The funniest dog and tv host meeting ever!

If you love it when the pets are brought on tv, where the host of the show shows the pets and asks people to come adopt them, you will LOVE this video! PROMISE!

Is the Disney Wedding Proposal real or fake?

First of all, let me say I LOVE Disneyland. If I could go there everyday I would. Almost two million people have seen the video below. Is it real, or is it fake. After seeing it, I will tell you. If you don't want to know, only watch the first one.





Now, look at this version. When he gets the megaphone at the 1.00 mark, he holds it, not by the handle, as he did in the first video. The first version was a Disney filmed version, and the other was not. But it shows that it was done, more than once, and that is is completely staged. All of the performers were Disney employees, including the girlfriend. But it is magical!

In the Disney version, which is the very well produced one, he picks up the megaphone at 3.29 into it.

Angels All Around Us

Some of you know that this week is the anniversary of my mom’s death and those that do probably know that I am a complete and total Momma’s Boy!! What can I say, she loved me! She took good care of me and I hope that I took good care of her when she needed me.

I took care of her in her later years as she struggled with cancer. She beat the cancer --- even though the doctors told her she wouldn’t. She was pretty amazing that way. But, even though she had beaten that cancer, she still ended up in the hospital a lot during the last few years of her life. She also had to live in a care center the last three months of her life. During that time, her body just deteriorated to a point where it would not work. She slowly lost the function of her kidneys, her blood pressure became uncontrollable and she had many high fevers. The list of things wrong with her just kept building until her tired body had no more fight to give.

She passed away August 3, 2008 at home where she wanted to die. When she first arrived home from the care center, she seemed to do better for a while. We even took her to Colorado for a school reunion just a few weeks before her death.

I could go on and on about the life of my mother and the tremendous impact she had on my life. There are so many stories, but instead, I want to write about the angels that I met along the way as we struggled with all of her health problems….there were many, but I want to focus on one occasion in particular. It happened in a waiting room….Those that read my blog often-- know about the last angel I came across in an ICU waiting room – in fact, it was a whole family of angels!…Maybe that’s where the angles congregate or just hang out… I don’t know, but they seem to help me there a lot!

On this occasion, I remember it was around the end of ’07 or beginning of ’08… My mother was very sick this time…she was throwing up repeatedly (sorry if any of you are eating at your computers…but that’s the facts…) Anyway, I took her to the hospital emergency room as soon as I realized it could not wait…it was not going to stop without some kind of medical help. It was terrible to watch and I can’t imagine what agony she must have been going through.

Well, you would think that when somebody like that came through the emergency room doors, they would put them somewhere other than with the other waiting room patients. I have to admit, it was embarrassing – even though there was no reason to be --- it was totally out of our control how sick she was and where they told us to wait.

As I looked around the waiting room, my eyes fell on a young couple…the young woman looked like she was just as sick as my mom…although she was not tossing up her breakfast, lunch and dinner like mom…she was clutching her stomach in pain…. I felt so bad for my mother and her. This young woman was feeling so poorly that she began to cry. Man, it was getting brutal!!! My mom, being the amazing person she was, leaned over to me in between “episodes” and told me to “go check with that young couple and see if you can help them in any way.” I’m sure I gave her a funny look, thinking “how can you be worrying about anyone else but yourself at a time like this?” That’s just how she was… whether sick or healthy. I told her that there was nothing I could do and I was sure they would be taking both of them back soon.

Well, after over two hours of my mom tossing her cookies and this young woman clutching at her stomach and bawling, they called the young woman’s name. When she stood up, she did not go to the nurse that had called her. She came directly over to us. She told my mom that she should go in first because it was obvious to everyone other than the ER staff that she needed to go back immediately and before anyone else. It was obvious! We thanked her over and over as I took my mom back.

When we got to the back to be helped, they had to take my mom’s entire life history! After all, they only had it in their computers for the last thirty-seven visits we had made to that hospital. After I finished and they were finally helping my mom, I walked back out to the young couple and said, “Thank you again. You will be blessed for what you did.” I felt the tears starting to fall, so I just quickly turned and went to the back with my mom who ended up staying in the hospital for four days on that visit. This couple was just one more in a line of angels that helped me over the time I cared for my mother. Their unselfish gesture to help us meant so much to us in that moment…especially since they were also suffering like others that had helped us along the way. They were there for us when we needed help.

