Christmas Card Slacker

I'll admit I'm a total slacker when it comes to getting holiday cards out. Last year we didn't them out until the week after Christmas. This year, I'm already ahead of the game because I've been scoping out the photo cards on Shutterfly There are so many cute designs to choose from. (It would probably help if I already had the picture taken too.)

So far this is one of the top contenders. I love the plaid and brown. It's Christmasy, but not cheesy.

I love the simplicity of this one too.

Or maybe something cute and modern like this one. Way too many choices!
I've had great luck ordering from Shutterfly in the past. They have many great gift ideas from

calenders and mugs . It's the perfect gift because who wouldn't want to get a gift with a picture of my adorable children on it. :)



I can't wait to make my final card choices once I get my pictures taken of the kids this weekend.

It's snowing!

And I'm not talking about just a few measly flakes. There looks to be atleast a good 4 inches or more already. It seems strange to go from fall to winter overnight. The first thing Carter said when I opened his shade this morning was "It's no-ing, it's no-ing!" I was amazed he even remembered what snow was from last year.
This could create some trouble's for Jack's baptism tomorrow.

Sucesses and Challenges

I don't think I really ever take the time to reflect on all the good things going on in my life; instead I am usually focused on the areas that are stressed me out. I'm going to try to
somewhat often write about the areas that are a success in my week and what I'm really struggling with.

Success: Carter has decided to pretty much take potty training into his own hands. This morning from the point I changed his diaper until when he used the potty chair before nap he stayed dry.
Challenge: I really need to stop doubting his abilities to be potty trained and let him try wearing his big boy underwear if he wants to.

Challenge: I just can't seem to get on top of our house cleaning.
Success: Two more loads and I'll be caught up on laundry. This will hopefully free up some time so I can work on other chores.

Jackson: One month old

It's hard to believe Jackson's been in our lives for a month already. He's grown so much already (no exact stats yet until our appointment on Friday).

At one month you are:

• Just starting to grow out of your newborn clothes. Anything footed is too small, but most of the onesies still fit.
• Are breast and bottle feeding. You like to eat every two hours during the day and on a rare occasion will go as long as 6 hours at night.
• Just starting to smile when you hear your mommy and daddy's voices
• Starting to get more on a schedule. You usually take a morning, afternoon, and after dinner nap. Bedtime is usually sometime between 10 to 11pm. You're awake and ready to start the day by 7am.
• Refuse to sleep in your cradle. Your best sleep gets done in your bouncer or on mommy.
• Have already taken a road trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa Ballman, Great Grandma Ballman, Aunties Steph, Stacey, and Heather, Uncle Jeff and cousins Ben and Lauren.
• Hate bath time and having your diaper changed.

Jackson, you have brought so much joy to your family already. We love you so much!

,

Craziness

Last Monday was Tim's first day back at work since Jack was born. We went on our first (since Jack was born) play date with the Straka's. The boys had a good time playing with Cole and Lacey and I enjoyed getting out of the house. Tuesday was by far the roughest day of the week. It started off good with me dropping off Carter to play at my parents' house while Jack and I went to visit my co-workers and figure out when I will be going back to work. My co-workers loved meeting Jack and are very excited for me to be coming back in another couple weeks. Now for the bad part of the day. I had driven our new car. Not use to all of the new features, when we were ready to leave the mall, I threw the diaper bag, my purse and keys in the front seat. I was then going to place Jack's car seat in the backseat when I realized the car had locked. I took Jack back into the store so I could call my mom since I didn't know Tim's work number. She was able to come help us fairly quickly. Tim has the only other key with him at work in downtown. I then remembered with the extended warranty we bought we got free roadside assistance. My parents also have the same brand of car, so I tried using the number they had in the glove box for the service. After 15 minutes trying to look up our account, it turns out that there is several different numbers for service and that was not the one ours was through. I then call the dealer to get the correct number, which also is not able to look us up since our car is too new to be in the system yet. It would cost us $80 out of pocket to send someone out to unlock the car, which we'd probably be able to get reimbursed for (but they didn't know how long that would take) and they weren't sure how long it would take to get someone out there. During all these phone calls Jack decides he's starving, so I start breastfeeding him in the car in the parking. (And I happened to have about the worst shirt choice for this, so I was pretty much exposed to the whole parking lot.) At this point time decides to drive from downtown to meet us to save the $80. The rest of the day went much more pleasantly. Wednesday I decided I needed to be brave and go out again, so both boys and I took a field trip to Walgreen's and Rainbow to get my coupon deals. It went surprisingly well. Thursday we went over to my parents for dinner since Tim had work and class which means Tim is gone from 8am until 10pm, a very long day for me! Friday we just hung out at home. Saturday was another uneventful day. Sunday I woke up with the stomach flu. I haven't been that sick in a long time. Tim had to work, so I sent Carter over to my parents for the morning. Jack and I spent the day in bed alternating between sleeping and nursing. Luckily Tim had Monday and Tuesday off, so we've been recovering the last two days.

