Everyday Moments of our Life

School Pictures {Flashback 2011}

2012-01-27T21:08:00.000-08:00

School pictures. Never really happy with them, I would prefer to just do my own, but for some reason I can not let a year go by without purchasing them!

Trevor - 9th Grade

Trevor's Football Photo

Meghan 2nd Grade

Photography {Before and After}

2012-01-27T19:20:00.000-08:00

Back at the beginning of January I reflected on 2011 and all of the things that I did NOT accomplish. What I didn't give myself credit for though was all of the time I spent with my camera last year. I feel like I still so much to learn and that there is so much I don't know, but when I sat down recently to edit Meghan's b-day, Christmas and Trevor's b-day photos I was pleasantly surprised at the difference in my photos between last year and this year.

I had my eye on this on-line class for a long time, it's a little pricy and I just couldn't justify spending that amount of money on myself, so I started saving any photography money I earned doing little shoots for this or that so I could sign up for the Photographers Workshop over at Snapshots of a Good Life guilt free. I had taken Karen's one day in person class a few years ago and I learned so much, I couldn't really imagine what else she could teach me for 8 weeks! Well, let me tell you, there was more, a lot more!

I only had my new 7d for a few months so I knew there was lots on the new camera to learn, but the class went into the details of composition, equipment, shooting modes, the exposure triangle, depth of field and the list goes on. Karen's teaching style makes all of the confusing stuff so understandable and then she is available on the forums every weekday to answer questions. She is the most active instructor I've ever seen in an on line class, I was so impressed with the amount of time and energy and thought that she gives to every answer she gives. There was so much information the first time around that I audited the class again in September which really allowed me to focus on some of things that I didn't quite get the first time around. All that to say I guess 2011 was quite as bad as I first reflected!

Trevor's B-Day 2011 - images are all straight out of camera

Love that lovely yellow color-cast and the motion blur of Daryl moving in the background!

Trevor's B-day - 2012 - images are all straight out of camera

Look! No yellow colorcast! I can't say enough how much a custom white balance has done for my photos

Not to bad for my oh so dark family room

I have also met some of the best on-line friends in this class. We hang out with each other on our Snapshots facebook page and follow each other on Pinterest! I can't wait until we can meet up sometime and meet in person!

He's 15 Today

2012-01-22T18:22:00.000-08:00

15 years ago today I became a mom! One of the greatest (and most painful!) days of my life. I look at my now taller than myself son and am still amazed that he came out of my body. Today, 15 years later, we are so proud of the young man he is becoming. He is a hardworking, fun loving teenager and I am so glad that God picked him for us!

Here are 15 random things about Trev ~

1 - He loves to go out and shoot his airsoft gun
2 - He is doing awesome in school despite the quote "Just because I get good grades doesn't mean I like school"
3 - He loves his German class
4 - He loves to play the PS3, he likes sports games but mostly the war games (he likes to shoot, see #1)
5 - He is very creative, loves to draw, is taking an art class and wants to take photography too (of course that one makes me very happy!)
6 - He will only wear skinny jeans
7 - His favorite deserts these days are sugar cookies or Blackberry Cobbler
8 - He loves to stay up late and watch TV with his dad
9 - He loves to hang out with his friends (Cole, Austin, Kyle) and ride his bike down the trail to get a treat at Mc Donalds
10 - He's not as crazy about doing chores, although he usually does them without to much grief
11 - I'm sure that he loves his sister greatly, but has a funny way of showing (read annoying) her.
12 - He will start drivers training in August. Not sure if that scares me to death or makes me want to do a happy dance
13 - I don't have as many photos of his as I'd like because every time I try and take is photo I get the hand (and sometimes something else!!!)
14 - He is like me in so many ways, he likes stuff, he likes to collect stuff and as soon as he crosses one thing off the wish list he's off researching the next thing he can't live without
15 - Happy Birthday Trevor

Last Week

2012-01-16T20:58:00.000-08:00

Last week ended up being a busy one and flew by super fast, as most do.

I'm getting a little anxious but I had to many PTA and work projects to get done last week so I have not gotten done as much as I had hoped with my Project Life. What I have done is actually made an effort to get the camera out more and take photos on a daily basis, and if feels so good. After sitting out doing a 365 project for 2011, after doing it for 2 years in a row, it feels great to get back into the habit of looking for that one moment I want to capture for that day.

It also helps that my new iPhone takes much better photos than my old iPhone so that also helps me pull it, well, it's pretty much always out anyway! and use it do capture those things that happen while were out and about. Knowing that I won't cringe when I look at the photo helps too!

What also helps is that I finally got a lens that has been on my wish list for a long time. Yep, the 50mm 1.4. I have shot with it's cousin known as the nifty-fifty since I got my first dslr, and I love love love that lens and the photos that I have taken with it, I use it probably 95% of the time. This new lens is a step higher in quality, with much better glass and bokeh. It will help shooting in low light too, which is always a plus since our house can be very dim at night. I've only played with it a little bit over the last few days but I'm already loving it.

Last week we also started down the orthodontic road with Meghan. So far only 6 rubber bands. Then next week she will be fitted with an appliance to widen her mouth since she has a tooth that needs to come in on her left next to her front tooth that there is no space for. So hopefully they can widen the arch in her mouth and make room for it to drop into place. The fun part will be that we get to turn the appliance everyday to aid in the widening, so not looking forward to that part! So happy for double dental insurance coverage!

Christmas Photos

2012-01-10T21:07:00.000-08:00

Can I just say "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year?" I know, a little late on the the Merry Christmas part, so I hope that your Christmas was Merry and let's just focus on the Happy New Year part, since it really still is the "New Year". Remember this when you get our Christmas card in the mail in a few days, ok?

Not sure what exactly happened, but since we didn't get out to take our family photos taken until the first weekend in December I never quite got around to getting them edited and sent off to the printer until AFTER Christmas. So I am making a note in my calendar now to start thinking about our family photos in October this year so that I don't have a repeat of 2011.

I spent Saturday saying goodbye to Christmas, but took a few photos before I started the demolition process. I know, these photos would have also been more appropriate in December.

This is the Gingerbread House that Meghan and Mimi made. This has become their Christmas time tradition, and they are improving greatly as the years go by!

The Gingerbread House is the only evidence left of Christmas, I just can bear to throw it away.

Our Christmas Tree ~ Notice that I intentionally left off the top part of the tree? That would be because there was a string of cranberries and the star that never made it to the top part of the tree. I needed help with that because I'm short! It was just that kind of year all the way around it seems!

A few other parts of the house just so we can look back and remember how our house looked during the holidays.

So long for now Christmas, we will see you again before we are ready I'm sure!

Meghan's Candy Inventory {Flashback 2011}

2012-01-03T21:13:00.000-08:00

So since I have a lot of catching up to do, I just might go back and try and capture some things that I missed in 2011. And then again, this just might be the only post that I do on somethings I missed in 2011, really only time will tell, it's only the 3rd and I've still got high hopes! And for the record there will be no rhyme or reason to my posts, because remember this year is all about "Simplifying", and the old me would have to get it all organized and in chronological order, preferably on an excel worksheet, before I posted anything.

This goes back to November, the day after Halloween. First you have to understand the constant battle, and I mean CONSTANT battle I have with my daughter about keeping things picked up. And while I can be completely OCD with organizing I do not hold her to that level. I just need her to put her things away after she uses them, put her clothes away or in the hamper when she takes them off, basically just pick up after herself. But for some reason it just doesn't happen. And I'm at my wits end trying to figure out how to get it through the cute little head of hers.

I help her get her room cleaned up and tell her that THIS is what it needs to look like every night before she goes to bed, by the next night, it's a train wreck. I find clothes shoved under her bed, at the bottom of her bed under her sheets and anything she takes out of her closet, even just to look at ends up in the dirty clothes. I just can't seem to get it through her head to put things back where you found them when you are done with them. Everything has a place, everything in it's place! One of my favorite sayings.

I asked her to clean out her very out of control back pack, I come back a few minutes later and this is what I find ~

seriously, I don't know where I went wrong with this child!! But, this same child will find out of place items in a store and run and put those things back where they belong, she has been doing this since she was 2 years old!

So back to my story. There was no school the day after Halloween, so she went with candy in tow to Mimi's house. When I dropped her off I was telling Mimi about how we had spent some time getting her room picked up and organized over the weekend. Again, telling her my sad tales about how Meghan can't keep anything clean.

A little while later I get a text from Mimi stating that Meghan has some organizing genes in there somewhere because she was taking an inventory of all of her Halloween candy and writing it down. I sort of laughed and responded back, to bad she didn't know how to sort it in excel!! Mimi then sent me a photo of the inventory list and at that moment it all became so clear to me ~

Her brain thinks very differently than mine! I looked at that picture and just started laughing. While I'm a very straight, lined up, in order all nice and pretty kinda person, she is one big circle scattered, no rhyme or reason kinda girl. This is the reason that we don't see eye to eye on how our stuff should be kept. I need the organization in order to be productive and apparently she does not, although you know this will be a constant battle between us. But I do try and keep things in perspective and realize that organization is not as important to her as it is to me, and she is only 8 years old, but, somewhere in the middle we can hopefully find some happy ground where we can both live.

High School Report Card

2012-01-03T21:02:00.000-08:00

I wasn't really expecting it when it came in the mail last week. Yes, finals was the week before the Christmas break, but I'm still on the elementary/middle school trimester time schedule for progress reports and report cards. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised to open up the envelope from Freedom High School and see this ~

I did have to ask for a little interpretation as I wasn't sure what 1st Fin was, apparently it is the 1st Semester Finals grade. He was pretty upset about the C in English, luckily his grade must have been high enough that the C didn't bring his final grade down. And luckily the forgotten Biology Final Study Guide mishap didn't effect his grade either. I'd say he's adjusting just fine to High School life. We are super proud of you Trevor! Keep up the awesome work.

2012 - WOW!

2012-01-01T22:31:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure I say this at the beginning of every year, but man 2011 sped by like a flash. And looking back I did a horrible job at documenting our year, and that makes me very sad. I'm not sure what happened, or where I completely lost my oomph . . . but it was nowhere to be found for most of 2011. No blogging, seriously my last post was the first day of school last August! No photo a day like I managed to do a pretty good job of in 2009 & 2010, nothing, nada, zilch! Heck, I haven't even sent out my Christmas cards yet!!! Just consider them New Year's cards, ok? I promise to pick them up from Costco tomorrow and get them in the mail this week! But that is the past, right? So now the only thing I can do is start fresh with 2012, cross my fingers and hope for a more productive year.

I have spent the last week home, off of work, visiting with friends and family, and organizing my heart out. I absolutely love to organize anyway but something about starting a new year with everything looking nice, just makes me really really happy! Although I must be more organized that I think, earlier today I realized that I couldn't find several Amazon Gift Cards that I got for Christmas, I'm usually pretty good with that kind of stuff and it goes straight to my desk. Well after having everyone in the house on a hunt for them, fearing that I would be garbage digging soon, I looked in the envelope on my desk labeled "Coupons & Gift Cards", and low and behold, I had already filed them away, with absolutely no recollection of it!!!!

Tuesday I spent cleaning the kitchen cupboards and pantry and today my scrapbook room. I definitely need to purge some stuff out of this room, like the magazines that I had going back to 2007, my husband and son took a stack out to the recycle bin that was probably almost as tall as me! That cleared up some serious shelf space and then I cleared off the piles on my work table, got my recent magazines to the shelf, got all the coupons filed away in their binders and am clearing the way so that when my Project Life kit arrives I will have nothing standing in my way to get scrapping about our everyday life! Wish me luck!!!!

I do love the newness and freshness that a new year brings, but wonder why I can't make that happen on any ol day of the week or month? I would love to start every month with the same excitement as I do in January. I'm sure it won't happen, so for now I will just take it day by day, I've started a list with some projects I would like to complete this year and I decided on my Word for 2012, Simplify - [ˈsɪmplɪˌfaɪ]vb -fies, -fying, -fied (tr)

1. to make less complicated, clearer, or easier. I have come to realize about myself that I can completely over think some things, and if I don't know exactly how or what I want to do, especially when it comes to creative things, I don't do anything. I really saw what doing nothing you by the end of the year, nothing produces nothing. So my goal this year is to just jump in and do something, it might not be perfect, it might not be the best, but it's something, and at the end of the year, a year of not exactly perfect is better than a year of nothing. Here is to an awesome 2012!

Back to School

2011-08-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

It is back to school time around here ~ while I did enjoy the lazy days of summer and not having to get the kids up and off to school every morning, I so miss the routine that school brings to our day, especially the earlier bed times!!!

Trevor started High School on Monday, I don't know how that happened so fast as I'm pretty sure I just sent him off to his first day of Kindergarten a year or so ago!

