Unsolved Mystery...; )

OK~over 100 hits yesterday on this blog and 16 bloggers commented...half of whom I already know. Seems kinda funny! We are all so secret on the web.

I won't be blogging daily anymore. Life is too short to spend soooooo much time on this thing. It IS fun, but too addictive. In a couple of weeks my schedule is changing drastically anyway and won't have the time which I did this past year. So keep checking back. Ya never know what I might like to post or when. I love memes and have one on hand just waiting to be answered. Have a great weekend!

WHO'S OUT THERE?!

I have quite a few visitors to my blog on a daily basis. It is fun to see when someone has left a comment, but I wonder who all you "other" people are?...hmmm. I know I visit blogs without commenting due to how much time it really takes to click over to a blog, read and then think if I care to say anything, but if any of you LURKERS are willing then drop me a comment and let me know who you are. It's kinda freaky knowing people know about me and I know nothing about them! ; ) LOL! Have a great day!

BTW: (I saw one of those dumb t-shirts with words on them yesterday and it said, "Thursday is the new Friday." Well, maybe that IS funny!) Be a blessing today!!! ; )

This & That

I have stated before how much we love our new home and the area, but to have people go the extra mile to make us feel welcome just blesses my heart. We are also four minutes from our church now. Several of our church members live close and we just feel more connected living here. We were blessed by one of the other staff wives bringing us this darling little basket filled with fruit along with a huge pan of freshly baked brownies. Can you guess which thing we chose to eat first? LOL! Well, the fruit was still left for the pic. There's your answer. We also had a family bring us grilled hot dogs with all the trimmings and makings for ice cream sundaes. Our next door neighbor brought us warm banana muffins one morning, as well. The rest of these pics are just random things that have caught my attention and the camera was close by.

Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

No one can see me. This is a safe place. Hee hee...I'm so clever.

Do you think these two are tired of the whole moving drama?

PandaGirl keeping herself occupied while we were moving things into the house. Cute as a button, but bored to tears. LOL!

I think Miao has adjusted just fine to his new home. Taking a little peek out the window while lounging on the new couch!

Last Tuesday we joined our beloved Hunan Spice family & Deshing Darling family (they both have better pics) along with some other blogging moms who have daughters from China whom we met only through blogging!

Seedless watermelon! YUM!

We woke up to this one day last week. Fun. Can't complain toooo much. It is only the second flat on this Xterra since '02.

This is how PandaGirl took care of her "babies" while she was away last Friday night at a friend's house when PandaPop and I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum (BTW: it was GREAT!)

Is This Texas or Seattle, WA?

I'm not complaining. I am just observing. It has seriously rained here for, what, two? three? months straight. It is JULY and we aren't even close to the 100's in temps yet. Praise the Lord for that huge blessing! Only, we can't really swim or do anything that is "summer" like. Everyone just walks around with umbrellas. All the foliage is so green and lush and gorgeous I feel like we are living in Scotland or Ireland. I wonder what our fall will look like? Normally here in Texas the leaves are actually engulfed in flames by, say, mid August and fall off the trees leaving most of the autumn leaves that remained to cling to the branches a lovely gray-ish-taupe-wrinkly elephant legs color...pure eye candy. This year we might stay green clear to Christmas! Crazy stuff! This is all after two years of serious drought. I will be glad when Jesus returns and the new heaven and the new earth (all this is found in the book of Revelation) will be as it SHOULD be....perfect, balanced and whole. For now, we are off to our last day of swimming lessons at the in-door pool for PandaGirl, though I'm not exactly sure when she can put her new skills into practice...it's raining here, ya know.

Where's The Beef?..er...Sweet?

This week I was thrown back in time to the 80's commercial from Wendy's hamburger joint and their famous marketing strategy of "Where's the Beef?". For you young'uns out there, in order to appreciate the humor in this, you have to had seen these hilarious commericials of the little old lady barking out in a rough 40-year-smoker's-voice, "Where's the BEEF?" when she discovered her burger's meat volume was almost nil. I felt her pain this week in my own kitchen. My mom had made some tub cookies a couple of weeks ago that were sooooo yummy and she informed me that they were new at WalMart in the little tubs. I can down anything with sugar and chocolate in very large amounts. Love it. Ususally eating several cookies at a time is my downfall. I wasn't stupid to think that these cookies were low in fat or calories, but I DID try to follow the serving size on the tub and bake what a normal size cookie should be. HA! I scooped out the suggested "rounded teaspoon", placed it on the pan and baked. The final product was less than desirable. The teeny-weeny little spot of sugar and flour that came out was nothing like what we call a cookie serving in Texas. The next batch I made OUR size...realizing of course, that we are eating a meal's worth of calories in one cookie now. I wonder why we can't lose weight?

Just Because...

