Ice Pics

Sam, Mr. Snappy, and I decided to go outside and look for the beauty in the ice storm. This is what we found.

Sam always walks with his nose to the ground, but his ears were perked up while he investigated his first ice storm.

Oh, Mr Snappy is the name I just now gave to my camera.
Y'all have a great day now!!

Texas Ice Storm

Our area, north of Dallas, got a bad ice storm last night. It's really cold and the roads are covered in ice. Almost all of the area schools are closed today. But the sun has come out and is shining brightly. Forecast is that we'll be above freezing by noon. I was hoping for some nice photo opportunities, but I haven't found anything that pretty yet. It's ice not snow and so at my house it's not really even white just clear slick ice. Perhaps I'll venture out in a while and see if there are some pretty places to take pictures of.

My class got canceled last night. I hated that because we'll just get behind and we were already really rushed for time to cover all that we need to this semester. Guess I better do some reading and studying this morning before going into work.

Photo Challenge--Looking Upwards

Photo Challenge time again.....Thanks to Joan for hosting this edition of Brenda's Photo Challenge. Be sure to see the other participants interpretation of the theme by going to the Brenda's Photo Challenge Blog.

I thought this was a great theme and had lots of wonderful ideas, but ended up posting old pictures. Even with that I had a difficult time choosing. I have taken LOTS of pictures that fit this theme.

These are the pictures I ended up with.

I took this picture last fall from my yard. I just happened to notice a beautiful sunset going on and got a few nice shots.

This pictures was taken of my office building during our 2008 snow. My header was taken at the same time in our parking lot.
Summer of 2007 we went to Ft Davis, Texas and had a wonderful time taking photos. The windmill and tree pictures were taken then.
Thanks for sharing my upward look. I'm headed to work but will be back to look at everyone else's photo challenge pictures later tonight.

Have a fun Saturday!!

Trees

I don't know why but I've always liked looking at trees. I find them fascinating. I like taking pictures of trees too. Here are some of my favorite tree pictures.

Here's wishing you all a wonderful FRIDAY!!

Thanks for encouragement

Thanks for all your words of encouragement. Some of the little annoyances have smoothed out. I got my house cleaned up and that always makes me feel better.

My class for this spring starts tonight. I suppose we'll get an idea of what the semester will be like.

Thank you

Thank you for your kind comments. I really don't mean to be negative and I'm really not all the time. I think I'm feeling overwhelmed at the moment.

I did get some things done at work yesterday and that felt really good.

Gotta get some stuff done at home today.

I'm tired of winter and cold and gray skies! Wishing for the flowers and crepe myrtles and blue, blue sky.








I'm tired of computer and technical issues and ready to work on tax returns that I can FINISH!!

This week has been FULL of pop up emergency issues like irritating computer problems at work and problems with our transition from one insurance to another only to find out we are back on the same insurance. Add in problems with getting information (I just need ONE piece of info to finish a big project) and getting IRS or worse CALIFORNIA tax department notices.

To top it all off, I seem to wake up every night in the middle of the night for a few hours.

So there's my chance to vent a little and just gripe to the world about my petty, insignificant problems.

God really is great and I trust in Him. I almost hate asking for His help with these things, but then may be that's just what I need to do.

I know one thing for sure, I certainly want to Praise Him for all His mighty works. He is an awesome God.

Decision Made --for now.

Thank you all for your input on our office staff pictures. We ended up posting choice 2 for now. The office staff seems to prefer not to be TOO close up. Some specific people really didn't want to be in the front. I kind of liked choice 3, but ended up with #2. Another reason that we chose #2 is because it is made in the entrance area to our building. It kind of gives the "feel" for where we work along with our team approach. It looks more like a GROUP than a bunch of individuals.

So here is the link to our firm's web site: Patrick L. Murray, PC, CPA's. One of my responsibilities is to maintain the web site. I did not build the original site, but did work with the ones who did, supplying the info and asking questions and for changes, etc. So in a way it's kind of my "baby." I really don't know much about html or web sites and often wish I knew more so I could make it better. I think it needs a total makeover, but I never seem to have time to do that. And just about the time I start really thinking about trying to improve it, some new client will come in and tell us how much they like our site. That's usually enough for me to say "okay." I'll just keep changing updating the forms and the ages of children. I typically only update it about once a year in the fall before the new tax season starts.

Hubby

Some have asked about my husband. You can read my posts from around Dec 4-20 for some background info.

Currently he is in a rehab program as an outpatient. This rehab is for brain injuries and is customized to the specific patient's needs. He is mostly working on speech. They have also identified some minor problems in organization, visual and motor processing times, and memory. Perhaps a few other things too. One program they have tests and prepares brain injury patients for driving readiness from a response time, neurological level. He has not passed this hurdle yet and we both are getting anxious for him to be able to drive again. He has one more week of full time therapy which is 5 days a week from 9:00 to 3:30. They provide transportation. After that he expects to have 2 or 3 weeks at 2 or 3 days per week.

He continues to experience some pain from the surgery as expected and gets tired easily. Again, that is just a part of surgery recovery.

