Well, it has taken a long time to get around to this post because I didn’t get the post done on the weekend and then yesterday and today I have been fighting a flu bug.  I seem to be getting some better, so I am hoping that by tomorrow I feel OK again.

This flu thing has been going around. Mostly sore throat, headache, fever, etc.  It tends to only last a day or two.  Two of my kids had it previously, so I guess I must have caught it from them.

Anyway, I think that last Friday was my “brown” day.  The last of the color posts.

Without further ado…I introduce you to some of the brown in my world. (I think brown has to be, like, the ugliest color ever. It hardly even seems like a color.)

One of the first things I do every morning is fix my bed.  I often think of this {odd} advice my Mom gave me before I got married.  She said “Audrey, I just wish you would learn to fix your bed in the mornings.  And eat breakfast instead of skipping it.”

Apparently I took her advice, because now I ALWAYS do those two things.

Our room has almost no brown in it, but our red silk sheets had seen their better days and at a Black Friday sale they had these micro-fiber sheets on sale.  They are really nice! Only, problem, they didn’t have red or black sheets, so we ended up with brown. 

The thing is…once I get the whole bed fixed, you can hardly tell there are brown sheets under there. So its all good.

This is the ceiling fan in our living room. It’s brown. But the color has very little to do with this story.

Nikki and I were sitting on the couch on Thursday night, looking through our respective “In Style” magazines, when I noticed it seemed really dark in the living room.  Turns out, two of the light bulbs were burned out.  I went and grabbed some light bulbs, got a stool, and climbed on up there to change them.  Apparently, I either forgot that the fan was whirring at a great rate of speed or else I just mis-calculated the distance to the fan. Either way, that fan hitting into my head at full speed did NOT feel good.  At all.  For days, I could feel the spot where the blade hit me. Thank God that He made our heads really hard! 

Our dirt road. It looked especially brown this morning because it had just rained.

The ferns are starting to lose a lot of their green color and turn to brown. 

A brown shirt that was given to me by a client when they came back from a hunting trip to South Africa. I was touched that she thought of getting a gift for me.  I tried to wear this shirt today, but honestly, it is just too small for me and it kept riding up and showing off more of my stomach than I like to have people (even my kids) see.  So, I ended up changing.

Nikki had a birthday party to attend, so the boys and I dropped her off and then went to a few garage sales.  One garage sale was all kinds of OLD stuff. Nothing that I am really interested in, but I know that some of the stuff I am looking at is really cool, if I would just know what to do with it. I think of people like Jenny K and Rachel B and wonder just what great finds I am passing up.

Here are some pictures of “brown” things that were among the many items at this garage sale.

We walked out of there with something Kendall bought for a quarter. I can’t even remember what it was. 

And then we went grocery shopping and picked Nikki up from the party and came home and had some supper and went to a high school football game.

And that was the end of the “brown” day.

Orange just reminds me of that little knock-knock joke that my boys were really into telling for a while.

Knock-knock.

Who’s there?

Banana.

Banana who?

Banana.

Banana who??

Banana.

Banana who??? (now growing a bit exasperated)

Orange.  Orange you glad I didn’t say “Banana”. 

Ha, ha, ha.  It got old really fast. Believe me.

Orange is such a bright and cheerful color.  I didn’t think I had a lot of orange in my life, but when I started to actually watch for it, I saw quite a bit of it.

One of the first things in my morning…I journal (not every day, but about 1/2 of the time) in this little orange notebook that I picked up on sale at Wal-mart a while ago.

My daughter woke up and came to snuggle with me on my chair.  She is still wearing her orange wristband from our camping weekend. I have offered various times to cut it off, but she wants to keep it on.  (Plus, her little “Princess” tattoo is staying on pretty well, too!)

So, ever since I have seen this picture on Pinterest months ago, I have kind of wanted to arrange my books by color.  But it would take some time and secondly, I wasn’t totally sure if color is how I want my books arranged. Wouldn’t arrangement by subject make more sense??  Yet, this picture really appeals to me.

For orange day I thought I would at least gather all of my orange books together and take a picture for you.  First, my upstairs bookshelf.

(Is that eye not a bit creepy??)

And then downstairs

I didn’t even attempt to go through the kids’ books.

I had told Nikki that orange was the color for the day, so she came to me, all excited that she had found this bottle of “Off” with orange on the label.  I took a picture.  The angle of this picture makes her look hilarious.  We laughed about that together when we looked at the picture on my phone.

Pretty wrapping paper with orange flowers. Nikki has an upcoming birthday party to attend, so we wrapped the present for her little friend in this cheery wrapping paper.

Speaking of gifts…this is part of a gift I got for a friend of mine who has an upcoming birthday.  Plus, this is like, the BEST candy ever!!  Seriously. Don’t even argue.

A brown and orange hand-made potholder that I picked up at a garage sale a while ago.  It kind of makes me happy.  We had some yummy Taco Soup for supper (so easy, healthy, cheap and yummy!!), along with rolls.

This was one of the toppings for the Taco Soup. Along with sour cream.  Why does “Taco Soup” need to be capitalized?  I don’t know. It just does.