My much belated birth story

Things have been a little crazy lately since baby Jack has been born, but I finally posted his birth story.

In the afternoon of Saturday, July 10th I was having contractions between 7-10 minutes apart. I was leery of getting too excited about them after going into the hospital the week before and being told that I was having “false labor”. As the evening progressed they were getting closer together and I was getting much more uncomfortable. Tim was working until 11pm and I was determined to not make him come home early unless I was for sure going to have the baby that night. Around 10:45 my contractions were between 4-5 minutes apart. I decided to call my parents to come over to spend the night with Carter because I was pretty sure it was the real thing this time around. I called Tim at 11:01 and he got home as fast as he could.
We made it to the hospital a little after midnight and got settled into our room. It happened to be the same room that we stayed in when Carter was born. They got me hooked up to the monitors and saw that my contractions were between 3-4 minutes apart. The nurse then did an internal. I was only 1cm dilated and 70%. I was extremely disappointed that I had made pretty much no progress in a week. They decided to have us stay to see if I progressed any further. When they checked me two hours later, I had progressed to 2cm, enough to let us stay to continue being monitored. I was given something to help me get some sleep. They checked me again at the 6am shift change. I had made no progress. I was still having contractions every 3-4 minutes. The nurse was not sure what my doctor would decide to do. She mentioned that I could possibly be sent home. Exhausted and frustrated, I asked what would happen if I changed my mind about trying for a VBAC. She said she wasn’t sure and would ask my doctor.
At 9am, they gave me the option of starting pitocin. At that point anything that would make the baby come quicker was a welcome thought. Because I really hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the last week, they offered a pain meds so I’d be able to get some rest before I was ready to push. I slowly started to make some progress, and spent most of the day napping. During one of the internal checks, my daytime nurse, who was not at all gentle, accidentally broke my water. At 3pm I decided that I would most definitely be getting an epidural because the pain was getting unbearable. Around 8pm, my labor and delivery nurse decided I was ready to push. Things were going well, but very slowly. After the 2nd hour, they were becoming more concerned about how the contractions were affecting the baby’s heart rate. The potential need for a c/s or use of the vacuum was brought up. At this point the on-call doctor for my clinic switched (the other doctor had been on-call for the whole weekend and got called into do a c/s.) She was willing to let me go for a little while longer as long as conditions didn’t change. At 11pm, after three hours of pushing, my body had pretty much stopped reacting to the pitocin and my contractions started to lose strength and slow down. As much as I didn’t want to use the vacuum, my choices were pretty much being narrowed down to that or a c/s (which I really didn’t want after this much work!) Around 11:45pm, the doctor prepped everything for the vacuum and had extra nurses on hand in case we needed them for the baby. After two more pushes with the vacuum, Jackson Curtis was born at 11:55pm. He weight 7lbs 10oz and was 22 inches long.
Overall things are going well for our family. Jack is a sweet and mellow baby and big brother Carter loves him so much. The adjustment to having two kids really has gone fairly smoothly for us so far. The real test will be when Tim goes back to work next week.

The first few days of recovery were just as bad as or worse than my c/s recovery. Now, over a week later, I feel almost back to normal, which has made the VBAC experience completely worth it. There was no way I could have done it without the encouragement of my nurses and the doctor who ended up delivering Jack.

