Pucker Up Straight Shooter

It seems my friend Jenni over at One Thing and Grueling Homeschooling thinks I may be deserving of a Lemon Award...

She thinks it originated with the ole "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade" motto.

I cracked up because my initial reaction to a serving of lemons usually does not involve me whipping up a quenching batch of lemonade. No my friends. It is more like a whiny-hiney, extremely sour squirt down the throat that makes me look like I'm having a convulsion.

On the other hand, since Girl Child and I do love us some lemon pie and some lemon pudding and Lemonheads and even lemonade...I figured I'd better look a little deeper for Jen's sake and see if I could come up with some proverbial lemonade from 2008.

And wouldn't you know it? As soon as I started reminiscing about Big Shooter's trials and tribulations this past year the whole "Pooor me, Woebegone, Whiny-Hiney" line of crap soon gave way to overwhelming gratitude and extreme humbleness for my Maker.

With Him, through Him, because of Him we were able to turn cart loads of a certain yellow citrus into life lessons for ourselves and the Crumb Snatchers.

Here are a few things we found out about our family :

We possess ...

Incredible strength

Unshakable faith

Steadfast determination

We experienced...

Deepest humility

Undeniable power of prayer

True friendship

We came away with...

Unabashed devotion to each other.

So thank you Jenni! Thank you for making me stop and and re-evaluate our year, look at it through fresh eyes, different prospective, with a clean slate.

Now y'all know the drill. I pass it on to others so they can look for the positive in a yucky situation, write a post and then pass on the bloggy love. The problem is - I have to hold it to 10. Maybe it's me, but it seems everyone I read seems to always make bloggy-fodder lemonade out of icky circumstances. And usually, stinkin' hilarious lemonade at that! So I have enlisted Big Shooter's help in picking just 10. He's going to look at my extensive bookmarked list and do a kind of eeny-meeny-miney-moe thing for me. If you are not one of them and you are just dying to write your recipe for lemonade...by all means, consider yourself AWARDED!

Big Shooter is awarded this prestigious award, even though he doesn't have a blog...that we know of.

Soliloquy of She Just Had to Say It

Fringe Girl at The Domestic Fringe

Jessica at Farm Fresh

Marie at Losha's Hope

My friend at Happy Chaos

Bloggy Buddy at 6 Happy Hearts

Mama Belle at The Bayou Belles and Their Beau

Marcy at The Glamorous Life Association

My friend Queenie at The Queen B

Love Note to my Big Shooter: Drawin' a blank here...sorry. I guess it's just a plain ole, big mushy, gushy I love ya, Baby Cakes.