The dishes (two of them happened to be orange) that were left in the sink overnight. (Picture taken Wed. morning)  On Tuesday, not long before I hurried out the door to a meeting, a picnic for one of my clients and then our Bible study/community group, I realized that I had forgotten to make a snack for community group.  I quickly mixed up some brownines in my (favorite) orange bowl, baked them, and then, since they weren’t cooled enough to put the frosting on, I grabbed my can of frosting and some sprinkles and just took the whole thing with me.  I had to wait to frost them till I got to community group.  Wow! Did I feel put together or what?  NOT.  Especially since I was home all day up to this point and could have made brownies at any point and they would have had plenty of time to cool.  Duh!

Tonight I played softball.  Two games, in fact.  We are in the championships/tournament stage right now, so our team played at 6 o’clock, won that game, and then played again at about 9:45.  We lost our second game, but it was close.  The “orange” team was playing in one of the other fields.   I have had so much fun playing softball this year! 

I didn’t get into bed until a little before 11 and then it took me a little to fall asleep, because I was still kind of wound up from the close ball game.  The rest of the story: The next morning I overslept. By about an hour.  And had to RUSH myself and the kids out the door. Still was late for work. I did not get fired.  End of story.

As a re-cap:

We have done all of the primary colors (as in, the colors in an 8-crayon pack) except one.  The ones we have done are:  Orange, Green, Yellow, Purple, Black, Blue, Red, and one extra that is not in that pack…Pink.  All that is left is brown.

Tomorrow’s color:  Brown (probably the most uninteresting color of them all, which is why it got pushed to last.  Poor brown.)

Isn’t there a book called “The Color Purple”?  Or a movie? Or a Broadway show? Or something.

Just a minute. Let me Google it.

Ok. It is a novel. And a musical. And a movie.  When I read through the synopsis of the plot on Wikipedia, the story seemed really familiar to me.  Maybe I read that book once?  Or not.  Who knows.

Before I digress any further…

Pictures from my “purple” day.  Purple was my favorite color for many years.  Probably from early teens until my mid twenties, when all of a sudden, I realized that whenever someone asked me what my favorite color was, I said “Purple”, kind of automatically. But it really wasn’t anymore.  Red had somewhere along the way usurped purple as my favorite.  This was also around the same time that I realized that for years I had been saying that “I loved weddings” and then pretty much every wedding I went to I didn’t love.  I found them boring.  And all so similar.  I came to terms with the fact that I actually didn’t like weddings, after all.  And that fact remains to this day.  (I also am not a big fan of babies or puppies.  Just judge me now. Once and for all, and get it over with.)

That’s part of growing older, isn’t it?  You change.  You realize one day that something you used to believe, you don’t anymore. Or something you thought you knew about yourself, you’re no longer so sure about.

That is part of what purple represents to me.  Since you asked. 

Had I used the phrase “before I digress any further” just before I totally digressed further??  Wow! 

Apparently, though, it is still one of my best-est colors, because a while ago my friend Morgan mentioned to me that it seems like I wear purple a lot.  I said “No, I really don’t” but after that I started thinking about it every time I wore purple, and she was right. I DO wear purple a lot. 

Just for your viewing pleasure, I collected all of the purple (or purple striped) shirts in my closet and took a picture.

Behold:

Two sweaters…one long sleeved shirt…one vest…three t-shirts…three dressy tops.  All shades of purple.  As with most of the clothing in my closet, I can tell you the flaws of each of these pieces.  Too short.  Too tight. Too long. Doesn’t go with much.  Doesn’t quite look like me. This is a problem I have. I am highly critical of my clothing and of the body on which the clothing goes.  So I generally avoid wearing approximately 80% of the stuff in my closet.  Maybe I need to go on that “What not to wear” show and get me some quality pieces of clothing.

In honor of “purple” day, I wore one of the above pictured shirts.

I love this shirt, which I just bought at Rue21 for like, literally, $2.  Two problems…it is a tad long so I have to kind of bunch it up around my stomach…and it is a bit tight across the stomach so you can see my little muffin top. Which makes me super self-conscious and bugs me to no end!!  Right about now, you are thinking that maybe I need to attend some sort of classes to learn to accept my body. And you would probably be right.  It is one of my many issues.  Let’s not try to narrow this down to being my biggest or only problem!

I also own this purple skirt that I bought a long time ago and have yet to wear. It still has the tags on it.

It is a shiny/slippery sort of material, but a super pretty color and I love the flower details along the bottom.

But every time I tried it on I feel like it makes me look “poufy” and my butt is sticking out behind me like a semi trailer.  I tried it on for the kids and asked them if it made my butt look big.  Yeah, I’m a classy Mom like that.  They all said “No” and I feel like they were sincere.  So I thought maybe I will give it another whirl this winter.  With my black boots and some grey tights, maybe?  When I told the kids that is what I was thinking of wearing it with, Derrick said that he thinks it looks weird when grown-up women wear tights and boots.  Maybe I should get a new fashion-consulting team?? Its just that the ones I have are free. And super honest.

I checked to see how many pairs of purple earrings I have.  It is three.  I wore the purple hoops with my outfit yesterday.

