Marathon Woman

The LA marathon was Sunday. I was not one of the participants. I was recently looking back at old journal entries and I saw in my goals for 2005 that I wanted to train for and run in a marathon. I didn't make it, not even close. It's also one of my goals for 2006. I missed the 2006 LA Marathon this Sunday. But as of yesterday I am in training.

Yes, it's been an intense two days of marathon training. Let's see, yesterday I started on my vigorous regimen. I walked up to the park by my house and walked around the track four times. I'm guessing four laps is about a mile. Today, I had to cut back on my distance. I didn't get home until it was just about dark and I was walking on the track in the dark and it was a little creepy. So I only walked two laps and then walked home. If I keep up this pace of training I'll be back to running a mile in no time. Then I'll only have 25.2 more miles to build up to be ready to run a marathon. But I can do it. I have a long way to go.

I've run three marathons in my life. The first one was in 1991. When I was in Bible College in Kansas in the late seventies I had a friend named Sheila. Sheila and I were buddies (we still are though we don't get to see each other much) and we used to run together. We would go on 10 and 15 mile "fun" runs on Saturdays, somethimes in pouring rain or freezing cold. We told each other that we would run a marathon together someday.

In 1991 I was working at UCLA and I had a friend named Beth. We both liked to run so we started to run together after work, around UCLA. We decided to take a stab at a marathon run. I think the most we ran in our training runs was 6 to 8 miles but we decided to go for it. This is a picture of me after completing the marathon in 1991. I survived and it was a great experience. I didn't take home the first prize Mercedes but it was fun. I think my time was over 5 hours. Not exactly world record pace but I wasn't running to win but to finish.

I told my friend Sheila about running the marathon and we decided we would run one togehter. Shortly after the '91 marathon, I became pregnant with Eric. He was born in January 1992. I ran the marathon with my friend Sheila in March 1993 and then the next year my husband Chuck and Sheila's husband RC ran with us. It was quite a family thing, with Eric and Sheila's four kids cheering us on. This time I think the time was pushing 6 hours, but it was still a great experience.

My favorite marathon memories are:

1. At the beginning of the LA Marathon, it's one big mass of humanity piled together but everyone is excited and friendly. Then the music starts to play, "I Love LA". With the adrenaline flowing, it takes a bit of time for the crowd to start to surge forward. With the music blaring, the crowd pushes past the grandstand with waves and encouragement from the mayor and boxing great Muhammed Ali.

2.The marathon route goes through diverse neighborhoods of LA. From the "hood" to the tonier sections, it seems the whole city is behind you, the runner. Neighbors handing out water with encouraging words, local bands playing, rock, Mexican folk music, Chinese traditional drums and dancers. It makes a person proud, for once, to be a part of this great city.

3. Breaking point after breaking point. At some point there it is: "the wall". Then a mental breakthrough and a second wind. One of the best memories I have is being hot tired and ready to quit and then after one more turn in the road, a refreshing ocean breeze comes through and rejuvenates. It reminded me of the refreshing wind of the Spirit. Just when you think you can push no further, God sends the wind to refresh.

4. Finally the finish, the best part. No matter how exhausted I was, those three times, at the sight of the finish line I would perk up and sprint to the finish. What a thrill!

I need to do this again!

Meet my avatar

Here's a fun way to spend a bit of time, design an avatar!

avatar
noun [C]
in computing, an image which represents you in online games, chat rooms, etc. and which you can move around the screen using the mouse or keys:
By typing in simple commands you could pick up objects and talk to other avatars, with your words displayed in a cartoon bubble above your head.

(from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

Playing Outlawed Tunes on Outlawed Pipes

Happy St. Patricks Day! Okay, so the other night I was in the kitchen and my son walked in. I asked him what he was doing and he replied, "Playing outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes." I laughed and then I realized it was a line from the movie Braveheart.

I think I mentioned before that he likes a band called The Dropkick Murphys. They play traditional Irish mixed with hard rock and punk. So Eric decided he wanted to learn to play the bagpipes. Where do you get bagpipe lessons in Santa Clarita, California? I don't know, but we're looking.

In the meantime, Chuck found a music store with a knowledgeable person to talk with. He took Eric to Santa Monica and they came home with a book and what's called a chanter. A chanter is the pipe part of the bagpipe, without the bag. It costs considerably less than a full bagpipe and you can learn to play the tunes on it. So Eric has been spending hours on end picking out tunes on the chanter. He can play the Braveheart theme song already.

