Kathleen Smith's Blog, page 25

What’s Your Nationality/Ethnicity?

I thought I would have some fun with my blog this week! I thought it would be nice to know where my readers are from. Do people from Italy read my blog? Do people from Germany read my blog? Do people in America read my blog? And then I thought it would be fun to see what nationality or ethnicity my readers are. Like I said just for fun. For me personally I always think it’s cool when someone from another country reads my blogs. Or even my books for that matter.

I’ve always thought my nationality was where my ancestors came from. Yesterday my husband was  kind enough to let me know that’s my ethnicity. My nationality is American. Where as my ethnicity is Irish, Italian and English. Now as proud as I am of being an American I am also proud of where my family,my ancestors come from — Ireland, Italy and England. Because if it were not for my ancestors who originally come from those three countries, I would not be here today. So my nationality is American, but my ethnicity is Irish, Italian and English.

Please tell me where your from. Tell my what your nationality is. Tell me what your ethnicity is. I would love to hear from my readers. I would love to know what country your all from. It would be very cool if people from all over the world read this blog and replied. Sadly I know that isn’t going to happen. Please if YOU are READING this blog, please take a moment and let me know, where are you from, what is YOUR nationality and ethnicity. I would LOVE to hear from you!

 

Okay Lord

Over the weekend I was thinking about how people like to try to do things on their own. I’m no exception to this. We have this habit of trying to figure out what we should do or where we should go. We pray about it, but then we go off on our own. 

It can be anything from what job should we take. What kind of a car should we buy. Which house is the best house for me. You get the idea. While we are trying to figure it out on our own the Lord already has that right job for us or that car or even that house. He keeps telling us “here this is where I want you right now” or He says “this is the right car for you”….

The thing is even though we hear what the Lord is telling us, we say “well can I try this other one first?”  While God is waiting patiently for us to listen to him, He lets us try to figure things out on our own. Funny thing is when we finally give up and say “Okay Lord I’m ready to listen and do what you say” things start to fall into place quite nicely. Then we all start to think “why didn’t I just listen to God to begin with?”  

It’s a struggle we all live with every day. Who knows maybe one day we will realize. If we just listen to God the first time and obey Him things would be so much easier. I doubt we will, but we can all try.  

 

Letting Go Even When I Don’t Want To

A couple of weeks ago I experienced this feeling of letting go. I didn’t like this feeling one little bit, but I knew I had no choice. This letting go experience that I’m talking about is the one where parents, mom’s more specifically need to let go of their adult children.

You see my daughter who is now twenty years old is getting ready to be on her own. She wants to be on her own. She is ready to spread her wings and see how far she can fly. I on the other hand would prefer to keep her safe in my nest. I know I can’t hold on to my children forever. I have to say though this whole letting go and letting them be on their own is hard.

You see I was used to her going away while my daughter was in school. She would go on these school conventions that would last a week or two. I was used to her going away for a summer at a time while she went to Summer camps. I was even use to my daughter going away to College. I always missed her when she went to these different places, but I also knew she was coming back home.

Now things are different. Now she wants to move. Now she wants to be on her own and do her own things. Now she is going on planes by herself. Now she is preparing herself for her future. As much as I know this is the way things are suppose to be, I’m finding it very difficult to keep my emotions in tact. It makes me wonder how my mom felt when I was ready to leave my parents when I married my husband. It couldn’t have been easy for my mom to let go of me and yet she did.

Now it’s my turn to let go and watch my daughter live her dreams. I’m thinking there are going to be a lot of teary nights in my near future. Not because I don’t trust my daughter. But because Letting go is hard to do.

 

WhiteFace Mountain

 

 

 

I walked up WhiteFace Mountain! Well sort of. Here’s what happened…

This past Thursday, August 20th was my birthday. I wanted to have fun that day with my family, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My husband told me to leave the ideas to him, so I did. The night before my birthday he gave me two choices. We could got WhiteFace Mountain or we could go to West Point and go to their museum. I liked both ideas, but I chose WhiteFace Mountain.

