Show & Tell w/ Mel

As I have posted before, I am infatuated with these little Robin's that live under my deck. Even though I dont really like bugs and critters, I find myself taking pictures of them all the time! Since the Robin's are quite big now, I was able to stand on a chair on the ground and capture a few pics from the ground instead of looking down through the slats of the deck. If you would like to see them a few days ago, click here.

The first two images are through the slats of my deck, as the others were. This is only two of the three birdies in the nest.



The following images are from the ground up, standing on a chair.





Last year, we planted a cherry blossom tree near a walkway in our back yard. It is a very small but full tree and perfect for a nest. I had taken a picture of this nest before when it just had one egg in it. Then there were three eggs. We think it is a Finch, but not too sure. The mama bird is brown with an orange beak. Anyways, they hatched!

Money shot!!


Ok, now for one last critter photo for the day. This guy is out in our garage hanging onto an electric cord. I saw him maybe last week and thought, "Hmmm, thats kinda interesting".....thinking he was alive and just hanging on. When I mentioned it to Keith, he told me that he found him there like a month ago! It sounds so morbid, but I instantly thought, "Hanging on for dear life, and dying".



This is also my first attempt at 'high key' , thanks to Christina.

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And Then There Was Life.....

I would like to show you the new babies at our house. I had posted earlier in Mi Casa es Su Casa that we had a Robin's nest under our deck. Everyday I look down through the deck to see if the little birdies have hatched. What are the odds that I would see one in progress! Yesterday, Ella and I took turns peering through the floor boards of the deck to watch this new little life come into the world. I got a couple of pictures with its butt and head still in the two halves of the shells, but they came out pretty blurry because he was wiggling so much.


I quickly grabbed my camera and got these shots of this alien like birdie - all full of wrinkly skin and big bug eyes. Then today, his sibling was born! I dont know what the normal hatching schedule is for birds, but I am now excited to see the other two hatch! It was amazing.


I am still waiting to get the money shot of the birdies with thier mouths open looking for food. ;)

Show and Tell with Mel

So this weeks show and tell isnt really about me, but about what my husband and our family and friends got to be part of. Keith works for his family business which is a spray texture and drywall company. In August of 2007 his company was honored to be part of the show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

This episode was very special too because it was the 100th family that Extreme Makeover: Home Edition had built a house for. It was a very exciting time. The project was very hush hush. Nobody involved could talk about it to anyone. As a matter of fact, any information that was passed along from the builder to any of the suppliers/contractors involved was named "Project 508" (the 508 stands for something, but I cant recall at the moment).

They ended up building the house in 99 hours. Keith, members of our family and friends were up at all hours of the night and had to be prepared to do their work at a moments notice. Sometimes leaving the house at 2am because that's when the drywall was scheduled to be hung. Most of Keith's family was there either working or volunteering throughout the week. A few of our friends work for Keith too and volunteered their time with the company. I unfortunately did not get a chance to get down there because I didn't have anyone to watch Ella.

The Swenson-Lee family lives in Minnetonka, MN and were victims of domestic violence. Their story has been featured in many newspapers and more notably on Dateline NBC. On September 22, 2006 the lives of Teri Lee's four children were forever changed. Teri Lee's ex-boyfriend, whom she had a restraining order against, broke into the family's home and fatally shot Lee and her boyfriend. The children, who lost their father in a car accident a few years before, were home at the time. Lee's then 11-year old daughter witnessed the shootings. Police found her two young sons hiding in a closet. None of the children were physically harmed.

Lee's sister, Vicki Seliger Swenson and her husband, Erik, both school teachers, adopted Terri's four children and brought them into their three bedroom home. With three children of their own and another on the way, the Swenson-Lee family has doubled in less than a year and was running out of space.

I cant even tell you though how rewarding it was for Keith, the business, all the family and our friends to be involved with this. The tragedy that this family went through and the love that the Swenson family had to take in Terri's 4 children was so overwhelming. It is something that we (even through I didn't get to go down, I still feel like I lived it through him) will always be proud to have been a part of. It is something we will be able to tell our grandchildren.

