#IceBucketChallenge

If you have no idea what the #IceBucketChallenge is, you need to leave this blog right now and catch up with the rest of the world. Also, where have you been for the past month or so?

The basic gist is this: You are challenged by someone you know to either douse yourself with ice water or make a donation to the ALS charity of your choice. Personally, I like the ALS Organization. Ideally, you should do both. And then you challenge whomever you want.

I encourage you, however, to not just douse yourself with ice and make a donation, but to find out about ALS. It's commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease and 5,600 people in the U.S. are annually diagnosed with ALS. At any given time, 30,000 people are living with the disease. Those are devastating statistics.

My cousin Courtney, of StopLightGoLight.com fame--I've written about her a lot--challenged me to the #IceBucketChallenge. This is laughable on so many levels. Courtney is rarely on Facebook and all of a sudden, she's posting video and tagging me. Lookie who turned out to be a social media aficionado after all? When I groaned, because I hate cold, The Daughters were all about dumping ice on me and themselves.

So, we decided, as a family, that we'd do the #IceBucketChallenge. Brian was in charge of getting the ice and filming. Lucky dog.

Daughter 1 went first. She'd been challenged by another friend as well. She challenged "everyone below" since she's going to post it on her Instagram. But, basically, she challenged Carinna, Daisha, and her Aunt Lulu and Uncle Jared.

Daughter 2 went next. She decided that Cousin Courtney must have challenged her as well. She challenged some of our Texas cousins, LJ, Brecken and Gavin, her Rebelz teammates and her Rebelz coaches.

I went last and challenged all of my co-workers at Central Middle School and all of the lovely ladies at Oklahoma Women Bloggers. Trust me. I know what I'm doing.

Enjoy!

My Favorite Things: Lazy Sundays

During the school year, there are very few Sundays that don't require my attention to something school-ish. (There's a special place in hell for people who think teachers only work 8:00 - 3:00 Monday through Friday nine months out of the year. And that special place is filled with ADHD kids who are out of meds and their helicopter parents.) Where was I?

Oh, yeah. There are only a few Sundays during the school year during which I have nothing to do. Today was one of them.

I still have a to-do list a mile long involving books, blogging, writing, school, house, daughters, husband, dogs, cats, dust bunnies, yard work, quantum physics, whatever. But, tomorrow, I have no obligations, so I can work on them tomorrow and take today to be lazy, which is what I've done so far.

I like Sundays anyway. Sunday school and worship services are a great start to the day if for no other reason than that I have to be unplugged. I turn off my phone when we pull into the parking lot and turn it back on when we pull away from the parking spot. For that time, I am unplugged and no one can disturb me. (There are other reasons why I like my Sunday school and worship services, but that's all I'm jumping into at this time in this space.)

We usually go to our friend's pizzeria for lunch--it's a buffet, so there's no arguing and no waiting.

When we get home, I tackle my to-do list for the weekend/Monday.

But, since we are still on Christmas break, I snooze.

I kno what you're thinking: Heather got a new hair cut.
This isn't me. I'm not this tan.
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I woke up in time for Daughter 2 to go to her sleepover. Then I shipped Daughter 1 off to her youth group. And here I sit. Relaxing. And blogging.

There's not often that we, in our ever-connected world, get a chance to just sit, so today, I'm taking time to do just that. I'm enjoying a lazy Sunday. It's one of my favorite things.

Also, since The Daughters aren't home, I'm eating the Christmas candy I've stashed throughout the house. It's also one of my favorite things.

My Favorite Things: My Bubby

My Bubby--I'm not sure why I started calling him Bubby; it evolved from Buddy, and I'm not sure why I called him that either. Although he does remind me of Buddy the Elf, I started calling him that way before the movie came out. My friend, FloJo, refers to him as Bubbly part in mock but partially because he is ... He's a bubbly sort of fellow.

When I was putting together my line-up of favorite bloggers to highlight, he was one of my first thoughts. We've been married for almost sixteen years, but have known each other for almost twenty ... we think. We met several times before actually meeting and sticking together.

