Ambidextrous, purple, giraffes

There is a lot of political turmoil right now. The left hates the right, the right hates the left. Vote blue all the way, no red. Donkeys face off against elephants in political cartoons. Trump is racist, Biden is communist. Can we just wait a hot minute? I dare say with the exception the 1% on each side, most people are ambidextrous, purple, giraffes.  Yes, I did say 1% and for that I apologize.  That means 98% of us are ambidextrous, purple, giraffes to some extent.

We all have the overly liberal cousin on Facebook that makes you back up slowly from your keyboard after reading her posts.  The brother-in-law that gets the death glare by your sister when he brings up that you voted for re-introducing wolves.  Maybe you have even had a major panic attack Thanksgiving morning when you realize you not only have your super conservative father-in-law coming over, but also your super liberal friend and her daughter!  These are all true stories.  But guess what?  I still love my cousin and her cute dimples; I love my brother-in-law and understand his views on the impact of wolves and ranchers.  Politics DID come up during that fateful (pre-Covid) Thanksgiving, and guess what?  There was a lovely conversation, without yelling, name calling or hurt feelings.

So, what is a ambidextrous, purple, giraffe?  An ambidextrous, purple, giraffe is pro-life as in against abortion AND against the death penalty.  They want to increase taxation including funding for the military.  They want to lessen government oversight, including whom one can marry.  They are against amnesty for undocumented immigrants and for increased minimum wage.  They believe everyone should wear a mask, get the vaccine, AND open up schools, sports and businesses.  They want regulations to reduce green house gases and privatized health care.  They believe teachers should be well compensated and that we all have the right to bare arms.  Save the whales and your i.d., because you will need it to vote.   Feel free to mix and match any of these statements, to be your own shade of ambidextrous, purple, giraffes.  Maybe your purple is bluer or redder, or maybe you are way out there and some shade of yellow, because there are ways to think outside the box on many issues, but that is for another post.

As an ambidextrous, purple, giraffe, you need not be pigeon holed on one side or the other, you still have a choice!  Christian? You are allowed to be a democrat.  Black? You are allowed to be a republican.  Live in California? Yep, you too can be a republican!  Live in Texas?  It is ok to be a democrat, although be careful who you tell.  Spend your weekends cleaning the ocean and beaches?  You might be a republican.  In your tree stand the first day of hunting season? You might be a democrat.  It is ok!  Your religion, skin color, or place you decide to call home does no get to dictate how you vote.

So, love your elephant neighbor and your donkey boss.  When uncomfortable conversations arise, listen more and talk less, because chances are the answer isn’t blue or red, but some shade of yellow.  Stop arguing and start brainstorming.  Listening to one another doesn’t hurt you or them and you might both realize you are ambidextrous, purple, giraffes too.

Summer Bucket List 2014

Another summer is here.  Wasn't it JUST spring break?  Heck, wasn't it JUST SNOWING?!?!  Anyway, here we are.  How am I going to make each day count?

1. Memorize the book of Titus
2. Get Katie comfortable riding her bike to the Rec center
3. Get D off her training wheels
4. Walk around the lakes a few times
5. Go on that hike Christi told me about
6. Go to the Sand Dunes?
7. Check out the sensory park
8. Water gun fight
9. Weaver Hollow and Deer Creek pool days
10. Paint fort
11. Sand and paint picnic table
12. Get more sand for the sand box
13. Run some Red Rocks stairs
14. Escape to the mountains for a day
15. Prep for Science Fair and Senior Breakfast
16. Get clothes ready for the clothing sale
17. Clean out the basement
18. Get D to memorize her sight words
19. Get TJ to read, ANYTHING
20. Try a Pinterest project at least once a week
21. Check out the Farmers Market
22. Blog more

I hope to add more later, but this should get us started today!

