The 24/7 Mom

Just wondering since nothing happened yesterday to blog about other than soccer and kids not listening. AT.ALL.  Drove me up the wall.

Pato gave me this iPod Touch when the guy who bought it from him cracked a small portion of the upper screen and refused to pay for the rest of it.  Didn’t get that.  You cracked it, but you won’t finish paying for it.  Nice.  Anyway, with the pink silicone cover on it, you can’t even tell the screen is cracked. Love it so much more than my pink iPod Nano that I had before.  Passed that one down to Kat.  The iPod Touch got me through when I was sick and in bed for a week.  I have mostly free apps.   The 2 paid ones I have are ones that I am going to review here on my blog. (That would be the 2 Wubbzy ones for the kids.)

Right now on my iPod I have –

• Digg
• Drudge
• Twitter
• Facebook
• iheartradio
• Huff Post
• Tap Tap Revenge 3 (my favorite)
• NinJump
• Chicktionary
• Bubble Explode
• Ragdoll Blaster 2 Lite
• Tap Jungle (not to fond of it yet)
• ZombieFarm (second fave)
• TapStore (getting boring)

For the kids I have -

• Toddler Teaser Shapes
• Matching Zoo
• WubbHunt
• Disco Dancin’ Wubbzy

I had these ones and played them a lot, but decided it was a waste of time.  They aren’t really that fun, just addicting, checking your stuff, how it’s growing etc.  Tap Resort Party, TapFish, TapBirds

I have to say Tap Tap Revenge 3 is my absolute favorite game to play.  Slightly addicting and I’ve bought quite a few songs on iTunes because of it.  Impossible by Anberlin, I like that by Richard Vission and the Static Revenger featuring Luciana, The Golden Age by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour (Pato HATES it when I play this song.  HATES.IT), and Calling The Maker by Aimee Allen are the ones I most recently grabbed.  The last one and the first are my favorit-ist songs right now.

Ok, so what apps are on yours?  I haven’t found one yet that I have to have that I would have paid for.  Most of my productivity stuff I do on my phone (Palm Pre ) and I’ve bought a few apps for that because I have internet access all the time on that and don’t have to find a wi-fi hot spot.

Want to know what’s on my phone – just in case you have a Palm Pre ?

Sure you do, cuz this post is just so informative. 

• Balloon Pop (the youngest 2 love this one)
• Where’s My Car? (saved me more than once)
• Express News
• fx Local news
• Critical Mass (Played this a lot in the beginning, not so much now)
• TweeFree
• Fandango
• The Weather Channel (I think that is Kat’s favorite)
• Pandora
• Trapster
• AppScoop
• My 100 Pixels Beta
• Topple Ball Mini
• Block Breaker Lite
• Mazer
• Party Sign
• Super Hangman Free (Jordan loves this one)
• Fall-E
• Word Ace
• New York Times
• Celebrity Tweets
• MTV News
• Send My Location
• Spades
• Express Horoscopes
• Tic Tac Toe
• Blocked Traffic
• Good Food
• SPB TV
• Shopping Manger (I paid to upgrade this one, LOVE LOVE LOVE it!)
• YPmobile

On my phone the ones I use most are The Weather Channel, Express News, Where’s My Car, and Shopping Manager.

So there you have it.  My list of favorite apps for the iPod (iPhone/iPad your choice of addiction) and for the Palm Pre.

In other news, I am love with a car now.  I was driving the kids to school and pulled up behind a mom dropping her kids off too.  She was driving this –

Pato would tell me it was bien fea.  (really ugly)

I could not stop looking at it.  You should see the rear window.

Want one!  It’s a Nissan Cube.  They have it in pink!  I want a pink Cube!  Maybe it doesn’t come in pink?  It shows pink, but that might be pink accessories.  Don’t care, love pink!  It only sits 5 and we have 6, but does Pato really need to ride with us?  He has a car.  Works for me!

Have a great day!

Artscow is giving away 5000 memo pads/day for sharing the deal on Facebook.  I just did it and ordered mine using this picture.

It says I’ll follow you across the bottom.