I didn't feel very bloggy the past couple of days. I just found these two pics and thought how very cute they are of my little fam and wanted to post them. PandaGirl took this pic of PandaPop and I at the hotel the weekend we went to check out our current church for the official "meet the congregation" weekend. She did great!

BTW: Whatever Blogger has done to "help" us by autosaving the drafts is really messing up! I can't preview my posts!!!! GRRR. Anyone else having this prob????????

In Case You're Curious...

Just in case you always wanted to know what the President's Ranch in Crawford looks like, you can get a glimpse today. No matter your views on George W. Bush our country is certainly covered in prayer because of his family's Christian values and the many Christians who do support him. I grew up just a few miles from his Crawford ranch in Texas. In fact, my high school used the play the Crawford Pirates in sports events. My cousin did all of the welding on the wrought iron fencing that encompasses the whole ranch and he has his picture with ol' George in their work clothes! Love it! When all the media hoopla started over his ranch I just had to laugh, because Crawford is a little town in the middle of nowhere! My parents live close to it and now my in-laws have land very close to the ranch. Saturday we went to "see" his ranch. HA! As you can tell from the pics below there is NO getting even close to his home. There's no American flags blowing in the breeze. No huge presidential signs. No welcome banners. Just a big STOP barricade. There IS a little house area close to the property with all kinds of satelites and antennaes with all kinds of government looking vehicles. Probably Secret Service stuff.

Apparently, George and Laura have made a point to have their ranch as eco friendly as possible. They have planted GOBS of trees, orchards and other plant life and have the best kind of energy efficient "stuff" as possible. Very earth friendly ranch. Even after the STOP sign the ranch is another mile or so down the road, so no goofballs like us can get into any trouble!

10,000th Visit!

As of December 6, 2006 I have had a few visitors on this crazy blog! How fun this has been for me!! I look forward to checking it everyday and updating when I can. How can I be "friends" with these people whom I have never met?!...but I feel that I "know" some of these friends through visiting their blogs as well. If I have the same number of visitors as a typical day then today I should roll over 10,000...woohoooo! So silly, I know. There are gobs of blogs with tons more hits than I get, but I only started out doing this for friends and family to see pics of PandaGirl and keep up with us. I love the new bloggy friends that stop by and leave sweet comments daily! Those of you who don't comment, thanks for coming back day after day to see what bizarre thing I might decide to post. If possible, look to see if YOU are the 10,000th hit today and let me know....maybe I'll call Ed McMahan and he can hook you up with millions $$$! ; ) Be a blessing today!!!

The 4400...Any Watchers???

Last fall PandaPop discovered this Sci-Fi series, went to the library and borrowed Seaons 1 & 2. We watched SEVENTEEN episodes in ONE WEEK!!! I am NOT a night-owl so for me to stay up until 1:00AM to watch a show...it must be captivating to me. I did a short little post about this show back in the fall, but now I have a lot more blog visitors. I want to know who else watches this series. We have been DVR-ing Season 3 and watch them on Thursday nights. The past few have been such a great story line full of twists!!! Love it! If you are faithful watcher then we just saw the one where Tom and Diane "remember" Maia in the fantasy dreams, Isabelle tries to hurt her father and Shawn tries to kill himself. I know, it sounds weird, but it really is fun. It definitely is a series that you have to see the very first one and don't miss any episodes in order to "get it" and keep up with the characters. Anyway just let me know if you are a watcher, but PLEASE don't spoil then end of Season 3 for us!!!! ; )

NEED to Win!!!!!

OK~as you can see from the links in this post I was encouraged to let all my readers know about the great contest going on over at 5 Minutes for Mom. If you really want to join in, then just follow the instructions, but please be advised that the little PRIZE is coming to the Panda home.....I hope. I really NEED a Dyson slim vacuum. Really. So do what you must, but remember that I have a cat and NEED this. Really. NEED. ; )

Visual DNA ~ This is Soooo Fun!!!

PandaMom's Visual DNA

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PandaPop's Visual DNA

Read my VisualDNA™     Get your own VisualDNA™

I LOVE being from TEXAS!!

You Are 80% Texas

Well, knock me down and steal muh teeth! You're pretty darn Texan.

How Texas Are You?

There is no 80% anything....I am full, 100%, born and bred TEXAN and love it! I hate the detestable heat in July and August, but other than that I adore being from Texas. We have a spirit all our own down here! Later y'all!

Decorating for a Retreat...

Our youth girls had a retreat last night that was themed with countries around the world. I was asked to decorate a table from China. This kind of thing is right up my alley. I love parties and I LOVE decorating and buying stuff for them!!! I had such a blast piecing together Chinese things that we actually purchased in China as well as surfing the web and finding fun things as give-aways. Since I had already been to the Asian market here in our area, it was nothing for me to pop over there and grab some authentic Chinese candy.

