Let it snow!

SNOW! View at 6:00 this morning.

Yep, DFW got our 3rd snow this winter. Well, the first one doesn't really count because it was just a light dusting overnight.  The 2nd one was on Christmas day, while we were in Missouri, of course.

Since the transmission went out of my car yesterday (UGH!) I was already planning to ride in with John. It was nice and snowy and slushy when we came in, but being from Missouri, it was no big deal to us.

Many of my facebook friends were upset that they had not cancelled schools. Really? In Frisco, we have community school so most of the time you are driving no more than 2 miles to a school to drop your kid off. And by the time schools started, it was much more wet than it was when we left at 6:30. Looking at the traffic map on the local TV stations showed warnings all over the metroplex of slow moving traffic and a few accidents. Radio said that it was a 3 hour commute from Sherman to McKinney on Hwy 75. Poor sheltered native Texans LOL! This would be almost like driving in summer for Missouri folks!

TX State Guard - Toy Collection

John joined the Texas State Guard in 2010 and last year and this year he has actively participated in collecting toys around Christmas for their Young Heroes of the Guard program. This program provides toys (generally stuffed animals) to children in hospitals.

To get toys, John offered anyone playing in Drop N Aces bonus chips if they brought in a toy. The response was overwhelming! John's goal was 400. We collected 755!!! Have I ever mentioned how awesome our DNA players are?! Because our van was broken down and we didn't have a way to transport the toys to Austin (where John is stationed), Don Sears, one of our DNA players, offered to drive John down there. They headed out around 6 a.m. to make the trip.

I'm sure that CVS next to Irving El Chico loved us because every Sunday, you would see a small parade of players headed over to CVS to pick up a toy to get bonus chips!

The Nativity

So what is required in a nativity? Baby Jesus, of course. Second most important is probably Mary, followed by Joseph, the Wise Men, shepherds, animals and an angel. Well, bless her little heart (all of you from the south know what's coming next), one of my poor friends is not quite up on her nativity lore. She asked her man how to set it up and he said it didn't matter as long as Jesus was in the middle. So as we were shopping for scrapbooking stuff, I told her I would help her get it right when we go to her house. Notice from the gap in the picture that there is one vital, female item missing. Oh, well, at least she has baby Jesus!

And what about collecting nativities? I have a small collection of nativities that I love. One of my favorites is my snowman nativity. So what do I see on facebook today? A blog listing the worse nativities. (Can we say zombies and bacon/sausages on saurkraut, please?) Ok, it's all fun and laughter until I see MY snowman nativity on the list. HEY NOW!!!! http://whyismarko.com/2011/27-worst-nativity-sets-the-annual-growing-list/

Buffalo Wild Wings - Our Home Away From Home

Who knew from our first impression that BWW would become our favorite food joint? When John and I first went there, I was not all that impressed with the queso (although I immediately fell in love with the pretzels suggested by our server) and John said the wings were ok. Well, just keep going back and something will grow on you. Now we go at least once a week by ourselves for lunch or with friends. It is a favorite hang-out spot after we go to a Tornado game and we go for lunch nearly every time John heads down for drill on Fridays. John used to be a Hooters man (double dipped bentley's please) but I was never that keen on it. Glad that we found somewhere that we, and our BFFs, like so well!

Our usual crowd consists of John, me, Kim, Sherry, Buddy, and sometimes Gene for lunch (or any combination thereof). We went there to watch the 2011 FIFA women's final soccer match (US against Japan) and poor Kim sat by Buddy and got beat up - everytime something happened, he would fling his arm in her direction. We watched one of the 2011 World Series games there (TX Rangers against St. Louis Cardinals - with John wearing his cardinals hat and Pam, Greg, and all other tables around us wearing their Rangers gear). We've hung out and played video poker against each other. We've watched the MMA fights. (Well, I've diverted my eyes from a lot of those - hard to watch as they get blackened eyes, broken noses, and blood running down their faces. There are enough TV screens that I can watch some trivia, poker, or a football game.) We've enjoyed the mild weather on the patio. We've just sat and talked for two hours.

It's kind a like Cheers in the fact that there's a couple of servers who recognize us. I don't know if that's a bad thing or a good thing! Our server today (who knows John's order of the mixed sauces) has nicknamed John "Cupcake" because John was lamenting that I didn't bring him one of the cupcakes that Barry had brought by the office that morning. He teased John that he couldn't give him the military discount because his name is "Cupcake"!

