The Bloggy Carnival Has Blown in to OZ

It's time for the Bloggy Giveaway Carnival, this is always so exciting! I absolutely love it!!

I am Marcia(the Marsh of this blog), Danandmarsh In Oz, Dan is my husband and we live here in Tornado Alley--KANSAS. I have a, well now smaller fear of tornados, a fear I have had since I was small, story further down. Oh well blah, blah, lets get partying..................

I am giving away this Pepsi tee-shirt!! It is a size L(probably runs a little smaller though). Yes I have taken the Pepsi/Coke challenge years ago!! I guessed Pepsi right though!! I love Pepsi, the choice was hard, they tasted the same, really. What it is they make you eat a cracker first, then you taste. Don't know why maybe it kills the taste, I don't know.

Well for a chance to win this tee-shirt, pretty much leave a comment. I will choose one winner on August 1st, at 10:00am CT. Blogger and non bloggers equally eligible. Sorry US only. Please leave a way to contact you should you win. Winner will be chosen randomly at random.org.

Oh not a requirement but if you would click on my header and read the titles, there may be something you may be interested in reading!!

Hey if you like my blog, feel free to subscribe!

Have fun at the carnival, I plan on it :)

...........................................................

Blogging for Blood Cancer Event

If you have a blog or a website, please help us promote our “Blogging for Blood Cancer” Event. The first annual “Blogging for Blood Cancer” event will take place from August 11-18, 2008. This first time event will bring bloggers from across the United States together to raise awareness for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and its mission to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.
The event is being hosted by Goodies for Mom in conjunction with the Friends of Heroes (FOH) National Light The Night Team of which I am a proud part. We are asking (ok ,begging) that bloggers post on your blogs throughout the event about the importance of the LLS mission, share your personal stories of those you have come to know who have been affected by blood cancer, or share some of the stories you read here and on the FOH site during the week that have touched your hearts.
All bloggers participating will have the opportunity to be entered to win prizes donated by event sponsors by leaving a Mr. Linky link on the Goodies for Mom post for the event. The event post will go up on August 11, 2008 at 8:00am. Even if you do not have a blog, visitors to the Goodies for Mom and Friends of Heroes blogs during the week will also have opportunities to win as they learn more about the importance of LLS’s research and patient services in the fight against blood cancer.
To help promote the event, anyone who puts a button or banner on their site, or writes a post about the event with a link back to this post, then leaves a link below on our Mr. Linky by midnight on August 10, 2008 will be entered for a chance to win a $25 Barnes & Noble gift card.
$50 American Express Gift Card
$50 gift certificate to Susan Murphy, Inc.
A customized tutus courtesy of Sara Rose Tutus.
$30 gift certificate to The Blue Top Hat
A cookie card and cookies from the Greeting Cookie
100% organic cotton kimono set for baby (pink or blue up to 24 months) from Go Natural Baby™ LLC
100% organic cotton T-Shirt with Coco Pants ( sizes from 3 months - 4T) (choice of three colors for the t-shirt and matching pants) from Go Natural Baby™ LLC
Here you can get all the detail of this giveaway and event

650' Down Under The Kansas Prairie

After one of Marsh's older brothers went on a hot air ballon ride. We accepted this as a callenge to get off our butts and do something strange too.
The center of Kansas use to be a shallow ocean. like 230-250 million years ago. We are old enough to remember the the muddy condition when it finally dried up, (took about two years). LOL
The salt deposit which was left, (like daytona) is where the good USA gets most of its table salt and of course the road salt for winter.

Marsh and I decided we would take the SALT PLANT TOUR. Cost? A mere $13.50 each. For all that we got trip 650 feet down into the earth. (a little like the distance the St. Louis arch is tall) in a pitch black elevator. Which didnt look like 4 million dollars. (and maintained like a redneck garage beer icebox).

The little electric trolly cars were cool, and each had a speaker system so we could really hear the tour guide talk. Really is quite a lot to salt mines. The tunnels total 67 miles but we stayed within about 1,000 yds from the eleivtor.

The most interesting part for me was the use of the mine as sort of a national treasure warehouse. The conditions in the mine are perfect for peserving paper and really about all other stuff such as origional major motion picture reels. I read a newpaper the day after Lincoln's death, and it looked like it was just printed! Being a history major I was thrilled to see the accounts of persons involved and astonished the the addiontional information about the other attempts of key figures that night. So much of history is lost.

Other points of facts we can now say we saw are. The batman movie MR Freeze costume worn by Arnie, Presly's shirt, that little pistol that Will Smith was given in from "Men in BLack" and a manniquin of Mr. smith from the Matrix. The gift shop of , if not the deepest on earth (650 feet down) was really neat, loved the t-shirts, "I survived the shaft', "I ve been where the sun really dont shine", just love stuff like that.
In closing I would just like to say that it was well worth the money, had a great time and would recommend it!
-dan-
The elevator down was not too fun, I don't really like enclosed spaces and Dan and I were back into the corner. eeekk! Center pic was in the elevator I was holding the camera above me and got a pic in the pitch dark. Note the tour guide in the blue shirt! He was a pretty funny tour guide. One plus on being 650 underground was no tornados down there!! :)
-marsh-

Kansas Underground Salt Museum, located in Hutchinson, Kansas

The Price Of Meat Nowadays!

