tagged in photo fun

my friend hannah tagged me...and i thought this would be fun. so, here's what you do:

1. go to your 4th folder where you store your photos.

2. select the 4th photo (no exceptions).

3. post the picture with an explanation and link it back to your tagger.

4. tag 4 people do do the same.

this is a table arrangement I did three Christmases ago for a women's holiday event at our (then) church. i (as a children's pastor's wife) was asked to do a "segment" on decorating for the holidays. so I introduced the women of Rolling Hills to no napkin rings. note that this is not at our home. meaning I toted my crystal tea glasses and two (count them) sets of forks to do this. and i threw in a little shout out to martha and made place cards that could be taken home as gifts. if only i had that time these days. 

what you don't see is the children's table arrangement on the other side. i toted butcher paper and jumbo crayons and put little paper napkins in tiny paper sacks for their setting. and i even put little luminaries as the centerpiece with fake tealights so that the kids wouldn't burn themselves. i was SO good back then. 

i tag: Dayle, Rebecca, Jessica and Mom.

just for fun this time.

jon made the decision to take our son on an outing last weekend to see mall cop. i was dubious from the start, and, as usual, my instincts were correct and it was truly a terrible flick. it had that quality that poor tyler perry is guilty of...the one where you try to mix a lesson into something that should really just be for laughs.

anyway, this post wasn't supposed to be a review, but there's a scene in the movie where paul blart (a painfully large kevin james) puts a cassette tape into his boom box and jams. i leaned over to jon and said: i think i had that same stereo. and he said: me too.

it got me thinking: kids these days have no idea. do you remember what it was like to have to search for songs using the rewind and fast forward? and if you held it down halfway, you could hear the teeny mousey music that made it easier to figure out when the song was over? how great was it when you caught the whole song from the radio and were able to add it to your mix tape without the deejay speaking before it was over? and you couldn't hear the latest song by just flipping on your laptop or flicking through your iPhone. you had to get that puppy at the wal-mart or one of those creepy music shops at the hot springs mall. and use the afore-mentioned finding methods to get to the song on the radio, because it was never, ever the first song. there was no best buy or really even target. if you didn't have enough baby-sitting money saved up, you had to buy the single. for me, that meant "blame it on the rain." and the B side had "dance with the devil." which i wasn't allowed to listen to, because no one should EVER think about waltzing with satan.

i'm sure one could make the argument that our brains are freed up by being able to skip around to whatever song we want with a couple of button clicks. that we can accomplish more by being able to save a trip to the store by downloading the latest from iTunes. but i kind of miss the intentional nature of the cassette tape. you had to be committed to find what you wanted. more people could benefit from this, i think.

whatever.

fyi...jon was on whatever with alexis and jennifer tonight re: plane crashes. i'll post a link tomorrow, but according to him, he called in when they started talking about "the miracle" plane crash in nyc. and he got right on. and he was able to tell the story of his plane crash almost TEN YEARS ago (we are so old). 

we are HUGE fans of alexis and jennifer. not only did he get to talk to them (i am GREEN with envy), but he got to spread some Jesus while he was at it. 

i married the coolest man on earth. siriusly. HA.

drip...drip...drip...

after the great flood of '08 (see earlier posts if you're curious), jon and i joined a plumbing club. not a club for plumbers, but a club where you pay a certain fee each month and twice a year, the plumbers check all your pipes and if something goes wrong, they basically pay for it.

so we were due on friday for our second 6 month check. the plumber...JUSTIN...came in (at 10:01...we had been told it was an 8 - 10 window) and told us that everything was great...except we need a new garbage disposal (this is legitimate), and all FOUR of our toilets needed to be "rebuilt." basically, because the tank bolts (trust me, i have a whole vocabulary you don't even want to touch re: plumbing) were rusting. according to JUSTIN (picture it in script), our homebuilder decided to use "eljer" toilets which come with steel bolts -- not brass -- from the factory, and the stupid builder decided to install them with the steel bolts. imagine. 

anyway, he told us that once you got in there to replace the bolts, you might as well go ahead and gut the whole thing and rebuild the inside. to the tune of...wait for it....$260 PER TOILET. the math alone makes my head hurt. i've been to lowe's enough to know that this is greater than the price of a brand new porcelain throne. please.

side bar: i grew up with one bathroom. jon calls me a "bathroom refugee." when we decided to buy a new home, my first priority was bathrooms. LOTS of bathrooms. with multiple potties and multiple sinks. so many that if one clogged, we could just play musical loos for years. so this house has four...count them...four potties. and i love it. 

anyway. i played the girl card (i call it another term...named after a girlie part, but i've promised to keep this thing PG), and told JUSTIN-in-script that i'd have to talk it over with my husband...being as the tab was approaching the $1500 mark. he fed me some line about how he just couldn't tell how long we had before all four of them started leaking. keep in mind that for three years prior to dennis's arrival, we have only used one pottie consistently. now we only use two consistently. something. was not adding up.

and i began my internet search. have you heard of expert village? they are amazing. they give you videos of ANYTHING you need. including removing and replacing tank bolts. 

so...jon and i...the same couple who used to spend saturdays whiling away hours in pottery barn...spent the whole saturday replacing tank bolts. it took four tries (before we got it right on the first pottie), but we did it. we saved about a grand, in my estimation, even though we lost four hours of life in the process. lost is relative, because anytime we fix something, we learn something new about our relationship. to wit: jon is sometimes right. sometimes. 

but i can't wait until tomorrow, when i get to call JUSTIN-in-script and tell him that for the low low price of $250 each, i'll fix all the toilets he's found "wrong" all over town. maybe we can be partners in suckering people.