ungrateful. It was a wonderful trip, but as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. We finished up by going to visit my uncle who lives near Kansas City, MO. It was a nice visit, and he took us into Liberty, MO, to see the first bank that Jesse James and his gang robbed. We didn't take the tour, but we did peek in the window to see what the little room looked like. And I got a couple shots of the girls in front of it. Today we start back into the full swing of things with a VERY busy day. DH has a doctors appointment today at 9 to see an endocrinologist about a possible parathyroid problem that might be causing his kidney stones. Then I get to go for an MRI at 11. Then DH has another doctor's appointment at 2 to see if something other than the possible parathyroid problem is causing the arthrosis in his shoulders and knees. (He's too young to have these kinds of bone problems!) Then at 3:45 DD2 has a dentist appoi...

Well, in the car, of course. :) This morning DH woke me up with a surprise. He got up earlier than everyone else, he said, and started to think that if we left Colorado Springs without going up the Peak, we'd regret it for the rest of our lives. To be sure, the prospect of going up the Peak got everyone hopping out of bed in record time. I really thought the climb would be terribly steep. It was a little in some places, but it would level off then climb a bit again. All in all, it wasn't bad at all, and we made it up and back down again in one piece. Obviously, since I'm posting! lol. They only let us go up part of the way today, I guess because higher up the conditions weren't safe. But that's all right. We got to go up about 13 miles, and truly, that was good enough for us. We stopped at a visitor's center at the 13 mile mark and bought a few souvenirs, and got quite a history lesson from the man who was running the shop. Let me tell you, what inspiration for...

I don't know if the whole family will agree, but for me, today was by far the best of all our days on this tour. We've seen so many pretty places, and I love them all. I cannot say that what we saw today was the most beautiful, because we've seen such varied terraine. The Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore were absolutely gorgeous, in a much different way than the Rockies. I think what made it so wonderful today was a combination of things. The weather has been wonderful. Absolutely gorgeous skies, as you can see by the pictures, and temps that are almost warm. It's the perfect weather for me to want to get outside and walk or climb rocks. Needless to say, the Garden of the Gods is a remarkably beautiful piece of God's creation. A more appropriate name would be Garden of God. I'm impressed that it's still free admission, and that's a testament to the man who at one time owned it. We walked for quite some time along the trails. We didn't do alot of rock cli...

(Don't know how to put captions on these through blogger, so this'll have to serve. This tunnel is the entrance to the Red Rocks Amphitheater, near Denver.) We got to see a little of Denver, today. I wasn't all that impressed. But honestly, I'm never very impressed with big cities. It was ok for a city, but I wasn't sorry to leave it behind and head south to Colorado Springs. But first, we stopped off at a place called Red Rocks Amphitheater. It's kinda neat, with, well, lots of red rocks. :) It's a sort of natural amphitheater, and they hold shows here on occasion. Rock shows, I'm guessing. The weather has been beautiful. God couldn't have been kinder to us. I'm not arrogant enough to think He's provided this lovely weather just for us, because I know there are a whole bunch of other people who are thanking Him for it as well. But I am grateful for it, and I thank Him for gifting us with such pretty blue skies. It's been perfect weather....

What a neat day today. We got to Keystone yesterday (Sunday) to find it under 6 inches or so of snow. Funny thing about Keystone. It's like it just shut down for the winter. The whole thing is one big tourist trap, of course, being the "home" of Mt. Rushmore. But only one little restaurant was open, and the hotel we stayed in only had a few rooms cleaned and ready for guests. Still, it was quaint. With everything covered in snow, it looked like a Christmas postcard. Even though we've had our fill of snow this winter, it was pretty. So we woke up this morning all excited to see a beautiful blue sky, not a cloud in it, and bright sun. We were off to see Mt. Rushmore and the Presidents. :) I'd seen it before, when I was 13. But it's been a few years, and I was anxious to see it again. And to see the reactions of my kids and Hubby. Well, I wasn't disappointed. I had seen it before in the summer, so it was neat to see the area all snowy. After we had seen ever...

Well, so far I've been headache free for the entire day. That's two days in a row. Whoo-hoo! We had an interesting day today. Got up at a reasonable time and hit the road for the Badlands. If I had not seen them before, I might not even believe they existed. It was flat terraine, then we got into some gently rolling hills. Pretty. A little different from the flat. Then all of a sudden, we started to see the eroded look. I started to breathe easier, because I think the family was starting to think I'd lost my mind. **G** Once we were in there, though, it was breathtakingly beautiful. We took alot of pictures, and it was hard to boil it down to just a few. But I think I got some of the best shots. When we first got in, there was a tiny bit of snow on the ground. Not alot. In some places there wasn't any. But by the exit of the park, it was pretty full of snow. At least the roads weren't bad, and we made it to Wall, then on to Keystone. Here I am with the girls. They...