And now, lest you think that all I did yesterday was collect purple clothing out of my closet, go through my jewelry, and parade around the house in my poufy purple skirt…I will set you straight.

I also spent a couple of hours organizing my kids outgrown clothing so that I can sell it.  I got all of the boys clothing done yesterday and now I can sell my remaining 3T stuff and all of my 4T and 5T.  The girls pile looks more daunting, so I have not started on that yet.

I found this purple and yellow sweatshirt in with the boys’ stuff. If you live in Wisconsin, it is practically a crime to be a Minnesota Vikings fan, yet we have one or two of them in our house.  Shhh! Don’t tell the neighbors. People have had their houses TP’d for lesser crimes than this.  (just kidding. totally.)

Bee-balms. With a bee on them.  How fitting.  These flowers are really pretty, but they are almost over for the season. I have been noticing that the wildflowers are few and far between these days. I think that the nights are getting too cold for them to survive.  That makes me sad.  Have I mentioned how much I love summer and hot weather?  Well, now I am mentioning it again.

I had noticed these beautiful purple flowers growing in the ditch by our local animal park/zoo when I drove by in the morning.  I tried to photograph them while whizzing by at 50 miles per hour. That did not work out. At all. As a matter of fact, there was not one iota of purple on the picture I took.

But what did work out is that we were invited to the annual employee picnic at the park tonight (I do bookwork for the company) and so I got a second chance to photograph these flowers. Aren’t they gorgeous?  The picture above this one is of a flower pot that they have sitting right outside their gift shop door at the park. So pretty too!

Other random purple:

Nicole’s life jacket that she has used all summer.   Now hanging on the deck railing along with those beach towels that we might still need if we get a hot day around here.

A juicy plum.  Its what we had for our fruit at lunchtime.  Well, we didn’t just have one to share. We had four of them…one for each of us.

My water bottle. This pretty much goes everywhere with me. Years ago I started drinking lots of water (and also going to the bathroom more often!) and it has become such a habit. I am constantly taking my water bottle with me and sipping from it in between whatever else I am doing. In fact, it is here beside me as I type this blog post.

My bike and Nikki’s bike. Nikki JUST learned to ride without training wheels about a week or two ago and now she is cruising all around. I am so proud of her!  Especially considering the fact that it probably took me a YEAR to ride my bike.  But maybe that had something to do with my trainer. It was my older brother, Loren, and one of his many methods of teaching me to ride bike was to put a toy dumptruck in the middle of our gravel driveway, and then push me towards it.  I was supposed to learn to steer that way.  Not to mention, our driveway was downhill and pretty short and led straight to the road.  We laugh about it today, but seriously??? Where were my parents when this was going on???

Our bikes always seem to collect in our front yard. All 4 (or sometimes 5) of them.  I don’t know why this always happens.  It just gives that red-neck appearance to a place when you drive in and see the bikes just scattered in the front yard.  But, maybe that fits us.  Who knows?

I hope you enjoyed the color purple.  I know I did.

Tomorrow’s color:  Orange

And then we only have one color left after that.  Can you guess what it is?

I am a big fan of black. 

For one, black clothing is generally slimming.  And that is always a good thing!  I think that I probably own no less than 20 pieces of black clothing. Maybe more.  God knows I need all of the slimming help I can get these days!

As you know, our washing machine was broken down for about a week (don’t blame Jeremy…he was on top of the situation…he was just waiting for a part).  This led to a discussion with my extended family about how long I could go without doing laundry.  I said that I think I could go three months without doing laundry, given the amount of clothing that I have.

I did have to re-think that, though, because while I may have enough of shirts, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have enough of pants/skirts.  Or underwear.  But the point was…I have a lot of clothing!  Now I am almost curious enough to see how long I actually could go that I would want to try it. But not QUITE curious enough.

Black goes with anything. We’ve heard that all of our lives, right?  And it really does. It is a basic neutral. 

My “black” day was this past Saturday…the day of the county fair.  I didn’t get as many pictures as I would have wanted to, but I will share with you what I have.

My huband (wearing his black sweatshirt) and his buddy Mike.  This was actually Friday night, around the campfire, but I figured it was close enough to mid-night that it could count for Saturday!

Saturday morning I took Derrick to his football practice.  He is doing a 6 or 7 week football program this fall.  I am excited for him!  The colors of the Hayward Hurricanes are black and gold.  This is some of the high-schoolers teaching the little kids about football.

When we got to the fair around 2 PM, they were just starting what they call “Poor Man’s Racing”.  They have this little race track and all of the cars are old beaters and they race around there. But, unlike a normal race, if a car spins out or gets turned around, they don’t throw the caution flag. They just keep on racing. And bumping and banging.  It is actually quite entertaining to watch.  I kind of wonder if they just take their cars directly to the scrap pile when they are done, because some of them look completely unrepairable. To me, at least.  Here is a black beater of some sort.  Getting ready to start the race.

We were at the fair for almost 8 hours.  Because, if you are going to pay $13 each for 5 family members to get into the fair, then you better make it worth your while. At least to my way of thinking.  It rained 3 different times during those 8 hours.  During one of the heavier rains, Kendall and Nikki and I spent quite a bit of time walking around in the animal barns and checking out the exhibits.

