Words That End in "-ia"

Converstations in my house have become code.  If someone came over to visit, and they heard my children talking to each other, they would not have a clue what my children were saying.  Here's a few examples:

"Hey!  You hit me..."
"Sorry-ia"

"Marrrrr-CELL-aaah... I was standing here, stupid, Ugly-a."

"Sor-ry, Ellen-a."

As I tend to yell at my kids for rolling their eyes, my eyeballs have a hard time keeping straight when I hear this kind of talk.  It's hard not to giggle but other times, I just want to pitch a fit and stomp out of the room like they do.  Afterall, I've learned from the best.... or maybe they learned it from me?  Is that a born-with kind of trait?  Either way, I've been having a hard time concentrating on anything around here, let alone write or do anything I want to do.

I have to admit, things have been pretty peaceful around here... no wait.  There's not much peace when it comes to the kids.  There's been a lot more peace inside of me when my children have a hard time getting along.  I don't know what it is, perhaps I've been waking up early everyday and spending a little time with God and prayer before my crazy day begins.  I've found myself much more able to handle the "words ending in '-ia'" attitudes and back talking when I can start my day with peace.  Maybe I've learned to let some things go and not hold myself up to a standard I think is appropriate, when really it's too much for me to handle.

With all that being said, I've been having a really hard time staying motivated to write.  Yahoo! is taking away the Featured Contributor Program starting the first of the year, which means I will no longer be a featured writer with Yahoo!.  In a way, I'm not really sad about that.  I'll miss the income but my lack of motivation with writing has gone so low that I wasn't taking advantage of any of the writing opportunities anyway.  My husband and I talk occasionally about my future options when the kids are in school full time.  Will I go back to work?  Back to school?  Stay home?  My options are so open, it actually drives me crazy thinking about all the cool stuff I could do.

Jeff gave me my Christmas present early this year.  He has a hard time keeping a secret and I love teasing him about that, but honestly I'm so happy he didn't wait.  He gave me a Nikon D7000 camera, which is a really, really, really nice camera.  A kind of camera I've always wanted.  It's killing me that it's been crappy outside the last couple of days and there's not much to take pictures of outside when it looks so crappy out.  So in the meantime, the kids will just have to put up with me practicing on them.  Thank goodness the world has gone digital.  I can't even begin to think how much money we'd spend on film with a camera like this.  It's just too fun taking pictures!  Here are a few pictures I've (we've) taken so far....









You can see a couple other pictures on my right side bar.  Once that sun comes out, I'll be out keeping busy so don't be surprised if I don't write again for a while.  Or maybe I'll be posting lots of pictures very soon.  I pray you all get a bit of peace in your heart and your days are sunny and happy!