I'm sure he'll be getting the bag to go with the pipe soon. If you know anyone who teaches bagpipes near Santa Clarita let me know, okay? In the meantime my son is "Playing outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes."

Happy Purim

Today is the Jewsish Feast of Purim. Actually, it ended at sundown, since all Jewish feasts run from sundown to sundown, so it started yesterday. That is unless you live in Israel, when, I believe, it's celebrated a day earlier. Ok, so what is Purim and why should anyone who's not Jewish (like me) care about it?

First of all, what is Purim? Purim is the feast instituted in the book of Esther which commemmorates the thwarting of an evil plot to annihilate all Jews in the Persian Empire. Queen Esther was the instrument God used to turn the evil plan of destruction into blessing and victory for the Jewish people. It was Esther's courage and willingness to risk her life for the sake of her people that saved them all.
Read the book of Esther to find out more about this great heroine of the faith.


Here's a fun site where you can learn more about Purim. (Be prepared for some rather obnoxious music to pop up.)

www.torahtots.com

Gymnastics Name Dropping

This is Aimee with Olympic Silver Medalist Mohini Bhardwaj at a recent UCLA gymnastics meet.

Ever since my husband and I were blessed with tickets to the 1984 Olympic gymnastics meet, I've been a gymnastics fan. We were privileged to see both the silver-medal U.S. women's team with the dynamic Mary-Lou Retton and the gold medalist men's team with Peter Vidmar and Bart Connors.

So you have to know it's a thrill to have my seven-year old daughter involved in the sport. And when I say involved, I mean involved. She trains four hours a day, five days a week and loves it. When she has a day off, she'll often be heard to say, "Oh I wish I were at the gym." This is not my dream, it's hers and I'm here to support it. I'm very proud of her, can you tell?

But, I digress, I must get back to my name-dropping.
Ever heard of a Yurechnko Vault? A Yurechenko is "a round-off on to the spring board, back-handspring onto the vault, then blocking off your hands to complete a salto in the air and land." (I just looked that up on google,I knew it was a vault but I didn't know the description. I think there's also a bars move named after her but I didn't find it in my search. Isn't the internet great?)

Well, we saw the person this move is named after, Natalia Yurechenko, now coaching in New Jersey. She was at our gym with her gymnasts for a meet that Aimee's gym sponsored at UCLA. Aimee also competed at the meet. I wouldn't have known who she was except Chuck and I struck up a conversation with one of the girls parents who happened to mention that their head coach was Yurechenko. Then I made sure I was able to get a look at her. (If it weren't for the Soviet boycott in 1984 she might have given Mary-Lou Retton a run for the AA gold, but we'll never know will we?) There's another reason to get a camera phone I guess. You never know when you're going to see an Olympic gymnast.

Please indulge me for one more name, Russian Olympic gold medalist Valeri Liukin, now the head coach of WOGA, in Plano, Texas. WOGA is the gym that produced Olympic gold medalist Carly Patterson and world champion(maybe she got second at world's, I could google again and find out but I have other things pressing right now and I want to get it out there.) and daughter, Nastia Liukin. He was also at the meet sponsored by our gym. Too bad his daughter Nastia didn't make the trip.

Anyway, these are a few of the gymnastics names that I've been hobnobbing around with lately. Of course there's the up and coming level 5 gymnast (my daughter), now being coached by two-time Olympian from Bulgaria Galina Marinova.

Hasidic Reggae?

Have you heard about Matisyahu, () the Hasidic Reggae musician? I probably wouldn't have heard of him either, had it not been for my fourteen-year old son who is a fan:

Here is a line from one of his songs:
"Torah food for my brain let it rain til I drown, Thunder! Let the blessings come down!"

Matisyahu's new album "Youth" was released yesterday. I've listened to some of his songs, and while I can't say I really enjoy the style, (to my untrained ears it sounds like a mixture of punk and reggae) I love some of the lyrics. He's so God-oriented and worshipful.

I've also recently been introduced to another of my son's favorite bands: The Dropkick Murphy's. They seem to me to be a mixture of Irish folk (bagpipes and ballads) and punk. We were listening to one of their CD's (The Warrior's Code) in the car the other day and one of the songs absolutely brought tears to my eyes. It was a ballad about a chance happening upon the gravesite of a young nineteen year old Irish boy who died in WWI in 1916.