Here are some black cows.  I wanted the kids to touch a cow, but they weren’t up for it. Kendall thought they would kick him.  I thought that was highly unlikely if they were lying down, but whatever. I didn’t push the issue.

A black and white sow with her little piggies, including the little black runt of the littler.  He was climbing over the others just to get some milk.  Those little pigs were so cute! Seriously.  Plus, having grown up on a pig farm, I am kind of nostalgic about pigs.  << Now, that was an awkward sentence if I ever saw one.

My sister Debbie was at the fair with her two little girls.  I noticed Sherra’s cute little black skirt and thought I would take a picture.  That baby Jenna just smiles and smiles and smiles. Even when no one is smiling back at her!  Debbie must be such a great Mom that her kids can’t help but smile.  That’s my theory, anyway. I told her that she always makes mothering look so easy.  Especially compared to her older sister. (me)

Kendall, for all of his otherwise dare-devil ways, is kind of a chicken when it comes to do carnival rides.  Here he is, riding the carousel (on a black and red horse that he choose to ride) with Nikki. Afterwards, he reported that this ride was VERY boring!  Ya think??

And my last, but certainly not least, “black” picture is of this (name unknown) lady.  She was wearing mostly black, but what captured my attention was her hair-do. I don’t know how well you can see it on here, but it was an elaborate bee-hive/bun/poufy sort of up-do.  Nothing against her, but I am pretty sure that hair-style is from the eighties. Or before.  I kind of wanted her to just stand there so I could stare for a while and try to figure out just exactly how she got it to stay up like that. Lots of hair pins is what I am thinking.

And…I know these pictures are not black.  They are most decidedly in the brown category. But I just wanted to show you what I wore to the fair.

My new cowboy hat and some cowboy boots that I found at Ragstock for $20.00.  Ever since I was a teenager and visited Guymon, Oklahoma and Perryton, TX with my Dad, I have LOVED the west and especially loved the whole cowboy/cowgirl look.  I often feel like I should live out west, but I am stuck here in Northern WI.  Where it is cold. And where nobody wears cowboy gear.  ;-( 

Anyway, I decided “Enough with that!”  I am going to wear my cowgirl stuff to the county fair, even if I am out of place.  And boy, was I ever. I think I was the ONLY woman there who wore a cowboy hat. I ran into a guy from my softball team and he said to me “Hey, I didn’t know you had a little bit of redneck in you!!”  I didn’t say it, but I was thinking “Dude! This isn’t redneck.  This is cowgirl. You want to see redneck, you just walk around with me a little and I’ll show you redneck!”

Jeremy looked at me and said “I would have never dreamt I would see you wearing that outfit.”  The kids declared that they were not going to walk around with me if I dressed like a cowgirl, but if they thought that would deter me, they were wrong.  Plus, they didn’t follow through on their threat anyway!

We had a good day at the fair, despite the rain, and I was glad we went. 

(I could write about carnival workers for another few paragraphs, but I think you all probably already have your thoughts about them, so you can just think those thoughts and we’ll call it good!)

Gotta run…Firewood to deliver.

Tomorrow’s color:  Purple  (One of my fav’s)

One thing I realized as I was photographing green today.  There are MANY shades of green.  Some of them so different that I hardly know if they can all be called green.

I guess I think of the basic color green like the crayon in the Crayola 8 pack.  Which I think is pretty similar to the color of grass.  But wow! There are a lot of different variations and shades of that.  I didn’t probably photograph a lot of “true green”, because I didn’t see a lot of that today.

But…this picture might come the closest. (Why does the word “closest” look like a mis-spelling of closet?)

We live in the middle of the woods.  Literally.  The color green surrounds me so much (in the summertime) that I barely notice it.  Its like green is the backdrop and then any other color is something you would notice.

But, whenever it is wintertime and then I look at a picture of the woods in the summertime, I realize how much I love all of the green that is around here when the trees are leafed out.

This is a beautiful pine tree that is on the edge of our lawn.  Also, across the road from our house is a “pine plantation”, which is just rows and rows of pine trees.  They are really pretty.

Am I the only one who LOVES to find things from my childhood and then use them in my own home? I think there are others who can relate. So, when I found this set of 4 “vintage” Tupperware cups at a garage sale (for a dollar, I think)…I snatched them up. It makes me happy to have my children using the same cups that I used as a child.

I went grocery shopping today and I was going to photograph everything I bought that was green.  But I think that this lettuce was about the only thing.  Plus, by the time I got done shopping with all three children and was trying to get ready to go camping, I was not so much in the mood to sort and organize all of the possible green items in the grocery bags I brought home. Have I mentioned that I pretty much hate grocery shopping? 

Green towel on the top of one of my overflowing laundry baskets. My washing machine has been broke down for close to a week and the laundry is SO piling up!!

This is a lime-green Sponge Bob ball that belongs to the boys.  It must have just been lying around in the living room, so I threw it into the little bin with their cars (and a stray football)

Derrick…wearing a green shirt and “playing his time”.  The kids are allowed a 1/2 hour of electronics per day and Derrick usually spends his playing the Play Station 2.  He always wants to save his time till the end of the day, instead of using it first thing. My other two kids…not so much.