As a side note if you’ve never used Artscow, I’ve used them many times.  I’ve ordered photo books, purses, umbrellas, coin purses for teacher presents, prints, a watch.  It is always awesome quality.  If I don’t have a huge time limit on getting it, I use them. (It ships from Hong Kong.)  They are ALWAYS sending out deals like this.  <3 them bunches!

The teacher presents I usually order in October.  Here’s the coin purse I ordered last year for both kids’ teachers.

Here was the umbrella design I used, it came out awesome!  The colors on everything always come out just like they do in my picture that I create for the design.

Oh, I’ve also ordered their canvases.  One of Pato’s most cherished possession is the last picture he has of his father at his sister’s quincenera that I had put on a 8X10 canvas.  (I couldn’t go any bigger because the original picture quality wasn’t great and that wasn’t a lot I could do with it.)  Those canvases are awesome!  We’ve got that one framed in the living room, plus 2 more that I still need to frame of the kids and Pato and I.  So they are highly recommended by me.

Check out the memo pad offer.

Dear FCA (wo)man:  Artscow did not give me a darn thing for posting this, well, they gave me a memo pad actually for sharing, but it wasn’t for sharing on my blog and I don’t have it in my hand yet.  I just thought I’d share it with my readers because I <3 Artscow and it’s a great deal!  Everything I have gotten from Artscow I have either paid for on my own full price or had a coupon offer for one of their fabulous deals.  They don’t even know I’m blogging this.

I wish I did it before I went last night.  I would have saved myself a couple of hours.

When we went to the modeling interview thing, Alyce was called back for 7:10 that night.  My other 2 weren’t.  Katiana was crying in the car. (She’s the one who wanted to go in the beginning and started this whole ball rolling.)  She was upset because “Alyce is prettier than me”.  No Katiana, Alyce just has a different look, maybe he wants someone with blue eyes.  Maybe he wants a 3 year old.  It has nothing to do with how you look, believe me child, I have been told by many people how beautiful you are.  Mama is not the only one who thinks so.

He went gaga over Alyce.  Oh she is such a ham!  She looks like a little Barbie doll and wrote WOW on her paper and said be back tonight at 7:10 with a current photo of her.

Problem.  All my pictures are either in photo books or on my hard drive.  I had to come home, take a picture (of all 3 of them because he told Jordan and Kat that he would call me if they were chosen), run up to Hy-Vee, printed it out (recommend Hy-Vee’s photo processing much more than Wal-Mart’s after seeing the results of their prints in seconds pictures), and jetted back downtown.

My nephew Carter was also chosen to come back so I met my brother Josh there.  My niece Taylor wasn’t chosen because she is missing a couple of teeth and waiting for the adult teeth to come in.

Everything sounded wonderful.  No agent fees, no school, no this, no that, he takes his fee directly from the client, his fee was 25% (I’ve heard average is 10-20%).  Awesome awesome awesome.  We all know that you shouldn’t have to pay to have someone represent you.  They get their cut when you are booked out.  You shouldn’t have to pay for schooling, all that jazz.  As he said, schooling isn’t going to do anything for you in modeling at the beginning, it’s a vain industry, you either have the look that is needed or you don’t.

I’m nodding, going along, happy happy.

Then he gets into photos.  You have a choice, you can pay a one time fee of $449, he will pay for the photographer and for the photos each time you need to have your pictures updated, he picks what goes on the website and that is your comp card.  The other choice is that you can go out and hire a high fashion photographer, take your own picture, and have them print 350 comp cards to last a year.

I came home and really started looking the company up.  He mentioned that he had some claims against him with the Better Business Bureau but that all were resolved but one and that that was in resolution now and had to do with the client who was to pay the model, not him.  He didn’t mention that he has a rating of F with the Better Business Bureau and that no, it’s not just one claim that’s unresolved.

I started Googling the company.  Nothing.  Nothing except people asking in Yahoo questions about the company.  They’d been chosen and wanted to make sure it was legit before they signed.  That’s it.

