What's in a name?

1.YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car) Ginger Chrysler (doesn't exactly flow from your lips)

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie) Chocolate Chocolate Chip (not such a scary gangsta name...but better than the alternative: Chocolate Snickerdoodle

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name) J-Cha

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal) Blue Dolphin

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born) Hope Richmond(wow...that really works, huh?)

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first) Chaje (I don't pretend to understand star wars)

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink) The Pink Dr. Pepper

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers) Jesse Norwood

9. STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy) Happy Spree

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names ) Carol Crawford

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter) Gizzo Glendale (I'm Gizzo Glendale and here are today's top stories...)

12. SPY NAME: (your favorite season/holiday, flower) Spring Hydrangea (doesn't sound very spy-like to me)

13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”) Cantaloupe Skirty

14. HIPPIE NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree) Kashi Cherry Blossom

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, weather element+ Tour") The Blogging Tornado Tour (tour dates announced soon)

Kinda fun, huh? Join in if you want to play. You know you wanna. Dont'cha, dont'cha, dont'cha?

Chick-Fil-A Grand Opening - First 100!

So there were some crazy people in my town last week who camped in the Chick-Fil-A parking lot for 24 hours so they could win free Chick-Fil-A for a year. Seriously, who would do something as strange as that?

ME!

Oh my! It was really a blast. First of all, the grand opening was scheduled for Thursday at 6:00am. I got there at about 8:15am on Wednesday morning. My sister, Laura decided to come with me, but she didn't really understand what she was agreeing to. When she realized we would be sleeping there and that we couldn't leave the premises, she had to call and cancel plans with a friend to shop for a HS graduation dress.



So, it was really cool that they fed us breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Wednesday. But the coolest part about that, I think, is that we got to WALK through the DRIVE THRU for our food. They lined us up according to our number (I was 75 out of 100) and shuffled us through the line.

The weather had been seriously scorching for days (over 100, not including heat index!), but we got lucky that Wednesday was not as hot. I think it only got to about 90 degrees. It still felt warm, though. I called my dad to see if he could hunt down a canopy to borrow. He suprised us about an hour later with a brand new canopy he had purchased. I'm sure he'll get many uses out of it, but I couldn't believe that he bought it so we could use it. What a sweetheart!


You may be wondering what the heck we would do to occupy our time while waiting for the day to progress. We had wonderful company. My sister Laura and my friend Becca were with me. We met some great people. Dick, who is 85 years old and camped next to us (this was his 9th Chick-Fil-A grand opening, I kid you not) had wonderful stories and experiences to share with us.

We also sat around chatting, rested on an air mattress under our shady canopy,
& watched and participated in fun and silly games put on by the Chick-Fil-A crew. This one is a frozen T-shirt contest. They froze a wet T-shirt into a ball, and the first one to get it on their body won. And they couldn't bang it on the ground. Ha. It was funny to watch.

Laura even participated in a kind of musical chairs scavenger hunt.

We enjoyed many visitors to our humble homestead in the parking lot that day as well. Our friends and families couldn't resist checking it out...

Taylor and Zach participated in some of the line dances and other fun. They did the Cha-Cha slide, Hokey Pokey, and Freeze Dance.

In the evening, they had an MC, showed a movie, and served ice cream sundaes. I guess we hit the sack about 11:30pm. Wake up call from the mike was at 5am, bright and early! We cleaned up our temporary "home", then proceeded to line up according to our numbers for a final check. I got to meet the cow...notice the not-enough-sleep look on my face.




When we finally got to get our grand prize, we walked single-file into the building amidst a cheerful band of Chick-Fil-A employees loudly, very loudly, banging on their metal pans (with metal spoons, mind you). Did I mention that it was loud, and 6:00 in the morning? My sister snapped a pic of me approaching the magic table with the goods. Oh yeah...and before we went inside, they gave us all t-shirts and paper hats to wear.
That same wonderful sister, who claims to be a photographer captured this wonderful photo of me accepting my prize. Don't quit your day job, Laura! Just kidding sweetie...it was crazy in there, fast moving, and did I mention, REALLY LOUD?

And to top it off, Thursday was my kids' last day of school. They got out early, at 12:30pm. Guess where we went for lunch? You guessed it...I spent my first coupon for a free meal that very day. Here are my kids enjoying the grand opening. They had been dying to play in the new kids play area...it is pretty cool.

So what do you think? Am I nuts, or just frugal and fun? YOU DECIDE! :)

I just read this thought-provoking story over at Five J's. I hope she doesn't mind if I post it here. The original author is unknown. Make sure to read the story all the way to the end.