It's so much fun being introduced to a whole new era of music. I'm glad my son wants to share his music with me. Hasidic Reggae and Irish folk punk, what will they think of next?

Mardi Gras Memories

It's Mardi Gras day in New Orleans!

The first picture is of me, my Dad and brother when I was one years old. It was Mardi Gras day and I was a rabbit. My big brother was Zorro.

The second one is my cousin Missy, my brother and me on Mardi Gras day. Missy is the clown, my brother is Spider Man and I am the jockey.


Today is Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday. My hometown of New Orleans, which was devastated last September by hurricane Katrina has decided to go ahead with the celebration. I have mixed feelings about this decision. However, no-one consulted me on this, so I guess I don't really have a say in it (jk). What I do have are some fond memories of yearly family dress up times.

When I told a friend recently that I used to march as a majorette in Mardi Gras parades she asked me if I bared my chest. (Well those aren't exactly the words she used but I don't want to put the exact words on my blog.) I was a little shocked by the question, (I was 10, 11 and 12 at the time) but I realized that this is the perception that most people have of the celebration. And they may by right; I haven't been to Mardi Gras since the seventies. I imagine there were wild, drunken parties back then and I'm sure it's gotten worse.

I do know that my family and our neighbors enjoyed a family fun time of dressing up in costumes, yelling "throw me something Mister" to the floats and seeing how much "loot" we could collect. The "loot" consisted of plastic necklaces, trinkets and baubles; but the biggest prizes were the doubloons. Doubloons are gold silver and mulit-colored souvenir coins that commemorated the parade. I remember that even back then you would never reach down to pick up a doubloon that landed on the ground because someone might stomp on your hand. You had to be the first one to step on it and then carefully pick it up.

Later on when I began marching in the parades, I remember the challenge of marching for five or ten or twelve miles, carefully trying to avoid stepping in horse manure. I remember the thrill of doing our baton twirling routines with its kicks and swirls to the crowds in the bandstands. I have fond memories of Mardi Gras.

Today, I pray for a city at a crossroads. The events of the previous year challenge me to repentence and prayer for my hometown. I pray that the city recovers, not back to the way it was, but to righteousness. I can only imagine what it's been like to lose a home and all its memories.

I read an interesting article this morning on MSN about Mardi Gras traditions. Here it is if you're interested in reading more:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11525571

third grade picture

Olympic Observations

I know I haven't posted to my blog in a while. I've been going through an adjustment period to my daughter's new five day a week gymnastics schedule at a new gym that's about an hour and a half drive away. She loves it. I think that the new schedule and new coaching are worthwhile, but something in me has been reacting with anxiety to the more intense schedule. I thoroughly enjoyed today's day off where I didn't have to leave the house once.

I remember that today is Saturday; and it's world and local news day. The Winter Olympics get my vote for the story of the week. I've managed to watch some of the night coverage and read up on the major events in the newspaper.

I love the theme for this Olympics: Passion. It's an emotion that sums up something that is lacking in our culture.

The only night I managed to stay up until the end of the programming was the night of the Ice Skating finals. I wanted to see Sasha Cohen skate and find out who won the gold. (Actually Aimee came in and blurted out that Sasha won the silver, so there went the suspense.) I was rooting for Sasha, and not happy to see her fall twice. In spite of the two falls, I thought that the rest of her skating routine was the most beautiful skating I have ever seen.

I also caught the women's snowboarding cross finals, the one where Lindsey Jacobellis of the U.S. had a commanding lead and decided to celebrate and show off a little before she reached the finish line. It wasn't a good idea. In fact it was such a bad idea that it cost her the gold medal. She had to settle for the silver.

I was also impressed by the story about the Turkish skater whose parents gave up their comfortable life in Turkey and moved to Canada so their daughter could get the training she needed to excel. There are only two skating rinks in all of Turkey. She was competing as Turkey's first Olympic Ice Skater. It makes my driving Aimee to gymnastics across town pale in comparison.

So here are some lessons learned from this year's Winter Olympics:

1. Stir up the passion, don't allow apathy or numbness to steal the zeal or fire from my heart. The Bible says: Stir up the gift God within, paraphrase: live passionately, go for the gold in life, don't settle for less.

