Scavenger Hunt Sunday

It's time for Scavenger Hunt Sunday again!  Here are my interpretations for this week's photography prompts.

Table

This photo is from July 2012, when Bono was 4 months old and would sometimes sleep with his head underneath a chair at the kitchen table.  He can't do this anymore...he's too big!

Bono the Bouvier des Flanders

I decided to use a photo from archives, because otherwise this is all I have for "table":   pretty much my favorite thing to see on my kitchen table!  

Grace (7) has said for a while, "They spell it wrong on the label!"  I asked her what she meant, and she said it should read "Mom's Favorite Cookie."

I collect

I don't really collect anything in particular, but I do like snow globes.  In particular, I like the snow globes that my husband finds for me, like this one that is from Italy.  (There's a movie reference here...While You Were Sleeping.)

Music

We have a resident guitar player (Robert, 16) who not only plays guitar but draws 'em, too.

He also has sheets of musical things posted on his wall for reference.

Yes!

When I saw my friend Nancy's Facebook post, saying "YES!" with the image she posted, I knew I had found my photo for this prompt.

Someone I miss

I didn't want to take a picture of a picture, so here's a doll that was my mom's.  It was probably the last doll she received, and she had picked it out as a gift from her father when they went to a festival/craft fair together several years before her death.  (She passed away when my oldest, Robert, now 16, was 9 months old.)  Also, the record behind the doll was my grandfather's (her father).

Click on the link below to see others' photographs or to join in on the fun!  

Farmville

Last Saturday, we took a little detour and drove through Farmville on our way to Tennessee.

Yes, there were farms...

and hay bales...

and a beautiful stone church.

Josiah (9) in front of the Farmville UMC stone sign.  The church is now known as The Farmville Church according to the sign in the background.

We didn't see a single mansion, or any of the several people we know on Facebook who live in Farmville, but we can point you in the right direction if you're looking for custom cabinets...just head down Farmville Road a little ways.

Overheard: The Facebook Edition

This post is composed entirely of conversations and other things I posted on Facebook.  We have had a week of illnesses throughout my family--each person being affected by either a stomach bug or a head cold--and I'm taking the easy way out for an "Overheard" post.    

 

January 2012...

 I think KOS (kindergartner over shoulder) may be even worse than TOS (teen over shoulder).

Grace [5 years old]: Mom, is her name Brenda?

Me: Yes. 

Grace: Brenda...who's Brenda? Do I know her? Oh, yeah. OK...Does Cindy know her?

Me: [Giving up looking at Facebook until Grace is completely occupied by something else, because this could, literally, take all day if I tried to answer ALL her questions about people on Facebook--how I know them, whether she knows them, and whether they know each other.]

When I posted the above conversation on Facebook, my KOS read most of that on her own. And wanted the full explanation.

~~~ 

Uh oh...my 5 year old just set the timer. She says I have 12 more minutes and then it's her turn on the computer. ;)

~~~

Grace:  It's really fascinating. Well, the way *I* look at it.

 

February 2012...

My 5 year old has spent much of the day playing with a plastic grocery store bag she has named Gerald. She's been running around the yard, throwing Gerald up into the air to let the wind catch him, and then getting him back so she can do it all over again. (He went over the fence a number of times, so I tied a kite string to him.) She spent a few minutes before bedtime letting him "fly" over the air purifier in our bedroom.

(How did this start? She first began pretending the plastic bag was a paper lantern that she sent into the sky to celebrate her daughter's [baby doll's] birthday, like in the movie "Tangled." I have no idea where she got the name Gerald from.)