Disney Part I

So, I have had many people who are planning their Disney trip ask for tips so here is as much as I can get done in a short amount of time:


We stayed on Resort property at Port Olean's River Side.  There is no bad place to stay.  Come on, it is Disney.  This is an upper midgrade hotel.  We chose this one, because there are 5 of us and we needed the extra bed.  The room was your typical hotel room, but with Disney flair.  This particular resort steams for the Princess and the Frog movie, particularly the frog part.  I can only assume Port Orleans's French Quarter steams from the rest of the movie.   It was well cleaned every day and the attention to detail with decorating was so cool, but again, you will get that anywhere.  So, there were 2 queen beds and a fold out twin.  We had to request blankets for the fold out bed which I thought was weird considering we had to register all of our guests. The room had a fridge, no microwave, although there is one in the main building.   There was a laundry facility close by and a small pool near our building.  The lobby building had a bigger pool with a slide and hot tub  all the pools had child size life vests!  Loved that even though we had packed blow up pool noodles, this was a big plus.  At the main building there was also an arcade store and restaurant. 

The bus system was great we never had to wait more the 15 minutes and usually much less. Except one night at Downtown Disney. I would skip Downtown, esp Planet Hollywood, we had terrible service there. The ferry from Port Orleans to Downtown was fun as something different, but it took half an hour and we had to wait 15+ minutes for the ferry to get there. We were hoping to go see Frozen, but we didn't get down there in time, the ferry wasn't the only issue, but do allow more time if taking the ferry than taking the bus. If you do go to Downtown Disney, there are great street performers at night.  The Lego store has Lego car races outside.  There is a movie theatre that serves dinner.  We ate at Cookes of Dublin and that was good, but I would go to the table service side as opposed to the counter service side.  I had the fish and chips sandwich which was quite good with their special mustard sauce.  Busses run slow here so do ferries.  Good luck getting back to your room.


 Wrist bands and Fast Pass.  Fast Pass it up. It really helps. You can even change times from your smart phone if you need to.  You only get 3 fast pass plus at a time, but when we were there, you could also get paper passes still so we used both.  You use your band and finger print to get into the parks everyday so, remember what finger you use that first day.  The kids love the bands.  They love using them to get into the park or for Fast Passes.  We were also able to put "money" on them.  They were each able to take their money out of savings to take to Florida and spend as they chose.  We were able to put so much money on each band.  We didn't pay to put money on the band, but the band had a limit of how much they could charge and then anything we bought on a band (ours or the kids) were all charged to our room.  I told Scott not to show me the room bill.  When the kids found something they wanted to spend their money on the cashier (excuse me, cast member) would ask if they were allowed to use their band, we would say yes and the kids would complete their transaction by scanning their band and entering our pin.  You can even set up different pins for everyone.  We just used one for the whole family. 


 If you don't have time for all 4 parks I would recommend them in this order, Magic Kingdom (duh), Hollywood Studios (Star Tours is awesome), Epcot (Best Fireworks Show), Animal Kingdom (Everest and the Lion King Show were great).  I will continue with park specific details next time.

Helping Sharkbait Get Well

If you know me, you know all about my little Sharkbait and all he has been through.  If you stumbled upon this website, because you Googled something fascinating (Ecumenical Sunday, maybe?) and just happened upon my blog, this is my nephew, Sharkbait.   Sharkbait was born in July of 2012 with major heart problems. He has been on oxygen most of his life, had multiple heart surgeries and heart catheters. He has had to make many quick trips to the hospital in an ambulance and even a helicopter. On top of his heart issues he has had a feeding tube his whole life, because of a cleft palate and lip. We are raising money for his mounting health care fees and to begin saving for his future heart transplant. Help us let his parents worry about the day to day of taking care of Sharkbait and not have to worry as much about his bills. Thank you!

For my Girl Friends

I got this in an email and wanted to keep it somewhere for prosperity

Thiswas taught at Stanford University…

In an evening class at Stanford the last lecture was on the mind-body connection - the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends. At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality "girlfriend time" helps us to create more serotonin - a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well-being. Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings? Rarely. Women do it all of the time.