 

 

So we drove to WhiteFace Mountain on the after noon of my birthday. The closer we got to it the more beautiful this mountain looked. As we drove to the mountain we decided we would take the elevator up and down. Good plan, right? It would have been except when we purchased our tickets we found out the elevator was closed. We then decided to do our best on the trail.

So when we got up to the parking lot we parked our car, walked over to where the trail started and we were amazed. The view from that mountain was beautiful! My family and I started the walk up the trail. It wasn’t easy. Parts of the trail were rocks that you had to climb up. There were steps in certain areas of the trail as you walked up, not many, but they were there. Let me tell you it was windy!

 

 

My family and I finally made it to the top and OH what a view it was! We were amazed at what we saw. We also quickly realized that we needed to hold on to our phones tightly or the wind would have knocked it right out of our hands. We managed to get some beautiful pictures of that mountain. We were glad we were able to make it up the entire trail.

We stayed up there for a few minutes and then we decided it was time to walk back down the trial. Going down was a bit easier. Just a bit. I think we did a lot of slipping and sliding along the rocks on our way down. At least that’s what my husband said we did. I had so much fun on that mountain with my family that day, I would like to go back again sometime. It made for a nice birthday!

 

Stupid Food Allergies!

When you have an allergy to any type of food product it can be annoying. For me personally I found out the hard way about my allergy.

You see I’ve always liked eating Reese’s Peanut Butter cups and Snickers. They were kind of my go to candy if you will. It’s been almost a year now since I found out I can’t eat them anymore. One day I was eating a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup. After one bite I got this strange feeling in the back of my throat. If felt like my throat wanted to close up and my toung felt the tiniest bit funny. I started coughing too. I didn’t think much of it and got myself some water. The next day I had a snickers bar and the same thing happened. 

So I went to the Doctor’s. They sent me to a specialist. I explained what happened and had some test done. It turns out I am all of a sudden allergic to peanuts. I can’t even take the smell of peanut butter. My allergy isn’t that bad, but I was seriously adviced to stay away from any peanut product. 

In all honesty I thought this would be pretty easy. Don’t eat peanuts or anything that has peanuts in it. Simple right? Not simple at all! I never realized how many food products have traces of peanuts in them. Or how many products are processed in the same plant as peanuts. It’s frustrating to say the least! 

I never realized how many candy or chocolate products have peanuts in them. In one way or another they have peanuts in them. This is a no no for me now. I’m finding myself looking at packages and boxes to see if they have peanut allergy warnings on them now. Every once in a while I mange to find a cookie product that says “made in a peanut free factory”. This makes me happy. 

So you know what I have to say about peanuts and other food allergies? Stupid Food Allergies! 

  

Blessings

This weekend was quite the weekend for me. It was pretty much filled with one blessing right after another. To the point that Saturday night before I went to bed I ended up crying. This was a happy cry. It was a wow I can’t believe all that God has done for kind of a cry.

It all started for me on Friday afternoon. I was talking with my husband about my book on miscarriages. He was looking at my sales ranking number and noticed a spike. He then noticed 5 book sales. He thought we had bought them to give out to people. I assured him, it wasn’t us that bought the books. So I was pretty excited to see 5 paperback sales from someone on my book – Miscarriages: My Story.

That night I received an email from the person who bought my books. She explained to me how she works for a non profit organization. She explained how they put gift bags together for women and their husbands who have gone through either loosing a child or a miscarriage. She then asked if there was anyway she could buy 70 – 100 more copies at a discounted price. Of course I was willing to do this. So I lowered the price of my book on paperback as low as I could and true to her word the next day she bought 75 more copies of my book. This thrilled me!

On Saturday night my family and I went to a local camp called Sacandaga Bible Conference, we call it SAC for short. We went to listen to Jason Gray in concert. He has been my favorite Contemporary Christian music artist since the first time I heard him at SAC 2 years ago. I can listen to his songs all day. One particular song of his called “Not Right Now” helped me get through the loss of my mom 1 year and 7 months ago. This song really said it all. How I was feeling and such. Another one of his songs that I love is “Remind Me Who I Am”. If you have never heard his songs, you’re missing out! After the concert I had the chance to meet Jason and talk to him for a minute. I had the chance to explain to him what a blessing his music has been to me. Especially in the rough times.

