"Calgon!, take me away!"

This is my happy place! I love Epcot World Showcase Lagoon, specifically the Italy, France, Canada, and England sections! If I could go anywhere right now it would be there right now, and stay a while! Yes, I'd get a table on the back porch of the Rose & Crown in the England section and gaze out over the lagoon and sip iced tea under a table with an umbrella! Yes, or go to Saratoga Springs, our home resort and sit out by the pool that also overlooks the lake and Downtown Disney and read a book and sip Diet coke! Ahhh....if only I could go there now!

Instead, I have to figure out how to manage a caseload of 80 special ed students who have speech therapy services and completely set up my office at my 2nd and new to me campus, from scratch! Oh, Lord, can I do this? I am totally over whelmed! I am in panic mode! But no one can tell. I smile and say hello and utter positive phrases. My palms sweat and inside I am screaming. Why do I have to do this at 52? Why can't I simply have a manageable number of students to serve? ASHA recommends 30! I have 80! When I was lead I worked hard to get each therapist at 60 or under, that is manageable but 80? Yikes! I had this high of a number about 13 years ago when I first moved here but after much assertive self advocating they came to see that this was forcing me to do a type of "hit and run" minimal therapy and they changed my assignment. On top of this we are having to learn and use an additional new web based data system where all the special ed audit files will be accessible. We are supposed to have two screens for our computers so we can view the audit file while conducting our work in the new file in e-sped and then we save our work, archive it, and then have it ready for pick up each week for the data people to input into the other data base. Yikes! My palms are sweating again! I've read that is a stress response. Ya think?! Anyway, we also have to do our schedule in another web based site called Caselite. This allows big brother to over see our schedule and our attendance and delivery of services. It is very time intensive as well as the other two aforementioned. Then we are going to learn another new system and website (this makes 4, so far we have to use), where we will document our daily data from every therapy session we perform. We haven't been trained on it yet but we will have to backtrack and input our data from when we start services this week. I am sweating more now as I share my thoughts and starting to chuckle nervously like some of my Autistic students do or maybe like some of my Tourette's kids do, nervous ticks. Then if we want to check our pay and our new salary for this year we have to go into another website "Skyward Financial" and figure out how to find OUR pay information and make sure it's right. Ok, sure! I don't even know what my Skyward password is from last year and I understand they have changed them all anyway! Isn't this crazy, I'm working somewhere I don't even know exactly what they are paying me this year and I don't have a password yet to get into their system and check that ! CRAZY! Next, we have to become proficient at Skyward Student website to find our student's schedules and info etc to be able to set up a scheduled time to serve them. However, their schedules always change some in the first 3 or 4 weeks of school but we must do our schedules and "publish" them in Caselite ASAP! I don't even the speech materials for GPHS moved into the new location/office I had to assertively advocate for this week and then it is going to need a vigorous scrub down, some paint, a rug I will have to buy, some lamps, stuff to go on the walls that I will also buy and more. Oh, but I need to have my caseload set up in Caselite and my schedule asap as well as print out all my 80 student's schedules from Skyward and print out their IEP's from E-sped and their frequency they are arded for services from e-sped and start putting my therapy data daily into a website we haven't been trained on yet, and check my pay in Skyward - which I don't have a password for yet, and schedule and attend ARD meetings done on E-sped and archived and then printed out (oh and they took our printers away!) we have to print to a copier across campus and run half a mile to go get our confidential papers printing out over there and sift through what's on the deck of the machine! Then have any new E-sped ARD's etc ready for pick up weekly by Harding that scans those into their data base.

I could go on and on but I'll stop that dribble here.

See why I am wanting to be in Orlando, or at Aulani in Hawaii? Man!.... why do they expect us older folks to automatically be proficient at all this computer stuff when we didn't even have computers in college!!! I typed my college papers all on a typewriter!

Oh, Lord, can I do all this? (I'm sweating again!)