This is the only photo I got of him on his first day, it was his idea to wait until the Tuesday morning so that we could include Meghan, aaahhhh, so sweet, right? Tuesday morning it was the "it's not the first day of school so why do we have to take pictures" line, somehow I knew his "thoughtfulness" was to good to be true!

He didn't have a lot to say about school besides "it's boring, my German teacher was trying to be funny but no one was laughing, it was really awkward, and there are only 2 freshman in my math class, all the rest are juniors, that is awkward". He went straight from classes to football practice, as he will just about everyday until the season is over so I didn't pick him up until 5:30, man that's a long day!

Tuesday was Meghan's first day of school, she wasn't overly excited to get back to school, although part of it may be that her cousins are in town and she would much rather be hanging out with them than going to school.

She is still at Gehringer and her teacher is Mrs. Snider. I don't really know the 2nd grade teachers but I did know Mrs. Snider and was hoping that is who she would get. I've heard from another parent that she is awesome, so I'm really excited to see what this year brings for little Miss Meghan!

Getting Away {Part 1}

2011-07-07T20:45:00.001-07:00

Last week we got to take off and go camp for the week (somehow I never thought that would be something I would be happy about doing!). We spent the week up in Myers Flat in the Giant Redwoods. The week started off a little on the wet side but since we were snuggly in the trailer it really didn't matter, it rained mostly at night and sounded so cool pounding on the canvas, I'm sure it wasn't raining as had as it sounded. Since it was muddy and wet and on the cool side, there was some of this going on

On Wednesday we took off for a drive, it is so beautiful up there. We went to the Famous One Log House and saw tress that were 1800 years old and a log that was hollowed out and made into a house! A little on the tiny side, but considering it was a log . . . kinda cool how they made it work.

It cleared up mid-week and we were finally able to go down to the river . . . I'm sure it was only once or twice that the kids asked to go to the water, but it sure seemed like 100! Somehow they just do not see the beauty in kicking back and relaxing!

I spent much of the week reading my book on Lightroom, and can I tell you how happy I am that I have edited everyone of the photos 300ish that I took that are worth keeping and that I actually deleted many that were not worth keeping! That is huge for me. I also figured out how to make templates in Lightroom, so quick to do and I can blog so many more of them!

Stay tuned for part 2, it's time for me to step away from this computer I've been sitting at for more hours than I care to count!

It finally feels like summertime!

2011-06-18T10:21:00.001-07:00

The rain has finally gone away and the temps hit the 80's and 90's this week. Hard to believe last week it was storming! That's ok, I'll take a little sun.

I've had lots of things I've wanted to blog but I've been pre-occupied with getting my new computer up and running. The hard drive on the old computer decided to die a month ago and we decided not to invest any $$$ to fixing a 3 year old computer, which is good and bad I suppose, but we were not planning on getting a new computer but after a week of working on the old laptop decided it really wasn't an option! Let me tell you how awesome Backblaze is though. Backblaze is an offsite backup system that works behind the scenes constantly backing up your files. Daryl was very much against me doing something like this a few years ago when I signed up with Mozy, I had been bugging him for is ok when that computer had a little crash, we were lucky enough to save the hard drive on that computer and recover all my data, so needless to say, I signed up for Mozy without his ok after that. He has finally come around to it being ok!

I switched to backblaze from Mozy a few months ago due to Mozy's outrageous price increase ($5.00 to about $30.00). You never know how good or bad off-site storage is until you need it, and at that point, it's too late, right? Well I have to say I was very impressed! 90% of my data is on an external hard drive, so I knew when the computer failed even if Backblaze didn't live up to what it was supposed to do I would still have my 40,000+ photos and thousands of digital supplies and most of my documents. But the things that always worries me are the thousands of emails and things I've saved in Outlook, would I really be able to recover all of my contacts and saved emails?

I purchased a new copy of Microsoft Office from Academic Superstore. This is a great site if you or your children are in school, there are tons of programs that you can get at a very discounted rate. I downloaded what looked to be my outlook data file from Backblaze and saved it to my computer, I installed outlook and when you set it up the first time it asks you if you want to import data, so I pulled in the file that I hoped contained all my data, and like magic outlook opened with EVERYTHING, looking just like I had left it a few weeks ago. I was seriously doing the happy dance!

What I have learned or I guess reminded, because I did know that my Photoshop Elements Catalog was not being backed up, is that I need to back up the catalog separately so that I don't lose all the tagging and organizing of the photos, which I hadn't done. This was actually ok since I can also access it from the laptop, but not ok when I had a space issue on the EHD that I was backing up to and in the end couldn't get to the catalog on either computer, and had to resort a data recovery tool to find the catalog! So now I am putting a reminder on my calendar to back it up monthly along with iTunes. Silly me thought that once I downloaded iTunes on my new computer and singed into my account all of my purchases would appear. Well, no, apparently they don't. Apparently you are also supposed to be making a back up straight out of iTunes of all of your iTunes stuff. So, I'm not to sure what is going to happen the first time I plug in my iPhone and iPad . . . . how soon is icloud coming?

As of last night I finally have PSE up and running on both the computers along with a new program, adobe Lightroom. I've been hearing/reading a lot about this program and am going to give it a try, the biggest draw for me is that you can batch edit photos that need the same type of editing, that will save a ton of time. I'm having some attachment issues with my photoshop catalog though, so I will probably be keeping it up to date until I'm more comfortable in Lightroom.

So, all that to say that has been what I've been doing the last month, along with all of the end of year activities that were going on with the kids. This school year went by so quickly and I now have a 2nd grader and a high schooler! YIKES!!!! High School!!!! It really doesn't seem real. He doesn't let me take many pictures of him these days, but I twisted his arm before his 8th Grade Dance to let me take a few ~

ok, time to get on with my day, happy Saturday everyone!

Mustard Weeds

2011-04-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

The weather actually cooperated with us and we made it out to the mustard weeds, the sun even poked through for a little bit. For some reason I thought that as the girls got older this little adventure would get a little easier . . . uuuummmmmm . . . not so much. But in the end we got a few cute shots and made some memories!

Meghan

Cayden

Aida

The girls loved climbing up the hill and throwing their "wedding" flowers up in the air.

Antique Store Finds

2011-03-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

I love going to Antique stores and finding just the right something that I never knew I needed but can't live without! Steph and I went over to our local Antique store a few weekends ago, I had been wanting to go for weeks but hadn't made it over there, and I found several new treasures!

I've decided to collect mismatched silver (thanks Steph for the great idea!) so here is the beginning of my collection, needs a little polishing though!

Then I found this cool tin, I've always love containers! And I've been wanting something to put the dog food in, this is perfect and fits perfectly by the dog bowl, it is very rusty but love how it looks. And I must be rubbing off on husband, I thought for sure he would wonder what the heck I saw in that, but he actually liked it!

And the an old suitcase, these are good for storing craft supplies in, and it was brown and red and matched my scrap room, so I had to have it, right?

And my best find of the day was an old headboard, I've been looking for headboards for both the kids beds and saw some possibilities in this one. The best part is the lady said it was priced to high (I didn't think so, and I'm so not good at bartering with them!) so she took $10 off!

So after a little sanding and a few coats of paint and some more sanding, Meg got a new headboard for her bed.

I love how it turned out and the little table that I picked up in Sutter Creek in December that was still waiting for a little make over looks perfect with it.

Love the babies tucked into her bed!

Spring Break

2011-03-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

It is officially Spring!!! Yeah . . . we made it!!!! I love spring, the longer days, warmer weather, although I'm still waiting for the warmer part!

I'm very happy because spring means that my favorite mustard weeds are popping up everywhere.
And I'm even more excited because my 2 cute nieces are coming this weekend and I'm really hoping that the weather will be somewhat cooperative so that we can go take a few pictures like we did 2 years ago. Crossing my fingers as the forecast is looking very wet.

The kids have been off of school all of last week and this week. I'm sure I've said it before, but I really do like this modified schedule. It seems like it is just about the time that the kids have had about enough and I'm at my wits end with getting everyone up and going in the morning and homework in the afternoon, that break time comes. Two weeks of no routine is nice, I usually take a few days off to break it up a bit for the kids and to not have to burden any one person with them for 2 weeks!!! Today and tomorrow are 2 of those days, I love days with no agenda.

We have been getting a few projects done around here which also makes me very happy! I brought this phone home from Mom's house last October or November. it's been sitting in the living room since then waiting for me to decide on it's new home.

I finally decided on the small wall next to the entertainment unit in the family room. Well, I decided on it awhile ago, but I had to have Daryl actually hang it, it's HEAVY and I don't need if falling out of the wall, which is probably what would have happened IF I had hung it up!!! This phone belonged to Mama & Popi, and I so remember Popi holding me up to it as a kid and turning the handle to make it ring. It was still hanging in Mama's house when we lived there. but we didn't take it down when we left.

It ended up at Mom's house and she was {gasp} thinking of selling it!!!! Well, I couldn't let that happen, so I brought it home, along with the desk and the high chair that were also Mama's. Greg was also parting with his old typewriter, so it came along for the ride too! I love antique furniture and old, dirty, grimy stuff!

And I already had this cradle that also belonged to Mama. (Don't laugh at the funky looking pillows! The patchwork one I made with my Grandma Topps and the green one in the back was Mama's, I used it to sleep on when I would spend the night with her).

ok, well enough about all my old stuff! Gotta go run to Safeway for some cheap tortilla's and then get some dinner started, no excuse for not making dinner when I've been home all day, LOL!!!!

LIPstick

2011-02-22T20:56:00.001-08:00

LIP being the operative word here. Meghan called me into the bathroom tonight after she had taken a bath, this is what I saw! When I asked her what the heck was all over her face, she said Lipstick! I had a moment of "oh my goodness what the heck have you done to yourself, you are so in TROUBLE!" But then I decided it was best to just close the door, laugh, and of course yell for Trevor to bring me up the camera!

Luckily with a little baby oil it came right off. And this is her "I'm so sorry Mom" face!!!

Catching Up

2011-02-19T17:28:00.000-08:00

Seems like I'm always catching up, why is that? I'm either terrible with time management or there is just to much to do or that I want to do! I'd like to think I'm not too bad with time management, LOL!

I think we are all finally healthy. Since my last post Meghan had a relapse and Daryl finally joined in our fun. But it's been a week now and we are all well.

We celebrated Trevor's 14th birthday, here are a few bad photos! Boy am I ready for springtime and some light. I've got to figure out how the heck to get decent pictures in my dark living, oh, I mean family room.

I also went to parent's night at Freedom High School. I guess that is what happens when you have a boy turn 14, but I still can't believe we are already registering for High School! I have to say that I walked away feeling it would be ok! The Principal and Counselors that spoke all seemed genuinely interested in the students and it felt like a very nurturing environment. But seriously . . . High School! Trev is actually really excited, and High School has changed so much since I was there 25 years ago. There was a whole course catalog with so many elective options it's crazy, so much more than what we had, so many options to help them prepare for College, it is kind of exciting.

I'm knee deep in 2 different on-line classes right now, what was I thinking? I'm loving Karen Russell's Photographers Workshop, she is an awesome teacher. I feel like these first few weeks have been sort of a review of many things I already know and hoping that as we progress she will hit the areas I'm still weak in, such as low light family room shooting! And we've all been waiting for probably a year or more for Jessica to come out with her final advanced digital scrapbooking class, and of course it started the week after the photography class did! I'm very behind but that's ok, got through the first lesson today and am loving digging into photoshop again and I plan on spending much of this rainy 3-day weekend at the computer, catching up!

Oh, and I almost forgot the other big news of our newest addition ~ meet Oreo our hamster.

We got this for Meghan, our pet lover. She had begged me to go to the pet store on Saturday, which we did, just to look. She really really really wanted a hamster, but I told her that she would have to convince her Dad. She had gotten him to agree to go to the pet store on Sunday, but then Meg ended going home with Kaitlyn so that they could go shopping and to see the new Justin Bieber movie! So Daryl, Trev and I went by to take a look on our way home. Somehow we got him to let us bring one home!!!

We surprised Meg on Sunday night after dinner. We were at the Tidwells house and decided to play a round of "telephone", one of her favorite games. I clued Kaitlyn in that she need to say "what should Meghan name her new hamster?"

Can you tell she was surprised? Here she is watching the video Daryl took on his iPhone.

And her first look when we got home.

She's in love, she sleeps in her room and so far hasn't woke her up a night spinning on the wheel, or me either for that matter!

oh and mom, take a look at these ~

yep, the heels that we both told her NO to. She went shopping with Kaitlyn and she took her purse, which had her VISA gift card in it. And what is the first thing she does, goes and buys something I told her I wouldn't buy for her. Oh the teenage years are going to be such fun, I can tell already.

Ok, well this ended up being a long post!

