Got Ink?

Sorry for the lack of posting around here lately. It's been a busy week. Unfortunately my papaw has taken a turn for the worse lately. He's had to have several surgeries in the last few months to deal with swelling on his brain. Thursday he suddenly lost the ability to speak, and he was rushed back to the hospital. They went in and operated on his brain again that afternoon, and he's not recovering as well as the doctors (and we) had hoped. He's only spoken about three words since he ragained consciousness, and he's for the most part unresponsive. I thank you for all the prayers you guys have sent up for us, and we would really appreciate you continuing to pray for him.

In other news, I finally got my tattoo yesterday! Nick and I both love it, and the artist was a friend who did it for a very good price. I'm posting a picture, and I also want to explain what it is and why I chose it. I decided on the Celtic design and the Gaelic script because my heritage is Irish. The script is a translation of the Bible verse Song of Solomon 6:3. "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine."

This verse has always been very special to me for a couple of reasons. Song of Solomon is the book of the Bible which outlines the marriage relationship, the romantic relationship between husband and wife. Obviously my marriage is very important to me, and I know that my husband is a gift from God. But the Bible also tells us that God also intended for marriage to be a picture of Christ's relationship with the body of believers that make up the Christian church. As such, I read the verse not only as "I am Nick's, and Nick is mine" but as "I am God's, and God is mine." It just really captures for me the sweetness of having a closeness to the God who not only created me, but loves me enough to have given me an assured eternity, and on top of that a truly beautiful marriage to the perfect man for me.

The tattoo is on my upper back, and I'm so pleased with how it came out!

Sticker Fun

All available at Opinions-R-Fun.

Good to know

Threat Level Generator

Thank you!!!

I just wanted to say thank you for all the lovely birthday wishes!

30

Well, it's happened. You might notice something a little different in my profile now. I knew this day would come, and it did. And I have survived. That's right. Yesterday............

.........I turned 30.

Actually I had a lovely birthday. I took the day off, and Nick was off anyway. We got up early and took Morgan to school, then went to have breakfast at Chik-fil-a. Yummmmm!

Afterwards we went to hang out with a friend who was getting his first tattoo. This was very cool since on the 26th I'll be getting my birthday gift from Nick - a tattoo of my own!

After the tattoo parlour we stopped by Nick's stepmom's hair salon, where she colored and cut and waxed me into shape for our next stop - the dreaded driver's license renewal. Sadly I had to give up the one with the cute, skinny picture of me at 21. But the new picture wasn't too awful bad. Now I didn't say that it was good, but then I'm never happy with pictures of myself.

Nick had picked Morgan up from school while I was getting spiffied up, so she was with us for the license renewal and lunch afterwards, then we went home for a bit to just hang out for a while. Later we went out for ice cream with Nick's dad and stepmom.

When we got home Nick and I spent some lovely time alone, during which there was plenty of birthday spanking and other fun stuff. A very nice birthday indeed!

Spanko Candy Fun

So I saw a commercial tonight about how you can order personalized M&Ms for a party. And I started thinking about how fun it would be to order some with spanko phrases. Such as:



Then I thought how fun it would be to have M&Ms with different implements. Imagine the game posibilities!

Happy (early) Birthday, Paul!!!

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Paul, happy birthday to yooooouuuuu! Here's wishing you a wonderful day, dear friend, and many more to come!

LOLOLOL! Not quite...

I am Vanilla Flavoured I am one of the most popular flavours in the world. Subtle and smooth, I go reasonably with anyone, and rarely do anything to offend. I can be expected to be blending in in society. What Flavour Are You?

Oh my goodness! **Updated to include new friends!**

What a fantastic bunch of comments you guys left! I got to meet a bunch of wonderful new people and hear from some lovely old friends too! I'm afraid I'm awful at leaving comments myself. There are so many awesome spanko bloggers out there that usually I just plain old don't have time to leave comments. But I really do try when get the chance, and I always appreciate each and every comment I get on here. A big thanks to Bonnie for hosting this again this year! It's been a lot of fun, and I'm glad she came up with the concept. I'm going to respond to everyone here:

padme amidala, hi sweetie! It's always so good to hear from you, and I always love to read over at your place! You're one of my favorites too!

PK, I'm so glad to hear from you! I'm afraid I don't comment on yours as much as I'd like, but I'm always over there!

hermione, thank you! I can't take any credit for Bonnie - she's an amazing blogger! But I always swell up a bit when she's so generous with her compliments. I look forward to reading your blog!

AKB, thank you! It's lovely to meet you, and I've added you to my Google Reader!

Kaya, it's always great to see you!

April, what a lovely comment! Thank you!

Dove, hi and hugs to you too! It's very nice to meet you!

Hi, Ofia! I enjoy yours too!

Paul, always lovely to hear from you, dear friend!

Kallisto, I'm afraid I'm guilty of that too, but I visit you guys all the time too! Thank you for commenting today!

Bonnie, this year turned out even better than last year. Thank you for doing this again, and for being an inspiration to all of us!

Thank you, luna. I've read you for ages too.

Thank you, Maggie! I always love to stop by your blog!