Parmasan chicken

Ingredients
1c bread crumbs
½ c grated Parmesan cheese
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp Olive Oil
½ tsp salt
Pepper
4-5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
¼ c basil
¼ c Mayo

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine bread crumbs, parmesan, garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste in bowl.
Mix basil and mayo in small bowl and spread mixture evenly over the chicken. Sprinkle bread-crumb mixture evenly over mayo and press lightly to adhere. Place chicken in a 9 x 13 inch baking dish.
Bake the chicken until crumbs are golden brown for 18-22 minutes.

I'm planning on freezing half of this for another meal, serving it with pasta and tomato sauce.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

I'm determined to have at least a week or two of meals frozen before baby comes. I'm too worried for the time that Tim (He's a pretty decent cook) is off work, but more so when he goes back to work. I'll try to post the recipes as I go.
This is one of my favorite sweet breads. I make it all the time.

Banana Bread
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas
1 cup chocolate chips (can skip if you just want plain banana bread)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Mix all ingredients together. Pour into two bread pans. Bake 45-50 minutes.

Buca Di Beppo Lemon Green Beans

I had Bucas over the weekend with some of my girlfriends. I forget how much I completely love their food. This is a pretty good replica of their green beans. :)

Ingredients
1 lb fresh green beans
1/4 cup butterr
2 medium lemons (juice)
salt, to taste (I used sea salt)

Directions
1. Prepare the green beans by clipping off the stem end.
2. Melt the butter in a sauté pan on low heat. Squeeze the juice out of two medium-size lemons. Strain the pulp and the seeds out of the lemon juice.
3. When butter is melted, carefully add the lemon juice to the pan.
4. Raise the temperature to medium and reduce until the lemon juice and butter become a sauce. Do not brown the butter.
5. Place the clipped, fresh green beans in boiling water for two to three minutes. Do not overcook. The green beans should remain crisp.
6. Strain the green beans and add to the sauce in the sauté pan. Toss the green beans in the sauce and season with salt to taste. Serve immediately.

Disturbing

In my quest of knowledge on food companies, I discovered after buying Horizon Organics half and half at the grocery store this week that they are pretty much what I'm trying to avoid. I guess this explains how their prices really aren't any different than Kemps. And it kind of bums me out because the same parent company own Silk Soy milk (which I love!).

http://www.naturalnews.com/021186.html

http://www.wisebread.com/horizon-organic-milk-is-it-all-just-lies

http://sites.google.com/site/integrityinbusiness/

On another interesting note, I found a chart that shows what who owns some of the bigger organic food brands. Check it out. I was amazed at how many of them are own by big corporations.
http://awesome.good.is/features/009/009buyingorganic.html

Self/Family Improvement Goals

These are almost more for me than any of my readers, but I wanted to get down in writing my goals on the ways that I am working to improvements in our lives.

1. Consumerism: I'll admit it. I like to buy stuff. I have improved on this greatly since being home with Carter for the last two years, but like most people I still sometimes get the "I want" fever. Areas I'm doing well on: I don't buy very many clothes anymore. What I do buy now is stuff that I love how I look and feel in it now. (Not how I might look in it if I lost 10 pounds or if I was more toned.) Almost all toys (gifts from others excluded) are purchased used. I plan on doing a big toy purge right before birthdays and Christmas to get rid of anything that is not used. We don't have the space and we don't need that many toys around. Areas I can still improve on: Kids/baby clothing. I'll admit it, I love buying baby and kid clothing. They are just so cute. We definitely have more than is needed. On the positive side much of it is hand-me-downs and garage sale finds. As I've been washing baby clothing, I've been pulling out anything that I don't really like to give away.

2. Food: This is such a big area for us, so I'll break it down further.

a. Grocery shopping: I've cut our monthly bill down significantly by couponing, meal planning, and shopping from a list.

b. What we're buying: I am currently trying to research and learn more about the items we are buying and the companies that produce/grow/manufacture it. The more I learn, the more I feel I need to learn. Just a few of the issues I'm concerned with include" treatment of employees (Are they hiring illegals to lessen their production cost? Do they pay their employees livable wages and offer them benefits?), genetically modified crops (Is their any way to escape/avoid this? What are the long-term repercussions going to be?), localism (can I get more of the products we eat grown locally to save on pollution/cost of travel to get it here?), use of antibiotics, pesticides, etc (Organic vs. non? Or are there any other options?), treatment of animals (free-range? corn-fed vs. grass fed?) packaging (Should I be concerned about the BPA in plastic or metal can lining? ). These are just a few of the issues I could think of off the top of my head.

c. Cooking: I'm really working to expand my cooking horizons.

