Christmas Gifts

Okay - here's hoping my loyal readers - all four or five of you - had great Christmases.

Christmas at the Callahan household was a wrapping paper storm of present opening. It was fun, but tiring. On Friday, the elder Bakers visited us for the day for our Christmas, and that was nice, but tiring. So needless to say, Brent and I have spent the last two days resting up - getting ready to put away Christmas and get ready for what will hopefully be a great New Year's Eve.

This year in our contest to get each other the best gift, my sister won. I received a Mood bag. Now, if you aren't a Project Runway fan (and why wouldn't you be?), then you have absolutely no idea what I am talking about. Brief explanation: the contestants on Project Runway have a new challenge each week, and they usually go to Mood, a fabric store in NYC, to buy their materials, and they always come in with these bags that say Mood on the side. One day while Daddy was in the hospital in Greenville back in March, Mary stopped over at my house to watch an episode we had on DVR (and I say we, because Brent watches it too - gotta love him), and I said, "I'm going to go to New York just to go to Mood to buy a yard of fabric and get one of those bags."

So you know what? Mary had Neil get the information off of the Internet (oh what a wonderful tool), and she called Mood, and after what I am sure was an entertaining conversation for the clerk in NYC, Mary had ordered two yards of fabric and a bag for me for Christmas.

My plan now is to use it as my school bag, just to see if anyone recognizes it. I FREAKING LOVE IT - lol - so Mary won this year.

But among all the nice gifts, I have one I want to mention - in honor of one of my loyal readers - Cathy - and her husband David.

The joke is that I am the Queen Bee of Chocowinity Middle School - at least according to some of the teachers - so for Christmas, David decided that I needed these -

Many thanks to everyone for their presents and warm wishes - and many wishes for a Happy New Year!

Leslie's and Mark's Daughter

Well, folks, she's here. Caroline Felton Bradbury was born on December 16. Apparently they waited until the last minute to leave the house, so Carrie was born on the side of the road in an ambulance - in the words of her father, Mark

Here’s the short story: Leslie had contractions on Tuesday (12/16) morning, as we got into the car to drive to the hospital I called 911 just to be safe, Will stayed at home with a babysitter, we got 3 miles from home when we met up with the volunteer fire fighter, he had us stop to check Leslie’s condition, within 10 minutes about 6 more fire fighters arrived as did the ambulance, within 5 more minutes the baby was born – with the car pulled off on the side of the road and Leslie reclined in the passenger seat, that’s why you see her exiting the ambulance at the hospital with Carrie in her arms! Oh, and between the fire fighters and ambulance crew, no one had ever delivered a baby before…

Both Leslie and Carrie (8 lbs, 2 oz; 20 inches) made it through the ordeal just fine and we are all at home now. Quite a day, quite a story.

Mark

And here is the Christmas card/birth announcement that came the next week - impressive timing for parents with two small children!

Congrat's!

Dollar Tree Strikes Again

Many thanks to the people of Indonesia for all their help in my on-going search for reasons we should stop shopping at Dollar Tree.

Technology Conference

Went to Greensboro for two and a half days for a technology conference last week. Learned some pretty cool stuff and got some free stuff, too. But really kept coming up against a couple of things I thought you guys might have opinions on.

First of all, they keep saying we need to engage these students. That they are using technology all the time, and they need to use more. That students are multi-tasking so much that they are doing like 26 hours of stuff in one day - seriously.

My problem with all of this is that students may very well be multi-tasking and doing all of this stuff, but is this allowing them to sit still for an extended period of time? I ask this, because to read a book - or even to listen to a book - you really need to be able to be still - and not distracted. I fear that these multitasking students are being trained to be entertained and drawn to shorter and shorter bits of information.

From TV shows with small bursts of entertainment divided by small bursts of commercials to music videos. It's amazing to me that they can sit down and watch a full length movie anymore. But then again - they are totally immersed in it if they go to the theater, so maybe movies still have a chance - lol

Anywho - the other thing about the conference was the abundance of laptops and the abundance of folks who thought it was not maddening to hear typing during a presentation. People who type during a presentation kill me. I can't even begin to imagine being the presenter.

What do you guys think?

One year anniversary

Well, Thursday marked the one year anniversary for the FIRST f-ing back surgery. The one that either didn't work or was totally f-ed up by the folks that put me on the gurney right after surgery. The one that had me in pain until the SECOND surgery in January.

But I'm doing good now. Although about three days ago the pain started picking up again. I think and hope it's just been aggravated by something - probably too much touch football - lol - but anywho -

Seems like forever ago. The whole wasted winter actually. Things happen at school, and I just say, "I don't remember. I wasn't here." Really weird.

But thank God the second surgery "took." Here's hoping for another year pain free.