Month: July 2011

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Rain, Rain, Rain

It has been raining here like crazy!  All you see outside is rain, rain, and more rain.  I have a beautiful copper rain chain hanging outside by our back patio.  It has ornate flower cups after each link.  At the bottom of the chain I placed a basin to collect the water for display.  I love watching the water funnel down from flower down to the next flower.

I first saw rain chains at the home improvement center with the gutter drain pieces.  There were a few on display and I thought they looked much more appealing than the traditional gutter drain spouts.  I convinced my husband to pick up a few of these gorgeous chains.  When we brought them home to put up he said they were really easy to install.

Now whenever it rains outside not only do I get to listen to the rain but, I also get to watch the beautiful dispaly that our japanese rain chain makes.  The chain we have on the front of the house has hummingbirds on each cup and is simply breathtaking. Whoever designed these pieces is truly and artist.

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Color Wonder and Crayons

I’m SOOOO very grateful for the invention of Magic Pens and Color Wonder Markers.  My daughter can color to her little heart’s content.  She loves to draw and is always asking to draw on something.  With these markers I dont’ have to worry about her getting ink on her clothes, the walls, or anything else for that natter.  I love that the invisible ink only shows up on the special paper made to use just with these products.

Now, crayons on the other hand…. ONLY BUY WASHABLE!!!  Yes, all crayons usually say they are washable but buy the ones that are marketed and labeled as being washable.  There REALLY is a HUGE difference.  The washable crayons wipe off of my walls with ease.  The regular crayons take a lot of elbow grease to get off.

I have to go birthday shopping and will be restocking on these two wonderful, worry-free, art supplies for the kiddos.

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Sorry No Connection

So yesterday, I hopped on to my computer to post a bunch of pictures from the holiday weekend and I couldn’t get my dsl to work.  I tried everything to get it fixed, resetting the router, restarting my computer, and even unplugging every cable and then plugging them back in.  Nothing worked.

I ended up having to call my internet service provider. I sat on hold for some time before I found out that my entire city had the internet down. The customer service technician told me he wasn’t sure what caused the outage and he didn’t know when we would have our service back.

I waited a few hours and called the company back to see if things were in working order again.  The guy I spoke to kept asking me a bunch of questions about the lights on my router.  They all just kept blinking and I still had no service. Apparently my internet should have been working again but I was just a lucky winner and got to have mine not work for an additional 2 hours.

Eventually, I got my service back.  However, when I started to upload images online everything went REALLY slow.  It reminded me of the days when I had dial-up internet.  I never thought I was going to get all of the images uploaded.  It literally took 2 and a half hours to upload 50 images.  Normally that would only take a few minutes.  I probably should have called it a night and tried again today but, I wanted to have it done before I went to work today to show to my friends some of the great shots I captured.

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Happy Fourth!

fireworks

We are going to head downtown in an hour or so and try to get a nice parking spot and place to spread out a blanket to watch the fireworks. I love watching the fireworks shows – all the colors and sparkles are so fun! I don’t like those loud bangs so much, but I think they add some sense of history to it, I’ll be imagining the cannons that were fired from the ships in the harbor, during the attack on Baltimore’s harbor.

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Online Education

I have a few friends that are considering going back to school. Sharon is looking at attending Walden University.  She wants to get her Master’s degree and doesn’t have a lot of extra time to spend to drive to a traditional campus.  She wants the flexibility of attending an online school to further her education.  I can sympathize with her.  I know having two kids and trying to find time to go to school is very difficult.  I don’t know how I manage to find the time that I do to do any of my homework for my program.

She told me that WaldenU.edu has 20 different Master’s programs available to choose from.  I think it’s worth looking into to see what other programs they have to offer for me.  I’m partway through my Master’s Program now.  I wonder if they offer any doctoral programs.  I’d like to continue to further my education and I think and online program would make life a lot easier for me and my family.

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Holiday weekend

Yay! I’m soo excited to have a 3 day weekend.  One extra day to sleep in and spend time with the family.  Of course we also get to eat lots of goodies at barbecue and enjoy a nice fireworks show afterwards.  Happy birthday USA!