  

 

On Sunday morning I got to see one of our Church’s missionaries from Italy, Sara Whitman. Sara and I have become good friends. The very first time she came to our Church with her husband Josh we had the opportunity to get to know each other better. We are both Italian. Although I would say that she is more Italian then I am since she was born and raised in Italy. I am Italian by being born into an Italian family.

Anyway, this gave us a chance to get to know each other better. We eventually became friends on facebook as well. Some time ago she asked me if she could use my book on miscarriages to help her as she is a missionary in Italy. My first reaction was OF COURSE. The idea of one of our missionaries using my book to help women in Italy get through their own miscarriages meant a lot to me. This has made our friendship even stronger.

So getting to See Sara, even for only a couple of hours during Church meant so much to me. It was precious time with my dear friend from Italy. We had the chance to catch up as much as possible. She told me how she was to use my book to help other women going through their own miscarriages. We are slowly working on a way to be able to connect better, so that perhaps one day I can do a facetime with her and these women.

Sara also has her own website where she had devotions and different things for people to read. Now I have to be honest her website is in Italian so I can’t read it. Not unless I hit the Google translate button. Which I do every time I go to her website. I hope you would take the time to look at her website, check it out, read it and so forth.

So yeah this has been a pretty amazing weekend for me. Filled with one blessing after another.

Celebrating Our Anniversary in NYC

Towards the end of last week my husband and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary. It was on Thursday, July 30th to be exact. We decided to go to NYC for “the weekend” to celebrate. My husband made reservations for us at a beautiful 5 star hotel. I will tell you more about that soon. He also bought us tickets to a new Broadway show: Amazing Grace, which I will also tell you about soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stayed at a beautiful 5 star French Hotel called Sofitel . I have to be honest with you I have never heard of this hotel until my husband told me about it. Needless to say I was pretty excited to be staying at a 5 star hotel. This place was beautiful! From the time we entered into it till the time we got into our room, it was beautiful. The people that work there were very nice to us and the food that we had was good too. We only had dessert and breakfast there, but it was still good. Once we got our bag into our room we went to their restaurant, had some dessert and then we walked around Time Square and basically roamed around that area of NYC.

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On the day of our anniversary we started it out by going to a restaurant named Butter. It was restaurant week so we used the special restaurant week menu to order off of. I had their chilled cucumber with melon soup, salmon and a mocha whoopie pie. Oh and grits! I would tell you what my husband had to eat, but I don’t remember. What I can tell you is the food was very good. And I wouldn’t mind going back for more of that soup and for the grits.

When we were done eating we went to the Intrepid air and space museum . We hadn’t been to this place in years. We figured since it was only the two of us, why not. We also took a tour of the submarine that they have and the Concorde. I have to say the Concorde is the smallest plane I have ever been on. Height wise it was kinda perfect for me. The submarine was interesting, but I think I preferred the Concorde. Also I had forgotten how big the Intrepid was until we got on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The night of our anniversary we went to see the new Broadway musical Amazing Grace. My husband bought us front row orchestra seats. For me it was very cool to be that close to the stage. It was a wonderful show. By the end of this play I had a lump in my throat because I refused to cry, even though I wanted to. I could hear the sniffling around, but I wouldn’t give in. This new Broadway show was well done and I highly recommend it to anyone. When the play was done we were a bit hungry so we went to Juniors for some onion rings, a chocolate milk shake and a soda.

Through out all of this we used Uber for our transportation from place to place. Uber is an app that lets you easily get car service. One of the drivers was so nice to us, It was raining hard when he dropped us off at the Intrepid and he insisted on giving us his only umbrella. Now that’s service! Each driver we had was nice, friendly and chatted with us through the entire drive.