There are so many gestures (big and small) like this that happen every day that have a profound effect on others lives. I always hope that I can return the favor by helping someone when they’re in need…even if it is just a little bit of help that they need.

Last week I had such an opportunity to help someone. I found a little boy of three years old, outside of my very large apartment complex. When I drove up, the little boy asked me if I could take him to his mom. I asked him where he lived and he said, “On the top,” as he pointed up to the top floor of the apartment building. So, I asked him which apartment it was, and he did not know. There are nineteen apartment buildings in that complex. So, I asked him where his dad was. The little boy said that his dad was sleeping and that he was not supposed to wake him up. Then I asked him if he knew where his mom was and he said, “I dunno.”

So, I sat with this adorable little boy for a little while talking to him and keeping him calm. All of a sudden, he started to yell, “There she is! There she is!” Sure enough, his mom drove up, got out of her car and ran over to the boy. She was holding a pizza. I asked her if this was her son, and of course, she said yes. I went on to explain to her what had happened. She thanked me profusely and they walked into their apartment…..which was on the BOTTOM FLOOR! I was so glad I was there to help because in this day and age, you just can’t leave kids alone for the shortest amount of time. I’m sure the mother was horrified when she considered what could have happened! There is nothing worse than imagining someone we love in harm’s way.

Well, during that same week, on the following Saturday, I received a call on my phone that said that a person that I was very close to needed my help. The phone call was from a police officer from a city about an hour away. I told the officer that I would be there as quickly as I could be. When I arrived there, the person that needed me was there as I had been told. I went into the lobby to get him and take him home. When I saw the person that needed me, they looked terrible. Next to him were two people waiting for me, but I did not know that at first. I just looked at them and smiled. But when I looked back at the friend in need, I just started crying uncontrollably. He looked terrible and like he needed a lot of help. As soon as the couple saw me crying, they told me that they were the ones who had brought him there and were taking care of him until someone could come and get him.
My mind immediately went back to a few days before when I had sat with the cute little boy, watching over him until a parent could come and get him. The couple explained to me what had happened and I’ll just say that it was pretty upsetting and my friend was very lucky to be alive. This friend had not done anything that had gotten him into trouble with the law. He had only been brought to the police station because he was in need of help.

When I heard all of the details from the couple, it was clear that they were in the right place at the right time. Well, that made me start crying even harder as I considered the alternative endings to the story. I told them thank you at least ten times. Then, I asked them for their names so I could send them a thank you card. They smiled at me and told me that they needed no other thanks than seeing how much I cared for this person and that now the person was being handed off safely to me. They said that they felt they had been blessed by being able to help someone so clearly in need of assistance with no one else around to help. I was truly thankful for them and what they had done to keep this person that I cared about so safe. It could have turned out so much differently.

Well, the day after this drama, I was outside my apartment again and I saw the mother of the boy that I had sat with earlier in the week. She was with her husband and she was pointing at me. The father of this little boy came right up to me and said, “You will be blessed for what you did for my son.” I smiled and thanked him for saying it. Then, it came to my mind that I had said the same thing to the young woman in the ER. I also remembered that the couple from the day before had felt blessed for coming to the rescue of me and my friend.

It truly felt like each one of these situations had some kind of divine intervention. As I look back on all of the help my mother and I needed, I see now how many people came to our rescue right when we needed them. I couldn’t help but think about my mother and how she had taught me to believe angels are around us. She also said that I should be there as an angel for others when I saw that they were in need of help. Then I wondered…..Could it be that my mom and other loved ones are working from the other side to assist people and to be “angels” for those in need?… Are they working to help us when we need help and keep us safe when we need safety…? -- After my experiences with my mom when we needed so much help, and my experiences during this past week with others in need of help, that wouldn’t surprise me one bit!!

Judging You Judging Me

“I think he must hate me.” I had this thought often when I saw, heard mention of, or thought about one subscriber to the newspaper I was running.