Motherhood

Let me be completely honest here. Being pregnant and the mother of a toddler is hard. I've been lucky enough so far to have a relatively easy pregnancy so far. Yes, I had morning sickness for the first half, but I rarely actually threw up. Once I hit the 18-20 week mark I've felt pretty good. The most negative aspect of pregnancy until recently had been that I failed my one hour glucose test two weeks ago. (I did manage to pass my 3 hour test, but man was I crabby to have to take that!)
Now that I've hit the third trimester the real fun has begun. (If you don't to hear me whine, feel free to skip to the next paragraph.) Since I've finally started to put on the baby weight, I've started to have back pain. It has become increasingly worse this week since I've been sitting in the most uncomfortable folder chairs ever in training all day, everyday this week. Tomorrow is the last day of training, so I'm hoping the lack of extreme sitting will help my poor body. To make life even more fun, I've also been waking up with leg cramps. Two nights ago, it was so bad that they woke me up at 4am. I've increased the amount of calcium and potassium, so hopefully these should lessen. I get heartburn from everything (or even nothing). And since I'm sleeping less, I have very little patience for naughty toddler behavior.
But, after one of the moms in our preschool class lost her baby at around 34weeks, I try to remind myself whenever I get crabby about being pregnant about how lucky I truly am to be pregnant. In less than 12 weeks, I'll (hopefully) have a beautiful baby boy to snuggle.

Craftiness

One of my goals for the next 12 weeks before baby boy arrives is to start and/or finish 50 projects that I've either been meaning to try or just need to do a little bit more to complete. Here are the first three completions.

1 and 2. Pillowcase dresses. The Pink is for my niece/goddaughter Lauren. Since she's is the only little girl in the family, she gets to be the lucky one to receive all my girlie craft projects. The shamrock one is for my friend's dog. Moo is a very stylish pup.

Project #3 is a burp rag embellished with some fabric. I love having these on hand for baby gifts because they are so cute and useful.

I'm hoping to have a productive nap time so I can complete some more projects today. :)

Another Recipe/ Honey Lime Chicken

I really liked this one, but Tim wasn't a fan. I think it could be improved with green peppers.

Honey Lime Chicken

2 lbs chicken tenders
1/2 Tbl garlic salt
1 Tbl oil
1 20 oz can pineapple rings (I used chunks since that was what we had)
1/4 cup honey
3 Tbl lime juice
2 Tbl soy sauce
1 Tbl cornstarch
Sprinkle chicken with garlic salt. Brown in oil. Drain pineapple. Add one fourth of the pineapple juice to skillet. Cover and simmer 6 to 8 minutes until chicken is golden. Remove chicken. Add honey, lime juice, soy sauce, cornstarch and remainder of pineapple juice. Bring to boil. Cook and stir until thick and clear, about 1 minute. Remove from heat. Allow to cool. Place chicken, pineapple rings and sauce in freezer bag. Label and freeze.
To serve: Thaw. Heat until sauce is hot and bubbly and chicken is heated through.

Easy Hummus

This is a combonation of a couple recipes I looked at

Ingredients
1 15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed
1 clove garlic (I like to use two)
1⁄4 cup olive oil, plus more for serving
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (I didn't really measure, just used half a lemon)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
¾ teaspoon kosher salt

Directions
In a food processor (or good blender), puree the chickpeas and garlic with the olive oil, lemon uice, cumin, and ¾ teaspoon salt until smooth and creamy. You may need to add a couple tablespoons water to achieve the desired consistency.

So simple, cheap, and delicious!

I love garage sale season!

I hit the motherload of rummage sales this morning at Falcon Height Elementary School today. The only thing I specifically have been looking for is 2T size clothing for Carter for fall and possibly some toy tools for Carter.