The girls each got to go home with:
rice paper umbrella
chopsticks
red envelope with Chinese coin (good luck symbol for Chinese New Year)
small panda
Chinese take-out box filled with Chinese candy and a chocolate covered fortune cookies (did you know these are NOT from China?)
a place card with the Chinese flag on the front with a Chinese character meaning either love, peace, joy or goodwill which I has also typed up a quick little trivia page on the inside

The icing on the cake was that PandaGirl was already dressed up for our Chinese New Year dinner with our playgroup, so it worked out perfect to stop by and snap a pic of her in her traditional dress with the decorated table. Love it!

Toward A Growing Marriage Conference

We had a wonderfully refreshing time on Saturday at the Toward A Growing Marriage Conference led by Dr. Gary Chapman. We have never gone to a marriage enrichment ANYthing, but I have always wanted to. Our best friends were signed up to go so we decided to tag along! We hardly ever get to see them, so we LOVED getting together for this fun event. PandaPop and I have worked very hard to have a good marriage. Only by the Grace that God freely gives can we boast. If it were left up to us we would have messed things up a long time ago, but He sees to it that we WORK at making our marriage the best it can be on a continual basis. We learned on Saturday that in order to keep things fresh and in perspective that we should plan on attending one marriage enrichment event at least ONCE a year for the rest of our life. Dr. Gary Chapman is an experienced, knowledgable and God-ordained man who has a wealth of information to better your marriage. If you have never heard of The Five Love Languages or any of his other writings then I implore you to search him out. I am thankful EVERYDAY for my best friend. I love PandaPop. A good marriage doesn't just happen. It takes lots of prayer, humility, team-work and for us...LOTS of laughter. We are blessed.

Six Degrees...

Have you ever actually tried the Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon thing? It is CRAZY how it really works! If you have not ever done this before or never even heard of it then try it:
All you do is try to connect someone or yourself to Kevin Bacon in six steps. It is mainly for connecting actors to him, but I can do it and I think it so funny! I did this a long time ago, but some reason it popped into my head and thought, "That would make a great post!" (You know you're a blogger when...HA!) You would be amazed at how easy it is to pick an actor and link them to Kevin Bacon in six steps. Here goes my personal connection:

1. I dated...
2. a GUY in college whose...
3. SISTER dated...
4. the ACTOR who played Slider in Top Gun with...
5. TOM CRUISE who played in a Few Good Men with...
6. KEVIN BACON

Can you believe it?!!! Little ol' me, connected to Kevin Bacon. Try it...I think you'll be surprised!

Click Here for History of This Phenomenon

Fajita Wanna-Be!

I don't know WHO decided that they knew how to make fajitas, but they are sorely mistaken on how this process works!!! For convenience sake I broke down and bought this Tyson pre-bagged, fajita kit ensemble. NEVER AGAIN!!! The serving size on the back of the bag says that it is made for SEVEN servings. UH, not in TEXAS.....the creators of fajitas!!! Take a look at my skillet and tell me that you can make SEVEN fajitas out of this. No way. Maybe if you put one piece of chicken per tortilla. Nobody does that. Needless to say, I will continue making my very own VERY delicious homemade fajitas. No more pre-bagged wanna-be-fajitas for this Texan!

Yankee Candles!

While at the mall I just had to go into the Yankee Candle Shop. I love so many of their scents. Now that the holidays are over I am ready to move from orange-cranberry or cinnamon-spice scents to one I enjoy for this time of year. Macintosh Apple. Yum. So crispy, fresh and awakening. Makes me start thinking about the crispness of spring just around the corner. It is bright red....my favorite color and add just the right touch to our home. mmmmm.

Why All the Name Callin'???

This post is for those of you who might have noticed on some of my comments that a particular blogger and I call each other a "geek". At some point in my life with my friend at

Glorious Grace

and I started calling each other a "GEEK". It has stuck for ten years now. I can't even remember what ever got us started. Maybe you do, Geek, I know you are reading this at work and laughing. I can even hear your laugh. Little Miss Glorious Grace was an eighth grader when I met her. We are eleven? years apart. PandaPop became her youth minister, I fell in love with her darling self and for some reason she thought I had something "motherly" in me. I did find myself mentoring her, though not really knowing about what exactly. Through the years she has been nothing but a pure delight to my heart. Thank you, Geek. Now she is this amazingly beautiful woman, studying for her Master's Degree and is becoming the godly woman that God has created. I am the one blessed to know HER. I can't wait to see how the Lord works His plan in her life. Are you teared up at all yet, Geek? You really should get back to work, ya know. Thanks for all the laughter you bring to mine and PandaPop's life. You aren't a geek at all. You are an angel. (Now, don't get all theological on me. I know you aren't REALLY an angel, duh.) Love you, GEEK!

Winter Ice Storm

We were able to get out a bit and were even able to have lunch with some dear friends that were passing through town...on the ice. I was so upset that I didn't take my camera with me, because the ice that we saw on the trees along the roads were just phenomenal with sparkly glassy beauty. God is so creative.