I’ve been in business for 4 years.  Google Heather Manning and see how many hits you come up with.  I’m a small digital scrapbook designer.  If you are a modeling agency that has been in business for 4 years wouldn’t there be something good OR bad about you?  People have a tendency to praise what they love and blast what they hate.  Why is there nothing at all?  That makes no sense to me what so ever. 

One of the answers on Yahoo was that this company wasn’t listed in any of the industry trade places, that that didn’t mean they weren’t legit, but that they weren’t a major player.  That’s fine.  He told us that last night.  You aren’t going to get rich doing this, Alyce would build up a nice college account was more or less it, and that was the whole reason I was interested.  Even without being a major player in the industry there should be SOMETHING out there, right?

300 and some people auditioned.  36 were called back last night, Alyce being one of them.  I can’t bring myself to call this morning and see if she made the final 13 that were chosen.

I’m not willing to risk my child on something that’s not legit and I’m not willing to risk my money on something.

I read something too that I had forgotten.  Modeling agencies usually don’t do interviews like this.  There are so many people wanting to be models beating on their doors that the legit ones don’t go out to hotels and find people.  (Although, how else would it happen for you in Des Moines, IA?  I asked myself that many times as a teenager with singing.  I’m too short and round to have ever been a model.)

So, there you have it.  Lesson learned, no money lost, Alyce had fun taking pictures outside, and she’s happy that she looks like a barbie.

Here’s the kids pictures I took (remember, these were quickies, just to get a current picture of them, not my best work) –

Alyce

Jordan

Katiana

They’re all beautiful aren’t they?  I think so!  Katiana had just dried her tears for that picture.  Poor baby. 

Today is another day.  If this is something Katiana truly wants to do, I guess we can look for alternate routes.  I didn’t even know she was interested in it until the commercial came on the radio and she jumped all over it.  She was so broken hearted over it.  Alyce honestly doesn’t even know what modeling is.  She’s not to torn up over the fact that I’m not going to sign on the dotted line.

Have a wonderful day!

Normally, Vampire Diaries doesn’t scare me too much, but there have been a few scenes that have. 

The episode Blood Brothers is the one that sticks out as one that scared me. 

It is the episode where Damon and Stefan reveal to Elena how they were turned into vampires.  I don’t want to give you any spoilers in case you haven’t seen that one, but it was excellent!  Suspense, fear, sadness, it was all in there. 

(Photo courtesy of Vampire Diaries Online)

Fave quote of this episode:

Damon: "Give me the address."
Alaric: "What, so you can go without me? No, I don’t think so."
Damon: "I’m not going with you. You tried to kill me."
Alaric: "Well, you did kill me."

If you haven’t seen it yet, you can get ready to grab The Vampire Diaries: The Complete First Season !  It comes out tomorrow! 

That was the promo for Blood Brothers when it came out.

I have to say, I love The Vampire Diaries.  If you know me, you know I’m a Twilight fan, but not so much a fan of True Blood.  True Blood is just a little too much for me.  I couldn’t even watch the entire first episode when I got it from Netflix which was hugely disappointing to me because I’m a huge fan of the books.  To me, The Vampire Diaries is more grow up than Twilight, but doesn’t push it was far as True Blood does.  A nice happy medium for me and I love it!

Now I need to watch the special features, I still haven’t had time to do it.  I’m excited to watch The Vampire Diaries: A New Breed of Vampires — Casting the Series.  Someday I will have time to sit down and watch it.

Soon I hope!

I have been hired by Warner Bros WBWord division to raise awareness for The Vampire Diaries: The Complete First Season  – which arrives on Blu-ray/DVD on August 31. Receive free digital extras at http://bit.ly/9LSaVp

I know the rest of the world is working for the weekend, but me, I cannot wait for Monday.  That means 2 kids are back in school.  My place stays cleaner longer, less fights, just a tad less stressful.  Jordan and Katiana don’t fight nearly as much on a school day.  They have less time to annoy each other. 

Jordan had a game yesterday and he did so good!  He played goalie the whole first half, blocking every shot that came at him.  We were ahead 1-0 at half when the coach subbed him with another goalie (his son).  Within 5 minutes we were scored on twice and now were down by 1.