2. It's not over till it's over. That goes both ways, whether it looks like a win or a loss, don't quit competing until the finish line is crossed.

3. It takes sacrifice to be a champion.

4. We really need to get TiVo.

American Girls

Meet the newest member of our family, Aimee's new look-a-like American Doll. Aimee named her Bethany Chan Masterson. She's got light brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles, just like Aimee. She bought her with her Christmas money and she came in this week. If you're not familiar with American Girl dolls, there's a whole world out there (and it's not cheap). Check them out at http://www.americangirl.com.

A Mother's Legacy: Flower Girl Poetry

Not Possible
You can't put the love
and laughter and tears
of a lifetime in a book
that costs 34 cents. But you
can try...

ECT





My mother died in 1979. I never really knew her as an adult, becuase I left home when I was seventeen. But she was an amazing poet. She was always scribbling bits and pieces of her poetic thoughts in pencil in a spiral notebook. After she died I thought the notebooks were lost because I never could find them at my Dad's house. I remember asking my Dad about them and he said he got rid of all my Mom's stuff. I thought they were lost forever.

I was so blessed to find three of them when I was packing up my Dad'd stuff in New Orleans to move him to stay with my family before he died. This was around 2000. I was so happy to see the notebooks again. It was a found treasure. . However, it was a bittersweet happiness. I couldn't pick them up without crying. There's so much of her in her poetry and I miss her so much. I had so much guilt for so many years for not being there when she died. God has been working His healing work in my heart in this area. I have a beautiful picture of her when she was twelve years old next to my bed. I can now look at the picture with pleasure instead of pain. God is so good.

They've been packed away for years. I've wanted to transcribe them and make them available for others to read. Well, I think I've found a great medium to initially publish my mother's poems. I created a blog, called Flower Girl Poetry. I'm still working out the technical difficulties with it so it's not quite ready to announce. The blog I created with my allmyways ID can only have information "about me" on it. Of course, I want to put info "about her". So I created another id and a blog called http://flowergirlpoems.blogspot.com. Like I said, it's not really ready the way I want it to be but I posted the first poem called Legacy on it.

As soon as I get a flat-bed scanner I will post some pictures of her to the blog. I also want to scan the handwritten text of the poems with the transcribed text. I tried taking digital pictures but they're not clear enough. So stay tuned for some great Flower Girl Poetry.

about me

I'm tired of looking at the About Me text at the top of my blog. I've been trying for about an hour to edit the template code so you have to click on "view my complete profile" to see the text displayed about me. I can remove the entire profile including the "view my complete profile" link; but I don't want to do that. I only want to remove the text.

If I sound frustrated, I am. I could change the entire template to one that is already set up that way, but I like the "scribe" look. I don't want to change that. I should be able to modify the html. I've been programming computers since the 70s. I started with FortranIV when I was an engineering major. Back then, you had to punch up your programs on punch cards, hand them in at the computer room window, and wait for you results to print out. I remember spending many late nights in the computer center. Ah, what fond memories! Kind of like trying to edit the HTML template in my blog.

The Mr. Wonderful Doll, does that count as news?

I know, today is Saturday, my self-proclaimed, "Karie's blog world and local news day" or something like that. I know something else; I seriously doubt that anyone but me would notice that I said it was going to be news day and I'm not writing about news. I could be wrong, but I don't think there are throngs of people out there, breathlessly waiting for my take on news stories this week. Let me know if I'm wrong, okay?

But for my own sense of saying something and sticking to it, I wish I had something on local or world news to write on. But I got nothing. The Daily News to which I subscribe has got to be the shortest newspaper in the country. But not one of the papers that are dutifully thrown on my front lawn every morning has made it out of the plastic wrap this week. Yesterday I picked about five of them, sopping wet from the sprinklers, in the garbage can. I need to cancel my subscription.

I know, you can get news online and I did see a few headlines on MSN; but I didn't click on any links to read more. I really want to be informed but I just didn't have the energy this week. I'm adjusting to a new, even more intense gymnastics schedule for my daughter, which involves four more hours a week actually at the gym and about five more hours of driving a week. I'm exhausted. My daughter, on the other hand, is bursting with energy. She amazes me.