We share from our souls with our sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very good for our health. He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym. There's a tendency to think that when we are "exercising" we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged, not true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking! So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky.

Sooooo, let's toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it's very good for our health. Forward this to all your girlfriends and stay in touch! Thanks to all the girls in my life who have helped me stay healthy, happy, and feeling very loved. Life isn't about surviving the storm; but how you dance in the rain.

Ecumenical Sunday 2013

I think it is always good to pray for unity of the church.  Why is there so much fighting within churches?  Or even between churches.  Today is the day to pray for Christian unity.  There is one truth that we can all agree on, let's, atleast for this week, not fight about the other stuff that really doesn't matter, shall we?

Happy Ecumenical Sunday 2013

Yikes! The craft room

Ok, you might have gotten the sense my craft room is a little crazy, well, you would be right.  My craft room/Girl Scout Room/ Storage room/Drum room/Spare room tends to be a mess more often than not.  This was an all day project.  My after pictures my be more like someone else's before pictures, but I am ecstatic with the progress made today.    I can not believe I am actually posting pictures of this room on the Internet.     I may have to change my name. I don't normally let anyone in this room with the exception of my sisters who stay here occasionally.

Let me explain the different areas of this room and what I did.  We will start in the Northwest corner.  In this corner I keep 2 stacks of boxes for the girl to grow into.  Clothes for the bear are generally from our neighbor and the boxes for the Bug obviously come from the Bear.  In this corner you can also see a clothing rack.  I am the chair for one of the major fund raisers for the school.  It is a children's clothing sale that we do ever year.  The rack holds hanging clothes that the Bug and Boy have out grown for the clothing sale.  I keep the Monkey's pack n play over there, some poly fil, gift bags/tissue paper and Valentines.

The Southwest corner has the boy's much shorter box of clothes to grow into.  Although his are also split into sizes.  It is a much more vague sizing, big or little.  There are just not the hand me downs for girls lie there are for boys.  Boys are just to hard on their clothes.  This corner also holds a dresser that holds my craft things, my crocheting, painting stuff, melty bead things for my kids and construction paper.  The top of the dresser looks a little busy, but I know what it there, promise.

Next corner, oh me oh my.  The exploding corner shall we call it?  This is my Girl Scout corner.  So much craft stuff, glue, fabric, scissors EVERY craft thing you can imagine.  I keep all my Girl Scout stuff down here, paperwork and their snacks EVERYTHING I tell you.  Well, I organized my boxes, made sure all the paint was in the paint box, all the glue in the glue box, all the yarn in the yarn box, all loose badges in a box, you get the idea.  What also helped is that Cookie Sales start a week from tomorrow.  So, I was able to take up a lot of cookie stuff, stickers, poster for booth sales, money bag, all kinds of good cookie stuff.  It will be nice when Bug gets through Daisies and I can start getting rid of some of this stuff, but that will be a sad day too.  Don't want to think about Bug getting any bigger.  Ok, happy thoughts, lets move on.

Have you been keeping track?  We are on the last corner.  The North... RIGHT! you have been listening, the Northeast corner.  See the hubby's drum set.  Pretty sweet huh?  Well, besides the drum set you will see MORE clothes.  These are all Clothing Sale clothes.  I can not wait until September to get them OUT of here.  Some are my kids clothes that I am selling, but there are also clothes that were not picked up last year, but they were supposed to be picked up by the seller so we couldn't donate them as the donation people had already came.  So, I have them here to retag for the school.  100% of the sale of these clothes will go to the school, but it is SO MUCH STUFF.  So I did a little sorting, the big open box needs tagged, then there are 2 smaller boxes one is my stuff to tag (for myself) and the other my stuff that didn't sell last year that is already tagged.

Well, that is it.  It totally makes up for all those easy days!

Before Northwest Corner

After Northwest Corner
Before Northeast corner

After Northeast corner

Before Southwest corner

Before Southwest corner

After Southwest corner

Before Southeast corner

After Southeast corner