Hank the Cowdog

He’s seven years old this year, and he is the cutest little thing on the planet! Though we call him “Puppy,” his real name is Picasso. (We got him from my art teacher ;)

Especially now that my brother got a new dog, we sometimes like to refer to them as Hank and Drover.

If Puppy were all brown instead of white with brown, he would look a lot like Hank, too. For anyone who does not know who Hank the Cowdog is, I feel very sorry for you. Someone has clearly slacked in your education. Hank the Cowdog is the Head of Ranch Security, and he is the only thing that keeps his ranch from running smoothly… I mean he keeps things running smoothly… well, it’s one of the two. No matter how hard he tries, the trouble always gets blamed on him, the only one capable of saving the day.

Joining him, with very little help to offer, is Drover. Whenever there is anything to do besides eating, sleeping, or taking the praise that should be Hank’s, Drover’s leg gives him too much pain even to walk. This means that when the coyotes attack or Wallace and Junior (the vultures) stop by for a visit, it is up to Hank to run and hide… I mean to fight them off.

The author of this amazing and hilarious book series, John R. Erickson, is a genius when it comes to writing these books. And they are for all ages to enjoy!! They also make really good Christmas gifts for some of the younger people in your family.

Except for the fleas (at least most of the time) and the marking of tires, Puppy is a lot like Hank. He can be our Head of Farm Security with his deputy… **cough cough** Sparkle.

The picture is a link to the website. PLEASE check it out, or at least check a book out of the library and give it a try ;D

My Hank
and my brothers Drover

Yes, there is a reason

Even if we don’t notice it at times, we probably all have them… Christmas Traditions. Whether it’s in the kitchen, decorating the tree, a little of both, or something else altogether, we do it year after year… unless your tradition is to do Christmas differently each year ;D

My family has a few traditions, too. Most of them are not anything out of the ordinary. We decorate, we cook, we eat, and we hang gummi worms on the tree.

Gummi Worm Tree of 2009

When my oldest brother was two or three, he didn’t like candy canes. When Mom and Dad asked him what he liked, he told them: “Gummi Worms!!.” So ever since then, we have hung gummi worms on the tree — though we have also, most years, hung candy canes on it, too.

It really is a nice look, though. They look something like colorful icicles with the Christmas lights shining through them.

It’s something you can have the kids do

Though, in the last few years, little sister support has slacked off hanging the gummi worms, it used to be something that all of us kids worked on. (I wonder if that was because Mom didn’t want to do it all by herself.)

Anyway, it is easy to do:

What you need

All you’re going to need are gummi worms (original works best, but sour will be all right), wire ornament hooks, some little helpers (optional), and a tree. Before you omit the little helpers from this list, consider the following: Mom always had us help her put up the tree (even when we were more hassle than help), and one out of five kids has fallen in love and completely taken over her decorating job. She can now rest easy every winter because she let us put the balls and the gummi worms on the tree for her.

The process: Hook the worm, hang the worm, and now you’re done ;D. It’s that easy!! (OK, so I will never make it as a “paid programing” sales person. Big deal :P) I find that the best icicle look is created if you just hook the worm once through the head or tail (we aren’t going fishing with these worms, and we do want them to come off the hook). After you have done all this “hard” work, you can sit back and watch as, one color at a time, the worms are taken off the tree and eaten. (Green is usually the favorite, despite the fact that the colors do not affect flavor.)

**WARNING: If you have a weak stomach, please use caution while performing this project, as gummi worms are now made with heads!**

Have a worm Christmas

Along with looking cool, hanging worms on your tree is a great conversation starter. Even if you don’t do this, I hope you will enjoy whatever traditions that you do have. Merry Christmas, everyone!!!

Here’s the trick

Jumping Whale
(click for the big picture)

This is one of my BEST photos EVER!!!! \m/>.<\m/

My aunt and uncle took me on a whale watching trip while I was spending a week with them in Massachusetts. We took a boat out of New Hampshire, and that is where I got the shot.

Right before the whale came up out of the water, there was a circle of green that appeared in the water where she was going to come up at. (I remember that it was a she. I don’t remember her name, but she had had a few calves already.) This circle of green is made by air bubbles that she blew out to scare little fish, then she would come up from underneath them to catch them. Then in this picture, another girl, that had been traveling with the first one, came up for air and was just going back in when the first one decided it was time to eat. SO COOL!!!

The ONLY thing that would make this better is if the water was level in the back, but I can live with that.

Harvesting Beauty

Other pics

Each year when they harvest the beans (which, by the way, are not green beans, but soybeans), dust fills the air. Not sure why, but something about harvesting the beans kicks up a lot of dust, which kicks off my allergies. But it makes for a cool picture anyway.

The Midwest
(My Back Yard)

The colors in this picture are so beautiful, but the real thing is much more so! We might not have a lot of rolling hills or large lakes of water in central IL, but we do have the picture perfect billowing clouds, and they are all the more beautiful when God paints them pink and orange.