Necklaces

2011-01-28T17:25:00.001-08:00

I ordered these 3 right after Christmas, 2 of then really cheap cause I had a groupon from Love Stamped for them, they other one I just ordered from The Rusted Chain cause I wanted something with my "word" for the year on it. I love them! I've been eying this style of jewelry for awhile and just never could decide WHAT it was I wanted! The one with the camera says "capture life" and then the last one has 5 different charms on it, mine & Daryl's initials, the kids names, on that says EST. 9-8-91, and one that says love.

I think I have one more groupon left, hummmmm . . . what else should I order?

Will the germs please leave now?

2011-01-28T16:54:00.000-08:00

So my last post was about my sick babies, of which one missed the entire week of school, and today asked if we could please leave the house for a little bit, I think HE is finally feeling better. Ended up taking him to the doctor yesterday when he was still feeling pretty bad, I was afraid he might have ended up with pneumonia and/or bronchial asthma, like I did. Luckily his lungs are clear and he got some antibiotics and is finally feeling better. Now if that cough would just go away! I'm feeling much better . . . amazing what 1 dose of antibiotic and a mucinex will do for you when your feeling really bad! So Trev and I have pretty much spent the week home together coughing in sync with each other, so not fun, I wouldn't recommend it at all.

So most of my photos this week looked like this

And why the 5 bottles of liquid antibiotic you ask? Well, my son, since he was a baby, has had a major gag reflex and can't get most pills down. A motrin is about all he can do. I tried to give him a mucinex yesterday morning since it had helped me so much. I gave him pudding and said to put it in a bite of pudding and then just swallow, well, I almost ended up with chocolate pudding in my face! So the doctor was concerned that the pill form would be to large for him, so she prescribed liquid, a lot of liquid. Even at the pharmacy they asked why it was for a liquid when he was 14 years old and told me that my insurance may not cover it that way. Great . . . but luckily they did cover it and my receipt shows that my insurance saved me $219.00, so I'm thinking that I basically got 5 prescriptions for my one $5.00 co-pay! And I don't have to get a pill down his throat, thank goodness!

So hoping to have Trev's birthday dinner tomorrow night, only a week late, I would have never thought he would have been sick for an entire week, I think this is a first, and hopefully the last!

Not so Happy Birthday

2011-01-22T19:31:00.000-08:00

Today Trev turned 14 . . . unfortunately he caught the bug his sister had early this week and was stuck on the couch with a 102 degree fever and feeling terrible. I told him we would pretend that today wasn't his actual birthday and that the first day he felt better would be his birthday, hoping that will be tomorrow, but if he follows in Meg's path it won't be till Monday.

Here is Meg on Thursday

those of you that know her well know that seeing her sleep in the middle of the day is completely unheard of! She woke up from this 3 hour little snooze and I asked her if she wanted some of the soup that Mimi had made for her? She said "for breakfast"? She thought she had slept all night!

Today she is completely back to her sassy little self . . . and for that I am grateful.

So excited . . .

2011-01-22T15:42:00.000-08:00

One more week till this starts! And I am soooooooo excited!!!!!

Finally Friday . . .

2011-01-07T22:10:00.001-08:00

Why is it short weeks always end up seeming the longest? I had Monday off and have to say I didn't use my day home as wisely as I should have . . . I should have put Christmas away, but I didn't want to . . . I should have done all of my ironing . . . but I didn't want to . . . I should have, well, the list could go on and on, but I didn't do much of anything at all, except sit and do a bit of reading, internet surfing and enjoyed a little peace & quiet.

So because I didn't do anything on Monday my house is still a mess of Christmas decorations, everywhere! Daryl took down the tree and took all of the ornaments off today while I was at work, I came home and found all of the red & green ball ornaments in a pile on the couch, screaming for me to take a picture. Love all of the reds and greens and I added a few silver ones this year for a little more sparkle!

This is my other favorite "ornament" photo from this year,

I'm looking for ways to be more creative in my picture taking.

Tomorrow is the Singing Hands Concert that we have been practicing for for that last few months, we are all excited and ready to see what God has in store for this performance. I know that our hours and hours of practices will pay off and we will be ready for tomorrow, it will be awesome!

Hello 2011

2011-01-03T12:21:00.000-08:00

But can you tell my why 2010 went so quickly? Why does the time have to keep passing so quickly. I was not a good blogger in 2010 and hope to do much better in 2011. See the problem is once I get behind I don't know how to catch up, so instead of doing something, I do nothing. (I'm pretty sure I have blogged about this before.) I see the solution as NOT to get behind, right? Ok, well, let's see how long we can keep that going!

Today is my last day of "vacation". I've decided that since Mondays are the worst day of the week, and Monday's after being off are even worse, my new rule is to take off the Monday after vacations, this is the second time I've done this and I'm loving my new rule! I'm working on putting the house back together after a week of goofing off . . . and trying to get up the enthusiasm to put Christmas away. I'm just not really feeling it and want to enjoy a little bit of peace & quiet for a bit with no kiddos in the house.

A New Year is kinda like a new slate . . . I guess that is the reason of all of the Resolutions, which never seem to last. I will follow along with Ali again and her One Little Word. I like this so much better than resolutions and I think I have finally decided on my word for 2011 after lots of different words have been flying around in my head for the last few weeks. My word is Create. I wanted a little nicer sounding word than last years ~ I think that I can apply this word to many areas of my life and look forward to working with it this year.

Our Christmas was awesome this year, I'd say the highlight for Meghan was getting her own iTouch . . . yes, I know she is only 7, but . . . she spends sooooo much time on my phone this was almost a gift for me! You might remember this post from last year . . . you could say she was NOT happy about the boys getting iTouches and she didn't. She looks much happier this year!

Although now that I look at these pictures again, she might just be more excited about the iTunes Gift Card she got!

At any rate, she is one happy girl. Trev was only a little bit pouty about the fact that she has a better one than he does, but he did get over it when he saw his present . . . a futon for his room.

Apparently I didn't get a good picture of it before it was carried up to his room, but he and Daryl sat on it all morning!

I can't believe it's all done! It was a great season and we feel so blessed to have our family, our friends, our health, our jobs, our home . . . waiting to see what 2011 has in store for us.

It's all about the photos, right?

2010-12-02T16:42:00.000-08:00

The holidays are a time for memories and for pictures! I love capturing our holiday celebrations through my camera lens, and for me, it is all about the photos and the memories it will help us to never forget.

I of course have to start the season trying to get a perfect family photo. I try and get this done early since of course our Christmas card must include this perfect photo! Can you guess which card I am ordering this year? I have used different companies over the years but I always come back to Shutterfly. They are one of my favorite go to sites for photo related gifts. Being a scrapbooker, of course on of my favorite things to make are photobooks for the grandparents, such a perfect way to re-cap our year in all of my favorite photos. And since I've now got some new family pictures, some of these great items may be on my next project list so I can get some of those new photos up around the house.

What are your favorite photo projects?

Project 365 - October Pages

2010-11-20T22:22:00.000-08:00

Old Photos

2010-10-24T23:30:00.001-07:00

Scanning a few old photos tonight and came across this one ~ can I tell you how happy I was to see that I had a double chin at under 1 year of age? Doesn't that mean that my double chin has nothing to do with the extra pounds I'm carrying around? I was born with it!

Oh, and no need to answer that question!

Fall has arrived

2010-10-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure anyway! It's raining today and I'm loving it, except for the part that I'm helping at the Brentwood Halloween Party later today, which is outside! I've been told I won't melt! I love the rain, when I can be in the house, reading a book or playing on the computer, nice and warm and DRY!

I can't believe that it is almost the end of October, we finally made it to Party City yesterday and got the kids Halloween Costumes, here is a sneak peek ~

Trev is going to be Charlie Brown and Meg Gabriella from her latest favorite movie High School Musical. I think I need to do a little work on that wig!

Most of my free time the last few weeks has been spent working on researching my family history, I've spent hours on-line TRYING to figure out my family tree! I have to say, I knew that there were a few stray branches, but some of the things I'm finding and hearing I had no clue about! I'm taking a class over at JS.com on Family History, something that I have always wanted to dive into but haven't because it seems to get to complicated, and it still is, but I'm going to get through it this time! I'm amazed at how much I don't know about my family going back several generations and kicking myself for not trying to get some of this information while my grandparents were still alive. I can't wait to get this big puzzle put together and am loving going through all of the old pictures and documents I have, getting them organized and doing a lot of scanning. I know it will be worth all of the time in the end.

And I know that the holidays are near because next Saturday is our Annual Baking Day, well, we don't really bake on baking day so I guess it should probably be called Mixing Day. Either way, I can't believe it's already time. I think Karen and I have been doing this for at least 10 years, and I love it although I'm sure Karen's kitchen is not the same for months with all the flour and powdered sugar flying! We have never had mixing day at my house because my husband would probably have a heart attack with all of the flour and powdered sugar flying!

Happy Saturday going to start checking a few things off of the to-do list before I waste away anymore of this rainy day.

Project 365 - September Layouts

2010-10-07T18:45:00.001-07:00

Fall Break

2010-10-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that it is "fall" already! Especially when it was over 100 degrees this week, crazy. I guess that is what we get with having such a mild summer.

Kids are off of school for 2 weeks and I've taken a few, very much needed, days off. I have to say that I really do like this school schedule, it is early getting back to school in July, but now when we are off it makes it worth it.

We are getting used to our new normal these days. The weeks seem to zoom by . . . between Trev going to school at 7:30 2 days a week, my Singing Hands class on Monday nights, Daryl's bible study on Tuesday nights, the kids have Awana & Youth group on Wednesday nights, by the time we get to Thursday's I'm ready for the weekend. Although I have to say it's really nice that both of the kids have church groups on Wednesday nights, Daryl and I have made every Wednesday night date night. Dinner with no children, who could ask for more!

Meghan has recovered from her little bout of pneumonia! Can I tell you how shocked I was when the doctor said she had pneumonia? She had been coughing and I had been giving her the breathing treatments for her asthma, but by the end of the week it wasn't getting better and I was running out meds so I took her in thinking it was just asthma. Although the day before her teacher told me that 2 other kids in her class had pneumonia. So Meg and I spend 5 days of togetherness at home. We had a camping trip planned so Daryl took Trev and Meg and I stayed home. The bad thing was that other than the cough she was acting totally normal and didn't feel sick, which while good, hard to keep her down. After 5 days of antibiotics and breathing treatments, Singular & Advair she is all clear and we are weening her off of the meds.

Well, lots of things on the to-do list for today so I better get going! Here is my latest favorite picture of Meg.

Project 365 - April Layouts

2010-09-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

Project 365 - March Layouts

2010-09-05T22:38:00.001-07:00

Finally caught up with Project 365 -2010, whew . . . it just doesn't pay to get behind.

Project 365 - August Layouts

2010-09-05T20:31:00.000-07:00

So happy that's it's only August 5th and my August pages are complete!

Finding a routine, again . . .

2010-09-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

or maybe it should be still? I don't know. It seems as soon as I try and get it all figured out and planned, things keep changing. For example our summer. I had it all planned out, what to do with the kids in the mornings between the time I needed to leave for work and Daryl got home from work, what to do with Meghan a few days a week so Daryl could get some sleep since he was back to working graveyards . . . had it all planned, I like a plan! Well, those plans never got implemented, the kids got out of school on June 3rd and on June 6th Daryl ended up in the ER with chest pains, it ended up that he was home all summer with the kids, well the 7 weeks that they had off anyway!

Needless to say it was a summer of doctors appointments and tests and trying to figure out what was going on with his heart, since the tests were coming back ok, it was troublesome and very unsettling going through the process. I now have a completely different picture of healthcare, and I work in the industry. But being on the other end is totally frustrating and I can see why people can get so discouraged with the process and with doctors.

We left the hospital after a 2 day stay knowing that his heart was strong and that there were no blockages and with instructions for a follow up appointment in a week with the cardiologist. Unfortunately he was still feeling terrible, had a few blacking out episodes and in general was just not his self. We went to our follow-up appointment and let the doctor know all of this and also reminded him of his family history and he said that he didn't know why he wasn't feel good, his heart was fine, he was fine, he probably had the flu, take a vacation and go back to everyday life, there was nothing wrong with him. We left that appointment a little bit discouraged.

While we were in the hospital several of the nurses commented on his unusually low heart rate and that there was something not quite right with it. The cath lab manager kept checking in with me and saying that there was an issue with his heart rhythm, he saw it when they did the angiogram, and recommended that we get a second opinion, which we did.