Thanks for all your prayers and well wishes.

update

Someone asked which person is ME in the photos of my office. I'm the one in the royal blue blouse. Currently the 2nd picture is posted on the firm web site. However, I'm still playing with the various pictures that were taken (we took 14 pictures in all in 4 different poses) with some frames and sizes and crops, etc. I think it is narrowed down to either the 2nd or 3rd pictures. But I may frame it or crop it or something. Once a final decision is made I'll post a link to the actual web site. There are bios for all the people in the picture on the site as well as a picture of our building and info about the services we offer, etc.

Yesterday, hubby and I spent the day with doctors and running errands. I had a routine follow up appointment with our family doc. Nothing out of the ordinary there; she seems to always suggest another OTC supplement each time I go. This time it was fish oil. Since she was the doctor who suggested hubby go to the cardiologist, he went in with me and talked to her a little bit too. Then we went to an appointment with a new neurologist. He was a more conservative doctor and pretty much said that we could expect gradual improvement in his speech, memory, and other brain injury related problems over the next 5 or 6 months. After that he doesn't expect much change. He scheduled an MRI in 4 weeks. That should give an indication if there are any permanent problems. After a few errands, we had a conference call giving results of a neuro-psych test from the rehab facility. Results were good with only a few areas he needs to continue to work on.

Vote Please

Our office took new pictures today. We need to choose one for our company web site. Help me decide.

Choice 1

Choice 2

Choice 3

Choice 4

Choice 5

I think the owner of the firm gets the final vote. We'll see who agrees with him.

Photo Challenge--Anything New

I've missed out on the last couple or so of photo challenges because life just got out of control for a while. I'm very thankful that God saw our family through a tough month of December and I greet the NEW year with excitement, hope, joy, and anticipation for a wonderful year ahead. So thanks to our hostess, Laura Belle for giving us this challenge. It is only difficult in that there are so many NEW things to post about. So the challenge became difficult to narrow down to only a few pics.

After much thought, I arrived at the 3 things I wanted to write about and photo. The first thing I wanted to post about was the NEW school semester. I enjoyed returning to college last summer and have written many posts about the adventure thus far. So I look forward to the NEW semester beginning in a couple of weeks. I decided to photograph my textbook, but it has a shiny cover and I was having a very difficult time getting a good picture. I kept trying to take pictures in different places in the house, etc. The 2nd thing I wanted to photo was my NEW doggie. Again I've written about my special SAM and posted many pictures of him before, but he has been a delightful NEW pet in our household, capturing the hearts of all our immediate family members. So Sam decided to make the photo session a little easier. He jumped into my picture of my textbook. The picture turned out pretty cute. Don't 'cha think?


For my 2nd photo and my 3rd idea, I turn to something a bit more serious. My husband has a NEW lease on life (aka NEW arteries)! Much to our surprise on December 4th, we found out he needed bypass surgery. The events that followed over the next several days were difficult and I posted about some of it before. But at this point in time, we are very, very thankful that he is recovering nicely as expected and we are hopeful that after he is fully recovered he will feel much better than he has in several years. I have some pictures of his scares when they were pretty yucky looking but decided to post a picture today that shows how wonderfully he is healing.

You can hardly even see the scar!!

So there you have my edition of Photo Challenge--New. Hop on over to the Brenda's Photo Challenge blog to find out who else is playing today.

Only in Texas

Saturday the temperature got to 84 degrees Farenheit! That's hot for a day in January! I used the car AC and then went home and turned on the house AC for a little while. Then Sunday morning a cold front comes through and we're back to heavy coats. There's ice to melt from my car before going to work by Monday morning. All day on Monday it just sort of sprinkled freezing rain. Temperature hovered near the freezing point, so trees and bushes got frozen but roads stayed okay. Today's supposed to be back near 60 I think. Only in Texas!!!

New Year and Donna's give-away

I'm so happy to have all my Christmas decorations put away. Our visit with family was wonderful and we are happy that life is returning to normal. I hope to work a full week at work this week for the first time in a very long time.

I almost went to work today, but decided to relish the quiet day at home with only hubby and the pets here. I am working on laundry and a few special projects I wanted to get done before digging into tax season. I even took a short nap!!

I hope to get back to some regular blog reading and posting as well.

Now one very important item of FUN--my good friend Donna from Cottage Days and Journeys is celebrating her 1 year blogging anniversary with a Give-Away. She is such a creative, talented person everyone should visit her blog and enter her contest. She has two prizes to choose from. Check out her post about the anniversary give-away. I won a wonderful Christmas ornament in her last give-away.

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year!!

2009

Here we come!!


We are having some family and friends over this afternoon to help finish up our Christmas goodies. It was a last minute idea, so I really have no idea if we'll have 10 or 50 people to show up. I'm pretty sure that we'll have at least 10 people besides us. Garry's mom and sister are heading this way today and will be here through the weekend. I'll probably get them to help me put away all the rest of the Christmas decorations over the next couple of days. We'll most likely do a little bit of after Christmas shopping too.