I ended up finding a Kolcraft Contours stroller for $60 that look almost like new. While it wasn't exactly what I was looking for in a double stroller, I couldn't beat the price and I love the fact that both seats can be forward or backward facing and it works with my infant seat. :)

We also ended up an Evenflo exersaucer for $10. We never ended up getting one for Carter, but I have a feeling that I will need to be putting this little guy down much more than I did with Carter. For that price, I figured I could garage sale it if I didn't use it and I would for sure break even on it. Our other big purchase was a work bench for Carter. He was very excited about it!

I ended up finding some cute sleeping gowns and sleepers for the babe that looked brand new. So excited about all my deals!

Adult pillowcase top

After a failed search all over the web for directions on how to make an adult sized pillowcase top, I took the advice of a fellow crafty nestie decided to somewhat wing it.

Basically I used my bust measurement and added 3 inches for the width. I used 26 inches for the length. Please excuse the horrible pictures. I really need to have DH help me take better ones. The pictures do not do it justice. For a non-maternity shirt I would probably experiment with making the back slightly smaller than the front.

Margarita Chicken

This recipe really couldn't get any easier.

Marinate chicken breasts in 2 cups of margarita mix for a minimum of 4-6 hours (I would probably do longer). (I also added some pepper, garlic, and dried onions to the fix to give it a little more flavor.)

Grill.

We chopped it up and used it in tacos. It would also be good served with some Spanish rice.

Pillowcase Dress

Probably a good thing I'm having a little boy because making pillow case dresses is so addicting. I would never be able to stop making little dresses like this.

There are tons of tutorials out there, but I found this one the easiest to use. http://freshlypicked.blogspot.com/2008/03/pillow-case-dress-tutorial.html

Slow Cooker Lemon Garlic Chicken

Ingredients
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
2 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice (I used the bottled stuff)
2 cloves garlic, minced (I used more, but I love garlic)
1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley

Place all ingrediants (minus the parseley) in the slow cooker. Cover, and cook on High for 3 hours, or Low for 6 hours. Add the parsley to the slow cooker 15 to 30 minutes before the end of the cook time.

Times may vary depend on how hot your slow cooker runs. Mine runs fast and was slightly overdone at 5.5 hours on low.

I served it with au gratin potatoes and peas.

Peeps T-shirt

I think I finally have my act together and will have time to start posting again. :) I plan on trying to catch up by doing several mini posts all this week.
First one of my nap time crafts this week. I was inspired by this adorable peeps t-shirt on http://gilliangreding.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/03/take_a_peek_at_.html . I adapted it a little bit and only did one bunny.


My little man was not the most willing model.

He did however enjoy the beautiful weather today.

Where have I been?

As usual, life with a toddler (and being pregnant) is never dull. Like most of retail, my hours for work have pretty much dried up for the month of February. After all of the craziness in Novemeber and December, it's nice to have the chance to rest and get caught up on things.

The list of projects we need to get done before baby comes just keeps getting longer. Tim is working on the finishing touches of tiling our basement bathroom and hallway. It is already a huge improvement from the ugly tiles and icky carpet that was there before. We are now working on picking out a new vanity top to complete the remodel.

Since Carter and the baby will be sharing a room, we have a lot of decluttering to do in the next couple months. Storage is very limited here, so we are having to be very creative with finding a place for everything. We're hoping to get a large shelving unit for the garage, so that much of what we have stored elsewhere can move out to the garage.

I had my 17wk doctor's appointment on Friday. My weight stayed steady at what it had been when I had been in 2 weeks earlier. Because of my much more extreme symptoms and the heartbeat is way faster than Carter's was, the doctor is guessing it's a girl. I guess we shall see in another two week when we have our ultrasound. Tim is worried that I'm too convinced that it's a girl and will be disappointed if it's a boy. The only thing I would be disappointed with was the lack of an excuse to buy little girl clothes. I'd be thrilled to have another little boy.