After connecting with another doctor, an arrhythmia specialist, they sent him a heart monitor that he wore for almost 3 weeks. The doctor discovered his average resting heart rate was 33, and that he was having 2 -3 second pauses between heart beats. Dr. E diagnosed him with having "sick sinus syndrome" while his heart muscle was fine, he had electrical problems with the sinus node and the blood was not getting sent to his brain like it should be. This is the same problem that his mom has and is not typical in people Daryl's age, which may be why it was difficult to diagnose. But I can't tell you the relief that we both felt when the doctor said he needed a pacemaker! Not that I wanted him to have one, but finally, after 2 months, knowing what the problem was and being able to fix it was music to our ears. I think Daryl was beginning to think he was just going crazy and making himself feel terrible!

He had the pacemaker implanted on August 2nd and only spent 1 night in the hospital. Overall he is feeling much better but still having some minor issues. He went back to work last week!!!! That was great, he was off for 3 months and his boss was great during the whole time he needed to be off. The best part is that now that he is back his boss doesn't want him working the graveyard shift and being in the office alone or with just one other person, so he is back to working a day job!!! Now here we go . . . trying to find our routine, again . . .

So I have adjusted my work schedule a bit to try and inconvenience my mom the least amount possible!!! Thanks mom for always being there to help me!! So 3 days a week I will be off work in time to pick up the kids and 2 days a week I'll work all day (yuck!) and mom will pick them up.

We are so thankful for the doctors (well, all but one anyway) and nurses that we saw and all of my nurse friends who were there to ease our minds and answer our questions through this journey. I'm so thankful that whatever it was that triggered the episode in June, which I truly believe was job stress, lead us down this path so that it could be corrected and we didn't find out when it was too late. All things happen for a reason so in this case job stress was a good thing. This has probably been a problem for awhile and he didn't know it. It's so easy to blame being tired or not feeling well on working graveyards and not getting the sleep you need. So now he is getting used to having the heart rate that the rest of us have!

We went for a follow-up appointment the week before last and it is amazing what they can do to that little box through the computer. Here he is all hooked up, he got on the treadmill and ran and then the doctor holds a little mouse looking thing over the pacemaker and she starts making adjustments. There were a few things that she wanted to change as she watched how the pacemaker responded while he was running. Pretty amazing!!!

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So . . . for now we are feeling blessed for health and jobs and everyday life. Things like this really make you think and try and keep things in perspective.

Project 365 - July

2010-08-08T15:11:00.001-07:00

Here are my July layouts. And if you happen to be keeping track, yes, I am missing March/April/May/June. Those are almost done too . . . but needed to get July done and try to make the incentive discount over at Weeds & Wildflowers, so I skipped ahead to get them done.

1st Day of School

2010-07-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

The kids went back to school yesterday, already . . . man this summer seemed to fly by. Trevor is in his last year of middle school, how does that happen, I'm pretty sure he just started middle school! And Meghan started 1st grade. It was harder than I thought leaving her without the protection of the fenced in kindergarten playground she was in last year. But in usual Meghan style she takes it all in stride running off waving good bye to me!

Had to get the usual 1st day of school pictures

They both seem to like their teachers and Meghan has a bunny that lives in her class, how perfect is that for her!! She can't wait for her week to feed the bunny. Can't wait until back to school night for Trev so that I can meet his teachers that I don't know yet, I like putting a face with his classes.

Today while were driving to Target to get more school supplies, middle school has very specific things they need, Meghan tells Trev and I that she had a time test today and that she got a 100% and that it was very easy. I asked her what it was on? Her reply . . . paper! Trev and I looked at each other and cracked up. She is a funny girl! At least were off to a good start!

Camping in Santa Cruz

2010-07-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

Got away for a few days up to the Santa Cruz area to get in one last camping trip before the kids go back to school next week! I can't believe that "summer vacation" is over for us. I'm sure we will still get in a few weekend trips here and there while the weather is still nice, but with the kids back in school it's back to the routine of school and homework and . . . aaahhhh . . . I think I'm already missing summer vacation!

Here are a few from this week ~

The water is FREEZING . . . but the kids didn't care . . . the wind was blowing . . . but the kids didn't care . . . it was COLD . . . but the kids didn't care . . . I stayed safely on the sand where it was a little bit warmer, trying to take pictures and keep the sand out of my camera . . .

The campground that we are staying at also has horses, Meghan is in love . . .

Camping

2010-07-10T16:43:00.000-07:00

We took off a few weekends ago and headed up to Columbia and camped at Marble Quarry, I'm happy to say that our trip went off without a hitch, or should I say broken cables, if you remember our trip from last year! We had a cool spot tucked away at the back of the campground, the boys hiked around and Meghan rode her bike, and Mimi & Grampie even came to visit for the day. One of these days I'm hoping Mimi will decide to stay overnight with us! She did agree that we had a pretty nice set up and that she could probably actually camp with us.I decided I'd better download the pictures from my camera last night after I realized how long it had been sine I had done that and laughed at these pictures of Meg . . .

She can be quite the little ham!

The boys slept outside both nights in the anti-gravity chairs, looks like they slept pretty good.

Missing a picture of Cole, but he had already gotten up. Meg could not understand why she couldn't sleep outside with the boys ~ so she pretended.

Don't worry, she was safe and sound in the trailer with us ~ I LOVE pictures of sleeping kids.

On Saturday we went into Columbia because we had to have ice cream and take the carriage ride. All of the kids, we had a few extra this trip, Hunter, Cole's friend and James, Cole's cousin.

Yummy!

Made it to the horses

Mimi took the ride with us and Meghan loved knowing about the bandit and the fact that Mimi didn't!

We stopped for some ice cream . . . Meghan shared with Grampie . . . but only on the threat that if she didn't there would be no s'mores for her that night if she didn't! And then we headed back to camp, it was warm and my ankles were killing me by that point!

Great weekend!

Hello to my almost forgotten blog . . .

2010-07-09T22:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog - I'm sorry for neglecting you, for not using you for the purpose of documenting our life, crazy as it can be, these are the days I don't want to forget. So, please forgive me . . . this is my new commitment to just pick up where I've left off and write about all the stuff that is happening in our everyday life, ok?

Can I start tomorrow?

PS - I wanted to add a picture, because I love pictures, and saw that I have not downloaded pictures since June 5th, I can't even believe that, I'm worse off than I thought.

What a week it was!

2010-05-20T15:41:00.001-07:00

Last week was one of those weeks I could go without repeating again anytime soon! It seems like it was something every other day!

Besides Trev's incident on Saturday, there was the computer monitor going out on Tuesday, then there was my fall on Thursday, there was Trev waking up sick and throwing up Saturday night (and you know how much I HATE that) but at least he made it out of the trailer, and then when we got home on Sunday Daryl was washing the cars and out of nowhere the van decides not to start! So it went to the shop on Monday! Luckily it was just the battery! I also went to the doctors on Monday to have him check out my ankles. He ordered x-rays of the left foot/ankle and the right foot, luckily they came back negative for any breaks or fractures, but he did confirm that both ankles are sprained, and he did put me off work for a few days, but that is not necessiarily a bad thing!

So, I think we have our things happen in 3's covered and we should be good for awhile! Although, since that is only 5, is there one more coming? I hope not!

While I hobbled to target today to get a few things I noticed that they have new carts! They look so cool all stacked up together, I just had to take a picture of them! It is my favorite store afterall!

Camping

2010-05-15T14:25:00.001-07:00

Loving camping in with our new trailer, Daryl loved cooking and washing dishes with the outdoor kitchen.

I'm trying to take it easy today in the Tidwells new anti-gravity chsirs, you see, gravity was not working with me this week, I took a little fall down the stairs Thursday night and ended up on the emergency room. Both my ankles twisted as I went down, the right one much worse than the left, and bringing back memories of the last time I fell and broke my foot. Luckily it's not broken, just badly sprained, but both are very sore, making walking around and getting in and out of the trailer a little difficult.

We are enjoying the beautiful weather and the sound of the kids arguing....can you believe Trevor was actually yelling at Meghan in the middle of the night for breathing to heavy! He is not happy that the fact the the two of them have to share the king size bed! I know, we are such mean parents! I seriously thought that bringing the dog was the major source of the arguing with those two, but since we left Max behind this time I'm realize it's not his fault at all!

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A weekend of mixed emotions

2010-05-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

We were all excited for Friday to get her because that was the day that Daryl went to pick up our new house on wheels, uuuummm, I mean trailer! I kinda don't think that I can say we are camping anymore, I have all of my luxuries of home, including a microwave and heated mattresses!
I spent Saturday morning loading up all of our stuff from the old trailer and washing all the pots & pans and trays, I always feel like I need to start the camping season fresh and clean! I made our bed with our old feather bed that we don't really need anymore since we got the new mattress and the nice warm flannel sheets. I've got sooooo much storage we won't have to pack and live out of storage boxes, which makes me crazy! We are excited to take it out this weekend and test it out!While playing in the trailer Saturday afternoon I got a call from Cole, he and Trev were over at the skate park by our house. He tells me that some guy was messing with Trev, hit him and took his iTouch and ran off ~ Daryl took off like a bat out of Haiti . . . I closed everything up and followed right behind, shaking and needing to see my boy. Trev had called 911 before Cole called us . . . so 3 cop cars were arriving at the same time I was. Daryl had Trev and they were looking for the kid in the neighborhood behind us where he ran off to.
Trev was pretty shaken up needless to say. I have to say that the Oakley PD was awesome, 3 officers showed up and didn't leave, well, except to go find a kid that they knew had just been released from prison the day prior, for doing the same thing. The officer wanted Trev to see if this was the kid, so he took his first ride in a police car ~ unfortunately it wasn't him. The officers were still at the park and talking to all the kids that were there, it's funny how the longer they stayed the more the kids remembered, soon they had figured out who this kids friend was. I figured at least it was a start, but the chances of finding him and getting Trev's iTouch back were probably slim to none. The officers were talking to Trev, they took photos of the bruising on his stomach and head, and were trying to get as much information from him as they could, wanting to know if the kid was in a line up would he be able to recognize him. I was surprised that they were on this like they were and asked them if they were really going to go looking for this kid. The officer said absolutely, that this is not tolerated and it is a personal mission of his to stop this kind of thing. Wow . . . I was a little surprised with that, but happy that hopefully they would find the kid. About this time one of the kids said, hey, there he goes, in the maroon car . . . the officers were out of there so fast . . . I'm so thankful that the kid saw him, one of the officers came back and picked up Trev do go ID him . . . and it was him . . . they brought Trev back to us and we were waiting at the park for them to come back and give us an update, the officer came back and had Trev's iTouch with him! I couldn't believe it. Not sure what will end up happening with this kid, but I hope something that will make him think twice before messing with kids younger than him.

Trev is doing good, we all stayed home on Monday, Meg said she didn't feel good and I think we all needed a little mental health day!

So after all of that drama it was also Prom Night for Kaitlyn, Meg has been looking forward to Prom since last years Prom! She spent the night with Kaitlyn and spent the day with all of her big girl girlfriends getting ready! Here are a few of the 400 I took that evening ~

I think I've made this post long enough so I think I will stop now, I have some more editing to do for Ashly's Senior Pictures that I took last week.

Spring is here . . . and I hope it stays awhile!

2010-05-04T19:04:00.000-07:00

It has been a beautiful week and weekend, luckily since Meghan and I spent 14 hours at the Oakley Relay for Life this weekend. We didn't actually do the walking, although I did do a lot of walking! I was helping with the "Bank" doing the data entry for the donations that come in through the day. So it was a little bit of work and then some eating and hanging out, then back to work. I had Meg with me, since Trev had his Band Festival also that day, which was supposed to be followed by going to Six Flags. Lucky for me there were some middle school kids there also helping out and Meghan took to one of them (like she does to most of the big girls she meets!) and the two of them hung out together the entire day! Made my working time so much easier and Meg had a lot more fun hanging out with her than she would have in a little room with me. We stayed Saturday night until almost 10:00 so we could see the Luminary Ceremony, Meg wanted to stay, she was actually trying to convince me that she should spend the night! It was a great day for a great cause. How awesome to see cancer gone in our lifetime?

Daryl convinced Trev that we should go to Six Flags another day, when we could actually get a whole days worth out of those expensive tickets! Trev agreed. His Jazz band also did great bringing home a silver, not sure if it's medal or trophy, but it's silver! Not bad, AND Trev had a solo that he failed to tell me about . . . boys . . .

So with a little extra time on his hands Daryl decided to take a drive to Turlock and look at the trailer we have been eyeballing on - line, in person. I guess the outdoor kitchen got him and he bought the trailer! And I'm actually excited! He picks it up on Friday, just in time for out camping trip next weekend! Now, we are crossing our fingers that it will actually fit in the garage, it's gonna be close and my van will officially be an outdoor van.

Well, off to make some cookies for Meghan's teacher, it's Teacher Appreciation Week, we are trying to do a little something everyday. I can't believe that we are only 1 month away from school being out, this year has gone by so quickly. I am so thankful for her teacher and the great year that she has given her and all of the students, sniff, sniff . . . I need time to stop for just a minute so I can catch up!