I know, I know, it’s not whether you win or lose but that you have fun, right?  I say that works for the 6 year olds, not under 12 boys who have been playing for 7 years and care about winning or losing.  Life is not all sunshine and lollipops and sometimes you have to lose, and you have to learn how to be a good loser, not everyone can win.

But that being said, put Jordan back in goalie.  He was on a roll darn it.  He did go back in as a sweeper (or fullback as I call that position).  Defense had to work extra hard because once the other team got a taste of winning they laid it all out there and fought for their win.  They were a good team.

And it was hot yesterday.  I felt for those kids.

Heck, I felt for us.

The girls watching the game.  I might be biased, being their mom and all, but aren’t they gorgeous?

Trying to shield Christiano from the sun.  He fell asleep on the way and stayed asleep almost the whole game.

Don’t worry, all the kids were covered in sunblock.

Getting ready as the other team comes towards him.  Child needs a new goalie jersey.  I remember when I bought this one it was way too big, how he’s grown.

He’s going to hate this picture, but I don’t get a good action shot often!

He said the same thing as I did.  If the coach hadn’t taken him out of goalie and put him in as sweeper, they might not have lost.  He said it to the coach though.  I said you’ve got some juevos man.  (Juevos is eggs in Spanish so we keep it clean.)  You said that about his son.  Oops.  Coach said that everyone who wants to play goalie needs to be able to have a turn.

I’m a sore loser.

I cracked up at one point.  One of the line refs was standing in front of me and his cell phone rang.  He took it out of his pocket to check it, looked at the parents on the side, and must have thought twice about answering it because he ignored the call and put his phone back in his pocket.  Hello.  Put your phone on silent during a game.

This is the same line ref who missed a player from the other team taking the ball about a foot out of bounds and bringing it back into play.  We were sitting there saying, it went out.  We couldn’t say anything to the ref though.  We all signed good sportsmanship contracts which included not calling the ref out.

I wonder if our refs lean towards us at all when we play?  I’ve never noticed blatant favoritism but maybe it’s because you only notice the ref calling things on your team?

We got called offsides a couple of times, well, more than a couple of times, but twice  it was very questionable whether we were actually offsides or not.

There were a couple of times their team was definitely offsides and they weren’t called on it.

It is hard being a mom on the sidelines.  I’m telling you.

Those of you who have been there know what I’m talking about.

I’m sure it’s tough watching football kids to, but it kills me when I see feet coming off the ground above waist level to kick a ball BY.MY.SON’S.HEAD.

I hate it when I see him get kicked in the privates and dropped to the ground.

I want to yell to stop play when any of the kids are on the ground and the ball is still in play by them, other kids kicking at it.

Oh well, soccer is over – until tomorrow.  Both kids have practice at 6.

Today I am taking Katiana and Alyce down to a modeling thing that was advertised on the radio.  No agent fees, no photographs needed, no schooling fees, just an audition and if you’re chosen, they pay for your photographs.  They work with Coke and some movie company, plus catalogs and calendars.  They are looking for 3 – 18 year olds. 

No, I’m not a stage mom, never auditioned my kids for anything more than a photo contest.  (Kat was put in a book when she was 5 months old when I won one photo contest.)  Katiana heard the commercial in the car and asked if we could go.  I said why not?  Who knows if they’d get chosen for anything, but  if they did, that would be great.  I’m always looking for ways to put more into their savings account for college and the future for them. 

Jordan is thinking about interviewing too.  He needs a hair cut bad though.  He told me he’d let me know when we get there.

I’m not sure if Alyce will be up to either.  She’s just starting to break out of her shyness shell with family members.  I’m not sure how she’d do with strangers asking her questions and asking her to do things.

We’ll see how it goes.

Alright, I have a diaper to change and various other mom things to do.  You have a great day!

I reviewed Jennifer Shaw’s CD a couple of months ago.  I loved her voice!  She is an extremely talented singer with a very strong voice.  Love love love her!

She is debuting her new music video today, and to celebrate the premiere, Jennifer is giving the song away as a free MP3 download 8/30 ONLY!

The video is produced and directed by Jeffrey Kubach whose resume’ includes the hit TV show Survivor as well as a nomination for Best Pop Music Video from Gospel Music Channel!  The video will premiere on www.Godbeat.tv today.

