What's the deal with people and flashing lights.  Give me a break, not literally, but that's what everyone does.  I can't understand the fascination that adults have with flashing lights.  It doesn't even have to be a police car, fire truck, or ambulance attending an accident scene.  Traffic in our city will come to a grinding stop over a simple HOV lane attendant with flashing lights on the top of his pickup.

Today I'm calling for a big healthy dose of "Grow UP!"  Stop making everyone late for work and causing misery for those of us who are mature enough to keep the foot on the gas when flashing lights catch our eye.

If you're the type that loves to slow down in hopes of seeing something amazing at every flashing light, I'd love to hear from you and know the fascination behind it.  If you're like me and would prefer to just hammer down, feel free to give me a shout out as well.

Peace!

I went inside and got cleaned up. About 20 minutes later, I just went to the back door to have a look outside. To my horror, I saw 3 fire trucks out in our field. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't imagine that I had started a fire while mowing without noticing it. I slipped some shoes on, grabbed a flashlight, and headed out. While walking out, I didn't see any smoke or flames. I was puzzled.

I walked up and greeted the guys and asked what was going on. They said that they had received reports of smoke in the area and thought that maybe our fire from a few days ago had flared up. So they were headed up to check it out. I explained that I had been mowing and that had stirred up a lot of dust, so that might be what what people were seeing.

I was also puzzled as to why they were just sitting there rather than continuing on up to where the previous fire was (you know, they area they wanted to check out). It was then that I noticed that the lead truck was buried up to its axle in mud. We had done some irrigation since the fire and the ground they tried to drive across was saturated. It probably took them 20 minutes to finally get the truck pulled out of the mud.

Sheesh, now I can't even mow without the fire department being involved. We may yet be asked to leave town. :)

She went to bed and asked the Older Daughter to keep an eye on things. In the mid-afternoon, the Older Daughter told The Wife that there were some flames. No problem. She was instructed to move the sprinkler over to water that hot spot. Well, thing starting going bad really fast from here. Now it seems that the Older Daughter simply had to take a shower as The Wife went back to sleep. Oh yeah, and Mr. Wind decided that this was a good time for him to blow.

The Wife was awakened to the kids screaming about the field being on fire. Looking out, she saw 5-foot-high flames and a racing fire. She called 911 and then headed out with the kids to do what they could while waiting for the fire department. She first stopped the flames heading toward the house. Then she raced over and put herself between the flames and the pasture fence to prevent it from spreading into the horse pasture.

Several hours and several fire trucks later, the fire was under control. Probably about 4 acres were charred. Here's a small section of the burn:

Now I was at work when this all started. When I got the call from The Wife, she had some choice words for me that I really can't repeat here. Also, I believe there was some sort of mention of homicide or something like that. Somehow, I survived and am able to report to you. (In other words, she didn't break my fingers to prevent me from setting more fires.)

Hey, here's something you don't see everyday. Where else can you find a cow, a fire truck, and a fire fighter dousing flames...all in the same picture? This may by an Internet first.

By the way, thankfully no humans, animals, or property were harmed in the making of this fire.

One of the rigs hubby rides/drives while on shift for school.

Its shiny!!

Redmond, WA

Delanae Lindstrom,

Our puppy Arika turned one year old... and what better way to celebrate than with a bunch of other Leonbergers. Two of the older Leos were turning 9 Years Old.

Delanae Lindstrom,

 !!!

Delanae Lindstrom,

I am a Heritage Makers Independent Consultant and these projects and my service are available through www.Family-Tales.com just click “Create an Account” in the upper right hand corner and let me know you need my assistance.

Click this link for a larger view:

http://www.heritagemakers.com/?event=projectBrowse&projectId=5e5860e8-59e6-4dc6-b256-313404e2714c&productId=7&projectSponsor=225771

Delanae Lindstrom,

I am a Heritage Makers Independent Consultant and these projects and my service are available through www.Family-Tales.com just click “Create an Account” in the upper right hand corner and let me know you need my assistance.

