The Best Things in Life were Made in the 80s (or 70s)

Let me just begin this blog by telling you what I thought was a story worthy of Paul Harvey.

Driving home from work a few days ago, I was about to pull onto our street when I noticed a coffee mug lying tilted on the pavement by the curb. I've always heard and read about single shoes left stranded on the side of the road, but in my 24 years of living I have yet to see a specimen of these alleged shoes and wonder why so many people talk about this phenomenon, when I have never seen any evidence to support these 'unique' occurences. I see weirder things, like ceramic mugs. I even thought to myself, "How weird," and then realized that the strange mug on the side of the road was a strange Andrews-household mug on the side of the road. Being the thriving metropolis Sweetwater is, I checked the speeding traffic (there was none) and put my car into reverse, picked up the mug and took it home. How did this mug come to be filled with dirt and resting atop the pavement on a road that is relatively speaking, not that near to our house? I asked Koby about it, and we discovered that he had been using a mug in his truck (coffee addict that he is), but neither of us have any idea how it came to be outside of his truck, much less how the glass sustained a trip from any height (probably thrown from a moving vehicle at speed, if you have any experience in riding with Koby) to the pavement.

Let me tell you a little bit more about our mug. It is part of a Noritake collection that was given to Koby and me by my parents, who registered for and received the set when they themselves were married in January of 1980. I feel certain that this is evidential proof that things were made better back in the day; music, people (yours truly is a product of the particularly good year 1985), and yes, even coffee mugs.

In other news, I have been slacking and have not told you about another Grace Academy experience. I taught a holiday camp at the Grace Museum on January 3rd. It was fun and I feel like our projects were for the most part successful. We made silhouettes on shaving-cream marbelized paper, embossed metal encaustics (yeah, with 1st-5th graders!), cork/wire sculptures, and custom magnets. Here are some of the fruits of our day-long labor. (Sorry for the picture quality - my pregnant brain forgot to bring the camera on this particular day and I was forced to use my iPhone.)











If you have kids anywhere from 1st - 6th grade ages, or know people who do and live in the Abilene area, you should definitely check out the camps that the Grace Museum offers. Not only do they bring in, ahem, phenomenal teachers, they have a great, safe set up and I yet to meet a Grace camper who did not enjoy themselves during their stay.

In Blob news, I have been incorrect in some of my reportings. Eager as I was to end my first trimester, I did not pay attention to my baby books/apps... I am NOW beginning the final week of the &$@#!@# first trimester. Needless to say, I am eagerly anticipating the "renewed energy levels" and cessations of "normal levels of nausea/morning sickness" that the second trimester is fabled to bring. I have started having dreams about actually delivering babies (in plural, yes. I imagine this to be because I do not know the gender yet, and so in my dreams I have boy babies and girl babies) in addition to other, um, interesting dreams, all of which is indicated "normal" in my copious amounts of pre-natal literature. For instance, last night I dreamt about wizard cats that tried to kill me with the dreaded 'avada kedavra' bite. Although this is not a far cry from normal for me, I have (in my pre-pregnancy) dreamt about evil vampire-spider-cats...

Also, we are moving to the BEST house in Colorado City on February 1st. We feel like we have won the lottery of houses. Maybe I am building it up too much, but you will see what I mean when we post pictures in posts to come...