First, I got an award! Yey! Thanks, Judy. :) I give you the award right back. I'm not sure how to put it on here, but I'll work on that tomorrow night. So we're in South Dakota. Yey! No pics yet. We got a late start (long story...shortened version following) and just wanted to get as close to Wall, SD as possible. It's supposed to snow tomorrow (Sunday) so I don't know how much we'll get to do. We're in a little place called Oacoma, about 150 miles east of Wall and the Badlands. On to my little adventure yesterday. I've been having these headaches all week long. They seem to hit every other day. Grr! So yesterday (Friday) when we were getting ourselves together in the morning, I started with the blurred vision and headache. DH hurried to get me into see a doctor. Well, when I explained all that had been going on all week long, the doctor ordered an immediate CT scan. It came back normal. They even found my brain in there somewhere. **G** But the diagnosi...

I was all geared up to write something for Monday. But when I went to bed Sunday night I started with what I can only guess was the beginning of a migraine. I didn't sleep well, and Monday morning I woke up with my eyes feeling like sandpaper. Super light sensitive. So I did very little on the computer. Figured it would all be over by Tuesday. Ha! Tuesday was worse. We had a BEAUTIFUL day here yesterday. Sunny skies...close to 50 degrees. I wanted to go out a bit, but the bright light just hurt my eyes and my head too much. So I just laid around with my eyes closed, curtains pulled shut. What a boring day! I did get caught up on my sleep, though. lol. Of course, now all my good ideas have flown out of my achy brain. Today I'm feeling better, but there's still alot of tension behind my eyes. So I'm not going to push it. Just wanted to pop on and say hi, and I hope to be back for real soon. Friday we're heading west for Spring Break. We're planning on heading up t...

Well, it's Friday. I made it through the week and posted on a regular basis. lol. That's pretty good for me. But today I'm left with nothing interesting to say. But that might be a good thing. The kids have friends coming over tonight, so if I don't want them to be embarrassed by a messy house, I need to clean up. It's not too bad. Just a little clutter that needs to be addressed anyway, so now's a good time to do it. So let me just wish y'all a great Friday and a wonderful, restful or fun weekend. Thanks to Marianne for being so faithful to my blog this week, and actually commenting! It means alot. :) Marianne, I like who your favorite author is. lol. I'll have to get some of her books to read. And thanks to Charity who responded with such words of wisdom on yesterday's post. Truly, what she said made alot of sense. And Charity, if you're reading this, loved the TP-ing Casa de Cluney short story. I found it by wandering through your links. See y...

A few weeks ago, there was this little discussion going on over on my writer's list. Ok, so it wasn't exacly a LITTLE discussion. Although everyone who wrote in was in agreement with everyone else, we were all quite up in arms about a comment made by some editor somewhere (don't know who she is or who she works for) who said something to the effect of, older authors (over 40) write too old fashioned. She basically said that all you have to do is look at the picture on the back to know if the book is going to be up to par with the "new" standards. So the discussion began with, can women over 40 get it right? It went all over the place from "don't judge a book by its cover" (or it's author's ability by her picture) to "rules don't make good story, good story makes good story." Well, in answer to the original question, duh! That's a no brainer for me. Of course we can get it right. And we do. There seems to be this terrible st...

DH came home the other day, freaking out after an appointment with a dermatologist. He has what we thought was psoriasis on his forehead. Flares up when he's stressed. Turns out it's something else a little less complicated, thank God. But that's not the point. The doctor, while doing the examination, had to feel hubby's skin. So he ran his fingers very gently all over hubby's face. The funny thing, DH said, was that it just didn't feel right. He knew the doc was just doing his job, but he said it felt so personal to have a person who he had never met before touching his face in such a way. He said it was more unnerving than having a check up of more...ahem...personal areas of his body. So of course, being a romance writer, I had to analyze that reaction to see how I might apply it to a story. A touch to the face can be very intimate. There's an emotion that goes with it, something that goes far beyond lust. It usually expresses, IMHO, a deep affection. That...

Yesterday I was being a good girl, and reading over the blogs of some of my friends. :) Judy's blog had a question that made me think alot of my current favorite song, "Letter To Me" by Brad Paisley. The question on Judy's blog was, basically, if you could go back in time, what would you change about your past? Well, there are alot of little things I might change. But looking back at all the major things in my life, there is very little I'd want to be different. I'd still marry the same man, have the same children, make the same friends. I would take each day as it comes and not worry too much about the future, for one. But that's not too much different from what I already did so far in my life. I would spend more time with loved ones, especially my dad, who died twenty-five years ago, today, when I was just sixteen. And of course, I'd dedicate myself alot sooner to my writing. Here's the link to the Brad Paisley song on You Tube. I tried to embed,...

So I'm only a week late in posting, but here I am again. :) We had a very nice trip to Greenville, SC, for a commissioning service for hubby. He's almost finished CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) which is a program to train hospital chaplains. But our denomination held this weekend conference type thing for all their home missionaries and chaplains. It was nice to meet some new people, and to spend time with others who are facing some of the same things we are. I think one of the nicest things, though, other than the new friends we made, was the weather. On Saturday the temps in Greenville got up close to 70! We were out in just jeans and short sleeved shirts. A lovely taste of spring, but then we had to come back to the Great White North. Some of our snow has started to melt, PTL, and yesterday we were even able to go out without coats and scarves and gloves. Just a light jacket. But...this morning we woke up to another dusting of snow, and ice on the ground where the piles o...