Our Visitor

We (Barb and I) kept our 3 year old grandson Andy overnight and part of Sunday while his parents got some time to themselves sort of lol. His parents decided to keep his little sister Emily with them as she gets a bit finicky when she stays with people she doesn't know all that well. We just happen to be not that well known to her. We did make some progress getting to know her on Saturday night though as we took the whole bunch to Cici's Pizza for dinner. It was a good time there as we got to interact with Emily a bit. These photos were taken in our backyard so to speak. It's actually the back yard of our apartment complex. I had gone out to take a picture of a Heron that had landed at the wetland when my grandson Andy called out to me that he wanted to go with me. What could I say right? Anyway, by the time I took a few pics of the Heron (I'll save those for another post) Barb had joined us as well. It was Barb that spotted the little frog first. Andy had a lot of fun hopping after the little frog. He even got a chance to touch it. After that we took Andy out to play at a playground and some ice cream. His parents went to see some of the local sights here while we had Andy. They called a bit ago to say they would be here soon to pick him up. After they picked him up Barb and I came back into the apartment and it just seemed so empty. It was very nice to keep Andy overnight. I hope we get to do this more.

Change

I decided to make a little change to my blog. Not really the blog itself but the sidebar part. To make it easy to see who's in my "family" of bloggers I added a separate area that contains links to the other members of my family who have blogs. Not a big change but a change nonetheless. Till next time BYE!!

Google Sillyness

Skittles told me about this silly thing to do on Google where you type your name and add "needs" to the search and see what it says. I was busy checking out other things so Skittles did it for me lol. Here goes what she found.

1. Mike needs a date. ( I do??)
2. Mike needs help. ( They got that right lol)
3. Mike needs to go. ( Already did lol)
4. Mike needs a general wash in the middle. ( Gotta keep things clean)
5. Mike needs this dirty job. ( Plumbing isn't my thing lol)
6. Mike needs a new van. ( I'd rather have a pickup)
7. Mike needs a new post. ( I did 3 of them today ..sooooo)
8. Mike needs to be around real people. ( What's wrong with mannequins?)
9. Mike needs a small area to perform. ( I guess they haven't seen me lol)
10. Mike needs to get his hair cornrowed. ( The Bob Marley look? )

It's a fun thing to do. Give it a try and see what you come up with.
Till next time BYE!!

Saturday

Not much new going on here. I couldn't think of a picture to post for this weeks photo hunt. There is however something new this week. My son in law Bob has started a new blog. It looks to be like it will be a lot of fun visiting it. It's called Tiggerbob's Temperal Typings and he already has a couple of posts. I have added him to my sidebar if you'd like to go pay him a little visit and welcome him to the blog world.

Other than that, we plan to have my other son in law Billy and his wife Carrie along with their son Andy and daughter Emily over today. We'll take them to the new pizza place Cici's for dinner and keep Andy overnight. Maybe even keep Emily too, but she isn't all that happy around us as yet. We'll see. Till next time BYE!!

Monday

I just thought I'd post a picture that was taken Saturday at my grandsons birthday party. It isn't of him, but of his cousin, one of my other grandbabies Emily. She is 1 year old and she hasn't had much time to get used to me. It makes me happy that she sat on my lap for a bit Saturday playing with my watch. That seems to be a favorite thing for the grandkids to do. I enjoyed seeing all of them though. This one is just special because she didn't mind sitting with me. Till next time BYE!!

Birthday Party

Saturday was my grandson Jakob's birthday. So Skittles and I went over to his house for it. It was pretty nice getting to see not only him but all the grandkids. It was one of the few times we have gotten to see them all at one time in one place. We got a late start getting there but when we got there everyone was still enjoying the occasion. If you want to see pictures of the grandkids and Barb's kids, go to her blog Skittles' Place where she posted pics.

I took my camera with me but didn't take any pics myself. Why you might ask? lol. It's because I've found that I'm not that good at taking people pictures. Skittles is much better at that than I am in my opinion. So I let her take all the pics there.

After the birthday we went and visited a fellow blogger. I won't say who it is just yet as Skittles wants to use the pics she took there for a Manic Monday post. So, I'll just say that we had a very nice time meeting this fellow blogger and that it was a neat experience. Till next time BYE!!

Recent Thoughts

I had thought about posting a little thing about how students in schools recently have been pulling worse pranks then when I was younger. I have recently read about several of these in which students at school have used cleaning solvents in teachers coffee, urine in coffee and laxatives on bakery products. I can't remember anyone doing this when I was in school. At worse it was a drawing or spit wad aimed at a teacher. I was wondering to myself, what has happened that these young people would go to such measures? Then came the Virginia Tech shootings and the deaths of all those students and faculty members.

Now it seems that the cleaning solution in coffee seems rather paltry by comparison. I still don't get how these students feel that what they do is funny or a good prank to pull. I would never have thought about doing that to anyone. Not even a teacher that I didn't care for. I guess I don't know or understand how some kids are being raised to think these things up.

