I remember: A beautiful face, a soft voice, and a loving touch. Comforting when sad, uplifts when down, joyful when happy. She always remembers my special days. I remember her beautiful soprano voice, my head in her lap as she strokes my hair, singing softly to comfort me. I remember she says “I love you” at least once each time she sees me. She stands at the door when I leave and flashes the “I Love You” sign as I drive home. And amazingly, her unconditional love even when I do things she does not want me to do. I salute her concern for others—she is never selfish, how much she loved my Father, for better and for worse. And I salute how she always tries her very best, and urges me to do the same.

Her mottos: “Let us oft speak kinds words to each other. Lift up your heart and sing. Have I told you lately that I love you. Remember who you are and what you stand for. If you can’t say anything that’s nice, it’s better not to speak at all.”

I will always remember her beautiful face, soft voice, and loving touch. Love you forever Mother Dearums!

I just had a great time with Brayden & Tyler. We had a sleep-over! I picked them up Thursday morning, we had a BIG breakfast, went to Target and then met Jo & the kids for swimming in the AF indoor pool. Chas came back with B, T and I and we had hot chocolate, pickles, and boiled eggs. Then we met Jo and kids to watch “Race to Witch Mountain.” They had to run right after the movie to get Justice to work. After that Brayd, Tyler and I stopped at BlockBuster and picked up King Kong and Fantastic 4 (second one) and stayed up watching them. We slept in the living room–Brayd on the sofa and Tyler, Rox & I slept on cushions on the floor.

We got up early and watched Home Alone 3 and then Home Alone 2…then finished watching King Kong. Brayd played on the PlayStation2, Tyler played with the number puzzle, both of them love playing the golf-tee game (triangle wooden block with 15 holes drilled and 14 golf-tees. the objective is to try and leave only one tee by jumping the others…)

Tyler loved the number puzzle and left this mix up for poor Auntie Shel to fix…and I fixed it!

Then it was time to take our showers and meet Tiana for lunch at Los Hermanos. Thank you for the great time!

I Stand All Amazed

I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me,
Confused at the grace that so fully he proffers me.
I tremble to know that for me he was crucified,
That for me, a sinner, he suffered, he bled and died.

Oh, it is wonderful that he should care for me
Enough to die for me!
Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me!

I marvel that he would descend from his throne divine
To rescue a soul so rebellious and proud as mine,
That he should extend his great love unto such as I,
Sufficient to own, to redeem, and to justify.

I think of his hands pierced and bleeding to pay the debt!
Such mercy, such love and devotion can I forget?
No, no, I will praise and adore at the mercy seat,
Until at the glorified throne I kneel at his feet.

Text and music: Charles H. Gabriel, 1856–1932Top of Form

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpFhS0dAduc&eurl=http%3A%2F%2F

Well, I spent many hours yesterday scanning in old photographs. It only took so long because I had to extract them from scrapbooks and photo albums. Ah the memories that went through my head. I could remember the exact time, smell the smells, remember what part of my life I was in…

Here’s the deal. If I don’t take those photos and do something with them so that my memories go with them, I might as well throw them in the trash. Why? (you might ask) Well, this photo is of my grandmother (she’s the adult sitting on the horse with the long rifle,) and I don’t know who the big group of kids might be. No one now living can remember if they were relatives or the kids she taught at school. So although I can make up a story to go along with the photograph, the reason for the photograph is lost. Sad!

Please, please! Make sure you write down your memories and keep those memories with your photos. I can even come to your house and scan photos for you! Visit my website www.preservepreciousmemories.com

4BybeeGirls

If there is anything that has been a constant in my life, it is the unconditional love I enjoy from my FOUR mothers. My mother, Ina Mae, and her three sisters, Lois, Rosalie, and Ruthie.

On February 17th my Aunt Ruthie left us to join her dear companion. Mother and I are so glad she didn’t suffer. We love her dearly, and we send our love and sympathy to her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren; her siblings, nieces and nephews, and all her friends and neighbors. We will miss her in this life, but look forward to our reunion in the next. Auntie…Love Ya and Appreciate Ya.