Get your free MP3 of the song God Loved The World here. (http://jennifershaw.com/godloved)

I had to share this with you all as Scott is one of my favorite authors!  You should check him out (and the Kindle giveaway blog tour).  I’ve reviewed 2 of his books so far (The Red Church and Burial To Follow).  I’ve said it in each of my book reviews, Scott reminds of me of some of the greats ie:  Stephen King, Dean Koontz, etc.  He has his own unique writing style, but he is so fabulous.  You can’t put his books down.  Just keep on turning those pages!

Plus, I’ve got nothing but postives to say about the Kindle, and mine is just the 2!  I’d love to get my hands on the DX!  Give it a shot!

KINDLE GIVEAWAY BLOG TOUR

Author Scott Nicholson and Amazon are giving away two Kindles as part of his fall book blog tour from September through November. A Kindle DX will be given away through the participating blogs, and a Kindle 3 will be given away through the tour newsletter. A Pandora’s Box of free ebooks will be given away through Nicholson’s "hauntedcomputer" Twitter account.

"The digital era coincides with Act II of my career," Nicholson said. "The Kindle has broadened many people’s horizons and given readers more power than ever, and this is an opportunity to celebrate them and the book bloggers who spread the word. "

Nicholson is author 12 novels and three story collections, as well as four comics series and six screenplays. His paranormal thrillers "The Red Church," "Drummer Boy" and "Speed Dating with the Dead" have all hit #1 in the Kindle "Ghosts" category.

As a bonus, if Nicholson hits the Top 100 in the U.S. or U.K. Kindle Store during the tour between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30, he will give away an extra Kindle 3 through the blogs. Sign up for the newsletter at scottsinnercircle-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to get daily links to the participating blogs. Winners will be selected at the Watauga County (NC) Public Library in December. No purchase necessary, and the contest is international. Co-sponsored by Kindle Nation Daily and Dellaster Design. Details at www.hauntedcomputer.com.

Scott Nicholson
http://www.hauntedcomputer.com
http://www.twitter.com/hauntedcomputer

And watch for 2 more book reviews from me of Scott’s books!  I cannot wait to get started on them!

Katiana had the first game of the season yesterday and she did great!  They are playing 4 on 4 this year because she moved up to under 8.  She wasn’t thrilled about playing sweeper and we kept giving her encouragement from the sidelines when it was her turn to play defense.  She kept telling us I caaaaan’t.  Yes you caaaaaaaan.  Play goalie with no hands!  You can do it.  She got scored on.  It was all good though.

When she went back up to striker she scored 4 goals, boom boom boom.  She’s turning into a rocking little soccer player.  All the girls did really well yesterday and we won by some insane number like 17 to 5 or somewhere around there.  It was crazy. 

Really Kata, you can play sweeper.  I promise!

The whole team.  We have some new girls this year since we have 8 players instead of 6.  Same coaches though (on both ends) and a new assistant coach in the middle.  Honestly, these guys are so awesome with the girls.  We’re lucky to have had them as our coaches for the past couple of seasons.  I really like them.

Christiano

Alyce

We were all slightly disturbed by the number of dragonflies that were out.  It was Katiana’s first away game ever and we played in town where the fields are right by the river.  Dragonflies EVERYWHERE!  Like, duck!  there were so many of them.  They don’t hurt people right?

After the game we ate at Carlos O’Kelley’s because the Olive Garden had a humongous wait and I don’t wait more than 5 minutes with little kids.  Doesn’t work well.

Then we went to Wal-Mart and grabbed stuff to cook out at my mom’s and to make s’mores with. 

Came home, put the extra stuff away and headed to mom’s.  My brother Josh, his wife Shelley, and their 3 kids were there and we had a blast.  We brought our own meat to cook whatever we wanted for supper and my family had steak tacos with green sauce and bratwursts.  Pato cooked ours.  If you ever get a chance to taste Pato’s cooking on the grill you should jump for it.  I’ve never tasted food as good as his.  I prefer his to going out to eat.  I’m a lucky woman. 

