Computer Illiteracy!!

My background for my computer is on the fritz! I know it looks ridiculous, so if anyone can help please give some advice. I'm big on Halloween and I was trying to add a spooooooky background and got this horrific result (I guess I got what I was looking for.) Anyway, I give up tonight. Let me know if you've got any answers. Love, Meredith

Ode To Rusty

It's been 1 week since I set Rusty off to see the beauty that I can only imagine is Italy, and I miss him like crazy. And since I let him take my camera with him, I have no new pictures this week. So I've decided to make a tribute to him with my favorite pictures of him that make me smile. I hope you enjoy them too.

Happy Fourth of July '08!! He loves himself a good BBQ!!

Enjoying his first (of hopefully many) trips the Seattle with my family

He's not afraid to take house work seriously.

I love you so much, Rusty. Please come home soon!!

BUT WHAT ABOUT MY DREAMS!!??

For as long as I can remember, I've dreamed of traveling the world. I would love to see every corner of it. But if I had to choose one country to visit it would be without a doubt Italy. I would go to Venice and ride the gondolas, Rome and see the colliseum and museums, I'd go to the Vatican and Sicily and on an on and on. So when Rusty came home about a month and a half ago and said, "Hey remember when I went to Spain to see the peach orchards and get some new innovative ideas on farming? Well guess what? They're sending us to Italy this time." I've never been so jealous in my life. I even cried. So Yeseterday sent Rusty off to realize my dreams. I guess life isn't fair after all.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RUSTY (a.k.a. Papa, Popper, Poppy, Pops, and daddy!)

Wednesday was Rusty's 32nd birthday! So Sadie helped me make his birthday cake. (Really she just licked the spoon and bowl, and yes that is evidence that I let my child eat cake batter with raw eggs in it, don't judge too harshly, my mom let me do it too!!) Anyway, we sure love that man and all he provides for us. We are so blessed and so grateful to have him. I don't know how or why, but he got through the whole day without me taking one picture of him. So here's yet another picture of Mercedes.

Viva la Mexico!!

Last Friday, at Pre-School, Mercedes class was learning about Mexico's Independence. They had the traditional Mexican meal for snack time and they all shared something that they learned at home (with their parents, yes that means I had homework) and the kids even got to dress up. Well I didn't have anything for Mercedes to wear so I sent her in regular clothes. Then at about 10:30 the teacher's aid, Mary, called up to ask if it was ok for her to wear one of her old dresses from when her girls were little. Of course it was!! So here is a picture of Mercedes posing (yes, she chose the pose) in Mary's Mexican girl dress after school. She had so much fun!

Anyone who knows me pretty well, knows that I am very patriotic and sentimental when it comes to the U.S. So today, 9/11/08, 7 years later, I am paying a small tribute to those we lost. Do we remember them? Will we remember them in November when it's time to vote? Which candidate will keep their deaths from becoming in vain?

A few quotes, that I thought were inspirational that reflect on what happened September 11, 2001

"What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed. Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause. Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve. Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together... So I ask again: what was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started. But you're about to learn." ~~ Leonard Pitts, Jr., 12 Sep 2001 in Miami Herald

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." Ronald Reagan

"Let those who say that we must understand the reasons for terrorism come with me to the thousands of funerals we are having in New York City and explain those insane, maniacal reasons to the children who will grow up without fathers and mothers, to the parents who have had their children ripped from them for no reason at all.

Remember British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who - armed only with good intentions - negotiated with the Nazis and emerged hopeful that he had achieved peace in his time. Hitler's wave of terror was only encouraged by these attempts at appeasement. At the cost of millions of lives, we learned that words - though important - are not enough to guarantee peace. It is action alone that counts." -- Mayor Rudy Giuliani

Apples To Apples

Last Monday, for Family Home Evening, the 3 of us walked over to Bishop Hatch's house to pick apples. This was something that I know Mercedes will never forget. She's still talking about it. Papa let her climb up the ladder and pick some of her own and drop them down to mama. This was a great, great, great evening topped off with popcorn and a movie. Later, Mercedes asked me, "mom, what will you do with all the apples I picked?" I explained to her that we would bottle them and add them to our food storage. She thought that was a good enough answer and set off to her room to create her own food storage, by setting up rows of mom's kitchen supplies (anything she could get out of cupboards her height) in her room. She's her papa's little girl. So organized.