I have really good people skills, I LOVE doing speech therapy and I am really good at that too! I even like doing paperwork and am really good at that too but now everything is paperless!!! Why can't I just do my schedule and data etc on paper like I've done for over 25 years!!! It worked well and it is what I know. Oh, God, help me learn all this, get really good at it, make a difference in these student's lives and remain positive, kind, and efficient! I can't do this God, without your help! I am in panic mode! I want to just run away! I fell like I'm on the verge of tears every once in a while but then another co-worker shares their worries and I realize that I CAN do this, for 2 more years, I can do ANYTHING! But as of January 31st, 2013 I can hang it up, say farewell, walk out the door and never return! I plan to go ahead and finish out that Spring and work until the end of the school year and retire for real in May 2013 but it can't come soon enough for this ole gal! God help me! Seriously, Lord under gird me, help me, give me the brain and body strength to do this and to do it well, excellently, not just get by buy hit a home run. I want to do such a good job these next two years that they beg me to not retire! But I AM retiring!! (I'll still work 2 days a week but for some rehab company that will let me do just the things I enjoy the most!!) OK, Lord, lift me up, I need some supernatural help here. I am doubting myself big time so I need a Big God to convince me otherwise and give me the Grace, Strength, and Wisdom to do this! I'm counting on you God!

Psalms 28:7 "The Lord is my strength and my impenetrable shield; My heart trusts in Him and I am helped!, therefore my heart greatly rejoices and I will praise Him!"

Thoughts kindled by this movie...

My wise and wonderful husband accompanied me to see this excellent movie this evening. I was very impressed with the story and the emotions this movie evoked in me. I cried, laughed, cheered, clapped, and left with a new appreciation for my parents and a realization that they had raised and taught me right.

President JFK was tragically assassinated on November 22nd, 1963 so I was 3 when this novel was to have taken place. We lived in San Angelo, Texas where my father chose to start his practice as a young budding orthopedic surgeon. My mother also had a degree and was a licensed dietitian. She then had 3 children so she chose to stay home and be a domestic engineer. She was truly the perfect mom, wife, and homemaker. She had a bachelor's degree from TWU in Home Economics and then her Masters in Dietetics. She made such wonderful happy memories for us as she kept a spotless house, made a cake from scratch every week, varying between Devil's Food Cake, German Chocolate, and a mouth watering white cake with amazing white icing, all from scratch! She cooked fabulous meals every night and served them always on a lovely table setting and presentation! She polished silver, ironed and starched just about everything, made bread and biscuits from scratch, served in the Junior League and the Doctors Wives Association and taught Sunday School at First Baptist Church! She was truly outstanding and made each of us kids feel loved, nurtured, and that she was proud of us. She was the absolute BEST nurse if you were sick! She'd make you literally go to bed and she'd set up a little bell by your bed to ring if you needed her! She even sanctified a special pan in our house as "the vomit pan" so if you had a stomach bug it went right by your bed so you didn't even have to run to the bathroom to throw up. She was amazing. I was so blessed.

My point in elaborating above is that once Daddy set up his practice he agreed to let Mom hire a lady to help her with her household management duties. Mom was thrilled. She found a wonderful young lady, Hispanic, named Mary who wanted the job. Mom worked right alongside Mary on the days she would come and Mary was a great help to Mom. We all considered her like family. My parents referred to her as someone like their daughter and they saw in her great talent and potential. She was smart and they saw this. They challenged her to go on and get her college degree at ASU and they would help her. She did! She went on to become a teacher and remained a close friend of our family thereafter. I always thought of her as a friend of the family and never, ever as "the help". My parents would not have ever tolerated a label like that or an utterance or thought resembling anything of the sort. I was never taught any ideas or stereotypes of this sort and was quickly corrected or informed by my parents if any idea or suggestion of racism or bigotry was ever presented to me as a child and later a teen. I am SO thankful I grew up in a home with parents who's background reinforced right over wrong and the fact that all people are equal.

My mother grew up with her mom being a Christian single mother, a nurse, who had to work hard to support the two of them. My mother was sent to live with an older Aunt and sometimes her grandmother so my mother's mother could stay as a live in nurse for several elderly people. My mother grew up with humble circumstances and it helped, I'm sure, to mold her into the amazing mother she was to me and my brothers. My mother dropped out of the Junior League when she realized how much time it was taking her away from her family. I always admired her for that.

My dad also grew up in a Christian home and with a hard working father who did civil engineering. He was the 2nd of his siblings to attend college (Baylor) and he went on to Medical School and earned everything he had. He was a very loving, kind, gentle, father who taught me how to swim and loved to play his guitar and sing in the evenings at home. He also bought pretty Living Bibles for our whole family one year and had us sit down once a week and do a family Bible study! I just loved that. I still have that specific Bible he bought for our family times of study. He worked hard and was a deacon at First Baptist Church. He loved to make model airplanes and rockets. He wore a Mickey Mouse Timex watch, even though he later could afford any designer watch he desired. He drove his car until it was SO old it was embarrassing to us! He just loved driving his old Oldsmobile into the doctor's parking lot and parking it beside another doctor's exotic car! He was so funny how he relished not fitting the stereotype of a well to do doctor! He had a great sense of humor and many friends. He spent too much time with each patient and his nurses would get mad at him because his schedule was hard to juggle since he would go over the time they had allotted him for each scheduled patient that day. He was a great Papaw to my kids and my nieces and nephews and he would not tolerate any racism, prejudice or bigotry at all. I am so thankful and realizing just how blessed I am.