TTFN Misha

Ok, so I’m walking in the hall from Mrs H’s class to Miss C’s class, when one of the 5th grade boys runs (oops, we don’t run in the hall) up to me and says “Have you had a heart attack yet?” I was so shocked, I was temporarily rendered dumb… he tilts his head and then continues… “you know, when we all make paper hearts and write on them how much we all loooooooooooove you?”

OMG! Kids say the darndest things!!!

TTFN Misha

I am such a fan of wordle word clouds. There are so many uses for them. Teachers love it…just think of the possibilities for spelling words, historical sites, famous people!!!! It’s wonderful. You aught to try it sometime. www.wordle.net

Wow! What a amazing time we had last night. We had an impassioned motivation/information speech by Doug; testimonials from consultants who were acknowledged for their sponsoring and sales since Reunion; plus there were tons of awards. It was a chance to spend some great time with my Heritage Makers friends. It was so fun having Jo here! Can’t wait for today’s meetings.

My personal favorite was exciting pitch about the delights of the TAC cruises! Free tote bags, free t-shirts, free girl-caps! (NOT guy caps, girl caps!) I am so excited to get those TAC points and join the cruise to the land of the Mayan’s in early 2010!!!! Gotta earn those points…gotta earn those points…cruise for FREEEEEEE! If I work really, REALLY hard Van can go with!!!

The meeting ended about 9:15 pm. Pam had a sleepover for her team at the Marriott and there were 13 of us in 3 rooms. She bought us all slippers to wear to go back and pow-wow it was sooooo cool! I forgot the charger for my computer so I had to run back home and missed the after-the-meeting fun =(

Today we will learn about the new product(s???) we can offer our clients! I know there will be a 6.5×8 spiral-bound cookbook available in March (don’t know the price yet) so, exciting!!!!! There are new contests that our clients can join, new clubs that offer free product and half-price products… And the room!!!! There were such amazing projects!!! What more can a girl ask for?

All this fun…and can you believe that I forgot my camera???!! I’ll get a pix from Pam or Amy. We miss you MW!!!

TTFN Misha

I’m just so excited about attending the Heritage Makers Regionals this weekend! The amazing ladies I work with will all be hanging out for an info packed weekend. They will be introducing a new product, discussing new policies and ideas, and…well…basically it will be an all Hertiage Makers weekend!

I’m going to try and post early in the mornings before the classes begin, but we’ll see how tired I am!

TTFN Misha

My assignments last week were to photograph 3 to 4 items at close range to discover the delights of depth of field, take a landscape photograph using the smallest aperture (least light, largest f-stop) on my camera, and a portrait using the largest aperture (most light, smallest f-stop) settings.

I searched and I searched for something I had 3 or 4 of…until I finally thought of soup cans. Although the cans don’t show too much blurring as they retreat from the eye, you can see the blur in the serape in the background! C-O-O-L!

The landscape shot was kind of difficult because I had been sick and didn’t want to go out, the weather had been bad, and it had been cloudy for the entire week. The last possible day and hour I went out and shot 8 or 10 shots from out my front door… Definitely not my best work.

The portrait was an easy decision! Rox! When she was younger there would have been no way to keep her still! But old lady she has become and she just laid there and took her nap while I took tons of shots. She is such a cutie!

So here’s the scoop on DOF (depth of field)… the more light you let into the camera (that’s the smaller f-stop like f27 which on my camera is really f2.7) the more the background is blurred; less light means sharper backgrounds (like f-8.0).

The shutter speed has a lot to do with your motion shots…you can freeze the action of your subject (as long as they are not headed right at you) by using faster shutter speeds (1/500 second) and blur the action with slower speeds (1/8 second). Couple that with your f-stop settings above for DOF effects, and you can really supercharge your photographs!

The other two ways to control DOF that I learned about were the focal length of the lens and how close you place the camera to the subject.

TTFN Misha