Ok, now for my 2 cents....When the house was finished, ABC hosted a party downtown for all of the volunteers involved. It was very nice, had lots of food and an open bar. We all went and had a great time. We were even told that the cast of the show would be stopping by....so, who are we most excited to see? Why Ty Pennington, of course. Thankfully, they did all show up later on in the night, after we had been there for a few hours. They even walked around for a short time to take pictures and sign autographs. I gotta tell ya, to see the women who frantically surrounded him was amazing. Here are all of these pretty girls, some hootchie, trying to get his attention....and then there's my mother in law. Dab smack in the middle of them. She didn't care if she got to talk to him or not, she just wanted to be close to him. It made me laugh so hard. I was actually quite disappointed in the real thing....On TV, TY looks to me to be a very tall, broad shouldered kind of guy. NOT AT ALL. Little man, is all I kept thinking. Little man. He was only like 5'7" and very slender. His pants were falling off of his ass so many time he had to pull them up over and over. And yes ladies....I saw his plumber butt. It was surreal, and actually quite a turn off. Dont get me wrong. Ty is very attractive, but, little man....little man.

So anyways, I just looked on the website for the show and coincidentally, it is replaying our episode tomorrow night! Sunday, June 22 8pm/7c. Check it out if you can.

Images were provided by the builder of the project: TJB Homes
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Show and Tell with Mel

So, what to get the Dad that has everything? Why, home made chocolate chip cookies, of course. I've been trying for a week to figure out what to get my Dad for Father's Day. He loves to game on his computer, and I cant tell you how many times I have gotten him a gift certificate to Best Buy so that he could purchase the next new game coming out. Except this year, I think my brother is already getting him a gift certificate. He lives in Florida, so its and easily mailed gift for him. So I didnt want to get him one too. Also, sometimes giving a gift certificate is just like giving cash. And who really has all that much of that these days. They constantly tell me that they dont need anything anyways, so giving them something like cash would just be silly.

So I decided to make cookies this year instead. Every Christmas I make chocolate chip cookies for my husband and my Dad (one with nuts, one without) and they really seem to enjoy them because it is the only time during the year that they get some fresh home made cookies. Also, it sort of makes me feel like a little girl again, making cookies for my Dad. I always get that 'Daddy's little girl inner joy' feeling when my Dad's face lights up because I made him cookies. Every year at Christmas, he acts surprised that I made them....yet I make them every year. That's a Daddy for ya. When I think of my Dad as a little girl, I think of all the quirky things he used to do. He always whistled the high pitched sound that the Starship Enterprise made when making a hail. He said words like "mayhaps", instead of perhaps or maybe and called hamburgers "hanka-burger-chinka-burger". (Dont ask me where he came up with that one, but we used to laugh when he said it.) His quirkiness makes him the Daddy I love.
Anyways, I was eating away half the cookies while I was making them and it reminded me of the time I brought Ella out to lunch with my friends from work. We went to a restaurant called The Good Earth. I had never been there before because they serve natural foods and I wasnt too sure I would like it. But we went and the food was delicious. We all got dessert afterwards and I ordered a chocolate chip cookie for her. Little did I know that the single cookie I ordered was going to be bigger than her head! As you can tell in the picture, she looks quite perplexed by it as well. No, she did not eat the whole cookie. I dont even think she ate half of it.

One last thing I wanted to mention today is how sad I think it is that NBC newsman Tim Russert died suddenly on Friday. If you dont know anything about him, he was the moderator for Meet the Press on Sunday mornings and had written a book about his father called Big Russ and Me. He had just returned from Italy to celebrate his son graduating from Boston College and with tomorrow being Fathers Day, I cant imagine how hard it will be for his family. So I hope everyone gets the chance to tell their fathers how much they love them this Father's Day and tell your husbands how wonderful they are as fathers too. You just never know.....Have a wonderful Father's Day.

Check out this weeks other Show and Tells.

Show And Tell With Mel

Here's my add for this week's Show And Tell.

Got yourself one of these puppies yet? Yes, this is my one and only, boughten on Ebay, Fertility Goddess. Prior to doing IVF for Ella in 2004, I was THAT desperate. Desperate enough to believe in voodoo. Desperate enough to believe that some wooden statue that was probably made by some man who lives in the mountains of Montana, was going to bring me the hocus pocus magic that I needed to have a successful cycle.