My guess now is that the name "Gerald" came as a variation of what was on the plastic bags she used as her several Geralds she ended up with.  They were all yellow Dollar General bags.

~~~

Grace:  Mom, were you the youngest in your family?

Me: No.

Grace:   Who was?

Me:  Jonathan.

Grace:   How many kids were in your family? 

Me:  Four. I had three brothers.

Grace:  Wow!! You were more crowded with brothers than I am!!

(She already knows this. I'm not sure why she was questioning me--it's probably because I was working on taxes and she thought I needed more to think about.)

 

March 2012... 

Wind advisory, high pollen count, and freeze warning for tonight. Yay.

March 5th in Georgia.  It wasn't even spring yet, and the pollen count was already outrageous.

~~~

Josiah [9 years old]:  I don't like black-soled shoes. They leave marks all over the floor. I mean, you can't even tap dance in them!

He said this with a straight face, as though he knows how to tap dance and enjoys practicing on our kitchen floor in his sneakers.

~~~

Overheard in the car yesterday when there were some pretty dramatic clouds...

Grace: [gasp]  Look! It's Mt. Everest! 

Josiah: Mt. Everest is in Asia. That's a cloud.

Grace: Nope. It's Mt. Everest. I can see the pointy mountain parts.

Josiah: Well, show it to me tomorrow. It won't be there.

He reminded her a few more times that Mt. Everest is in Asia, then dropped it because we had arrived home. This afternoon when we were once again in the car, he asked her if she could still see Mt. Everest. Because Grace loves to exasperate her brother, she said yes. ;)

~~~

14 year old Robert's Haiku :)

Flowers run over
Destroyed by lawnmower
Still lots of pollen

~~~ 

While sitting on my lap this morning, Grace began an odd conversation...

Grace [6 years old]:  Mom, what's the biggest lie you could tell someone?

Me [wondering where she was going with this, and pausing to consider the question]:  Well, I think the biggest lie you could say is that there is no God.

Grace nods, expectantly, and waits.

Me:   Another really big lie would be that Jesus didn't really die on the cross and come back to life. What do you think?

Grace [nodding again at my response]:  I would have said that the biggest lie was that God doesn't love you.

WOW.

~~~ 

After getting lots and lots of candy at an Easter egg hunt:

Grace + candy - her big brother Josiah = a whole lot of chatter.

Josiah is home now, and not a minute too soon...

They are kind of lost without each other.  This is a consideration when thinking about sending Josiah to a week long sleep-away camp this summer.

~~~

I checked out an "Adventures in Odyssey" story from the library and Grace is listening to it now.  It's on cassette tape, and as I was flipping the tape over from side 1 to side 2, you would have thought my 6 year old's eyes would pop out of her head--"It's on BOTH SIDES?"  Yes, and I feel old now.  Thank you.

~~~

I made liquid soap yesterday using a Pinterest recipe. I let it cool, and then had Jason help me pour the goopy soap into a gallon jug. At some point, he looked at me and asked, "So, is it tomorrow that we make our own butter?"

Just as soon as that cow I ordered comes in...