Now on to the Virginia Tech thing. I hear a lot of talk on the news about how things might have been averted had the campus police done things differently. I guess I don't really agree with this thinking. If I were a cop and got called to this early scene in which 2 people had been shot, I would have figured like the real cops did and thought the gunman had left the scene. Most of the time that's what happens. Who commits a crime then hangs around? I guess we all found out though.

The second thing that bothers me about all this is the talk about more gun control and more measures enacted to make it tougher to purchase a firearm. This type of thinking reminds me a lot of when I was in school and someone did something and the teacher didn't know who it was. All those in class got punished for it. I just don't think it's right to punish everyone for what an individual has done, no matter how bad it might have been.

Well, I guess that's about it for now. Till next time BYE!!

Balance Meme

I was tagged by Skittles at Skittles' Place to do a balance meme.

1. How do you achieve balance in your life? In easy terms it would be a 3 step process I think. Observe, Analyze, Act. Of course, it doesn't always work that easily.

2. What is your biggest challenge in balancing your life? knowing what needs to done to achieve balance.

3. What are your priorities? Being happy. It isn't always easy to know what it takes to make me happy, so it's a challenge in itself at times.

4. Have your priorities changed over time and why? Not really.

5. What advice can you share to help all of us balance our lives? Don't give up hope. :)

Saturday Photo Hunt

This weeks theme for the photo hunt is hobby. I have quite a few hobbies so this meme was pretty easy for me to do. I chose to take a picture of a couple of engines that I have put together. They are pretty neat in that part of them are made of metal. There are plastic parts also, but the engine block and cylinder heads are metal and are screwed together. They are also much larger than a standard model kit is. I enjoyed putting them together and hope you enjoy seeing them.

For Callie Ann

I had posted on my first and only Manic Monday a few weeks ago and the theme was "sprung". I posted a picture about a sprung frog from a railroad track. This prompted a question from Callie Ann Brat about whether I was into model railroads as well as real ones. So, after Skittles called her tonight I got to chat a little with her and she asked me about this. So, I am re-posting a picture that I took around Christmas of all my model trains set up on our old dining room table. To be honest though, this isn't all of them seeing as I did a bit of train shopping after that. So, Callie Ann, here's a shot of my trains all set out on the table. They are HO scale by the way.

Friday Visitor

It isn't exactly warm out, but we did have a nice visit by a neat critter today. I had gotten home from work and Skittles was taking our dog for a walk when she came back to the apartment very shortly after. She came in calling my name and asking me to come see something and bring my camera. As she led me out of our apartment patio door, she told me that there was a heron at the small wetland type area that is behind and to the south of our apartment. I tried getting a few shots of it standing near our door, but my lens just wasn't strong enough to get a good picture of it. So, I ventured nearer to it and got a few good shots of it. It was pretty neat seeing this bird. I've posted a few pics of it to show you what it looked like. Till next time BYE!!

Saturday Photo Hunt

This weeks theme for the photo hunters meme is "clean". This one got me to thinking. What could I post for this? So after thinking a bit more, I decided to post a pic of some clothes that had just been through the washing machine. Probably not the neatest pic, but it was the easiest I could think of lol.

Friday's Feast

Appetizer
When you travel, which mode of transportation do you prefer? All of our travels have been by car. We love seeing all the sights there are wherever we go.

Soup
Have you ever met a blogging friend in person? Not as of yet.

Salad
When was the last time you were really, really tired? Last night lol.

Main Course
If you could have dinner with any one fictional character from a book or movie, who would it be? Interesting question. Maybe it would be Roland Deschain from the Gunslinger book series written by Stephen King.

Dessert
Fill in the blank: One day, I hope to see clearly without glasses.

Friday

I haven't been blogging much lately. Most of my time after work has been watching tv or doing jigsaw puzzles. Skittles got our first jigsaw puzzle that we put together on our new dining room table a few weeks ago and it was a pretty neat one. After we put it together we had to find a whole bunch of hidden items that were mixed in with the picture. It was fun putting it together and also a lot of fun trying to find all the items on the list. We are now working on a new jigsaw puzzle. This one is just a standard puzzle though.

I'm off work for the Easter Holiday till Tuesday. A blessing that is part of working for the Big 3. We get Good Friday as well as Monday off. We had a meeting at work a month of so ago where we were told that things would slow down in mid March, but so far it really hasn't. We were down to about 8 or so hours for about a week then it was pretty much back to normal. At least for the time being that is. It seems that there are more orders for Mustangs coming in so the overtime is with us till that goes away.

It seems strange to me to get back into blogging for some reason. I used to post pretty regularly, but now it just isn't much of a priority anymore. Plus, I almost feel like an intruder while reading others blogs. Not sure what's going on with that. Anyway, I thought I might try to post more often just to keep the folks that do read my blog a little better up to date on what's going on here.

So that's about it for now. Till next time BYE!!