I am very grateful to have been raised in a Christian home with parents who took me to church where as a child I learned a very simple song that holds an eternal and relational truth, "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow black and white, they are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world!"

Proverbs 17:6

"Children's children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children."

New pool and patio and the old Wimpee Homeplace!

I continue t0 be amazed and proud of my brother and his gifts,skills, and talents! He designed, built, and completed this beautiful vanishing edge pool and patio at my parent's old home place! This is the house where I was blessed to grow up. He and his wife live here now and have made it a showplace as they are totally updating, renovating, and repairing it to even better than it was in it's previous years!

Beautiful glass tiles dress up the edges! the steps are even pretty limestone as well!

Gorgeous West Texas setting in Mom's old backyard! Perfect spot to sip a cold drink and watch the sunset over the Twin Buttes!

Oh, so amazing! His talent and vision astound me!

He finished the patio after I had visited! He got these columns in Mexico!

I am so proud of Blake and Sue! Brandon, Ras, and Juan helped but Blake is the head honcho and the visionary and he works just as hard as the helpers! Amazing! He also planed beautiful Mesquite wood for customers and simultaneously was restoring a vintage Airstream in the driveway while he was doing this pool and patio! Yes, the ADHD that is pervasive in my family CAN be channeled into creations beyond imagination!

Thank you Lord for the many wonderful memories in this house! Thank you for family and heritage and genetics!

Psalms 128:2

"For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands; happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee!"

After my last visit "home", I smiled as San Angelo was in our rear view mirror. I can truly say,
"it is well with me!" Thank you Lord, thank you. I am blessed beyond measure and you have been good to me and my family.

A week at the Skaar Dog Resort

We loved having Gabby, a long haired dachshund stay with us this week while her human mommy and daddy went on vacation! Our good friends, Cecil and Betty, checked Gabby into our dog resort this past week and we so enjoyed this sweet old girl! Gabby is 16! She loved treat time, play time in our big back yard, couch time, massage time, and social time with Zeus! He really loved her because she basically ignored him and tolerated his curiousity.

Evening lap time and couch time at the Skaar dog resort!

Zeus was quite fine with this lady like gentle old gal visiting this week!

Nap time! Isn't she sweet! We can learn so much from our furry friends.

We should all love unconditionally like dogs do and make a huge fuss of glee and happiness everytime a loved one comes home and walks in the door!

What a fun week we had here at the Skaar Dog Resort!

Sunscreen and your dermotologist are your friend!

Sunscreen and Your Dermotologist are your friend!

I love the CVS brand of this spray on 30 SPF Sunscreen! Be sure you use a 30 or higher!

Bronze Goddess Soft Shimmer powder by Estee Lauder is the best beauty secret ever! For an instant tan look, simply brush it on anywhere you want! Face, neck, chest, shoulders, arms! I love this product!

Ok, next best tip, mix this lotion and the following one together and smooth on after exfoliating and bathing! You will LOVE the sunless tan it gives you!

Good stuff!!

Willy Nelson sings a song that says, "Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys!" I'd like to offer my friends and Mamas this advice, "Mamas don't let your babies go out without sunscreen!" and for that matter don't let them get in tanning beds either! I'm 52 so anyone my age or near my age knows that we didn't have good sunscreens nor education about this risks of sun exposure when we were young.

I had my 4th pre-cancerous lesion removal this week. I just got the pathology report today. My first three were all stage 2 but this one was stage 3, pre-canceous. So, that means in 2 weeks my doctor removes the stitches and then will most likely opt to excise the remaining margins to make sure they removed it all. Had I not gone for regular skin screenings this would have progressed to melanoma. I will have to continue head to toe skin screenings every 6 months for life. I am thankful for good doctors, for my parents teaching me to be my own health care advocate, and I am thankful for good insurance. I am blessed and appreciative at a time when so many are unemployed and lacking health care coverage and barely making ends meet. I am so thankful it was caught while still PRE cancerous and not melanoma. God is good and I am very blessed.