We hung out around the campfire roasting marshmallows with humongous campfire size marshmallows that made an incredible mess with 6 kids until about 11 and then came home.  I forgot to get my camera out, so no pictures of that fun.

At home I promptly crawled into bed and passed out much to Pato’s dismay.  I think he tried to wake me up but I was having none of that.  I went straight to dream land.

Got up and just made some bird bread because I didn’t get it done last night before I passed out.  My budgies are calling out for it.  Loudly.  They get it at 8:30 AM usually.  They aren’t happy with me right now.

Today Jordan’s dad is bringing him home in a couple of hours and then he has a soccer game today.  Then home for showers and bed for school tomorrow.

I’m off to pull the bread out of the oven and get the girls and Nano in the shower for the game.

Have a great day!

I don’t even remember what I was going to blog about this morning. 

I have a nice tender spot on my neck that’s burning and made me forget.

I took Woodstock out of his cage this morning, like I always do, and we hung out, it was all good.  Went to put him back in his cage so that I could get Twinkle out and he didn’t think it was time to go back in.  He got me good on my knuckle.  The middle one on my hand.  I said, ok.  We’ll just hang for a tad bit more.  Went to put him back in his cage again, and he looked at me, then bit me on my neck.

On my neck.

I have never had one of my birds bite me on my neck.

Little “4 letter word that I don’t put on my blog that starts with s and ends with t”.

I cannot believe he just did that to me.

At least he didn’t draw blood in either spot.  I just have a couple of indentations where he peeled some skin off.

That’s not right.

I’ve had him since the end of July, but birds are different type of animal.  They don’t immediately become your best friend.  Well, unless they are handfed babies, like Twinkle was.  She loves me because I gave her the formula.  She was accustomed to our hands from 6 weeks on.  Older birds, especially rescue birds, it takes them awhile to get to trust you. 

Woodstock is 7 and set in his ways. 

He’s lucky in that he wasn’t abused, but he was abandoned by his owner.  She was in a bad situation and dropped him off with her friend, she said she’d back back to get him.  Then the friend never saw her again.  Her friend wasn’t a bird person at all, so she took her to the Macaw and Cockatiel Rescue of New Mexico.  I fell in love with his little face in a picture and when they came through Iowa, he came to live with us. 

I don’t think he’d ever eaten anything but seed.  I’ve got him eating bird bread (full of veggies, fruits, protein, and other things that are really good for him), chopped veggies, pellets, and a little seed now.  I just gave him his first chopped up fruit this morning.  He’s not interested in it so far.  It makes me sad when I hear about birds being fed all seed.  I did it with my first parakeet because I didn’t know any better and didn’t do my research.  It causes so many health problems, including liver failure eventually.  Who knows if that is what took Huck before his time or not, but now my birds all get transferred to a huge variety of food (snuck into their bread if it has to be).

Back to not trusting you.  Birds live a very long time.  Lovebirds, even though they are smaller birds, can live 15 years or longer.  (Did you know that budgies can live that long too if well cared for?  I’m determined mine will.  Penelope is 5 and Lucky is 4.  They are my oldest budgies.)  When you get an older bird, especially one who has been abused, it takes them a long time to trust you. It can take months, at the very least.  Seeing as I’ve only had Woodstock a month, and I was gone for a week of that, I don’t blame him for still being nippy.  (That’s a nice way of saying, watch his body language or he will take a chunk of skin out of your finger….or neck.)

With Woodstock, you never ever offer your finger for him to step up on yet.  He’ll take a bite, hang on, and twist (which is what he was doing to my neck).  When I take him out of the cage, if he wants out, he’ll hop to my shoulder.  Then when I put him back, I put my shoulder up to the door, and he hops in….usually.  The only time I give him my finger is if he’s flown somewhere he can’t down from or if he’s on the floor and he can’t get back up.  Then he doesn’t bite.

That’s another thing with him.  I think he’s either been kept in a small cage his whole life or had his wings clipped since before he fledged or right afterwards, not giving him a chance to learn how to fly.

