Hi, my name is Tonja, and I am glad to have you stopping by my site. I live in south Alabama. I am a mother of 3 grown boys. My husband and I own a Powersports business. I got my degree in nursing,and have used it extensively…at home. My first son was diagnosed with cancer at age 4. He is 32 now, married to a wonderful girl. My third son was born with a cleft lip and pallate. He also has a heart condition . He is 24 and in graduate school now. My second son is 25 and homebound. He has a very mysterious condition for which we are still trying to get information. He is in severe pain at all times and it effects his balance and vision as well. I am going to write about their stories one by one on this blog and talk about how God has given my husband and I grace and mercy to make it through….and keep a small amount of sanity. I work now as a music teacher in a private kindergarten. How can you feel bad when you are around precious little ones? We are very active in our Southern Baptist Church…and I am the Preschool Director there. My Mom and Dad live here in town as does my sister and her family. How blessed we are to all be together. If you look back at some of my previous posts, you will see pictures of my family and friends. Thanks for visiting me. I am fairly new to blogging, and I have soooo much to learn. But isn’t it fun? Party on!

If you have looked at the news today, you have seen pictures of Enterprise, AL. I live about 30 miles from there. Yesterday was a terrifying day for all of us in this area. Once we got the warning, we rushed to get our little preschoolers home and the teachers as well. The skies were ominous. And they kept telling us it was going to get worse. The tornado struck in Enterprise around 1 p.m. What a tragedy. They only had around 25 minutes warning and made the decision to keep the kids at school until it passed, rather than have them on the roads of home alone. A wise decision, I think. Many more would have been killed if they had been in the parking lot or on the roads. My town was spared that wave, in fact it never really rained too bad. Then last night , it got ugly again. We had a warning here. There was tremendous lightning and rain, but short-lived. Nothing ever struck here. Thank God! Please keep the people in Enterprise,AL in your prayers. It is a nice little town, full of fine people. Their high school is totally demolished and 8 of their classmates dead. One was still missing as of last night. God is a God of awesome power and through His grace, more lives were not lost.

O.K. on to the next thing that scratches my blackboard, the proper use of language. Now there are many words that are used incorrectly, but today I am going to talk about the two that are most annoying to me. First the word ‘seen’. How many times have you heard an intelligent looking and otherwise, sounding person suddenly ruin it by using ‘seen’ improperly? As in: “I seen her come in the room.” Oh! My! That is just not right. It’s basic grammar. Did these folks never go to school? And it just SOUNDS wrong, even if you do not know grammar rules. I am constantly surprised by the people who say it, too. Don’t they have someone in their life who will tell them that is wrong? Obviously not. Because I believe most people would want to speak correctly, if they knew they were wrong. So here is the correct usage:
PRESENT: “I SEE her come in.”
PAST: “I SAW her come in.”
FUTURE: “I WILL SEE her come in.”
PRESENT PERFECT: “I HAVE SEEN her come in.”
PAST PERFECT: “I HAD SEEN her come in.”
FUTURE PERFECT: “I WILL HAVE SEEN her come in.

BUT NEVER: “I seen her come in.” WRONG…WRONG…WRONG !!!!!

Now…the second one is ‘YOUR’ and ‘YOU’RE’. ‘YOUR’ is a possessive pronoun. “YOU’RE is the contraction for “you are’. “YOU’RE so silly,” means “YOU ARE so silly”. “YOUR jokes are funny,” means “the jokes that YOU told are so funny.” The way I see this misused the most is on an invitation or sign inviting someone to attend. Such as: “YOUR invited to the party.” NO! NO! NO! “YOU’RE invited to the party.” It is amazing where I have seen this used incorrectly. In newspapers, on public billboards, in magazines. Someone is not proofreading. Any time you can substitute ‘YOU ARE’…you should use ‘YOU’RE.’

Allright…I feel better. Now, if all offenders will please clean up YOUR act, I and millions of other sesitive ears, will be grateful. I could go on and talk about ‘LAY,LIE’, ‘SIT,SET’, or ‘GOOD,WELL’. But not today. I’ve ranted enough.
Thank you very much.