Click this link for a larger view:

http://www.heritagemakers.com/?event=projectBrowse&projectId=b24dbb4a-c2aa-448d-85fd-a765f74f98eb&productId=5&projectSponsor=225771

Delanae Lindstrom,

This is a template book. Simply swap your photos in where the photo place holder is and fill in some text and you’re done. It’s so easy! The design work is already done for you, however everything can be changed giving you complete creative liberty. (Gotta love that!)

I am a Heritage Makers Independent Consultant and these projects and my service are available through www.Family-Tales.com just click “Create an Account” in the upper right hand corner and let me know you need my assistance.

Click this link for a larger view:

http://www.heritagemakers.com/?event=projectBrowse&projectId=40f6b1d2-9be5-4b93-9559-ffa967ab7296&productId=1&projectSponsor=225771

Delanae Lindstrom,

I am a Heritage Makers Independent Consultant and these projects and my service are available through www.Family-Tales.com just click “Create an Account” in the upper right hand corner and let me know you need my assistance.

Click this link for a larger view:

http://www.heritagemakers.com/?event=projectBrowse&projectId=1a930f0c-b293-4db9-99c6-728413f9bfca&productId=5&projectSponsor=225771

 

Delanae Lindstrom,

Heritage Makers Independent Consultant ID# 225771

www.Family-Tales.com

www.DigitalScrapbookingLessons.com

www.FireproofMemories.com

http://iig.nu/hm/delanae (For a sample of all of my templates)

                           delanae@family-tales.com 

                           425-698-3488 (mobile)

                           425-605-7716 (home)

 

 

 

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EACH month your Premier membership grows by WELL OVER $20 a month (the cost of a monthly membership) and you get unlimited high resolution photo storage to boot! I honestly don't understand why anybody would question this amazing deal especially if you've ever purchased a digital kit, or taken a simple visit (yet costly) trip to the Scrapbook Store.

Delanae Lindstrom,

To participate you need to have a Heritage Makers Premier Membership Account. If you do not have one, please go to www.Family-Tales.com and in the upper right hand corner select "Create a New Account". Follow the prompts and sign up. It's easy and a great digital scrapbooking value.

• individual 12x12 page layout
  
• page must have a summer activity theme
  
• must use brads (any kind, any collection) somewhere in layout
  
• must use a minimum of three photos
  
• must have at least one sentence of text for each photo
  

1ST PLACE: 3 packs of 12x12 pages (5 in each pack)
2ND PLACE: 2 packs of 12x12 pages
3RD PLACE: 1 pack of 12x12 pages

DIVISION 2:
Card game layout: "It's in the cards."

• deck of cards (27 required; 54 optional)
  
• design should be original; contestant may not use HM playing card templates
  
• cards should have family or heritage theme
  
• cards should have photo and text elements along with any art elements contestant wishes to use
  

1ST PLACE: 3 decks of cards (54 in each pack)
2ND PLACE: 2 decks of cards
3RD PLACE: 1 deck of cards

THE DEADLINE FOR ALL CONTEST ENTRIES IS JUNE 30TH.

Submitting your entry:

1. Once you've finished your design, find it in Unfinished Projects, and click the "Browse Project" button.
   
2. Inside the preview of your project, click the "Email a Friend" button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
   
3. Email your project to eblack@heritagemakers.com with the words "Drag & Drop Design Contest" in the subject line.
   

Delanae Lindstrom,

Robert and Sam meet at a Canada Day fundraiser for a local firehouse, and man do the sparks fly. Sam is a college kid, only a year over legal. Robert is a studly thirty-something fireman. They come together and make a blaze that's hard to put out.  

There's a lot of living between nineteen and thirty-something, though, and Sam and Robert find they have a lot to work out. Can they keep fanning the flames of their romance, or will family and friends, and their different places in life, throw a wet blanket over their love?

This starts, I imagine, how more than one relationship might truly start. Less about the hearts and flowers and more about basic, animal attraction.

Robert is a smokin hot fire fighter who has been burned before in a relationship. Enough to make him very wary of Sam. He is unwilling, initially, to take their relationship beyond anything sexual and making himself vulnerable to another person.

Sam is just such a piece of fluff. But I kinda liked him for all that and thought he was ballsy and proud of who he was. He reminded me of Lysander in Jilly Cooper's gorgeous book, The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous. Both Lysander and Sam had a particularly endearing flaw.

