I am on top of the world today!
Today, I am excited to be alive. I have had a whirlwind summer filled with swim practices and swim meets, VBS, summer school (argh!), sleepovers, lawn mowing, vacation, being taxi to my parents, holiday celebrations, buying school supplies...the list goes on.
As I was reflecting on the last couple of months, I realized how very much I love my life. I love the change of seasons and all the delightful splendor they bring with them. I love that there are challenges to be faced that once endured or overcome, make me a stronger person with a deeper, richer character. I love having time to spend with my children, knowing that sooner than I would like to think, they will be starting out on their own path in life. I love spending time with my parents, gleaning knowledge and wisdom that only persons of their 86 and 90 years can provide. I love that I can find joy and beauty in every. single. day that God allows me to wake up to a fresh start, breathe in and out all day long, and lay my head on my pillow at night, resting in His care and protection. I love that I am such a very blessed woman to have been spared soooo many of life's tragedies...to the point that I am almost 50 years old and I have never experienced real sorrow or excruciating, painful loss.
I love living each day just to experience the wonders that life has to offer. I realize that attitude makes all the difference in how well I live and how much I enjoy, what life has dealt me.
I have hopes and dreams, but if I never achieve making those become reality, I will still say at the end of my life that is has been a good one and that I enjoyed every single minute of it...good and bad. All the life experiences have melded together to make me who and what I am and I can truly say that I like being me!
Yes,I am on top of the world today. Tomorrow may find me in a valley or even a deep, dark pit, but today...I am celebrating life!
Friday, July 31, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
How Would You Like To Run Into This?
Here you can see the female (center) with two males at the top of the web. They are small. Wonder what happens to them after mating....dinner maybe?
Weird photography where I centered the spider on Callie's nose!
Same on Micah.
Wrong picture...sorry! Out of focus, but these are the same female and two males from above.
A wasp or beetle in her web for scale. She was HUGE!
Antlers for additional scale. These spiders were everywhere at my Aunt's pond a couple of years ago and they grow big...well at least the females do!The Golden Orb Weavers build large, semi-permanent orb webs. The strong silk has a golden sheen. These spiders remain in their webs day and night and gain some protection from bird attack by the presence of a 'barrier network' of threads on one or both sides of the orb web. Sometimes their strong webs manage to trap small birds or bats, and the spider will wrap them and feed upon them. Commoner prey items include flies, beetles, locusts, wood moths and cicadas. Golden Silk Orb Weavers are large spiders (body 2-4 cm) with silvery-grey to plum coloured bodies and brown-black, often yellow banded legs. The males are tiny (5 mm) and red-brown to brown in colour. This spider belongs to the Tetragnathidae (longjawed orbweavers) family.Nephila clavipes is the only species in the Nephila genus that exists in the USA.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Tips for Parenting...and Grandparenting!
Tips for teaching your children how the media works, can trick them
By Aisha Sultan
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
I often talk to parents about teaching their children to become critical consumers of mass media, and I found these tips to be smart and helpful:
The average American child watches two to three hours of TV a day, and that doesn’t include the time they spend playing video games, sitting in front of the computer, and watching movies. Yet, few children are taught how to decode the messages that come wrapped in the media. Ellen Besen, an animator, author, and teacher, offers this help for parents and teachers:*
RECOGNIZE THE MOST BASIC CAMERA TRICK. “Framing,” the way that a camera focuses on a particular element or scene is often use to distort or enhance reality. For example, the shot of a crowd cheering or jeering a particular celebrity or politician that overflows the edges of the screen gives the impression of a mass turnout. Yet, if the camera were pulled back a little it could reveal a largely empty stadium or a relatively sedate street. “Teach your kids that what they don’t see if often as important as what they do, especially when their watching news or reality TV” says Besen.
* DO YOU REALLY WANT SHOE POLISH ON YOUR BROWNIES? Familiarize yourself with the ways in which many consumer products, especially food, are doctored to make them more appealing. Foods are often coated with paint, shoe polish, or oil to make them look brighter and more enticing. Also, portions sizes are often exaggerated.
* TURN OFF THE SOUND OCCASIONALLY. We often forget that with visual media there’s much more at work than the visuals. Encourage kids to notice the difference sound effects and music make in how they perceive what they are seeing by watching something first with sound and then without it. Then, encourage them to watch and listen for the effect of rhythm on perception. Rhythm can come from such elements as music or camera moves and can be used to make a story seem more exiting or more important.
* PLAYING ON FANTASIES. Ask your kids to think about what desires or fantasies certain ads tap into. For example, think of the SUV commercial that has the driver tearing off the road into the wilderness or the toothpaste commercial that ends with a beautiful woman fawning over a man.
* POW! CRASH! WHAM! DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN FAKE AND REAL VIOLENCE. It’s particularly important to remind kids of just how highly staged most of what they see on TV is, especially when they’re seeing violence. Make it clear to them that fight scenes are among the most choreographed and manufactured and that while violence on TV or in the movies doesn’t leave lasting destruction, in real life it does.
By Aisha Sultan
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
I often talk to parents about teaching their children to become critical consumers of mass media, and I found these tips to be smart and helpful:
The average American child watches two to three hours of TV a day, and that doesn’t include the time they spend playing video games, sitting in front of the computer, and watching movies. Yet, few children are taught how to decode the messages that come wrapped in the media. Ellen Besen, an animator, author, and teacher, offers this help for parents and teachers:*
RECOGNIZE THE MOST BASIC CAMERA TRICK. “Framing,” the way that a camera focuses on a particular element or scene is often use to distort or enhance reality. For example, the shot of a crowd cheering or jeering a particular celebrity or politician that overflows the edges of the screen gives the impression of a mass turnout. Yet, if the camera were pulled back a little it could reveal a largely empty stadium or a relatively sedate street. “Teach your kids that what they don’t see if often as important as what they do, especially when their watching news or reality TV” says Besen.
* DO YOU REALLY WANT SHOE POLISH ON YOUR BROWNIES? Familiarize yourself with the ways in which many consumer products, especially food, are doctored to make them more appealing. Foods are often coated with paint, shoe polish, or oil to make them look brighter and more enticing. Also, portions sizes are often exaggerated.
* TURN OFF THE SOUND OCCASIONALLY. We often forget that with visual media there’s much more at work than the visuals. Encourage kids to notice the difference sound effects and music make in how they perceive what they are seeing by watching something first with sound and then without it. Then, encourage them to watch and listen for the effect of rhythm on perception. Rhythm can come from such elements as music or camera moves and can be used to make a story seem more exiting or more important.
* PLAYING ON FANTASIES. Ask your kids to think about what desires or fantasies certain ads tap into. For example, think of the SUV commercial that has the driver tearing off the road into the wilderness or the toothpaste commercial that ends with a beautiful woman fawning over a man.
* POW! CRASH! WHAM! DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN FAKE AND REAL VIOLENCE. It’s particularly important to remind kids of just how highly staged most of what they see on TV is, especially when they’re seeing violence. Make it clear to them that fight scenes are among the most choreographed and manufactured and that while violence on TV or in the movies doesn’t leave lasting destruction, in real life it does.
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