Another new bike

2010-04-27T16:29:00.000-07:00

Dad must have been feeling generous this weekend, on Sunday he and Trev went out to look at bikes. Trev decided that he would be saving his allowance over the summer for a new bike. Well, him and Dad made a deal and Trev agreed to forfeit his allowance for the next few months and they came home with a new bike!

And Miss Meghan, who was riding with training wheels on Saturday came in yesterday to tell me she could ride her friends 2 wheeler bike all by herself. I of course grabbed the camera but didn't really think that she could ride alone . . . but I was wrong, I think this is definitely riding by herself!

Needless to say, Dad took the training wheels off of her bike today! And of course it's raining so she is not happy she can't go outside and ride her bike!

A New Bike

2010-04-24T18:07:00.001-07:00

She was ready for something bigger - now she is speed racer, won't be long till those training wheels are gooooone!

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Hello Weekend!

2010-04-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to report that the end of the week has made an improvement over the middle of the week! And I'm happy that it's Friday and that the weekend should be sunny and warm! I love spring and the sun and that it gets warm during the day and cool at night. It could be spring all year round in my book.

While it was so beautiful out yesterday afternoon I worked on my little photo canvas project. You see, I've been trying to figure out what the heck to do on this huge wall ~

something that won't cost me a small fortune. I finally decided on a square of 9 photos, 3 across and 3 down (think Brady Bunch opening scene). So I had the picture you can see sitting on the staircase printed 20 x 30 and put it in a frame, remember I thought this wall was huge. Well, by the time you put a frame around a 20 x 30 print, it's pretty much huge when you want to put 9 of them on the wall. So, project went on hold until I could figure out a plan B.

Then I saw this idea, on a coupon web-site of all places, and can't believe that I didn't think of this before, taking a canvas, painting the edges and the putting a photo on top. Perfect!! I'd have canvas prints all over my house if they were not so darned expensive! Canvases were on sale last week at Michael's for 40% off + there was another coupon that could actually be stacked with the sale for an addition 40% off. So for about $1.50 a canvas I figured this would be the time to do this little project. Plus it's spring and I need a change around here! So I uploaded 5 pictures that I knew I wanted to use to Costco and wanted to get started.

After a little painting and some spray adhesive . . . this is the finished product . . . I'm loving it!

Need to do 4 more, but I not sure that I have the pictures I want to use, I want them all to be pretty recent so I may be looking for an occasion to get the perfect ones I want to use. The best part is that this whole project probably will cost about $75.00, which is a lot less than I figured I was going to have to spend if I was framing them all.

Now to convince my husband that they must be hung this weekend!

I'm gearing up to do Ali's Week in the Life Project next week. Ali, and a lot of other people, including my sis, spent this week documenting their everyday life through photos and words. I was going to do it this week also but Monday came and I just didn't feel quiet together enough to pull it off and decided it didn't matter that I didn't do it the same week as everyone else, in fact, I could spend the week looking at the way so many of my favorite people are documenting their weeks and get some ideas for myself next week. So I'm gearing up and excited to get started.

Off to go relax a bit before bed . . . and to try to put behind me all of the work stuff that keeps bringing me down, just when I thought my work situation couldn't get worse, it did, but I'm going to work hard to not let it consume my weekend . . . it's just not worth it.

Momma said there'd be days like this

2010-04-21T23:00:00.001-07:00

And if momma aka Mimi was anywhere near this state I think I'd have dropped off my sweet children to spend some quality time with her!

I'm not sure where the day went wrong! Well, with Trev it's not the day.....he's been grumpy for several days, he had a total meltdown over doing a bibliography for a report yesterday, and he had the detailed instructions right in front of him. He's tired of school, tired of his sister, and has absolutely no patience with anything, there has been a lot of huffing and puffing going on! I can definitely see the teenage boy start to come out in him, and I'm not sure I'm liking it much, we did my sweet little boy go?

Meg started out a bit rough front the time I walked in the door and said that we would be working on homework, she said no, I should have known I was in trouble! Our evening ended with a spanking, a temper tantrum, me taking away her new favorite CD of Justin Bieber, more tears when she got into bed and I'm pretty sure she was asleep by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, about in tears myself for feeling like such a great mother. Aaahhhhhh.

But after a little bit of quiet and and a nice long bath it dawned on me that we are all going through a transition right now. The kids have gone from having their dad around 24/7 to hardly seeing him at all during the week. Our dinner time has been pretty casual and not sitting down with at least the 3 of us everynight, something I need to work on. So while this change is good for many reasons, it is a change and change is not always easy. Hopefully now that I've realized this we can figure out some ways to smooth it out a bit.

On a happier note, Meg & I stopped at Michaels after we dropped Trevor off at youth. As you know she got money from the toothfairy that is burning a hole in her pocket! She bought a few things last week (including the Justin Bieber CD) and a book and little ceramic bird a Michaels. When she paid she got a 40% off coupon of which she promptly put in her wallet. She picked out another book tonight from the $1 section and I about hit the floor when she pulled out her coupon! I was so proud of her! Unfortunately Michaels has this newish rule and the coupons don't work for books, so she couldn't actually use it, darn!

And because I like pictures, here she is at Mimi & Grampies house on Sunday trying to catch a lizard!

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How does this happen?

2010-04-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

That I get so off track that I neglect my poor little blog for so long? I actually think about often, but when I feel like there is just so much to catch up on I don't know where to begin . . . hence . . . nothing! That's the solution, right??

So, I'm going to jump in right where I am, as flylady would say. I'd forgotten about flylady when we moved, and that I can't believe was 3 years ago at the end of March! But, gotta love that there is now an app for flylady for my phone, so I'm trying to get back on the flylady and the awesome routines of getting stuff done! Her motto is that you are never behind and to jump in where you are. So, here I am, back . . . and hoping to do much better.

We are adjusting to Daryl back working graveyards. I have very mixed feelings about this, I thought it would be great, that is what we were used to and it will be great having him home during the day in the summer with the kids, although he may feel a little different about that! On the flip side we got so used to him being home and on the same schedule that we are for the last 10 months things are feeling a bit off right now. I know we will adjust and we are so so happy that he has found a job, a job that he is loving even, so I'm not complaining in the least.
We are winding down to the last 6 weeks of school, I can't believe how fast this year has flown by. Both the kids have had an awesome year, but I'll have to catch up with school accomplishment on another day!

Last week Meghan had to have her tooth pulled! Yikes . . . I was a little nervous for her, but she did so great. This tooth has been loose for 6 months, since her very large front tooth actually pushed out the tooth right next to her front tooth back in October. Her front tooth has now been coming in and trying to take up both spaces, it is quite large and it is looking like some major orthodontics will start in our near future. To make matters worse it was her dark tooth, it has been a nice shade of gray for several years, probably since she was 3 years old!!! She was becoming a little bit self conscious about it too and making an effort to smile with her mouth closed, which was probably a good idea since if she didn't pay attention she was smiling with one little tooth sticking out!

That picture was taken at the end of March. A few days before the scheduled extraction her other front tooth was loose and it came out after about 2 days!

And finally after the extraction last week. The dentist didn't even need any instruments to remove it, just got it good and numb and wiggled it out, whew!!! Thank goodness it was a good experience since there is a good possibility there will be more of that in the future. I'm sure the 20 bucks the tooth fairy left for her helped to!

And one last picture from yesterday . . . they look so cute and innocent, until you see the flailing hands of Meg trying to get to the dog and Trev trying to keep her away from the dog!

Project 365 - February Layouts

2010-03-07T17:36:00.000-08:00

Barely making the incentive deadline!!

My Little Shopper

2010-02-21T08:27:00.001-08:00

She makes me smile....she had to have her own basket, she proceeded to fill the basket with items as we walked up and down each isles (that she had to go and put back where she found), she had her "iPod" (read a small Sponge Bob MP3 player) in her pocket and the headphones on her head....yep, she makes me smile!

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Sleeping in + Nowhere to go + Cleaning & Organizing = Great Long Weekend

2010-02-15T17:45:00.000-08:00

I LOVE to be home . . . I love to go out and about too, but I love to not have anything to do and be home. This weekend we did just that, I only left the house 1 time since Bunko Friday night. We have eaten every meal at home, watched movies and the Olympics and I've spent the last 2 days in my Scrapbook Room, re-organizing! I love to organize and re-organize and re-organize some more. I've been itching to get in here and it all started by my bringing home the electric 3 hole punch from work so that I could punch all of the kids work and get it into their binders, I was a bit behind with Meghan, like I needed to put 2 years of pre-school into binders. So I did something that I thought I would never do . . . I threw away her middle year! Yep, in the trash, although I have until tomorrow morning to change my mind. So I'm currently all caught up with my paperwork, it's been driving me nuts looking at the piles, it feels so good to have it all put away. I put all of the kids work chronically into binders, that way I have something to do with it when it comes home and I know where to go if I need something out of it for the scrapbooks. Trevor probably has about 10 of them now!

So once I completed the hole punching, which goes so much quicker with the electric puncher by the way, I started opening up drawers and figuring out how things could be better grouped together. I opened one drawer that I totally forgot was full of patterned 12 x 12 paper. It was not with all of the rest of my paper so I forgot about it, so from there I started moving things around and organizing paper by color and/or by company.

My biggest obstacle are cards and memorabilia. I wish I could throw cards away, but I just can't. I'm still trying to find a space and system for this kinds of stuff, but now that I've got some space cleared out (I threw away 2 large bags of garbage!) I'm going to figure out a system that will work so that I can keep everything organized and able to find stuff when I need it!

So it's now 6:00 on Monday night, back to work tomorrow. The only other big thing on my list for this weekend was to tackle the ironing pile . . . let's see if can get it done after dinner . . .

And because I like pictures with my post, how many of you remember these?

Do you remember Roller Haven? It has since changed names to Paradise Skate. Meghan went to her first skating birthday party. I was cracking up though, I'm pretty sure that these are the exact skates that were around 30 some odd years ago. Pretty gross if you think about it!!!!

And I'm happy to say that I can FINALLY check the ironing off the to-do list. Needless to say I think it was a very productive weekend, and I think I'm ready to start the week. Boy do I wish every weekend was a 3 day weekend!

Project 365 - 2010

2010-02-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

Here are all of my January layouts! Yipee, I'm on track so far!!!! Thank goodness for deadlines and incentives from the great designers over at Weeds & Wildflower s, it does help keep you on track, and I really do work so much better under a deadline!

Good Job Meghan

2010-02-04T13:56:00.000-08:00

We got Meghan's Progress Report last week, looks like she is doing great, and her teacher says she is doing great too!

The words listed on here are the Kindergarten sight words, words that they are expected to know. Since she knows them all her teacher gave her the 1st grade sight words, it's a list of 63 words, the first time she read through them she knew almost all of them . . . looks like we have our work cut out for us keeping her challenged like we did Trev!

Safeway

2010-01-26T20:32:00.000-08:00

I went to Safeway tonight because I had coupons for the cereal that was on sale that were just too good to pass up, even though I probably have 25 boxes of cereal in my pantry! For 8 boxes of cereal and 4 boxes of fruit snacks, I paid $5.70. I was very pleased with that, but when I went to the car and looked at the catalinas I got at checkout, I was laughing out loud, I got 2 $1.50 off your next purchase and a $2.00 off of, yes, you guessed it, more cereal. So I paid $5.70 and got back $5.00 in coupons. I had figured I paid roughly .50 an item, but now I figure it's more like .05 an item!! I love great deals!

Then I ran over to Raleys to get some more juice, they had a really good deal this week and we go through a ton of juice over here. So I got 4 bottles of apple juice and 2 packages of apple sauce for $6.00.

So for $11.70 out of pocket, I got all of this! Hard to believe that full retail for this is $64.98, I can't even imagine paying anything close to that. I think that before couponing and just shopping the sales I would have thought that about $2.00 per item here was an acceptable price and probably what I paid for these kinds of things at Target or Winco, but that still adds up to $36.00.

ok, off to bed . . .

13

2010-01-24T22:28:00.000-08:00

My baby boy became a teenager on Friday. Man, I feel old!!! And I wonder how the time could go by so fast, 13 years . . .

We celebrated quietly with family on Friday night, keeping it low key because of the SAT test on Saturday, so he will have a little party with friends next weekend.

THIRTEEN . . . .

He is loving his iTouch, notice the big ol head phones around his neck, I guess it really does all come back around, couldn't believe he wanted those big things!

He actually likes music . . . that hasn't always been true. There were many car rides he cried asking me to turn off the music because it gives him a headache. Funny thing is that the music he listens to gives me a headache!