The next morning, Friday morning, my husband put on the news. I wasn’t paying attention to much till I heard Scotty McCreery singing. Then we found out he was singing at Fox and Friends. My husband told me that was only a couple of blocks from where we were staying. So we went to check it out. That was a VERY nice way to end our stay in NYC!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that we went back to our Hotel and we had breakfast. It was a simple breakfast, but it was good. It was also my first time ever drinking French Press coffee. So I wasn’t expecting them to bring it out to me the way they did. It was good. I personally prefer my coffee to be stronger, but I think that’s because I’m Italian. All in all it was a great weekend away for our 21st wedding anniversary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Skit Guys

A couple of nights ago my family and I went to see The Skit Guys live! We had heard from some friends that they were going to be at  Word of Life for one night. When my son found this out, he was rather excited and asked if we could go. Since my husband and I love The Skit Guys as much as our son does the answer was YES.

If you have never heard of The Skit Guys your missing out on a lot of good laughs. At the same time these two men know how to reach the hearts of people. If you do know who they are then you know what I’m talking about. They make you laugh so hard you start crying. In the end though they have a wonderful message about grace that will touch your heart.

My family loves to watch The Skit Guys videos at home. My husband also likes to play them for our teen S.S. Class. The Skit Guys have many different skits that you can watch like God’s Chisel, Grace and Trust Fall, all of which can be seen on The Skit Guys website.

Now, I have to say some of their videos make me cry. Especially the one with the parents who have a son. Watching their son go from being a baby, to a little boy, then to a man with his own family. Yeah, I cried.

Okay so basically what I’m saying is The Skit Guys are a must see! Whether it be in person or on video, they are a must see.

SIDE NOTE: Yes, I have to have this side note. That night when we saw them in person. My son had the chance to tell one of them (Eddie) about his YouTube channel CG Taser. I don’t know if Eddie has had the chance to check out my son’s YouTube channel yet. But I am asking my readers to please check it out. My son is good at what he does. You can see CG Taser video’s here on YouTube. At the moment I am giving you the link through my channel, but you should be able to figure out how to to get to his.

Please check out The Skit Guys videos and my son’s videos! Thanks!

 

Having Fun at 5Wits

The other day my husband and I took our youngest to Destiny USA Mall in Syracuse, NY. We wanted to go on some adventures so we went to 5Wits:Adventure in that Mall. In case your thinking to yourself, “what is 5Wits:Adventure”? I’m going to tell you.

5 Wits:Adventure is this place in the mall where you can go on 4 different adventures. They have Espionage, Tomb, Drago’s Castle and Deep Space. Each one of these is different and lots of fun. My family and I did Drago’s Castle and Deep Space.

In Drago’s Castle we needed to work together to figure out how to get a key from one end of a long chain to the other end and then unlock the lock. After that we needed to figure out how to open the next door by finding out what moved in that room. The next room we needed to figure out a puzzle. There was one last room, but I don’t know how to explain that one, sorry.

In Deep Space we needed to figure out how to get a space craft back to earth with out getting hit by asteroids. That is the basics of that one, but it its much harder then it sounds. We needed to work together to get through these adventures. These puzzles make you really think and at the same time you have to work together.

My family and I had so much fun. We were laugh with each other, getting some what scared here and there and we were even sweating from the running around we did. We decided we need to go back with our two oldest children so we can have more help and have fun as an entire family.

5Wits:Adventure is a very cool place to take a family, a group of people or maybe even a date. We had a blast and we highly recommend the adventure to anyone. Like I said earlier this particular 5Wits:Adventure is in the Destiny USA Mall in Syracuse, NY. But you can find other 5Wits:Adventures in other cities. You can easily Google them.

 

Book Trailer

Hey there! It’s been two weeks since my last blog post. I wanted to share this post last week as a continuation for promoting my new book. I ended up not writing a post last week because I was busy with other things.

So here we are two weeks later and I am finally able to share about my books trailer with everyone! I personally love my books trailer. I have a very talented husband when it comes to the computer and putting stuff like book trailers together. Yes, my husband made this trailer for me. He starts the trailer with a picture of the Brooklyn skyline. As the trailer goes on he used pictures of me grown up till present day. Once that was done I helped him pick the music. That was the hardest part. Picking music that I would like and that would fit my personality.

I am hoping my readers will like my books trailer. I am hoping that people will like it and maybe even be a little intrigued. Enough so they will want to read my book.

Ladies & Gentlemen I would like to introduce you to the book trailer for…

Brooklyn Raised / Livin’ Upstate !   ENJOY!