Ellie, it's so very good to hear from you! Thank you for a beautiful comment!

mthc, thank you for commenting - it's always nice to hear from you!

SelfSpanker, I'm the same way - I do keep up with your blog, and I'm glad you popped in to say hi.

Thank you, Todd & Suzy. I love yours too!

Grace, my sister! Every time I read your blog I think "That is SO me!" Well, except for your Muslim mother in law. You're one up on me there. (But seriously, you guys have my prayers on that). I'm so glad you stopped by.

Hello, Nigel. Nice to meet you!

Carye, hi sweetie! I'm always so glad to hear from you, and I'd love to email with you regularly!

Bethie, I'm the same way - I read your every post, but I just don't get the chance to comment like I'd like too. I always love your blog though!

Thank you, Valdor! Lovely to meet you!

Naughtybuttcute, you're welcome, and thank you for stopping by here!

Thank you for the comment, Marcus, and I'll be back to yours as well!

Danielle, it was a pleasure - I'm so glad I could help! And it's good to hear from you!

Frank, thank you - I always enjoy your blog too!

preggo_spanko, thank you for the lovely compliment! I've enjoyed watching your blog grow!

Erik, I appreciate you stopping by!

Susan, thank you for your comment - I'm glad you stopped in!

Love Our Lurkers!!!

Pssst! You - over there! How about saying hi? You know you want to...

Come on, everybody here is really nice, and a bunch of us got to be friends just by saying hello. And of course you're welcome to just hang out here without introducing yourself - we're still very glad to have you. But we just loooove meeting new people, especially folks with an interest in This Thing We Do (or want to do, or fantasize about doing, or are just curious about).

Anyhoo, I just wanted to let you know that Bonnie and a bunch of the rest of us spanko bloggers would be thrilled to meet you, so please feel free to pop in and say hi!

Gratitude Tuesday

It's Tuesday again, and this post is to express my gratitude for...my vacation!

Yep, this week I'm off from work, and I'm fortunate that Nick's job is still (for now) on a 4 day on/5 day off shift, which means I have him from this past Sunday through Thursday. Yesterday was lovely. My mom picked Morgan up for school, and Nick and I got up and took off to spend the day together. We had breakfast together, then went to our local used book store. This store takes in used books for trade or cash and I got a bunch of new to me ones for the lovingly read ones I turned in. Then, best of all, I got about twice that many from the free bin! Some books they don't accept, whether because they're worn out, too old, or maybe the store just already has a surplus of that edition. Unless the trader wants their rejects back, the store puts them outside in one of three bins for people to look through and take what they want. Apparently I stepped out just after they had taken out a big load, and I got enough good books to do me for the next few months.

Later we went to Best Buy to have the Geek Squad take a look at my laptop. Lately the ac power cord hasn't been working all the time, but I wasn't sure if it was actually the cord or the port in the back of the laptop that was the problem. If it was the port I'd have to have it repaired, which would be covered by warranty, but I'd be without it for a couple of weeks. If it was the cord, I could just order a new one, but the cord is $70, and I was pretty sure it wouldn't be covered by the warranty.

I was pleasantly surprised by my experience. The Geek Squad guy was super nice, very professional, and not interested in trying to do more than I needed him to do (a big help on a very small budget). He plugged it up, turned it on and was able to quickly point out a small place on the cord that was the problem. Okay, awesome, so I didn't need to be without my computer for a couple of weeks. But what was really awesome was that later when I called the warranty department just to check, I found out that the cord is covered by warranty! I should have a new one by the beginning of next week.

We also stopped in at a local general store downtown that I'd wanted to visit for a long time. It was awesome! I loved everything in there. The prices were very reasonable, and I was able to pick out a few things to come back for later when I do my Christmas shopping. They even have this leather flyswatter for about $15 less that I found it for at Orvis.

We also stopped at a Cingular store and found out that we could get both of our phones repaired (long story) for about $50, much less than I'd anticipated being charged for one.

Today was a leisurely sort of day. We kept Morgan home with us and just kind of hung out. Tomorrow is Morgan's class trip to the pumpkin patch. We're both going to go along, and it should be a fun time.

Happy Gratitude Tuesday!

Photobucket Fun...

Check it out!

PaulH666, did an awesome job of turning Morgan's reading list into a story. Very nice job!

Read it here on his blog Tan Her Hide.

For Paul...

A bit of Photoshopping, and a different picture on every side!

Board of Education?

As many of you know, Morgan is in first grade. One of her textbooks is a very basic Reading Handbook (which, I might add, she doesn't need, because my baby girl is an AWESOME reader). But anyway, part of their regular homework is to read a given page, which consists of vowel sounds, phonics, and short words. Today's list:

vat wet Jim nod yum

hug sob zip get Dad

fed miss rod bun tan

leg fuzz vet van lap.

Is it just me? I know people who could build a whole spanko story out of those elements!

Rubik's Spanko

It's no secret that I love silly online generators, so when I found the link to this one over at Bonnie's I had to make my own!

Perhaps...

...I made a mistake.

But it's been months since I bought a spanking toy. And it was only $2.99. And it was so pretty and so deceptively lightweight. Um, deceptively. I think I'm going to hide this one way back in the utensil drawer...