I had already shown you this shirt (that I recently purchased at Kohl’s) a week or two ago. I literally looked through my closet for green shirts, and I noticed that almost everything I own is more of a blue/green or a teal than a true green. This is probably the closest I come to having anything green to wear. This shirt is more true green than it appears in this picture.

I wore this cami today…underneath a sweater.  Again, it is more of a blue/green color.

And I wore these feather earrings (a gift from my dear friend Becky) along with the above outfit.  I still smile to myself when I remember Beth Goodrich saying that these small feather earrings could be the “gateway earrings” into wearing larger feathers in the future.  It was SO dang funny when she said that!!

My green Pampered Chef knife that I use all.the.time. Here, I had just got done cutting up strawberries. I love this knife.  It stays so sharp.  Plus, pretty much all my other knives are crap, so maybe that makes this one stand out more!

Derrick…sitting around the campfire at our campsite…with his green can of “Morning Mist” or whatever the off brand of Sprite is called around here!

I feel like I didn’t quite do green justice today (Sorry if I let you green lovers down), but I photographed what I could.  Green is a pretty color…in all its various shades!

Coming up next:  Black (And a trip to the county fair)

Yellow is not a favorite color of mine. I am not sure why.  It is SO bright and cheery and makes a person feel happy, yet I realized, especially yesterday, that I have very little yellow in my house. I don’t think I own a single yellow piece of clothing either.

Strange and interesting. How one person’s absolute favorite is something that another person is not drawn to.

I worked yesterday and I learned that my office, also, contains very little yellow. Trust me. I looked. The only yellow items I could have photographed were so boring and had no story to tell that I decided to just skip it.

Nevertheless, I did manage to capture some yellow throughout my day…

A lone banana on my little fruit stand that I bought from Ikea.  I actually don’t like bananas. But they are healthy and they are cheap and they are a quick snack.  So I keep buying them and about 1/2 of the time they go to waste.  Did I mention they are really cheap?  That way, if they go to waste, I don’t feel too bad. This one is just perfect right now.  I probably should get around to eating it!

Remember how I made little cheese shapes for Nikki’s birthday party?  Well, this was the scraps from that. It made a perfect little snack to take along in my lunch today.

Yellow sticky notes. I use them. A lot. And my phone. And other (strange) methods to remember things.

Sometimes I worry about how forgetful I am. I am constantly writing things down and tricking myself into remembering things.

Case in point:  Just this week, on Wednesday, Jeremy asked if I could take the truck to town and get a tire that needed to be picked up.  No problem.  But…I know myself.  I knew that in the hurry of getting the kids and myself out the door when it was time to leave, I would, out of force of habit, just get into the minivan and drive away.

So, I did what any sane person would do.  Earlier in the morning, I went and hid the key to the van. I put it inside the glove box instead of leaving it in the ignition, where it usually is.  That way, if I did forget and got into the van to leave, I would be like “Where the heck is that key?” and then I would remember that I was supposed to take the truck and run that errand for Jeremy.

I guess I know myself pretty well, because after having someone stop buy to pick up a piece of furniture from us, making sure the kids were all ready and had gone to the bathroom, grabbing a last minute snack, and heading out the door for Nikki’s doctor’s appointment, I headed straight for the van. The kids were already all in there…ready to go.  I put my purse and other crap into the van, sat down in the driver’s seat, put my hand up to turn the key and then I thought “Where the heck is that key?”

And that’s when I said “Ooops, kids.  We have to get out. We were supposed to take the truck.”  Do you feel like I need medication for this? Or is this something you can relate to?

The bad news was: I took the truck for the day and didn’t replace the key to the van back to its original spot. It was still in its (apparently) very good hiding spot. So when Jeremy went to get in the van to leave for his guy’s night out, he couldn’t find the key and had to call me.  But it all worked out!

This yellow book that I am reading right now for book club.  I am only on about chapter 3. Maybe I will have to take it along camping this weekend.  So far, I give it about a two star rating.

Abandoned pool floatie.  The weather has already turned cooler here (its only mid-August, God. Did you know that?) and so we emptied out our pool 1/2 way already.  The kids can still splash in there.  I had picked up two of these floatie things at a garage sale and they are wonderful. Turns out, I think they are meant for snow, but they work great in water too. And…they are made with much tougher material than pool floating devices usually are made of, so they are the only ones that have survived a summer of use.

Pretty yellow flowers that are blooming everywhere right now. I don’t know what kind they are, but they grow on a super high plant. I think the ones down by my garden are probably at least 6 feet tall…with the flowers mostly up towards the top of the plant.

I think that this is goldenrod.  Correct me if I am wrong. I went to take a picture of these flowers and how perfect was it that there was a yellow (and black) bumblebee on them?  I like this snapshot.

I took a close-up of this flower too, because I thought it was really cool how each little individual flower is kind of star shaped, but you would never notice that from a distance.

Warning: Abrupt change coming up.