Loves getting itunes gift cards so he can load up his iTouch with music and games. His latest song download is the "Pants on the ground" song.

Also loves his Air soft guns

Still skateboarding and now also rides the ripstick (gotta get some pictures of that now that he has it figured out)

Will only wear "skinny" jeans

Playing the Sax and in the Jazz band 2 mornings a week before school, not even having to be on him as much to practice these days, nice change!

Watches sports with his dad, pretty much all of it, because he wants to. He understands it and asks intelligent questions about things, Daryl has been waiting oh about 13 years for this to happen

We are so proud of him and can't wait to see what the next 13 years bring. We love you Trev!

And here he is Saturday morning on our way out the door for the test . . .

This was his second time getting up! I guess he was a bit nervous about the test. I heard him come out of his room about 11:00 and go into the bathroom, he didn't come out so I went to see what was going on. I look in his room and his light is on, his bed is made and he was in the shower! I'm trying to talk to him though the locked bathroom door to find out why he is in the shower . . . I wasn't for sure that he was even awake, given his little bouts with sleepwalking . . . but he thought it was morning, and was not to happy about being awake at this point! I went and turned his bed back down, turned off his light and headed back to my room, before he came out of the bathroom, I could hear the grumpiness in his voice and didn't want to be in his way!!! The next morning he remembered that he dreamed he woke up and it was 7:30 and we were late! We had to be in Clayton at 7:30, so we would have been very late if that were the case. Thank goodness we got up and out of the house in time and arrived in plenty of time.

I thought it was funny, I know I never sleep well the night before something big is happening, and I guess he can't either!

And he said the test was "boring". That it was the longest 5 hours of his life, I couldn't get him food quick enough. It said it was hard, but that is not surprising, he still has a good 4 -5 year of learning before he will take it to count for college, we are just proud that he took the step and took the test in 7th grade.

This morning

2010-01-24T14:22:00.000-08:00

On the way to church, Meghan is looking at her bible, it's a little girls childrens bible, and she says that she needs a new bible because she has had this one since 2004. I asked her if she remembered who gave her the bible and she said yes, aunt Stefie. So I said that at some point she would get a new bible and that she could save this bible to give to her daughter someday. To that she responded, "why would I want to do that?". Sometimes she has more of her dad in her than I thought!!!

Picture is totally unrelated to this story!
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Some couponing and some discipline

2010-01-20T22:11:00.001-08:00

Trying to get back into the routine of things around here, but still working more hours at work which doesn't help me get things on track at home! Also doesn't help with this cold and rainy weather, all I want to do is curl up under and blanket in front of the fire and watch TV all night.

Getting through all of the birthdays this month, we celebrated with Mimi & Grampie on Monday night and will celebrate Trevor's entrance into the teen world on Friday. Although we will be celebrating very low key as he will be taking his SAT on Saturday, so it will definitely be an early to bed night for him! He does not do well when he doesn't get enough sleep! So I think we will have a little party with friends next weekend.

Been doing a little catching up with my coupon shopping, didn't do as much during the holidays and I missed it! Although I loved shopping out of my cabinets all month and not needing to run out to get whatever we ran out of. My stockpiling has paid off, although my husband is convinced we have enough cereal and peanut butter to last a life time! (we don't!).

I went to Safeway tonight to pick up a few things . . . I got all of this for $14.63 + a $3.50 catalina for my next purchase. I was happy!

Even though that was a great deal, it was not near as good as my CVS trip a few weeks ago, I paid about $2.50 for 6 cans of Oust and a package of cookies (Daryl picked those out), which is a really good deal, but on top of that I got back $18.00 (yes, that is eighteen dollars) in ECB (Extra Care Bucks) to use on my next shopping trip, which I used a few days later.

Trying to be very strict with what I am buying now, since I do have so much, I'm sticking to my lowest prices on items that I don't need now, makes it a little bit more challenging but I'll end up with greater savings in the end.

I think that I've finally decided on my word for 2010 - I've debated between Discipline and Balance. I don't like the word discipline, it seems like a negative word, a word I don't want to think about for an entire year, yet it is the word that keeps coming to the front of my brain, I keep trying to replace it with a nicer word, but it just doesn't feel right, so discipline it is. And I figure with a little bit of discipline maybe I'll find some balance?? I'm hoping anyway. There are so many areas in my life that can use a bit of discipline . . .

*what I eat and what I feed my family, committing to planning and fixing healthy meals for us
*exercise . . . enough said about that
*how much time I spend on the computer or iPhone, reading blogs mostly, and mostly coupon or scrapbooking related, but still, time can get away so quickly
*to use my camera more and to be better about my Project 365 photos (it's no fun going backwards to try and fill up a week I've slacked off)
*writing a daily to-do list, and actually looking at it everyday
*documenting more stories of our life, making creative time every week
*a reasonable bed time - I hate going to bed and I hate even more getting up in the morning, but it is a little easier when I've gotten enough sleep

These are just a few things . . . I'm trying to be more in tune with what I am doing and how I am spending my time so that I can begin to get a better, more disciplined routine in place. I know it helps me to keep on tract and it helps the kids too, especially when they don't have a grumpy mom who is trying to get things done last minute or on a deadline.

And this look explains it all . . .

2010-01-13T21:52:00.002-08:00

Meghan has never had problems expressing herself, she does take after her father you know! Well, we celebrated Christmas with Papa & Gigi after New Years, the big boys both got iTouchs for a combined Christmas/Birthday present. Oh what Meghan would do to have her own iTouch! We actually thought that maybe we, ooppss, I mean Santa, should get her an iTouch for Christmas instead of the DS that we got her, some days she spends more time in my iPhone than I do, not to mention the games are .99 instead of 29.99! But somehow I just could not justify getting an iTouch for a 6 year old.

So when it comes time for presents Meghan opens hers and unfortunately the only larger set of Littlest Pet Shops that Meghan doesn't own and that I told Gigi that she would just LOVE, was given to her by the little neighbor girl for her birthday. I was very surprised that she got that from a little girl that we barely know. Needless to say when she opened that gift she wasn't as excited (read: distracted) as I thought she would have been since she already had it. She was a bit disappointed but we assured her that we would take it back and she could pick out something else.

And then came the rest of the boys presents:

Looking more surprised than Trevor! ok maybe this will go over ok ~

I only wish you could hear her screaming at the top of her lungs at this point
"THEY GOT ITOUCHES"
"THEY GOT ITOUCHES"

Feeling better now that we got that screaming out of our system!

But then it went to this look, followed by her socking Trevor in the arm!

It was funny and sad at the same time. Had she been able to open up her gift and play with it like it should have happened I don't think that her reactions would have been so severe! I did feel bad for her, oh what that child would do for her very own iTouch, if she is not playing with my phone she is begging Trevor to play on his Touch . . . I keep reminding her to get her DS, but apparently it's not a cool as the Touch!

Progress Report

2010-01-13T21:29:00.000-08:00

Trevor brought home his progress report yesterday . . . how is it that a child can have A's in every subject and a C in PE you ask? Well, let me tell you about how the PE teacher grades.

I thought it was odd a few months ago when the first progress report came home, Trev had all A's and a B in PE, I questioned him as to why he had a B in PE? Well, unlike when I was in PE they have to do 2 additional assignments each trimester, so the teacher will not give any student an A on a progress report because the 2 assignments have not been completed. They have not even been assigned! How can your grade be penalized for an assignment that has not been assigned? Sounded a bit off to me but Trevor guaranteed that by the time report cards came out he would have an A in PE, and he did.

Then comes the 2nd trimester, the 1st assignment was assigned on a Friday and was due the next Friday before Thanksgiving break, this was the week Trevor had the stomach flu, so being the good mom that I am I kept him home from school as to not send him to school throwing up and spreading his germs. He had the assignment completed on Tuesday but hadn't turned it in since it wasn't due until Friday. Well, he got sick on Wednesday and stayed home the rest of the week. Unfortunately, he didn't give it to me to take to school with one other project to turn in and when he tried to turn it in after the Thanksgiving break, the teacher said he could not turn in late assignments.

So that is why he has a C, he has "missing assignments", and the 2nd assignment of the trimester has not been assigned yet. I was going to e-mail the teacher and have a little rant, I won't be happy if this prevents him from having straight A's when it is report card time. But it looks like he can make up the "assignment" by running extra laps everyday.

I'm still annoyed!

Welcome 2010

2010-01-01T22:21:00.000-08:00

Wow! 2010 ~ wasn't it just Y2K? Seriously how has it already been 10 years?

We celebrated New Years Eve quietly at home. I was sick on Wednesday and still not feeling great on Thrusday so we had to opt out of our New Years plans and stay home. We watched some movies and barely stayed awake till midnight!

I woke up today feeling great! Yipee!!! I should, I didn't do anything for 2 days. But I made up for lost time today, got all of the laundry done AND folded, finished getting ALL of my coupons organized and into my binder (started that little project while watching movies last night) there are tons of coupons coming on Sunday so I wanted to get what I had cleaned up, made grocery list and went grocery shopping, so much easier to do with organized coupons! Cleaned out the kitchen cupboards, yes, almost all of them, amazing what happens to them when you don't pay attention to what the other people in your house are doing to them for a month or two, did some miscellaneous picking up and now I'm tired. It was nice to get the little stuff done around here without feeling guilty that I should be doing something else, such a great feeling, my head feels so clear and I love that. I should probably take advantage of that before I have to go back to work on Monday, blech . . .

We are looking forward to our 2nd Christmas with Papa and Gigi this weekend, then I will get Christmas put away, I figured we couldn't have Christmas without a Christmas tree, right? So while it's been nice to have an excuse to keep Christmas up, next week I will be wishing I had taken it down already!

Deciding on my word for 2010, I never did settle on one for 2009, but I've got a couple in mind so I just need to decide which it will be. I also decided to continue with Project 365 - even though I got behind in my layouts and sometimes a little bit in my picture taking, I've got a picture to represent all 365 days of 2009 and that feels like a huge accomplishment. Unfortunately I feel like I'm starting out behind since I need to finish up the 2009 layouts, I will get it done.

Here is my first picture of 2010, Meghan put her baby to bed tonight before she went to bed, was very cute, she held her and patted her back and then laid her down and covered her up, such a good little mommy (who was not to amused that I was taking this picture). She did take good care of me when I was sick, she is a good little mommy!!!

Here is to an awesome 2010, I can't wait to see how it unfolds!

I bet there's an App for that . . .

2009-12-27T15:21:00.001-08:00

My iPhone - $199.99
Monthly Data Fee - $30.00
Santa Tracker App - $0.99
A 6 year old texting Santa and Santa texting her back - Priceless

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my iPhone?

Merry Christmas (and an attempt at a little recap of our month!)

2009-12-26T19:10:00.000-08:00

Wow! I can't believe that Christmas has already come and gone, time seems to go so fast, I had such a great start on the Christmas shopping yet I still went out on Christmas Eve for just "one more thing", why is that? December is always such a busy month, I thought I was more prepared this year, but I don't feel that I was, I was doing my baking and peanut butter ball dipping Christmas Eve morning . . . but at least the baked goods were fresh, right? I guess all in all you get done what you get done and it all works out in the end, but next year, I will have a little better plan!!!!

December started out with with cooking painting on Saturday with our friends the Howes, we have been doing this since Trevor was a baby, now the boys will paint a cookie or two to eat and that's about it, the girls on the other hand, love love love cookie painting!

Cookie in one hand, paint brush in the other!

This is what I usually get from Trev when I try and take his picture!

Sunday was my birthday, I was recovering from a cold the week before and had stayed up until after 2:00 am trying to get the house finally decorated the night before, so we skipped out on church and headed straight to bagels and coffee! Spent the afternoon finishing up decorating the tree with Meghan, she had been waiting so patiently all week to decorate the tree!

Mom fixed me an awesome Mexican dinner and fixed one of my favorite cakes, it was a great day!

The next weekend started out just as busy, Meghan, Mom and I went to the hospital for the "Gingerbread Run". Meghan had a great time doing crafts and seeing Santa!

My birthday is quickly followed by Hayden's and Meghan's birthdays, on the 16th and 17th. We celebrated Hayden on Saturday after we went to the Gingerbread Run. We met them in Sacramento and had dinner at this very yummy Italian place called Hot Italian, it was the best pizza I've had since I was in Italy. After that it was back to his house for cake and presents. I can't believe that Hayden is officially a teenager, that means Trevor is not far behind! yikes . . .

Meghan was cracking up her Uncle here, I believe this was the conversation about boyfriends and kissing boys!

The next week brought Meghan's 6th birthday!!! She was so excited to turn 6. We made cookies to take to school, she wanted the kind that you can make shapes out of and put frosting on. Is she my kid or what, cut out cookies are my most favorite cookie ever!