On a completely different subject, I wanted to write more about Mr. Wonderful. No, not my husband but the doll. The Mr. Wonderful post on Chuck's birthday was kind of an inside joke. He came home from work the other day and told me about a Mr. Wonderful doll that one of his co-workers had brought to work. It's a guy doll named Mr. Wonderful. Pull the string and you hear phrases like:

Here honey, you take the remote, I'll watch anything as long as I can be with you.

I'd love to go shopping at the mall with you today; spending time with you is more important to me than watching the game today.

I just want to cuddle.

You just go sit down and relax, I've got dinner covered tonight.

Mr. Wonderful

Happy Birthday to Mr. Wonderful! Who is this Mr. Wonderful? He's the man I married, the love of my life, my soul-mate forever.

I know that when you get to be our age, birthdays aren't quite as much fun as they were when we were children; but here's a birthday poem for you. Today, on your birthday, may you be "The Birthday Child".

The Birthday Child
by Rose Fyleman

Everything's been different
All the day long,
Lovely things have happened,
Nothing has gone wrong.

Nobody has scolded me,
Everyone has smiled.
Isn't it delicious
To be a birthday child?

In the Doghouse

These three are in the doghouse. They are, from left to right, Princess, Woobie and Coco. Coco is the mom, and the other two are her pups. Don't let their cuteness fool you. They are trouble. They are master escape artists. For several days now, they've managed to escape from the backyard and go exploring the neighborhood. This despite Chuck's constant efforts to block their escape.

The entire backyard is chickenwired. Boards are up over the remaining escape holes. And yet, still they manage to escape. At first it was just Coco and Princess leaving the premses. Each time they escaped Chuck would "fix it". And still they would escape. Woobie was the "good one". She would stay behind and run to the sliding door to announce her mother and sister's escape. You know it says in the Bible that "evil company corrupts good manners." On Sunday, Woobie joined the ranks of the escapees and went with them.

We returned from church on Sunday to find all three of them missing. There was a note taped to our garage saying that the dogs were being kept at a neighbor's down the hill. They had been discovered in her backyard visiting with her dog. When we got home, Chuck once again "fixed" the place of escape. And the dogs were banished to the laundry room.

Yesterday, I asked the kids to take them out in the backyard (since they were going crazy inside) and watch them closely so they wouldn't escape. Meanwhile I went to take a shower. The kids got involved in some kind of sword-fighting game devised by Eric and the next thing they knew the dogs were gone. It took an hour and a half of traipsing down the hills, knocking on doors down the hill and general searching to recover them. It turns out they weren't down the hill at all.

This time they walked "up the hill" to a nearby busy street and were rescued by a kind lady from the midst of dodging traffic. That's what she told us, anyway. I'm really glad I didn't see it. She flagged down my son who was combing the streets and asked if he was looking for three little dogs. She kindly kept them in her back yard, and got them back in after they escaped from it.

This has got to stop. These three will remain "in the doghouse" until further notice. I'm looking into those electric collars.

Tempus Fugit

Boy does time fly. Here is proof. Just a little while ago I was sending my baby boy off to Kindergarten and now the whole picture frame is full. I bought two of these school days frames from the Pottery Barn store at the Mall in Sacramento over a year ago, around Thanksgiving, 2004. They sat in a bag in my closet for over a year because I was busy doing a few other things. I could never quite grab block of time to devote to putting pictures in the frames. Well on New Year's Eve this year the earth shook. Both of my kids were occupied elsewhere, Chuck was busy with a football game or something and I found myself with a block of uninterrupted time to collect and frame school pictures.

I was a little concerned because during the first two years of homeschooling, I hadn't quite found a group that took school pictures. So I'm missing third and fourth grade school pictures. But I did have a little league baseball picture and an acting headshot from those years and they fit the bill nicely.

Sometime during the process of putting the pictures in order, I realized with a shock that the entire frame was full. It brought tears to my eyes. My baby boy is no longer a baby, he's a red-blooded American teenager, with the attitude and long hair to prove it. When I was growing up in the seventies, I certainly never imagined I'd be fighting my own son about haircuts. But it's happened.

It's not that I dislike long hair. When I was a teenager I only dated guys with long hair. When Eric was a toddler, I let his hair grow. The first haircut was more traumatic for me than for him. The only reason I agreed to get his hair cut was that I was tired of hearing people say, "Oh what a cute little girl". So it's not that I object to long hair. I just want him to keep it neat looking and that means a trim every now and then is a necessity.