Once Jeremy got home, we headed out to a dirt track race. My sister in law had the kids for the day while I worked and agreed to keep them for the evening (and overnight…bless her heart!) while we went to a race.  Races are normally not on Thursday nights, but this was a special Modified Touring Series that was in town on a Thursday.

I had not been to the races all year yet, and I was honestly missing it.

There is something about the sounds and smells of the racetrack that I love.  I tried to decided what the smells are and I think it is mostly the smell of fuel and rubber and cigarette smoke and fried food.  I know that doesn’t sound that great, but you have to just trust me. It really is!!  There is no other smell in the world like the smell of a race track. 

Jeremy and I used to go all.the.time.  But having kids and more responsibilities kind of slowed down our race track attendance. Now sometimes Jeremy just goes with his buddies instead of with me. Which is cool. But I wanted to get to at least one race this summer.

There is lots of yellow at the race track.  Mostly the paint and graphics on the cars.

But there is also yellow on the people. 

Did I mention that one of the things that I love about the race track (or really, anywhere I go) is the people watching.  I am an avid people watcher. Lately, I have been trying to figure out how I could get paid to people watch.  Then I would just do that all day. That’s how intrigueing I think it is.  I’m sure I “get watched” sometimes too. But since I am largely unaware of that, its all good.

Hopefully I wasn’t too obvious in my watching (and even photographing) my people watching subjects at the race track.

First off…

Guys in mustard yellow sweatshirts. This seemed to be a bit of a theme.

This bearded dude not only was wearing a mustard yellow sweatshirt (why, oh, why?) but also was eating a cold meat and cheese sandwich of some sort that he had taken out of a plastic baggie. I so hate cold meat and cheese sandwiches that it almost made me gag watching him happily chow down  on it.

Subject #2 wearing mustard yellow.  This guy was sitting a few rows below us with 2 of his buddies. They seemed to be having a great time.  At one point, he was holding a beer in one hand and an energy drink in other.  And here the people who invented “Sparks” thought they were on to something new!  I guess it isn’t illegal if you have your highly-caffeinated drink and your booze in two separate cans, now is it? Who said people aren’t ingenious?

I also saw a third guy wearing mustard yellow.  But I was not quick enough on the (camera) trigger.  He was also wearing a cowboy hat and jeans that were pulled up way too high. I very much regretted not getting a picture of him and waited the rest of the night for him to walk past me again, but it did not happen.  I didn’t think it would be cool to go up to him and offer him $10 to snap his picture.  But maybe I should have at least tried?

And then there was this guy.  With the buck on his cap and the yellow quilt wrapped around him.  I am pretty sure that he was married (for many years) to the woman sitting beside him, who lovingly wrapped the quilt around his shoulders and smiled at him sweetly and then took the other half of the quilt and put it around her shoulders.

Seriously. It melted my heart.  The reasons I think they have been married a long time:

A)  Who owns a quilt like that when they are newly married?  It looked worn and it looked hand-made and it looked like something you wouldn’t keep around if you didn’t appreciate things that took hard work and time. Kind of like a good marriage.

B)  The way they interacted.  There was a familiarity and an ease and an unspoken love between them.

C)  Probably just because in my heart I wanted to believe they had been married a long time. It made the whole thing so much better than if they just met and shacked up last week.

One other thing in the people watching department:  There was a young girl with GORGEOUS auburn hair who was wearing a purple shirt and smiling constantly. Believe me. If she had been wearing yellow she would most certainly have been photographed because she was so fun to watch. She was at the race track with her (apparent) boyfriend, who was tattoed and pierced and kind of ruggedly handsome. I very much enjoyed watching them. Even though they were kind of big on the PDA portion of their relationship.  Something about her…she was just interesting.  And I think it was mostly because she smiled a lot.

This is the “Flag Stand”.  See the yellow flag.  The means “Caution” and they wave it when someone spins out or there is a wreck or debris on the track or whatever.

*And here is where she waxes philosophical*

There is a saying in racing:

“Cautions breed cautions”  It is very true. When you get the cars all bunched up back together to re-start the race, there is more chance for another wreck, which produced yet another caution.

There is also this song that is along the same lines:

“The more I drink, the more I drink.”  Think about it.  Very true. At least for some people.

And then one that relates to me:

“The more I write, the more I write.”   I definitely have seen this to be true with me. (I hope you are following all of this, because it makes perfect sense to me!)

The moral of the story is this:  Habits re-produce.

So whether there is good things that we are cultivating in our lives or not-so-good things, the more we do something, the more we continue to do that.  Whether it be reading our Bibles or running or cooking meals at home or being patient with our kids or cultivating grace in our lives or whatever.  Think about it.

*End of muddled philosophizing*

And one last “yellow” picture.  This is Kenny Wallace being interviewed.  Kenny is a fixture on the Speed channel (for those of you who watch that.  What? No one watches the Speed channel?  Well, I have.)

He was kind of the super-star of the night there at Rice Lake. And apparently the reason we had to pay an extra $8 each to get in. Because he was there.  Ok, people. He’s not THAT famous.  Anyway, he is a Nascar driver and announcer on Speed and has gotten into dirt track racing in the last few years. 