A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our small Tennessee town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world a few months later.

As I grew up, I never questioned his place in our family. In my young mind, each member had a special niche. My brother Bill, five years my senior, was my example; Fran, my younger sister, gave me an opportunity to play ‘big brother’ and develop the art of teasing; My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me to love the word of God, and Dad taught me to obey it.

But the stranger was our story teller. He could weave the most fascinating tales. His daily conversations with us were filled with adventure, mystery, and humor. He could hold our whole family spellbound for hours. If I wanted to know about politics, history, or science, he knew it all. He knew about the past, understood the present, and seemingly could predict the future. He was quite an artist, as well; the pictures he could draw were so lifelike that I would often laugh or cry as I watched him.

He was like a friend to the whole family. He took Dad, Bill, and me to our first major league baseball game. He was always encouraging us to see the movies, and he even made arrangements to introduce us to several movie stars. My brother and I were deeply impressed by John Wayne in particular.

The stranger was also an incessant talker. Dad didn’t seem to mind, but sometimes Mom would quietly get up—while the rest of us were enthralled with one of his stories of faraway places—go to her room, read her Bible and pray. I wonder now if she ever prayed that the stranger would leave.

You see, my dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions. But this stranger never felt an obligation to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our house—not from us, not from our friends, not even from adults. Our longtime visitor, however, used occasional four-letter words that burned my ears and made Dad squirm. But to my knowledge the stranger was never confronted. My dad was a teetotaler who didn’t permit alcohol in his home, not even for cooking; but the stranger felt like we needed exposure and enlightened us to other ways of life. He often offered us beer and other alcoholic beverages. He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely, much too freely, about sex. His comments were often suggestive, sometimes blatant, but always embarrassing. I know now that my early concepts of love and romance were greatly influenced by the stranger.

As I look back, I believe it was the grace of God that the stranger did not influence us more. Time after time he opposed the values of my parents; yet he was seldom rebuked, and never asked to leave.

More than thirty years have passed since the stranger moved in with the young family on Morningside Drive. He is not nearly so intriguing to my Dad as he was in those early years. But if you were to walk into my parents’ den today, you would still see him sitting over in a corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?
We always just called him TV.

--------------------------------

Original image by The Paper Boat

Staying Blog Savvy

(photo source: Country Living.com)

Cool new blog signature, huh? Before you know it, I'll be composing stuff using HTML...naaah.

P.S. The photo in this post has nothing to do with the topic of the post, I just didn't want to give you a post without a pretty picture to look at! :)

Heavenly Hilton Head Holiday!

Memorial Day week, we had a marvelous time at the BEACH! Oh, how I love the beach! I didn't want to do anything but set my self in a chair in the sand all. day. long. every. day. But my dear hubby reminded me that this was indeed a family vacation, not just a mommy vacation! :)

FISHIN'

Here are all of our fisherpeople doin' their thing. Yes. They caught several shark off the beach. I know. Yowsers. But we swam anyway.

This silly bird was our fishin' buddy. He came out every time we started to fish and hung around...getting closer and closer to the fisherpeople. He got little pieces of bait that had been dropped...and one time he snuck a whole fish from someone's bucket! He's got some nerve!

THA BEACH
Here are some pictures of Zach and Taylor playing on the beach. A really cool thing about the beaches at Hilton Head - tidepools form when the tide goes out. It is really fun for the kiddos to search for fun sea creatures in the tidepools...Taylor and Zach found hermit crabs, starfish, sand dollars, and even a baby blowtoad. Way fun.

I buried Zach in the sand. He was so excited for it! :)

Mike taught Taylor how to boogie board. She caught on really fast and spent tons of time doing it. Zach, on the other hand, decided to use his boogie board as a mailtruck. He dragged it behind himself carrying various beach finds.

One evening after dinner, we went back down to the beach so Mike and Taylor could fish. We stopped at our favorite beach ice cream joint (which happened to be across the street from our condo). Taylor enjoyed blue raspberry ice...as evidenced by these pictures.

This was our lovely view at the pool. I LOVE, Love, LOVE the spanish moss! Did I mention that I love spanish moss?



We did a lot of walking on the beach too.

LOVE this picture of the kiddos. They were sitting on a lifeguard chair in the evening. This shows true emotion. No canned smiles in this picture. :)

I love both of these pictures of Zach. Model much?

We saw this cool tree on the way to breakfast one morning. Couldn't resist the photo op.

I wanted a picture of our whole fam when we were showered and not in bathing suits, so I stopped some poor mom with a toddler and asked her to take our picture. I apologized the whole time cause I knew she was busy. But I really wanted a family pic from our vacation.