Mimi and Grampie came over to celebrate on her birthday and have cake with us, I think she had a great day!

Then on Saturday was Meghan's party with her friends, I'm always pulling my hair out trying to figure out what to do for these winter babies birthday parties. She kept saying that she wanted a Littlest Pet Shops party. Not knowing exactly what she meant by that and also knowing that you can not readily get a lot of supplies for this kind of party, I thought we'd give it a try anyway. I think it turned out great and she had a great time with her friends. They did some crafts, some coloring, they played with all of Meghan's LPS stuff and then all the kids got to "adopt" a LPS of their own to take home.

Well, I think that wraps most of the major things we celebrated this month, still editing a few Christmas pictures to post in the next few days. Only 2 days of work next week and then 5 days off, I can't wait!!!

Pictures

2009-11-29T20:02:00.001-08:00

Today we went out for our 2nd annual photo shoot with the Tidwells. I'm pretty happy with the results.

And yesterday we had our annual Thanksgiving Day family photo! This one was a little more difficult because there are so many if us, and we could not go outside because of the tornado like winds. But on the plus side this year I have a remote for the camera, which means that Anth didn't have to run up and down the ladder 25 times trying to get the perfect picture!

All in all a productive photo weekend!

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from my iPhone

Testing

2009-11-28T16:55:00.001-08:00

So, I'm such a bad blogger! I'm hoping that having this little app on my iPhone will help me be a better blogger! No promises, but we'll see! Now if I can figure out how to get a picture in here too!

Ok, looks simple enough! This is from our baking day, I mixed up 20 batches of peanut butter balls!!!! Yummmmy!!!!

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Fall Fun

2009-10-26T17:17:00.000-07:00

I drug the kids, well, Trevor, Meghan still willingly goes, and Mimi to the Pumpkin Patch on Saturday. I have a feeling that this will be the last year I get Trevor to go with us, he was not to thrilled with me this year! But it's a tradition and I want my fall pumpkin patch pictures! I guess I'm going to have to find a different way to get my fall photos! Meghan as usual loved the animals and the barn show. She was so anxious to get her pumpkin that she was around the corner and on the trailer before we got there. We got there early which was great for getting some pictures because I didn't have people in the background or walking in front of me!

You'll never guess what I found in the right ear . . .

2009-10-10T18:03:00.001-07:00

Sunday night as I'm cleaning Meghan's ear I flip her right ear lobe up to see how the back is looking, and I see something shiny . . . I should not see anything shiny, blood and scabs are NOT shiny. According to the x-ray there was not a back in the right ear. Well, the x-ray was incorrect, there was indeed a back in the right ear. I was so not happy about this, I didn't want to take another trip to see Dr. Jennifer and I wasn't sure Dr. Khonsari and his big hands would be the best option either, so, that left Daryl and I. I was dreading it all day Monday, so I got home from work and had her soak in the bath tub to get it all cleaned warm and opened up, all to add ice to it to numb it. The easy part was she let me put the earring in the left ear, which went in nice and easy. So I started in on the right, couldn't really get a good hold of it from the back, then I tried to push it through using the earring, that didn't work either, the earring went all the way through. Daryl came to help, he got the ear turned enough that a little more of the back was showing, enough that I could use the earring and pull it out. whew, thank goodness . . . by Wednesday evening I got the right earring back in!!!! Finally I think this whole mess is DONE!!! She is now back to 2 earrings in her ears and we are cleaning and twisting twice daily.

On Wednesday we went to the dentist, it was long overdue for both of them, Meghan has no cavities and Trev has 2 surface ones, looks like he was lucky enough to get my "deep grooved" teeth, darn. He will have them filled next week and some sealants put on to help prevent future ones.

Today we did a little bit of this ~

Isn't quite riding on her own yet, but a little more practice and she will be gone!

Welcome Fall

2009-10-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

I love the fall . . . I love the colors, I love the coolness, and I can't believe that it's already officially Fall! Something happened to September, not sure what, but it somehow got away much to fast. I'm sure most of it is figuring out our new schedule, which for the most part seems to be working ok.

The kidos are on Fall Break last week and next week, I'm taking a few days off so Meghan doesn't have to go to her old pre-school everyday! Trev ended up going up to Oregon with Mimi & Grampie at the very last minute last week Monday, so it's been a very quiet week around here, we all really miss him. They are on their way home now, should be hitting Redding anytime now, can't wait to give him hugs (which he will just love I'm sure), since they took him at the last minute I was already at work on Monday so I didn't get to hug him goodbye!

We also got the earring problem solved, thank goodness for great friends who are physicians! I really did not want to have Meghan have to have surgery to remove the earrings, but I was not having any luck getting them to budge, so I called Jenn to get her opinion and she agreed it was crazy to be put under for that. So on Friday Meg and I headed up to Rocklin and Jennifer got them out. Not without a little bit of a struggle, even though we gave Meg a little medication to "relax" her. Seems that most medications do not react as they should with her, and while she didn't go to sleep or even relax as we had hoped, it was almost as if she was agitated, and suddenly didn't want anything to do with getting those darn things out. Surprisingly the one with the back stuck inside came out much easier than the one that was just the post. Hard to tell from the picture but the one on the right, which was in the right ear, is very bent, not sure how that happened, but figure it might be why it was so hard to get out.

Once they were out Meghan was fine, we went and picked up Jennifer's daughter Tyler, her and Meg are only 4 months apart, but have never really gotten to play together. It was so fun watching them, they are 2 peas in a pod, 2 little giggle boxes, I'm now realizing what I must have put my parents through! They had a ball playing with the Littlest Pets Shops and with Tylers baby dolls, they even packed them up along with a diaper bag and brought them to dinner. It was so cute, I even got a picture of it, but someone must have deleted it while taking her self portraits with my iPhone. Should have taken more than one shot.

I also did a terrible job at my daily photos in September, so with a new month I'm motivated to get back on track. I have about 12 weeks of layouts to do, starting on those today and hope to finish them up this week. I have Tuesday and Wednesday off this week, so hopefully I can get some things checked off of the "to-do" list. I can't believe that the holidays are right around the corner, I really want to stay ahead of the game so that I can enjoy the crazy month of December and not be to crazy. All right, off to get a layout done before dinner!

Earrings and e-coupons

2009-09-22T18:24:00.000-07:00

Last night I am at my Singing Hands class and Daryl calls, the first thing that goes through my head when I saw the call was from home was oh great, who's throwing up! Thank goodness that wasn't the issue. Meghan had come down and asked Daryl to take her earrings out because they were bothering her, but he couldn't find the backs, he calls to tell me that the skin has grown over the back of the earring! Yikes, but I'm figuring that maybe there are some crusties back there from soap and shampoo not getting rinsed out properly, not really skin. I told him to get some alcohol and a cotton ball and try and clean it up a little, we determine she is fine until morning, but I had to go and take a peek last night when I got home. Sure enough, the skin had grown over the earring back on her left ear, you could see about 1/2 of the back and that's it and you could not see a back at all on the right ear. I looked at it better this morning and I could probably work out the left ear, but I couldn't see anything in the right ear, I was hoping that maybe the right backing had just come off, but then I thought I could feel something in there.

I got her into the doctors this afternoon and he refers her to a Pediatric Ear Nose & Throat doctor and then over to get x-rays to determine exactly what was going on.

(I love having my iphone camera with me at all times and ready for any adventure we may encounter!)

The x-ray techs asked many questions about exactly what they were supposed to be x-raying because they had never seen anything like this before ~ and thank goodness the x-ray did not show a back on the right ear!!! I guess that must have fallen out at some point. So we now just have to deal with the left ear. I'll let you know how that goes, we have an appointment tomorrow afternoon.

E -Coupons

I have completely ignored e-coupons until recently, I won't be ignoring them anymore. I haven't saved tons of $$$ using them yet, but when you look at individual items, I'm getting great deals, making some items free and even making a little bit on the item.

You see the great thing about these e-coupons, which currently tie to your Safeway Club Card only, is that you can stack a Safeway coupon, a manufacturer coupon and then the e-coupons will come off, and depending on how many you have loaded on your account, multiples may come off, even if you only bought 1 item. Here is an example ~ at Safeway today Meghan wanted a Kids Cuisine TV Dinner, they were on sale for $1.99 each if you bought 3 of them and I only had 1 manufacturer coupon for $1.00 off of 2 dinners. So I'm figuring $5 buck for 3 is an ok price at $1.66 each, not great but ok. At this point I have forgotten that I have several of these coupons loaded from Shortcuts.com, when I look at my receipt I realize that I had 4 of them loaded! So, my TV dinners went from $1.66 each to .33 each, now that's a good deal!

I also did this with some of my new favorite snacks last week ~ here is what that looked like

On sale at Safeway for $2.50 each. If you buy 4 or more then you get $4.00 off.

2.50 x 4 = $10.00
- $ 4.00 Mix & Match Savings
- $ 1.60 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ .40 e-coupon
- $ .40 e-coupon
- $ 1.00 e-coupon
_________
Total + .40 I love when I make money buying stuff.

At this point Safeway is the only store this will work at, but check out Shortcuts.com and also cellfire.com, when you register for this one you use your cell phone number and also your Safeway Card number. Between the 2 I've probably saved at least $15.00 in only 3 shopping trips. The cool thing with shortcuts is that by the time you get home from shopping you have an e-mail showing which coupons were applied to you shopping trip.

And since I'm talking coupons, I'm happy to report that I made my goal to save at least 70% in August coming in at 70.1%. Working towards 72% or 73% for September.

Where did I leave off?

2009-09-20T20:41:00.001-07:00

It's been awhile! Things have been a bit crazy around here the last few weeks, in a good way. Daryl didn't go to work on that Wednesday two weeks ago, which was good because the painting was not finished! But just as he was wrapping up the last bit of touch up Thursday evening he got the call that all of the paperwork was complete and he could start on Friday! Good timing if you ask me!!! The bathroom/retreat area turned out awesome, I love it. Still need to do a bit of "accessorizing" but I'm looking for some specific things that I will probably be looking for for awhile, but meanwhile it's looking good!

Here is a before as you walk into the bathroom ~

This now contains most of the stuff that was on the floor, you can barely see the pile of stuff on the floor in the top photo.and the little desk we found - now if we can find a smaller couch or chair and get the treadmill fixed, it will be just about done!

We also celebrated our 18th Wedding Anniversary, seriously, I can't be old enough to be married for 18 years? Can I???? Well, looking at the then and now, I guess I have aged just a little bit!!!

Trev took this one, should have switched it over to auto mode for him to avoid the blurriness, but hey, this is my life, we stopped painting long enough to go have dinner and snap a quick picture!

With Daryl working I had to make a few changes to my work schedule and Mimi & Grampie are helping out a lot, it's a crazy schedule and I had to put it all on the calendar in order to keep straight where I need to be and who is doing what each day! Luckily I got this new toy for an anniversay gift! It's been very very fun!!!! And yes, I've been playing on this instead blogging!!! Addicting is all I can say. I'm amazed at what this phone can do, it's like having a computer and the internet at your fingertips, 24/7!

I'm sure there is lots I'm forgetting, but it's now 9:00 on Sunday evening and time for me to head to bed, with my new schedule I have to be at work by 7:00 tomorrow morning, so early to bed for me!

Holiday Weekend

2009-09-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

I love 3 day weekends, and I especially love when we can get projects done, like finishing painting the bathroom and retreat area of our bedroom! It's been on the "to-do" list since we moved in, just about the last of things to be painted, just the laundry room and kids bathroom left and we will be 100% painted over here, time to start over now, right? Just kidding, my husband will not go for that.

We had a busy weekend so the painting didn't start until today . . . so Daryl has 1 day to finish up because on Wednesday, he goes to work!!!! Yep, you read it right, he got a job last week and starts on Wednesday. Actually he got 2 job offers last week, when it rains it pours! Both of the jobs had pros and cons and in the end it was a pretty easy decision since one of the jobs hours were 3:00 pm - midnight. Neither of us really want to go back to the crazy off hours, and I think that those would be worse than graveyards, so we opted for the one that pays less and is further from home, but we both feel good about that decision and trying to keep us all on the same schedule, he would just miss to much with the kids working those hours. Needless to say, we are feeling very blessed over here this week, and Daryl is very excited to get to work. Me, while I'm obviously very happy he will be working and gearing up for the crazy schedule of how I will be getting everyone where they need to be everyday. I have been totally spoiled the last few months because Daryl has been getting the kids up and out, lunches made, dropped off, picked up, cooking dinner, cleaning up . . . I've been living the easy life, well, it will be ending on Wednesday!

We made a trip to IKEA on Saturday, needed to get another set of the expedit shelving that I love so much for our bedroom and we also found a little table/desk for up there too. Can't wait for it to all come together. I also bought some new accessories and towels in my favorite colors!