I am disappointed to say, though, that he was very “middle of the pack” in the “A feature” race of the night.  I honestly expected more of him.  Oh, well. I guess he better keep his day job.

Ok. I need to get my butt moving. I have places to go today. And this post has taken far too long.

There are children to pick up and showers to take and groceries to get and food to get ready for camping.

Tomorrow’s color:  Green 

Somehow, writing that title made me think of that old Leeanne Rimes song.  You know the one?  Called “Blueueueueueueueue”.   She was only 13 and had the voice of a twenty-something.

Personally, I always thought that song was a little too whiny and I preferred her “One Way Ticket” song. Something about the idea of catching a train west and just seeing how far it would go appealed to me.  Still does some days!

Anyway, yesterday was all about blue.

My day started with my walk/run.  I never feel right saying I went for a “run” when I walk over 1/2 of the time.  It would be better defined as a walk with spurts of running.  Depending on how energetic I feel that particular morning.

I have absolutely loved my morning routine this past 6 weeks or so.  I do my walk/run, I come back and make my coffee, and by then it is about 7 PM, so I usually have about an hour before the kids get up.

My coffee maker has a blue light on it. 

I sit down in my blue chair beside my little table where my books and Bible are stacked.  My little “reading room” is just off of the kitchen, but I have this curtain hanging in between. 

The curtain falls down a lot. Especially when my daughter is riding her tricycle through the kitchen.  But recently I put a few nails below the rod and I am hoping that will stabilize it.

By the time I took a picture of my blue reading chair, it had an early morning occupant.  Who apparently did not want her face photographed!

The gorgeous blue sky!!

My friends and I thought that it was going to be a rainy day, so we planned a PJ and movie afternoon.  But, it turned out to be a lovely day, so there were less movies and more playing outside by the kids.  But, we still wore our sweatpants and pj’s. Because who wants to pass up an opportunity to be super comfy?

I thought about taking a picture of my beautiful friend Morgan in her blue shirt and blue and green pj pants, but I didn’t figure she would let me post that picture on my blog.

Before we left for the day, I realized that we were all wearing blue in some form. Without even trying.

This was attempt #3 by my young photographer. He finally got BOTH my head and all of my skirt on one picture, but…he sat on the floor to take it and therefore I look like I am a giant towering over him. Which I was, I guess.

But when it was time for a picture of him in his blue shorts, he did not want to look at the camera. Hence the crossed arms and lowered head.

This kid was a little more cooperative.

And this one was more than happy to pose in her little blue jean skirt.  (one of her FAVORITE pieces of clothing this summer, btw) 

There is a problem in our household right now because my washing machine has been out of service all week.   My dear daughter only likes to wear about 10 pieces of clothing out of her MANY, many clothing choices.  Therefore, by day 4 of not doing laundry, she is wanting to pick through her dirty clothes basket for something to wear.  Which I did not allow her to do.  So we had a little clothing war this morning.  I ended up setting the timer and telling that if she did not pick out something to wear in 2 minutes, she WOULD be wearing whatever I picked for her.  Guess what? She found something to wear.  Because God forbid Mom would pick it out for her!! 

Along those same lines, I almost had to laugh to myself when we were at the doctor (Nikki got her kindergarten shots — she did awesome, btw) yesterday and the young, perky, female doctor asked her if she dresses herself in the morning.  Uh…HECK, YEAH!

After Nikki’s shots, they let her pick something out of the prize drawer. They have sucks and other small toys in a drawer and the kids can pick out of it.  My boys were with me, so they let everyone pick something. Derrick got a blue sucker and a blue sticky finger thing.

This picture does not do them justice…but my son Kendall has the prettiest blue eyes with these super long, gorgeous eye lashes (he inherited those from his Daddy).  His eyes are so sparkly and mischievious and just so pretty. Maybe I shouldn’t say his eyes are pretty, because he is a boy, but they just are!

My baseball cleats…laced up and ready to play. I can’t decide if that strip on the front is purple or blue, but I decided that for today, they would be blue!

We played a double-header last night and we won one game and lost the other.  We even played in the drizzling rain part of the time.  And I had a good time!! 

We did watch a “blue team” (their team t-shirts are bright blue) playing before my game started, but I didn’t have my camera with me, so there is no picture of that. 

It was a busy day…full of friendships and fun!  And plenty of blue.

Side note:  So far, the mouse has had two little buddies. They are now both dead. Hopefully word is getting around that it is best to stay out of the Miller house.

Tomorrow’s color:  Yellow

It was not by accident that I chose today to be the “pink” day.

Beings it was Nikki’s 5th birthday party and I knew there would be lots of pink floating around.

Side note: Pink is probably my favorite color to wear.  At least judging from the number of pink shirts that I have in my closet.  But not baby (light) pink…more like a deep pink or a dark pink. Just wanted to clarify that.  (I wear red a lot too!)

Anyway, without further ado, here are my “pink” pictures:

This ring I bought recently. I decided that I want to start wearing more rings. So I bought some. Anyway, I kind of really like this one!

This is, specifically, “blankie and puppy”.  They have no other names.  The blankie is a replacement blanket that Nikki probably got when she was 2 or so and “puppy” is a gift from her cousins. They are definitely her comfort items. She sleeps with them, she asks for them when she is upset and she will usually come out of her room with them in the morning.