I should have tried to figure out how to feng shui it and all in my house as to bring it's maximum potential to my needs at the time, but I didnt. I set it up in my living room so I would see it everyday. I think its actually kinda cute. I rubbed its belly a few times, if you must know....but other than that, it just sat there staring at me.

Now I dont know if it's hocus pocus voodoo magic was actually the reason that I got pregnant on my very first cycle of IVF and actually gave birth to Ella. It could have been the mother and child pendant I was wearing that day, or my lucky underwear.....but the fact is I am glad I have it.

I have since repositioned it in my living room, and since had 2 failed FET cycles. I cant help but wonder if I feng shui'd it correctly in the first place. But in any case, it just goes to show the things we will believe in in order to get a BFP!

Got any funky stuff you've tried?

Show and Tell w/ Mel Sunday (a little late....)

I used to blog about a year ago and had posted these guys up when I found them (so sorry if you are seeing these again for a second time for anyone whose stayed with me), but I thought it was a good SHOW AND TELL, and I deleted my previous blog, so I dont have my old posts anymore (dummy me).

In any case, when I found this first image, I was having a bad day. I went out onto the deck and my eyes just sorta glanced over. After 7 years of living in my house, I had never noticed he was there. It was one of those warm, fuzzy moments. The ones that say, "everything will be alright".

The second image of the "3 stodges", believe it or not is on the back door of my bathroom. Guess when I found that? Needless to say I have searched the rest of my house for anybody else watching me (since there ARE people watching that I wasnt aware of as noted in a previous post) I have since unplugged all of the baby monitors and am getting used to figuring out what Ella is doing by either sound or if she has turned her light on when she should be sleeping.

So anyways, I wondered if anyone else can find any images in thier wood?

....And Now, The Rest of The Story (Show and Tell Sunday)

**So I came upon a blog that does Show and Tell Sunday, so I thought I would join. Hopefully I can keep up with this every week. Sounds like a great idea. In any case, here's my first show and tell.......

Almost 10 years ago, my husband Keith had something very unusual happen to him. He went to a gas station on the way to work to get some smokes and some cash for the week. As he went to the ATM to take out a $20.00 bill, the cash machine ended up giving him 279 $20.00 bills! Totaling $5580.00. You can imagine his shock as he sat there and it spit out one bill after another. He ended up calling the police later that morning after getting to work and turning the money in, but his story made the headlines. All the local news channels and papers were calling our house trying to get an interview with him. We even had the BBC call for interview. It was really kinda cool. But that wasn't the the only cool thing that came out of it.

The bank that owned the ATM gave him two child sized backpacks and a big hearty thank you for returning the money. Woo-Hoo. After the news stations got wind of that, I think they ended up feeling like dumb asses because no one was impressed with the gift given to the man who returned almost $5600.00. A representative from the bank called after seeing the news reports and he ended up getting $500.00 and two front row tickets to a Minnesota Vikings game. That was much better than two child sized backpacks.

But the best gift of all that came out of it was from a stranger who lived across the country. We received a package a couple of weeks later from an old woman who was impressed by Keith's honesty. Inside the package was a statue of Diogenes with a handwritten letter.

The card that came with it stated:

DIOGENES(400-323 B.C.)
-Was a Greek philosopher who believed that only virtue brings happiness.
-It is said that he searched Athens with a lighted lamp in broad daylight, looking for an honest man.

The letter says:


Dear Keith,

It was a pleasure to read about your experience with the cash machine. Read the card with the figurine and you will see this is Diogenes - Who has found his honest man!

His name is on the base and seems to have something green tucked under his arm.

This came from Greece, imported into the USA at Tampa Springs, Florida, a Greek fishing village, also known for its tourist. I was there about 30 years ago and I spotted Diogenes.

Please Enjoy.

Sincerely,
Florence K.

We were so touched by this gesture of a complete stranger. The fact that someone reached out to him to say 'good job' and send him this beautiful statue was extremely kind and generous. We treasure the statue and display it proudly in our house to this day.