Ephesians 1 ,"3 - Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ:"

I'm thankful for the covenant of grace.

After yesterday's shocking verdict from the trial of Miss Anthony I find myself having thoughts of thankfulness for the covenant of grace we have been under since Christ's death. I am grateful and humbled that he gave his life, willingly, to pay the penalty for sins I had not yet even committed but he knew I would. He paid the sentence for me, he spared me from the punishment I deserve.

In the Old Testament this was not the case. It was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, literally! If you sinned and broke the laws you paid the penalty and swiftly! When I typed in the word "smote" into my concordance app, 220 scriptures came up with details of sinners who were "Smote" (not pretty, not nice, yes, very violently!), and they paid for their error/sin right away! Makes me shiver to think of some disobedient people who experienced "the earth opening up and swallowing them up and their households", yes, there was violence in the Bible and it wasn't pretty. If the entire Bible was a movie, it would not be G rated. Like I said, I am SO very thankful for what Christ did for us all.

We were able to come before God on our own, after Christ's death, and enter the "Holy of Holies", the inner most part of the Temple, and come before God without dying. We became our own priest and we were free to ask for forgiveness on our own, without a burnt offering because Jesus was the sacrificial lamb for us! I am so thankful.

After hearing the verdict, and remembering that the law of our country guarantees us all innoncence until proven guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, I was stunned, yes, but I can't judge Miss Anthony or anyone. I don't know all the facts, evidence, nor what really happened. I can only pray for her, pray for her parents and pray for God to bring good from this tragic happening. I am thankful to be an American and to have laws and a judicial system in place that has due process guarantees. I am glad to know that, God forbid, if I was ever accused of a crime, I would have the right to trial by a jury of my peers and I would have rights and safeguards that "attempt" to help truly innocent people from being wrongly punished. It is not my place to judge Miss Anthony. I grieve for the loss of this precious innocent little girl. Our system is not perfect. Innocent people do get sentenced for crimes they did not do and guilty people go free who did commit the crime they are accused of. However, the intent of the law is to protect the innocent and falsely accused. It is such a complex issue but I am glad to be in America. I feel so for the parents of that young woman in Italy accused of murder. I feel for Americans who were punished by caning which is being beat on the buttocks with a big cane for minor offenses in some countries. Other contries have no juries, just judges, end of story, you can be locked up and that is that. End of story. In America we even let our former President's issue pardons to who ever they choose as they leave office!

Romans 6:14 says, "For sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law but under grace". These words are huge! Read them again and think about their meaning! Be thankful for grace! Justice is not what I ask God to give me, grace is what I ask of Him and thank Him for, over and over!I wonder if Miss Anthony has any idea that the jury gave her grace by following the judges directions and following the law as they interpreted it. They agreed that the government did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that she committed manslaughter/murder. She will not be "smote", she will not be swallowed up by the earth, she will not suffer an eye for an eye..., she was acquitted. If she is guilty, she will not pay the penalty for her sin. We are all like Miss Anthony in this one way. We are all guilty of some sin/s and we are all offered grace instead of justice for our sin/s. Christ paid the penalty for our sins, past and present, long ago.

Tommy Bahama!

Melissa and Jonathan are going to Maui with his family this month and Bill and I now have our reservations at Aulani, the new Disney Resort in Hawaii for our 30th Anniversary in January!

Bill mentioned to me that I may want to get a new swim suit for the trip and HE realized that now is the best time to do that! If I tried to shop for that during December right before our trip it might be difficult! (However, I know now about the fun store at Northpark called "Just Add Water!" where you can buy swim suits for women all year round! Shhh.... Anyway, I found the perfect Tommy Bahama swim suit there and then I went online and found this darling sundress I just had to have for our trip as well! I texted Melissa to tell her and show her and guess what!?

My dress, which I LOVE! I can't wait to wear it in Hawaii next January!Melissa called me right after I texted her my message that my dress had come and sent her a picture too! She said she had been at the Katy Mills Mall and Jonathan found the Tommy Bahama outlet there!! She got two sundresses and at half price! There is not a Tommy Bahama store in the DFW Metroplex, 0nly in San Antonio and Houston! So I was so excited for her! We have the same sundress just different colors! So fun!

This is from the tommybahama.com website! It comes in orange and pink! I got pink!

Thank you Lord for simple pleasures! Just had to share!