We love the soft pretzels. Jacob even "got stuck" going with us for lunch after his Collin College tour, and found that he really likes the mini corn dogs, and my french fries. John's alternates between bone-in and boneless but his favorite sauce is the hot BBQ mixed with hot. (One of the servers suggested mixing them one time and now that's his order.)

Reader, Reader, can I find a reader?

I love having a reader for a son! I was an avid reader when I was growing up. Jacob struggled with reading when he was young, and I despaired of him being "a reader> However, after Reading Recovery and Title 1 in school and me reading to him for years, one of his favorite pasttimes is now reading.

We have read several books and series together and now he is finishing up the Eragon series that we started many years ago. The new (and last) book was out and he could not wait until his birthday or Christmas to get it, so I got it for him before we left to go to Missouri for Thanksgiving.

Now instead of getting on his computer & checking Fox News before he goes to school, he is reading the 800+ page book.

I was always in trouble for reading during classtime when I was in school but I haven't gotten any complaints about him. Does that mean that he follows the rules, he's just better at hiding it, or the teachers are so excited to have a student quietly reading in class instead of mouthing that they don't complain?

We are visiting John in Del Rio. On the drive down, I truly understood what I've heard people say - Dallas is not Texas. The vegetation is different, there are long stretches of harsh nothingness, many ranches, cactus, and even deer (although they are the size of big goats LOL).

We were driving along between Junction and the turn off to Del Rio and I was looking at two horses at their trough in the field beside the road and then realized there about 20 deer there, too! I whipped the rental car into a u-ey and went back to take a photo. Although most of the deer scattered, I got some individual shots and I got a picture of a representation of Texas - the two horses at their trough surrounded by cactus and the tumbleweed.

Yesterday we went to Seminole Canyon and took the guided hike to see the Pecos River Style cave paintings. Again, the starkness of the landscape was beautiful in its own way, but it was hard to imagine this early man eeking a life out of the harsh terrain. The people who created these cave drawings were nomads and no tribe has claimed them so there is not much known about them or their lifestyle. Assumptions can be made but there is no certainty since there are no decendents to share their stories and lifestyles. The tour guide was happy to share with us some 3000 year old poop - although only one kid was interested in holding it (and it wasn't Jacob). She said that from this they could reconstitute it and could tell what the diet of these people were - mostly vegetation and they were protein deprived, but there were sometimes grasshoppers or other small bugs and animals. Guess you get it where you can!

In the evening, we went to Dottie's house. Dottie and her husband who is a deputy sherriff, have meals for the group and it just happened to fall on this weekend. I got to meet almost everyone that John works with and we got to watch Dottie feed the deer. It was amazing to see these deer trained to come at nearly dark when they hear the corn hit the metal bowl. They would come right up close to Dottie. Looking at her feeding the deer, seeing her 4 dogs and the many cats, you can tell the she has a very giving heart. One of her cats was proportioned to what I would expect Garfield to look like in real life!

Classes

What were your favorite classes in school? What class(es) would you like to take now?

Of course I loved Art class with Mrs. Catlett. (hey, another C) She really turned my life around.

I liked humanities with Mrs. Carson (wow, C again)

One of the classes that I think helped me most to prepare for college was Expositions with Mrs. Packer. Even though she seemed a bit scattered sometimes, her emphasis on getting the details in your writing helped me to be the only person in the incoming Freshman class at Columbia College to test out of English 1. Mrs. Braun told me that my scores were very good on the grammatical test but all of the faculty was very impressed with my essay and the detail in it. (As I look around this room.... All of the students were all in the cafeteria testing and I wrote about specific people, i.e. Will North Dakota farm girl Darla be able to handle the homesickness to be the first person in her family to graduate from college?) Another fun thing about the class was playing "Dictionary", the original version of Balderdash. The person who had the dictionary would find a word in it and then write the real definition while the rest of us made our own up, just like Balderdash. Wish I had translated that class game to the money making commercial one!

I HATED math. Thank goodness we were only required to have one year of math for my graduating class (the requirements upped the next few years). I took Algebra with Mr. Baylor. I don't know how I ever stayed awake in that class.

I think I could have liked science, but it was so much about memorization (those periodic tables) instead of learning how things worked or why.