Sam often seems over the place but does begin to have serious feelings for Robert. I did find this a little difficult to take as he is only 18, nearly 19 when they 1st start the hot nekkid man love, of which there is MUCH! I kept thinking about many relationships at 18 that start and finish rather smartly and wondered if most blokes at this age really do want to settle down. Am I being too cynical? Robert being that much older, and smokin, makes for interesting plot and much, much, much smexy stuff. Energizer bunny stuff, srsly Sam puts that pink bunny to shame!

A good read for a night with rain on the roof. 

You can get this pink bunny goodness here. AND Drew Zachary is here.

I hope you all check out the Desert Island Keeper Hero addition at Lisabea's, CJ's, and today Sarai's.
I am hoping that no one pinches my pick before I can post!

Addison's seat expired 12/07, so we were able to get her a brand new seat. And believe it or not, it was totally free of charge! We were allowed to give a donation if we so desired or just have the seat with no strings attached, but we felt that we ought to give something for such a great service. And what we gave was way less than we would have had to pay for a brand new seat, so it was well worth it.

The kids were thrilled to see Police cars, a fire truck, a race car, and get goodie bags with lollipops, magnets, cups, beach balls, coloring books and crayons in them. AND we got some fantastic safety kits from the Jaycees complete with everything you need to fingerprint your kids, collect a DNA sample, and put "Safe Shoes" tags into their footwear.

I love these types of events. My friend Roxanne is a car seat safety checker, but since she's having a baby any day now, she wasn't working this event. We had two police officers who really knew their stuff and spent about 45 minutes with us to check each kid, each seat, and install all of our seats properly and safely.

Here is the website so you can catch the next event--please get your seats checked. 80% of all car seats are being used incorrectly, that's a pretty risky number. Be safe.

What do I take, after the photo albums, the inhaler and the important papers? Then what? In California the other day, Ava Raich packed the younger kids' special blankets, her grandfather's World War II Marine uniform and his Purple Heart, she told the Los Angeles Times. Diane Doroski fled with an antique toy carousel and her great-grandmother's butter dish. Butch Rey took his wife, three children and two parents. His sons took all their autographed baseballs and their PlayStation 2, Agence France-Presse reported.

The word evacuation doesn't do justice to the poignancy of the act. An evacuation is--potentially--the willful and reasonable abandonment of a life. Not just the photographs but also your grandfather's ashes and your baby's receiving blanket from the hospital. Until they're gone, it's easy to tell yourself those things don't matter. Then material things become a proxy for all the nonmaterial things you lost too. Peace of mind, say, or a sense of where you came from. Or an identity as someone who gives handouts and doesn't take them.

Now that disasters are becoming more frequent and more destructive, entire populations are becoming experts in this calculus. Since Hurricane Katrina, people on the Gulf Coast maintain the smartest evacuation packs you will find anywhere: ruthlessly compact, wildly creative. They keep documents sealed in floatable boxes; they have coffee tables that turn into trunks and garbage cans that turn into latrines; they have learned that the only thing more valuable than a hand-crank radio is a hand-crank TV.

In 2006 the New Orleans Times-Picayune asked people to write in their advice for future evacuations. Their responses read like poetry, and you won't find most of them on any Red Cross checklist: my own pillow, Sudoku, shoes other than flip-flops, solar-powered garden lights, cat litter (for the humans), the kids' immunization records, the good bottles of wine we were saving for special occasions, and Xanax.

People wrote about the lessons they will carry in their heads. The kind of advice that doesn't fit in a suitcase but will almost certainly matter more than Band-Aids: Learn how to text-message, do not let your kids watch TV news, and never depend on the government. And "as you drive away from a house and possessions you may never enjoy again," wrote a survivor, "remember the song about how you can't drag a U-Haul behind your hearse."

Over the years, I have written about dozens of disasters as a reporter. Mostly because I would be embarrassed if I didn't, I keep an evacuation backpack stashed deep in the hall closet. But the truth is, I've never been satisfied with the concept. Yes, I think everyone has a responsibility to have three days of water and food, plus extra medications, if possible. But there is something wrong with those lists. They are too long and too short at the same time.