I ran two different newspapers for a total of nine years. I learned a lot about people during that time. It was my job to report the news and, obviously, the news is about people in the community. It is a relatively small community where everyone knows everyone else. When I would have a story to print that was less than flattering to one of my fellow citizens, I sometimes had a difficult time bringing myself to print it in the paper. However, as a journalist it was my job to write and print the story.

Running a newspaper in a small community, rather than a newspaper publication with a much larger circulation, has its own unique problems. When a story is printed in a newspaper written for a large population of subscribers, the chances are pretty slim that you would know every single one of the people mentioned in each article…whether it be the crime section, the business section, the weddings or the obituaries. In a small town it is very likely that one does know, either first hand or through an acquaintance, every single person mentioned in the paper. And, most of them are related in some way. This can lead to some very interesting challenges for the staff of the newspaper.

For example, say there is a high speed chase on the streets… At a large paper, it would be highly unlikely that the parents, or spouse, or the congregational leader of the perpetrator would call or come into the newspaper office to beg them not to print the story because it was so embarrassing. At my small newspaper, it happened all of the time.

During my time at the paper, I can think of only four incidences when people came into the newspaper office to cancel their subscription to the paper. That really is a low number. Three of the four people canceling were members of either the City Council or the County Council. It was the newspaper’s job to have a reporter attend and print what happened at the Town Council Meetings. These articles were for the benefit of the citizens to learn what was going on in their community. Since these meeting were open to all of the public, you would think that the members of the council would only say what they wanted the community to hear…wouldn’t you? Well, I guess when they saw their actual words in print they must have seemed different somehow. They were not always pleased with how it came across in the article, or it caused them to receive grief from others about things they said or did on the council.

I would explain to them that we were only doing our jobs and that it was, in fact, exactly what was said in the meeting. Why they were surprised was beyond me. Well, one of the council members actually went and read the minutes of the meeting and came back to apologize a week later and reactivate his subscription to the paper.

One of the other two people that complained definitely thought that I, personally, had something against him. He felt that I had some kind of agenda against him. He thought I was singling out his decisions on the council and printing what he said and how he voted on various issues. In a small town, this can be very uncomfortable as everyone sees everyone pretty regularly… You know the kind of town where everyone raises their hand to wave before they even know who they are waving at….because, of course, they will know them! So, you can imagine how uncomfortable it was when I would pass this council member on the street, or see him in one of the local businesses. It was quite obvious to me that he would see me and then hurry away so he wouldn’t have to speak….at least I thought it was obvious.

I made a mistake in judging this man as someone who would hate me forever. I assumed that because of this incident with the paper that he would always dislike me and avoid me. For six years I thought this. As it turned out, I must have imagined some of it.

How do I know he doesn’t hate me now? Not from me asking him…but from me needing something from him… and yes, I needed something from him in his role as a public servant. I needed a favor and he was the decision maker on whether my request would be granted. I was hoping to avoid him all together by going through another person in his office. While helping me, this person asked me if I wanted to see him directly. I laughed and said that I was sure that I was NOT a person he would want to deal with. So the lady that was helping me took my phone number and said she would get an answer for me and call me back.

It only took a short time, a few minutes in fact, for her to call me back and report the decision. It was good news. She said he definitely knew who was making the request of him, and he approved it anyway. It was a big favor and he easily could have denied it to me. It was clear that he did not hate me at all or want to take out revenge on me. I had thought for all of that time that he did not like me and that he would never be doing me any favors.

I felt quite bad about judging this person… and it was ironic because I thought he was making a judgment about me from one incident. If I only would have taken the time to talk to him and clear the air, I would have avoided a lot of uncomfortable situations….uncomfortable for me …obviously now I realize they were not that uncomfortable for him. He had clearly moved on. He was fine and I was the one carrying the assumption of hate around with me. It had bothered me a lot when I thought this person did not like me for doing my job.

So, what did I learn? I learned that I caused myself a lot of worry by assuming something rather than dealing with it head on. I am grateful for this lesson. In the future, if I have any doubt about how my relationship is going with someone, I will simply ask. If there are hard feelings about something, I’ll try to work it out. Maybe this lesson from my small town could be of benefit to the world at large?