Cleaning SOS

I had been hearing about the Fly Lady cleaning program on the nest, so I decided to finally check it out today. I knew it was the right thing for me when on the welcome page I read, "Are YOU living in CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) like Franny in the pink sweats? Do you feel overwhelmed, overextended, and overdrawn? Hopeless and you don't know where to start? Don't worry friend, we've been there, too."
So I decided to sign up and check it out since it was free. The first day's assignment was to clean your kitchen sink. Pretty easy. And she actually gave some ideas to get them extra clean. (Not sure why I had never thought about using steel wool to clean our stainless steel sink, but it worked amazingly well.) I peeked at Day 2 and Day 3 and I think I'm pretty safe to skip ahead to Day 3. Day 2 just talks about getting up and dressed for the day. Since I've always done that, I don't think that's much of an issue.
I'll try to update on how I'm doing. My clean sink did inspire me to get my kitchen clean. So already I can say it's doing some positive things.

Relief!

Last Thursday I tripped while taking some laundry down ours stairs. Now I know better than to go down the stairs in my socks. Wood stairs are just too slippery for that. I luckily only fell own 3 stairs, hitting my butt and back. It definitely scared me. Since I wasn't having any cramping or bleeding there really wasn't any reason for me to go into the doctor.
I had just began to feel the baby fluttering in the last couple weeks. When I hadn't felt the baby flutter all weekend, I started to worry. So we decided, while I was probably worried over nothing, it was worth calling the doctor anyways this morning. They said I really didn't have anything to worry about, but if it would make me feel better I could come in and have them find the baby's heartbeat on the Doppler. Knowing that I would worry until my next appointment, I decided it was worth taking Carter out in the snow, to hear baby. The doctor found baby's heartbeat after just seconds of looking. I had worried over nothing.
I'm taking it easy today because I was up until 7am with Carter. I think he's getting his 2 years molars in which has made him clingy and miserable. He would only sleep in my arms. Every time I put him down , he would scream like crazy. As tired as I am today, I'm trying to remember to enjoy those moments snuggling with Carter because he's growing up so fast!

Pregnancy obsessions

So it's crazy to think that I'm already more than a third done with this pregnancy. I'm really hoping my energy will return soon. I'm pretty good at trying to avoid caffeine, but some days after my early morning shifts I'm not able to function without a diet coke. It is glorious!
I'm dying to shop for baby stuff with all the amazing clearance sales going on right.

Some of my favorites this time around are:
Bubble baths: I take one pretty much every night. It is the one thing that seems to help relieve my back pain.
S'mores: Microwave s'mores are my obsession. I make them all the time. For some reason they taste good pretty much all the time.
Mott's natural applesauce: I try to only only eat applesauce without added sugar to make it healthier. Mott's is the only natural one that tastes any good.
Yoga pants: Pretty much my uniform when I'm at home.
Oberweis Chocolate Milk: Simply amazing. I'm not a huge milk drinker, but it just tastes so good.

Finished Projects at Last!

One of my goals for the year is to get caught up on all of the half finished sewing/crafting projects I have going on. Today I successful finished a blanket for baby and a small baby quilt (if we end up having a girl I'll keep it, otherwise I'll sell it or gift it)

The Polka dot one is somewhat based off the baby bear tutorial on http://sew4home.com/projects/bed-linens/358-stylish-baby-nursery-the-three-blankets . I'm still learning how to do all the stitches on my new machine, so the spacing between some of the stiching aorund the edges is slighly goofy. But it will be a perfect lightweight summer blanket for baby.

It's been another somewhat crazy week that I really can't explain where all the time has gone. I worked three days this week, but since the work load is so light this time of year I got off really early. My Friday shift even got cancelled. While I am sure we will miss the money that I could have earned, it was nice to pretty much still be a SAHM this week.

This Carter's typical wild man face. He is so goofy these days!

Pregnancy-wise time has been flying. It's hard to believe I'm almost in the 2nd trimester already. I'm still feel somewhat icky most afternoons. The exhaustion is pretty much constant (and I assume will remain until I no longer have small children anymore).

Heaven is the face

The song "Heaven is the face," by Steven Curtis Chapman makes me want to cry. For those who don't know the story behind the song, his 5 year old daughter died after being accidently run over by an older brother who didn't see her. I can't imagine the pain and grief that family must feel. It's just a really beautiful and heartfelt song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9JTwJ_1lzE

Quote that made me think

"Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls."
Mother Theresa


It's so simple and so beautiful.