After Hurricane Katrina, John Sorensen and his wife Barbara Vogt Sorensen, both experts in disaster preparedness, went to Wal-Mart to conduct an experiment. They divided up the emergency-supplies list that FEMA had published, then started shopping. It took them 2 1/2 hours. It cost $343 for a family of two. Theoretically, a good number of the items would need to be replenished every six to 12 months. "A family that lives from check to check can't afford to do that. It was a real eye-opener," says John, who, with his wife, works at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. He piled everything into a huge duffel bag, and his wife couldn't lift it. "I think there is a need for prioritization," he says.

Personally, I've come to think that the smartest thing to do is to keep a small bag of recommended provisions, plus a list--which you would make yourself and update every year or so. The list would be short enough so that you could gather everything up in 10 minutes. If nothing else, making the list would be an interesting exercise. Like making a time capsule that never gets buried. Unless, of course, Mount Vesuvius erupts. In that case, if you have had time to pack your bag, it might be something for the archaeologists to unearth. They would puzzle over the PlayStation 2 and the butter dish and wonder what it said about who you were--and what you most feared losing.

Delanae Lindstrom,

"A fire truck!"

I went for a walk now and then today. Very nice weather! It was breezy all day but very nice. I went out and got some root beer. But most of the day I just did some scrapbooking.

While out on a walk, I noticed a wire blowing in the wind from one of the telephone polls. I called 911 and they asked if it was sparking. Luckily it wasn't. But they sent a fireman over anyway, which is a good thing. Turned out to be a cable TV wire, and no danger. But you can't be too sure and it's good to report that stuff anyway, just in case.

It wasn't even a few more minutes and there was that same fireman and his van, the medical examiner's van I guess, two ambulances, the fire engine, and two police officers at the last building in my complex. There were people all outside the building. Come to find out after all that, that a neighbor which I spoke to maybe once or twice had passed on. He had health problems and I don't know when I saw him last, definitely a year or more, I'd guess. I didn't know him well. I spoke to his son which was walking to his truck. I thought it was just another neighbor and thought I'd ask what happened. He said his father passed on. Sad. Right on Memorial Day yet, too. One police car stood for hours. I did take some time to silently wish comfort for the family.

Also today I paused for a couple minutes in remembrance of fallen soldiers and others that have passed on (this was before I knew the neighbor had passed away). The more I thought about the soldiers and how they died, the more upset I got. I felt they didn't just fight for our freedom. No, they got killed for political or religious wars. That's how I see it. But that was because I was thinking of those who fought in Iraq. I should have thought of the ones who fought in WWI/ WWII and the Civil War. I think those were the only ones where some things were really worth fighting for. That there was good reason. I don't know about the others. All I know it was over some religious thing or political thing which we probably had no real reason to fight anyway. We could have left well enough alone, for all I know. Unless I am shown differently, this is how I'll think of it all. I also thought of deceased family members, friends that passed on, 911. It just was too sad, disturbing. I wonder why pause for those moments to remember something so horrible? I wish I had thought to think and remember the good folks and the good people had done when they were alive, and not have to focus on how or why the passed on. And that's hard to do when you don't personally know the person.

I was outside when it was raining slightly talking to a neighbor and taking photos of her and her dog. I made a scrapbook page for her which I'll try to get to her sometime this week. Turned out nice. I want to fill in one more page for 2006 in my scrapbook and then I'll take the whole thing and one other I have over and show her the ones I did.

Right now it's dark, and there's a nice breeze coming through my office window. Yes, I'm in my home office but that's where my computer and craft stuff is anyway. Tomorrow it's back to work. I already have ideas for a project I'm still working on. I have to do June's budget and bill pay schedule.

Well, I guess unofficially it's Summertime. Gardens, friends, family and neighbors, hot weather. I don't know if I'll get a picnic at the park in this year but I hope to. Maybe even make it to the German Fest later this summer. I hope. Sure would be nice. Washing and cleaning the car, and fixing up odd minor rust and scratches is also planned for this summer. And there's always the garden, of course. Near daily morning waterings. I didn't water today because I thought we were going to get some good rain. We didn't. Tomorrow I'll have to water, but then watch we get that rain they were predicting! Can't always tell what the weather will do.