Twinkle has never been clipped and I have no intentions of ever clipping her.  She zoom zoom zooms all over the place.  She can turn corners on a dime, fly down from the highest places she finds to perch (surprisingly, flying down is very difficult for birds – if they have never really learned how to fly), she’s just amazing to watch.  I can turn around to watch her, and she’s already done a complete lap and is back at the starting spot when I’ve just turned to see her go. 

Woodstock only flies when he is surprised.  That’s it.  And then he needs you to come rescue him.  He prefers to walk/hop everywhere.  I keep telling him he’s a bird and that he needs to use his wings, but he doesn’t listen.  I guess it’s actually good for now while he’s getting to know us that he doesn’t take off and hide somewhere.

You want to know the funny thing about Woodstock?  He trusts Katiana.  She can get him to step up and put him right back in the cage.  I tried to wake her up to help me put him back when he bit me and Pato yelled at me to let her sleep.  but, I have a vampire hanging off my neck.

All in all, this is why I don’t have a cockatoo or a macaw.  They have HUGE beaks that can do major damage if they aren’t trained properly.  That’s also why I don’t own a pit bull.  I don’t think I am a strong enough personality to be in control and those animals definitely need to be trained by someone who is in control and firm with them.  Not wishy washy ol’ me.  I’d love to have a bigger bird, I think they are gorgeous, but I leave them to the people who really know what they are doing with them.

Speaking of birds, we had moved the budgies into Jordan’s room when we got back from Ohio for a long drawn out reason.  He decided last night, against my advice, that they needed some out of cage time.  The budgies don’t like people bothering them.  We’ve tried taming them.  They are in a flock.  A lot of times in a flock situation, they have no interest in making friends with their humans.  Mine just want me to feed them and leave them.  He let Angel and Lucky out somehow.  Which I found really strange because we’ve tried to let them out before and they wouldn’t even come to the door.  Then he opened his bedroom door to say, MOM!  Lucky and Angel got out of the cage, but I’ll get them!  Scared budgies are fast budgies.  Took me quite awhile to capture both of them.  I had to towel them to get them back in the cage.  They seem none the worse for it this morning, so that’s good.

Kat just got up and asked me what happened to my neck.  She said it looks like it hurts.  I haven’t looked at it yet, but if anyone asks at her soccer game today, I’ll just tell them Woodstock gave me a hickey.

Speaking of soccer, I have to go take a shower, get 4 kids ready, a husband up, and Jordan packed for his dad’s.

You have a wonderful day! 

I don’t post a lot of these, but this one made me roll.  I found it over at the bird board I am a member of.

These are actual comments made by 16 Police Officers. The comments were taken off actual police car videos around the country:

1. "You know, stop lights don’t come any redder than the one you just went through."
2. "Relax, the handcuffs are tight because they’re new. They’ll stretch after you wear them a while."
3. "If you take your hands off the car, I’ll make your birth certificate a worthless document."
4. "If you run, you’ll only go to jail tired."
5. "Can you run faster than 1200 feet per second? Because that’s the speed of the bullet that’ll be chasing you."
6. "You don’t know how fast you were going? I guess that means I can write anything I want to on the ticket, huh?"
7. "Yes, sir, you can talk to the shift supervisor, but I don’t think it will help. Oh, did I mention that I’m the shift supervisor?"
8. "Warning! You want a warning? O.K, I’m warning you not to do that again or I’ll give you another ticket."
9. "The answer to this last question will determine whether you are drunk or not. Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?"
10. "Fair? You want me to be fair? Listen, fair is a place where you go to ride on rides, eat cotton candy and corn dogs and step in monkey poop."
11. "Yeah, we have a quota. Two more tickets and my wife gets a toaster oven."
12. "In God we trust; all others we run through NCIC." ( National Crime Information Center )
13. "Just how big were those ‘two beers’ you say you had?"
14. "No sir, we don’t have quotas anymore. We used to, but now we’re allowed to write as many tickets as we can."
15. "I’m glad to hear that the Chief (of Police) is a personal friend of yours. So you know someone who can post your bail."
AND THE WINNER IS….
16. "You didn’t think we give pretty women tickets? You’re right, we don’t.. Sign here."