I have to add that my friend Kathleen has made both butter and cheese.  I think I'll live vicariously through her.

~~~

My Dove chocolate wrapper said "Indulge your sense of enjoyment."  So I ate another chocolate.

‎"Feel free to be you."  Hmmm...I like to eat chocolate. I think I'll have another one.  (And, really, who else am I free to be?  Anyone else...well, that's identity theft, folks.)

I was in a strange mood that day.  My friends put up with me, though.  :) 

 

April 2012...

Grace:  I bet there's only one song in the entire universe that I don't like!

Me: Really? What song is that?

Grace: I don't know. I haven't been all over the the universe.

Silly me.

What I learned about Facebook

I mentioned going to a web-based communications class in Duluth where I took photos of fabulous murals. The class topic was focused on using the various online communication tools in ministry. One of the communications tools talked about was Facebook. This was particularly of interest to me, since I have grand plans of (eventually, but hopefully soon) using Facebook as a means of communicating with our wonderful group of nursery volunteers as well as our ladies' ministry, since a good many of us are on Facebook and I am trying (trying) to be more active there.

With the Facebook portion of the class, there were the more obvious-if-you-think-about-it things, like leaving political views and affiliations vague at best on your profile page and being careful about what you post in regards to such things if you are a public face for a ministry. It was also suggested that you never post your phone number or address on your profile page for security reasons. The reason behind this is the "Friends of Friends" privacy setting.

Assuming that each of the following people have the "Friends of Friends" setting in place, suppose I am friends with Jane. I can click on any of her friends and see their profiles, wall, and photos; let's say I click to find out about Jane's friend Sara. While I'm on Sara's page, I click on her friend Tina, and then Tina's friend Barbara, etc. I don't know anyone except Jane, yet I can see all of these other people's profiles, wall posts, photos, and comments by all of their friends, all with the help of the "Friends of Friends" setting. Yikes...I like my privacy. ;) I have all of my Facebook privacy settings set to "Only Friends."

Now onto photos...You can change the privacy settings on individual photos while having a global privacy setting for all photos. The example given was if your global privacy setting for photos is "Friends of Friends" or "Only Friends," you can change the setting to "Only Me" if there is a photo of your niece in one of your albums and your sister doesn't want the photo to be seen by anyone. Go to your photos, click on "Edit Photos" along the top of the photo, click on the "Edit Info" tab along the top of the photo, click on the "Privacy" drop down menu, choose "Customize," and choose "Only Me." (You can also block certain people from seeing individual photos here, too.) NOTE: I have only one photo I've uploaded to a Facebook album--all my photos are on my blog--but hopefully these steps will be the same if you have many photos.

One more note about photos...any photo in your Profile Photos cannot be made individually private. After I realized that, I deleted the photo I had uploaded as a Profile Photo of my kids (with their names and ages listed) and put it in an album. I use pseudonyms for my kids on my blog, which is totally public; I don’t want their names to be available to anyone I don’t already know on Facebook, either.

I also learned how you can "Hide" people and/or applications. I love this, and it doesn't take as long as it sounds like it will take to do it. I have hidden applications such as Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc.--things that my Facebook friends do but I have no interest in--and it has cleaned up my page tremendously! Now I can easily read the activity that I'm interested in without scrolling through Farmville updates or seeing a new high score on Bejeweled Blitz. (I'm really not picking on y'all! :) It's just not something I play, OK?) To "Hide" an application, hover on the applicable post and the little box that says "Hide" will appear; click on "Hide" and you will have the option to hide the person or the application.

You also have the option to "Hide" the person rather than the application. You can do this if, for instance, you reconnected with your long-lost friend from middle school but you have vastly different views on life now. You still want to keep in touch and don‘t want to go so far as to remove them from your list of Friends, but you don't want to see the off-color things she and her friends post on a daily basis; you can "Hide" this person and she will remain in your list of Friends, where you can send her a message anytime you'd like. For information on how to unhide people or applications, see http://socialmediaanswers.com/how-to-unhide-people-and-applications-from-your-facebook-feed

If you want to remove someone in your list of Friends, they will not get a notification of any kind that you did this; you will simply no longer show up in their list of Friends. To remove a Friend, go to Account, Edit Friends, click on your list of Friends, and click on the X beside the person’s name to Remove Connection.

One last thing about Facebook, and this wasn't at all part of the class but I will share it...I consider my online activity to be much like the way I consider my phone and even my front door. I don't always answer my phone just because it's ringing, and I don't always answer my door just because someone has rung the doorbell. This can really drive my kids a little nuts, but my phone is there for my convenience, and my home is my private area. In the same way, my computer is for my convenience. I am "invisible" most of the time when I am on Facebook so if I only have a couple of minutes to spend at my computer, I don't have to explain to someone that I don't have time to chat. To be invisible on Facebook, look at the lower right corner of your screen and click the "Chat" box. A small box will pop up, and from there you will click on "Options" and then "Go offline." To go back "online," all you have to do is click on the "Chat" box and you will immediately be back online and able to see who is available to chat with you.

Have you learned any tips for Facebook? Please share!