He's my biggest supporter and the one whose opinion counts heaviest with me. He encourages me in all aspects of our life together and is a great daddy, an awesome teacher, a fabulous husband (read my book, Getting Lucky--you'll understand why) and my best friend.

Check out his Favorite Things post on his blog. This man, my heart, one of my most favorite things.

Thankful Thursdays: Week One

Last week, Daughter 2 and I had an experience with a street person. It struck a chord deep in my heart that made me want to be more intentional with our family's thankfulness this fall. Each week, we'll be celebrating Thankful Thursdays by honoring someone or something in anticipation of Thanksgiving. I hope you'll come along with us and report back how you and your family celebrate each week as well.

This week, we're thankful for helpers.

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." ~Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers

With your family bake some muffins and deliver them to the helpers in your community. Maybe you could take the muffins to the Fire Department or the Police Department or the Emergency Room or the Ambulance service. There are helpers all over our communities. Find them and celebrate them with a batch of muffins.

My family and I are making pumpkin muffins from this recipe, but feel free to make any kind of muffins you'd like. On Sunday, I'll share our experiences with this.

Report back either on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Pinterest (send me an email for your invitation to the group board). Use the hashtag #ThankfulThursday

Next week, we'll be thankful for elderly.

Let's count down to Thanksgiving with a celebration a week!

Alarm Clocks Kill

I wasn't feeling well when I went to bed. I was chilled, achy, tired, cranky. I didn't want to be sick, so I convinced myself it was my lack of exercise that was making me feel this way. I set my alarm for a half hour earlier than I get up it normally goes off I normally start hitting snooze and told myself I'd get up, do some yoga, eat a healthy breakfast and see if that didn't make me feel better. And if I were getting sick, surly that half hour of yoga would be enough to rid my body of the germy invaders, right?

Source

I had just closed my eyes when my alarm went off, playing a wonderfully melodic tune that made me think the fairies had come to wake me with their tiny little belled feet. I stretched out my legs, which had been pulled up to my chest all night long and then got up from my bed.

Donning yoga pants (duh) and a tank top, I made my way to the living room where I commenced to doing yoga the way my bestie, FloJo, had taught me. I had no DVD, I had no YouTube tutorial, I just moved. I saluted, I warriored, I bridged, I stretched, I inhaled through my nose. I exhaled through my eyelids. My toes were in tree position. My body knew--just knew--how it was supposed to behave during a yoga session.

The cats sat on the ballet barre that we have in our living room and watched me with an intense yet approving stare as I moved my body in ways I didn't think I could. When my workout finished, I namasted to the dogs who had laid at the kitchen door with their heads on their paws during my entire routine.

I did feel better for working out in the mornings. Who knew, right?

I proceeded to cook a full breakfast for my family. I made individual omelets in individual omelet pans that I don't remember actually buying. I squeezed--SQUEEZED, y'all--orange juice and set the glasses in the freezer until the family got up and around. And then I checked on the pot roast I had simmering in the crockpot. My kitchen smelled divine. I was pretty sure that if the producers at any major television network could have seen me in all of this morning's glory, I'd have been offered my own talk show on how to be perfect.

Then Brian showed up in the kitchen. He was wearing his karate uniform--I thought this was weird because he doesn't take karate. As far as I know he has never taken karate. I don't even know if he pretended to do karate on the playground during his fourth grade year. Yet, here he stood in my kitchen wearing his karate uniform ... ruining my morning.

"HEY!" he yelled. Jeez. There was no reason to yell and mess with my morning. So, I just glared at him.

"HONEY!" he yelled again. Why in the world did he think yelling was at all appropriate this morning? "HEATHER!"

"What?!" I yelled back. All that yoga goodness from earlier that morning was completely zapped from my body.

"Your alarm."

beepbeepbeep. beepbeepbeep. beepbeepbeep.

Alarm clocks kill. Alarm clocks kill dreams. They also kill big breakfasts.

In a pickle

Ten weeks ago when school let out, I had a list of a gajillion things that we would do as a family over the summer to create meaningful and magical memories that would last a life time.  And since school starts in two weeks, I figured it was time for us to do all that crap since we sat around for ten weeks doing nothing. Well, doing nothing while melting.  With the heat as my inspiration, I decided that we'd make sun pickles.