The birthday girl (she is at the stage where she makes this weird/awkward face for her pictures) 

Pink on the crown and pink on the dress

The balloons hanging above the table.

The “princess” table setting.  Lots of pink here.  We did little shaped (high heels and crowns) sandwiches, princess fruit “wands” and shaped cheese with crackers.  Here are close-ups of the food, in case you are interested.

The Dairy Queen cake.  That was what Nikki requested this year.

Nikki opening her present from us…with the pink wrapping paper.  Still wearing her (pink) pajamas. The gift inside was a talking doll.

One of Nikki’s friends at the party…wearing THE cutest little pink swimsuit.

Swinging at the pinata

**No one was injured in the bursting of the pinata

All of the friends (except for little cousin Sherra who preferred to stay out of the pool)

A pink book of activities for girls.  A gift from a friend.

All in all, it was a very good day. Everyone played nicely, they had a fun time, and I made it through. I love throwing my kids’ birthday parties, but I think I always feel exhausted by the time it is over!

So…here’s to pink. And the fact that my only and baby girl is now 5 and starts school in less than 3 weeks!! 

I guess time flies when you’re having fun!

Next color up:  Blue

I thought I might take some time on my blog and go back to the “random word of the day” idea.  I love doing that, because just a single word totally gets my creativity flowing and next thing you know, I’ve got a whole post written.  And since I need writing practice and since I like to write…it works perfectly. At least if I have the time.

Anyway, the word was “color”.  I got to thinking about color and how life would be without color.  So dull and boring.

Winter in Wisconsin, really.

 Ha, ha.

But seriously, there are all of these beautiful colors around us…and how often do we just pass them by without even barely noticing.

I decided to dedicate this week to noticing color.

Maybe pick a color a day and try to photograph as many things as I can that are that color.

I chose red for today. Maybe because it is my favorite color.  Although I have other favorites too!

Let’s just say I love color and mixtures of color.

So…what did I find today that was red?

Well…

These crayons…sitting on the counter where Nikki had abandoned her coloring project.  I pulled out the reds and snapped a picture.

My red peep toe heels.  I wore these on Friday night when we went out with friends.  I “think” they looked cute with my white skinny jeans and red shirt.  They were uncomfortable after a while. And I always figure if something is uncomfortable, then it must at least look nice, right?

I know this doesn’t look red, but it is RED PEPPER hummus.  That and some pita chips were the main part of my lunch.  Super yummy!

Beautiful raspberries that I bought for some fruit kabob thingy-s that I am making for Nikki’s birthday party tomorrow.

Fresh tomatoes…from my little garden, nonetheless.  Kind of makes me happy.

See that red “v” on there?  And the word “victor”.  Yup, that was me today. I caught that darn mouse and I threw him out in the woods.  The trap is set again and baited with peanut butter, because I am thinking he might have had a buddy!

A red pack of playing cards.  The boys have really been into playing Solitaire and today they learned how to play something called “Double Solitaire”.  Somehow, seeing them play with cards instead of with electronics warms my heart.

When I see that little red ”message” icon on Facebook, I always feel this little surge of joy and anticipation.  Who could be messaging me?  What is it about?  Yes, my life is pretty uneventful!

And that is all my “reds” for today.  Did you notice anything red in your world today?

Tomorrow’s color:  Pink

Has this ever happened to you?

You buy a shirt somewhere.

Probably because you think it is cute and it is also cheap.

You wear said shirt numerous times.

All of a sudden, one day you spot someone else around town…wearing YOUR shirt!

Maybe they choose a less than appealing combination to wear it with.  Maybe the shirt is a bit tight on them and doesn’t look that flattering.  Maybe when they bend over their butt crack shows and you wonder “Does that happen to me when I wear that shirt?”

Whatever the reason, all of a sudden, you aren’t quite so crazy about that shirt anymore.  It just doesn’t seem unique or special or quite so “me” when I see other people wearing it.

This has happened to me three times lately.

Following is an exhibit of the shirts that are now in my personal shirt graveyard…to be worn only at home.

Or on days when I am feeling like I just don’t care.

Note to self: Don’t buy shirts at Wal-Mart.

This one is from Old Navy, but I think I got it at a garage sale. This was the most recent spotting…just the other day at our local gas station, I saw a women getting milk out of the coolers…wearing MY shirt.

From Maurice’s.  On clearance. Apparently, I was not the only person who couldn’t pass up $5.00 for a sorta-cute shirt.

But then, sometimes I am the one who likes someone else’s shirt and wants one for myself.

As happened this past weekend with my friend Stephanie.

She was wearing this super cute, flattering shirt that she got at Kohl’s.

We ended up getting some time to go to Kohl’s and I picked one up.  Even in the same color she had.

She seemed fine with it and even encouraged me to get one.

No, we don’t live in the same community, but I do apologize to her in advance if seeing this picture of me in “her” shirt ruins it for her!

In the meantime…I’ve worn it twice this week! That’s how much I love it!

That is, until I see someone in my hometown wearing it!