IBA #605, 140, & 78

# 605 - Looking at my children, I can see…

Well, I cannot even adjust that one properly into anything I can write about!  I can say that, in the past, when I thought about “my children”, I always planned on siblings.  As I get older though, I would be happy if we are able to clear up the current medical issue standing in the way and have a single child.

# 140 - The biggest “learning” moment you have had in your life so far, or the several moments you have had.

Oh, these are littered throughout my life!  Although, I must not have learned too much…as I cannot pick something out of my memory today, (it could be that I have not managed to finish my first cup of coffee yet this morning).

Rather than “learning moments”, my Mother used to tell us we were “making memories” when we did things that were not the brightest things to try once we had already started them.  One of those “memories” (she was right though, we did make a memory!) occurred on a Fourth of July when I was somewhere between 9 and 12 years old.  I forget what year it was, specifically.  Each year the town I grew up in, like most towns in the US, I imagine, put on a large fireworks display, however, since “town” was a 30 minute drive on a normal day and 2 to 3 hours after the “show”, my Mother and my best friend’s grandmother decided that we should only go half way into town, and watch from the top of the butte. 

As a side note, the butte I am talking about is Lava Butte.  It is located on Highway 97 just south of Bend, but north of Sunriver, Oregon.  There is a gigantic crater at the top that was made when the volcano erupted last (thousands of years ago).  The butte itself is surrounded by a huge scape of lava flow and is awesome sites to take in if you are anywhere near the Central Oregon area!

However, since you cannot drive to the top of the butte and the shuttle service was expensive (doubly so that day because it is a prime viewing spot for the fireworks show), we opted to “hike the butte”.  You would think (or at least assume) that someone who would make that a conscious decision would at least be able to “do” it, right?  Well, not so much in our case!  First let us look at the group of hikers…tennis shoe (I am talking the little canvas ones) clad girls (and “old” women) ranging in age from seven (if I was 12) to mid-40’s!  Not one of us was in the physical shape needed for the climb and it was all up-hill (as hiking up a butte normally is)!  We ended up only making it about one-quarter of the way to the top, but we were high enough above the highway at that point to see the fireworks.  We should have brought binoculars though!  For us it was a very tiny display…  The most fun we had watching anything that night was watching the moonrise!  From our vantage point, the moon was huge and had a yellow-orange color to it.

We did learn a lesson that day though…do not attempt to walk up Lava Butte unless you have all day, plenty of water, and no little kids with you”!

# 78 - My heart raced.

…so I took my Blood Pressure pill? 

Okay, obviously not where I was supposed to go with this one.  I really hate these types of writing “assignments” though.  If I was in a “creative writing” mood, I would not be doing an IBA post!  I do write what would fall under the “creative writing” title, but only when a mood and situation fall together…so not very often!  Even then, I like to write those as more of a first- or second-person narrative.  I like to put words into my characters mouths…  This is also the same reason I enjoy playing The Sims (original, 2, and 3).

The Sims: Complete Collection 

 The Sims 2 $4.90!  Of course, this is only the base game with none of the expansions though...

The Sims 3 

The Sims 3 Pets - Limited Edition - This is slated to come out in October...I am extremely excited to see how they worked this in Sims3, Pets for Sims2 wasn't all that spectacular and I generally did not allow my Sims the pleasure of pets because they were hard to deal with!  When I did let them have them, the pet was confined to a fenced in space in the yard so they did not destroy the house I spent so much time creating!

The Sims 3: Generations I recently picked this up  and honestly I haven't really seen much of it in the game.  I need to find a walk through to see what I am missing!