So anyway, time does fly. Now I'm the older generation. Now my son is getting ready to enter High School. He's thinking about SATs. His school days frame which holds pictures from kindergarten to eighth grade is all filled up. Where does the time go?

Confessions of a Desperate Housewife

There’s a title that should get someone’s attention, maybe even my husband’s. No, I’m not running around jumping in bed with all my neighbors’ husbands. I think this is what the show Desperate Housewives is about. I couldn’t say for sure since I’ve never actually watched it.

Since I love words and their origins and definitions, here is the definition of desperate:
1a. Driven to or resulting from a loss of hope.
1b. Having a great desire or need.

I am not a desperate housewife in the TV show sense, or in the sense of definition 1a; although at times, especially in the last few months of 2005, I’ve been tempted with hopelessness. It’s a feeling that I resist. I have a hope and His name is Jesus. I am full of hope.

The desperation I’m talking about is the one in the dictionary definition 1b. I’m full of desire for more of God. I’m hungry for Truth and I have a great need for help from heaven. I am a Desperate Housewife.

Declining Japanese Birthrate: A Nation in Need of Hope

In an effort to put some order into my blogging efforts, I’ve decided to initiate a theme for each day of the week. I think this will encourage me to be more consistent in my postings. It’s just that I have so many ideas about what to write about, that when I actually have a few minutes to sit down and write, it takes me a while to figure out which idea to start with. Then, my brief moment of respite is interrupted, and all I’ve managed to write is a list of ideas.

So, Saturday is officially proclaimed as Karie’s Blog World and Local News day. I’d like to take one or more news items that made the biggest impression on me during the week and write about them. I have to confess though, I haven’t read the newspaper all week. I’ve only watched the news briefly, so I’m not very up on what’s going on this week. I did see the disturbing images of rioting and destruction after the Palestinian elections. I’m very concerned about Hamas terrorists gaining control through this election. This is a reminder to pray more than ever for the “peace of Jerusalem”.

I read an article in World News Magazine http://www.worldmag.com about the declining birthrate in Japan. Apparently, for the first time since World War II, the nation’s death rate outpaced its birth rate. The decline in births is attributed to several factors, including young people waiting longer to get married. The most significant factor seems to be a general feeling of pessimism about the future. Loss of hope for a brighter future is causing many Japanese couples to forego having children. Japan is a nation in need of hope.

busy weekend

I'm just not up to writing about quantum physics this morning. I'm busy getting my house ready for some very special guests tonight. My cousin and her husband are in town from New Orleans and they are coming over for dinner tonight. I haven't seen my cousin in years and I'm really looking forward to seeing her. They've had a rough few months with Katrina forcing them to evacuate their home in New Orleans and then Rita chasing them from Beaumont, Texas where they had evacuated. They are also dealing with her husband's health problems.
I'm so excited about seeing my cousin. I feel so disconnected from family members in New Orleans and I'm excited about an opportunity to reconnect. It's a real answer to prayer.
This weekend also happens to be a big gymnastics meet weekend at my daughter's gym. Team parents are required to work at the meet. The requirement is two sessions and setup or tear-down. And Aimee is competing in the meet on Sunday. It's her first meet as a "level 5" and we weren't sure if she'd be ready in time for the meet today but she got the go ahead from the head coach last night. So it's a busy weekend. Quantum physics will have to wait. But through it all God's hand is on us and both the dinner tonight and the competition are anwers to prayer. Now I have to get back to cooking and cleaning....

Things to Write About

Note to self (and anyone else who cares to read)

I got a new laptop! I'm so excited.

I have a whole list of things to write about. Here is my list:

Lessons from Harriet the Spy

BLOG THIS! What is a blog?

Battling Entropy: Progress in Organization

Homeschool Challenges

I'm a wanna be liberal

Cookbook Ministry

The Iranian Threat: Lessons from the Pianist

Arise and Shine: What I'm Learning from the Sun

I Love My Life

What's in a Name?

QED: God in Quantum Physics

Flower Girl Poetry

Puppy Love

Book Lover Update

Milestones: Aimee lost her top front tooth

(re) Dedication: It's Hanukkah all Year-Round!