Being raised "german" I grew up with many german dishes. Saurkraut, blood sausage, blood pudding, beef tongue, pickled fig feet and my personal favorite, pig foot soup.

After we moved to a our new area we went out to find a "decent" place to eat. We like mexican food so we stopped there and low and behold they had pig feet soup! Of course with the new inflated price of $6.95 a bowl. Still not a bad price for a trip back in time. Yes it was very good, pigs foot came complete with toe nails, LOL!

So after dicussing with my caring wife she said she would fix some. Off to the store we went only to find that nowadays pig feet(trimmed) and back bone scrap is selling for $1.69 a pound. Needless to say we didn't buy any.
-dan-

..........................

Why Did This Happen?

As I had mentioned earlier that I have not had a tornado dream in like 9 years but guess what? I had one last night. Eeeekkkk, why, why, why? The weather was fine not even an indication of a thunder storm. so vivid, so realistic. This tornado did damage but no one hurt, we did have to take cover, hubby and I don't know who else went to one spot, but I didn't like the spot, so my grandson and I went down in like a little cubby hole. Black cloud spinning around behind the trees as it crept around them. Doing damage a few blocks away. This town was not like our town, well you know how dreams are. Well I woke up, thank goodness!

Any suggestions why this dream of a tornado was reborn after all these years?

.................................................................

Our Sunday Drive

Sunday Dan wanted to do something(his only day off). He wanted to take me to Kechi Kansas. He said there was all kinds of antique shops, mind you he hadn't been there for years. Myself, I have never been to this small town in Kansas near Wichita.
We get there and and there was 1 or 2 shops and they were closed. There was this pretty building but we only saw one car. It was full of glass figures. I saw the sign and it was indeed open. It is called KARG ART GLASS and is a gallery full or his and other artists' work!! Oh my I was drooling at the beauty of the work. The lady there gave us a CD on the operations of glass blowing. Very, very interesting.
Please click on the text link and check out the beauty of glass art.

.....................................................................................

ProTycoon--Win $110 cash and Other Prizes!

David from ProTycoon recently won two prizes from 78 Tips to Increase RSS Subscribers for Your Blog. Congratulations David!
In turn he wants to give some back to his readers. In by doing this he is having a contest.There will be 2 winners:
$110 cash via Paypal
125×125 Sidebar Banner for August
125×125 Sidebar Banner for one month on Blog for Beginners
Contest Runner-up:125×125 Sidebar Banner for August
Details for the contest can be found here! Good luck to all who enter
ends: July 31st
.................................

How Ironic

Dear hubby and I have recently moved. He got a better job. We had to move because the new job was 55 miles away from where we lived. Now we live 3 minutes by car from his job. Formerly we were driving 2 cars to work, a total of 140 miles a day.
The ironic thing is that we moved(remember I don't have a liking for tornados) to Hesston, Ks this is where the big F5 tornado hit in 1990. Eeeekkkk! Here is a video from this tornado.

Dating Site to Danandmarsh

As some of you may already know Dan and I met on a dating site on May 29 2005. We talked for 6 months before we even met. Yes we fell in love online. While I always preached to my kids on how this was a no-no, it turned out to be such a yes-yes for me. I was just looking, honest!! I came across his profile picture it jumped out at me and said, "pick me, pick me," I talked to his picture and said, "no I am just looking."
Finally after a few days I sent him a "hi," wink, ice break I think is what it was. A week went by and bingo, it went from there.
We met for the first time Decemberr 3rd, 2005 when he returned from Iraq. Oh did I fail to mention I moved into his house Sept. 2005. Whoooooaa! Boy was I taking some chances. Being a staff sargent in the Army and seeing him online I thought he seemed to be like snobish, like I am better than you kind. Boy after meeting him I was never so wrong about that, he was/is the complete opposite. So down to earth its something else. Funnier than crap sometime. I don't know you would just have to meet him to know what I am talking about.
Well we got married August 26, 2006. We are so happy together.

......................................................................

Title should be Marsh in Oz

The reason I should say this blog should be "Marsh in Oz" is because I really think that fate is what brought me here to Kansas.
When I was very young living on a farm in Woodstock Illinios I dreamt of tornados constantly. These tornados never touched down in my dreams. Later on in years these dreams still occured quite frequently.
Finally as an adult I landed in a bad marriage, blah, blah which brought me here to Kansas in July of 1990. Wow, I saw my real tornado about 8 months of moving here! It was so unreal, people weren't taking cover or anything. I thought these people were nuts! My four children were all taking cover! I had the fear there but then yet it wasn't.
Years went by, and oh yes there were tornado warnings in our county all the time. I bought my first home in 1997 in another county still tornados around but yet never any tornados in my town. One night a few years later I had a dream and this tornado touched down!! First time(remember all other dreams they never touched down) one has touched down in my dream. There was like houses and the tornado scurried through but did not hurt the houses. Guess what, here it is 9 years later and I still haven't dreamt of a tornados.
This is why I feel living in Kansas is my fate. My dreams were telling me I was going to live someday where there are alot of tornados, Kansas. Maybe 9 years ago I felt contend enough here to have that last dream. Guess what I still haven't found the yellow brick road, actually I still haven't seen Dorothy or ToTo.
Yes Kansas is my home now.
More about me and my life in Kansas later.