Mushrooms

Last but not least is something else I found in my back yard. I must have taken 20 pictures of these mushrooms, but I think this one is the best (go figure—it was the first).

None of these are really related much (except that they’re all nature pics, I guess), but I hope you enjoy them anyway. You can click any of the pictures to see a bigger version. And don’t forget to look at the beautiful things that God has put around you!!

PLEASE be polite and don’t use these without mentioning me. And sorry if the pictures look jumbled. I have a wide screen and don’t always see what you do, but adjusting your window size should make it a little better.

Think before you speak

by whatmegsaid

Have you ever been told that when you’re angry or upset over what someone has said to you, you should count to ten before responding to them? That’s great. Have you ever been told to count to ten before you try to encourage someone? What! You haven’t? Well, let me do so now.

It’s normally when I’m riding in the car that I notice the things that people say on the radio (at home, I’m listening to an iPod or CD). I usually listen to a Christian radio station, and people who are going through tough times will call in to tell the people on the radio how encouraging the music is. Then the radio announcers will often pray for them, and nearly every time they say something like, “God knows how many hairs are on your head, and he knows what you’re going through right now,” and that is ABSOLUTELY true. And if this is really enough to encourage the people on the other side of the line, then fine, they can keep doing this. But for listeners like me, who have heard them say that exact thing several times, it has become a bit of a cliché.

It is not just that they repeat it over and over again, either, but it’s the way that they say it. The human head has anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 hairs on it (some heads are a little easier to count than others), but God knows the exact number for your head, my head, Bob’s head, and a whole bunch more people (world population is around 6,800,400,000). Can you imagine knowing a 6 digit number for over 6 billion people?! Probably not! So it bugs me when the radio guy says, “God knows the number of hairs on your head,” without missing a beat. That verse has been used so many times that people don’t stop to think about what it really means.

Another too widely used phrase is, “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” This, too, is very true. God has an amazing and exciting plan for each one of His people. The problem? WAY overused!!! and WAY too easy for so many to say! Sitting outside Chemistry lab one day, a couple of young mothers started talking about a funeral that one of them had gone to. At first, it was just about the huge number of people who showed up, then they talked a little about how one of them had already made a will just in case something happened to her. Five minutes before the class before ours ended, one of them made a comment about how little the pallbearers did because modern coffins were so heavy. This led the other one to tell about a funeral of a two-month-old boy that she had been to, where the father had carried the coffin by himself, with the body inside, cradling it just like he would the baby. I have no idea whether this man was Christian or not, but I have to wonder what was going through that father’s head while he was holding the coffin of his little boy. Whatever it was, I’m sure that it wasn’t how God had a wonderful plan for his life. Right then, if someone had told him that, he probably would ask that person why God’s plan didn’t include his boy. The mother might be wondering if it mattered how many hairs were on her dead child’s head.

Give it time

While the over-use of these phrases do not make them any less true, it does start to become too easy for us to say them. If you can say it while talking casually into a microphone, then it is too easy. If you are not even to the middle of your life yet, and have not published any books about some terrible thing that has happened to you and how you got through it, it isn’t going to encourage anyone for you to tell them that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

I am exactly the kind of person that I don’t think it would help for me to tell someone that their life is part of God’s plan. I have been incredibly blessed throughout my short life in my family, friends etc. I haven’t lost anyone very close to me, I haven’t done drugs, and I haven’t even had my heart broken over a boy breaking up with me. And I am not about to write any great, insightful book of philosophy. So why would someone believe me if I said their life was God’s plan? “Sure, that’s easy for you to say!” would undoubtably be the response.

The names that stand out when you think of great people are not the people who grew up in the average house with their .81 sibling and their 2.28 cars. Rather, they are people who have gone through something really tough and came to praise God through it. Joni Eareckson Tada, at age 17, was paralyzed from a diving accident and was told that she would never walk or even put on her own makeup again. But with the help of a lot of family and friends, since her accident “she has written 35 books, accepted a Presidential appointment to the National Council on Disability, spoken in more than 45 countries, established a disability ministry that reaches around the world, and produced paintings with a brush between her teeth.” And as of April 1, Tada “has been officially inducted as Indiana Wesleyan University’s 2009 World Changer during a ceremony held today in Luckey Arena.” (quotes from Indiana Wesleyan University).

Tada is a person who can say that God has an amazing plan for your life!! And she is someone the rest of us can point to, and tell people about, even if we haven’t had many troubles ourselves.

November is the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and in November of “OH, gosh, I don’t remember” (as Mom put it), I sat down to start my 50,000 word book. I think I was 11 or 12, and I didn’t quite make it to the 1700 daily word count, but I was only a thousand words or so short each day.

(It was very considerate of them to use colors that match my theme.)

But anyway, that is how I started my novel, oh so many years ago, and it eventually evolved into the story that I am working on now, and nearly have nearly finished. Not quite the goal of one novel in one month, but it has been SO much fun. Even if you don’t think you can make the word count, it might be fun to try it some time, and, some time when I’m not in college anymore and don’t have any homework to work on, I might take anther shot at it myself.