Yesterday we did a little bit of phone upgrading. Daryl has been promising me an iPhone once he got a job, well in celebration of a new job and our 18th anniversary tomorrow I got my iPhone and I LOVE it!!! So cool, so much you can do, LOVE having the internet with me at all times. How did I live without it? Trev also had a little accident with his phone on Friday and the face cracked, of course he isn't ready for an upgrade but another line on our plan was, so he lucked out, he was going to just get mine and he was less than thrilled with that idea! So he got a new cool phone and a hard carrying case so that there are no more little accidents while the phone in is the backpack, otherwise, he WILL be using my old phone. But he is most excited about the unlimited texting we also added to the plan. He has probably already texted me 50 times and we've been in the same house! Meghan is feeling left out and thinks she should also have a phone. uuummmm, no, sorry!!! So she is carrying around my old one and listening to the music on it. Daryl is just shaking his head at all the ring tones that have been going off all day, he doesn't get why we are so happy!!

Looking forward to a new week and finding our new normal and new routines. I'm sure it will take a bit of getting used to but I think we are all ready for this new chapter. Even though he was only out of work for 3 months, we knew it was coming 10 months prior, while that is great to know so far in advance, it also is hard to make decisions to do things knowing that you will be unemployed in a few months, so many little things were put on hold, feels good to get some stuff done!

Happy Labor Day, I'm going to go and try to find my bed, which is a bit buried at the moment!

Another tooth . . . G.O.N.E.

2009-09-02T22:07:00.000-07:00

This one was fast, which is good, there is nothing worse than loose teeth, well there's throwing up, but then there is loose, hanging teeth, that they want you to look at every other second, that comes right after throwing up in my book. I have nightmares that all my teeth are loose in my mouth and falling out. Anyway, she mentioned that her tooth was loose, but she's says that all of her teeth are loose, so I didn't give it much thought, until Sunday, she was swimming at the Tidwells's and she gets out of the pool to show me her tooth, which was very bloody. "Uuummmmm, what happened???" I ask, trying to be cool about the fact that there is a lot of blood in her mouth, and she responds "my thoof is loose". I thought that maybe she hit it or something, not sure why it started bleeding so much, but within the hour it was out!

and she was still not to amused with the $2.00 that the thoof fairy left for her.

And this is a picture of her dressed up to go to Kaitlyns Birthday dinner last night. We did showers before we went so she would be ready for bed when we got home. She came out with this little outfit.

When I told her that she looked beautiful she looked at me and said "you can't go like that." I had on shorts and a shirt. She said "we are going to a party and you need to dress up." So I have this little fashion statement telling ME how I should dress, nice!

Gotta love the tiara and the missing tooth, I mean thoof!

She can swim . . .

2009-08-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

well, sort of! She's been doing great kicking around the pool with her life jacket on all summer, she is quite the little fish! I kept thinking I would get her into swimming lessons this summer and never did, next year for sure. We were at a birthday party last weekend at a waterpark for one of my oldest (not in age, in number of years, ok! and I prefer not to talk about how many cause then I feel really old) friends daughters. Growing up she taught swim lessons every summer and made a ton of money doing it. I joked that I should have just brought her up to spend a few days with her and she could have given Meg the lessons. She said that as soon as she could put her head under the water she would be ready to swim, well, she's been doing that since she was a baby! So she walked over to the side of the pool and gave her some pointers, and whalaa, under she went and started swimming under water across the pool! I guess it shouldn't really shock me, but I was pretty amazed that just like that, swimming!

Looking forward to a nice quiet weekend. Hoping to get some scrapping done, I'm very behind on my 365 layouts and I have a class sitting in "my classes" over a www.jessicasprague.com I would like to get working on. Happy weekend!

Can I brag for a moment?

2009-08-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

yep, it's my blog, so if you don't want to hear me brag on my kiddos for a minute, stop reading now!

Trevor came home last week with the results of his Pre-Algebra assessment test. He's always been a math whiz, but this is ALGEBRA, yes I know it's just pre-algebra, but still, I was a bit nervous, not to mention that it is his 1st period class. Well, I'm not going to worry quite as hard now, he got 40/45 on the test, the highest score in his class, most of the others were in the 20's.

I was talking to Meghan on the phone after school on Friday and she told me she got an award at school, and that she was the only one in the class to get this award. She didn't know what it said, so I tell her great job and I'll see it when I get home. I was half thinking she was making it up! I know, that's bad. But we had just been telling Trev how great he was doing the night before, so I thought maybe, just maybe she was a bit jealous and was making up the little award. Well, boy was I wrong! She had made a picture for her teacher the night before, colored it and then wrote some words on it that she knows how to spell. So she got a "You did a Super Job" award for doing "kid art". She was very proud of herself! And so are we!

Then today Trevor came home with this letter ~

Although I'm not exactly sure what this program is, Trevor says that it's like the GATE Program in elementary school. Needless to say, we are very proud of him for earning this!

In other news, Daryl had a productive weekend doing a little backyard project. It started by getting rid of the wasp nest ~

Then he did a little concrete painting, it looks much better than this in person, and it's not spotty looking, we were going for the "rustic" look!

And then we added a little more seating ~

and a new table, chairs & umbrella ~

I think he did a great job! Thanks honey, I LOVE it!

Cracking me up

2009-08-21T23:40:00.000-07:00

Working on editing the 100's of pictures I took last month and came across these, they just made me laugh! These were from the 4th while we were hanging out with the Tidwells.

The girls were laying so nicely, like little girl cousins do, on the towels to dry off.

Enter boy cousin, Levy ~ looking pretty innocent, right? Notice the little grin on his face??

Notice him tickling Meghan's foot?

And then Cayden's

Quite time was over after that.

My not so good K-Mart trip

2009-08-19T18:34:00.001-07:00

Wish me luck trying to convince a K-Mart employee that they somehow missed $22.55 of my coupons, EVEN after I asked her to double check because I was pretty sure she had.

A few good deals

2009-08-16T16:22:00.000-07:00

Went out yesterday to grab what I thought were just a few things, but I actually came home with quite a lot of stuff. I think the best deal of the day was the cantaloupes that were .10 a pound, I got 3 of them for $1.17, can't beat that!

Remember how much I love my cup?

2009-08-16T15:22:00.000-07:00

you can read about it here, well, there was a little accident last week. I won't mention names, to protect the innocent until proven guilty, although the fact that he went to 6 Starbucks looking for a replacement probably is proof enough!

There were attempts made to fix it, and I have to say it is functional, but not so pretty anymore, all of those smudges you see is super glue that was used to put the two pieces back together. Waiting anxiously for these darn cups to make another appearance, and then I will buy more than one of them!

And the results are in . . .

2009-08-13T21:17:00.001-07:00

I think I get more nervous for Trevor's STAR Testing results than he does! He has set the standard very high for himself and every year I'm anxious waiting for the numbers to come in. Once again he did not fail and got great scores.

I was also happy to see that his reading list level is at level 11 out of 13 levels. He has always loved reading and read books above his reading level. Keep up the great work Trev, we are very very proud of all your hard work in school. All of your effort is paying off! We love you.

All in a week at Wags

2009-08-12T18:42:00.001-07:00

I ended up with all of this after several trips to Wal-Greens last week. I spent $50.00 out of pocket and I still have $10.00 in register rewards left to spend this week. The retail value of this is $232.68, a savings of $182.33 ~ 78%!!!

Unilever and Kelloggs and Loreal were having some great register reward deals, which is why I got even more peanut butter, Ragu and Suave deodorant!!! With the register rewards factored in I came out ahead $3.22 with the deodorant and the ragu and peanut butter cost me .37 each. I got 3 boxes of hair dye, 2 bottles of make-up and some blush for $4.00. Some of the office supplies were "filler items" that were on clearance and I think we now have enough snacks for the kids lunches to last till spring time! I think that the Kelloggs/Keebler items worked out to be .50 each. I love that, no more running to the store at the last minute because there is nothing to put in the lunch box. Amazing what a little bit of planning can do for you. Here are a few close-up pictures.

Bad blogger this week . . .

2009-08-07T23:04:00.000-07:00

Not sure why . . . getting into the routine of being back to school, been to 2 back to school nights, Trev already had school pictures on Thrusday, Meghans are on Monday. Meghan is still loving school, Trev still wishes he was off for a little longer! Meghan loves buying her lunch and asks everyday if she can . . . the answer is usually no, I figure they can each buy once or twice a week, the pantry is stuffed with yummy lunch stuff for so much cheaper than the school lunch, Trevor's is $2.75 and Meghan's is $2.50.

I spent too much time clipping/organizing coupons this week, lots of good ones in the paper and all of the internet printable reset. But it has been worth it. My goal this month is to have an average savings of at least 70%, I ended last month at a 62% savings, so now that I can be even pickier I'm working towards being at 70%, so far this month (I do realize that we are only one week in) I'm at 78%, that is for 2 trips to Safeway, 1 trip to CVS and a few stops into Wal-Greens, they had some great Register Reward deals this week, I'll post my weeks worth of bargains after my final stop tomorrow.

Safeway had some awesome coupons this week that matched great with some that I had, today I saved 85%, I did a similar transaction on Sunday and saved 75%. Not to bad, I don't have a picture of Sunday's trip, but it looked a lot like this one. I paid $12.60 for all of this!

Free items are:

4 Twix candy bars
Starbucks ice cream
3 bottles of Marie's salad dressing

Really cheap items are:

Pop-Tarts .49
Tortillas .99
Kraft Cheese slices 1.49
Granola bars .99
Cream Cheese .99
Cantaloupe .77 each
Cookie dough .24
Salad was 1.00/bag
Finish $1.49

For the two visits at Safeway this week I spent $34.11. The total before sales & coupons was $166.80 - for a total savings of 80%.

Since I got 3 newspapers on Sunday I have more coupons so I will make one more trip this weekend to use those coupons too.

So glad it's Friday, need to get to bed, I'm sure Meghan will be up bright and early like always on a Saturday morning, especially she has been promised cinnamon rolls for breakfast!

My husband needs a J.O.B.

2009-08-07T22:54:00.000-07:00

Since he is currently playing Mr. Mom, and doing it very well I might add, he is been getting the kids their breakfast, making lunches and getting them to and from school everyday, I'm getting spoiled very fast!!! This will hopefully be a very short lived situation, but until it ends I will enjoy actually getting to work on time, every morning!!! While getting the lunches made this morning he asked for the cookie cutters so he could make Meghan's PB & J sandwich into a heart! Meghan found the butterfly before the heart, so she had a butterfly PB & J sandwich in her lunch today. How cute is that!!!! Should I be worried??!!!

First Day of School!

2009-07-28T19:10:00.000-07:00

It was an exciting day around here, the much anticipated, by Meghan, and the not so anticipate, by Trevor, 1st day of school! I can't believe that my baby started kindergarten today, and she LOVED it!
Meghan did great, she loved it, waved good bye to us with a big smile on her face, made it very easy to leave her without getting to emotional!

Mimi even came out bright and early so she could go with us, and she brought with her "that girl", (wasn't that a TV show a long time ago?) as Meghan refers to her as, for some reason she can't remember that her name is Jennifer. Jennifer is Greg's niece, I think that makes us cousins and maybe Meghan a 2nd cousin? I'm not for sure, but she and her mom and dad are here visiting for 2 weeks and Meghan took to her immediately, she loves being with the big girls and it made her day that she came with Mimi this morning! I think that she even got more hugs than Mimi and I combined!!!

Daryl took Trev to school, without all of the hoopla, that just isn't cool anymore, I was lucky to get him to let me take his picture this morning!

Trevor's favorite thing today was having PE everyday, and Meghan's was recess, hummm, I'm seeing a trend here. But Meghan came out talking about how much she love school and that she wanted to go to kindergarten everyday for the rest of her life! I guess I can't complain.

100th Blog Post!

2009-07-25T18:48:00.000-07:00

Not to bad for about 7 months of blogging, that's an average of 3.2 posts per week or 14.3 posts per month, I'm pretty sure that I didn't get to 100 in a year and half with the first blog I started. But this year, after realizing that I could actually print my blog into a coffee table book, I took on a new perspective of blogging, capturing our "everyday life". I would love to post daily, but for now I'm happy that I have a pretty well-rounded view of what our life is day to day.

And today, somehow I have ended up with no children home with me ~ not sure how I got so lucky, but I'm enjoying a little quiet. Trevor spent the night with his friend and they invited him to go with them to his grandfathers for a BBQ and swimming this afternoon. Meghans best friend from pre-school invited her to her dance recital and then to play at her house this afternoon, I took her over there about noon and am waiting for a call to go pick her up anytime. I had a nice afternoon running a few errands to Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Wal-Greens x 2 and Rite-Aide to get in on a few sales. Came home and have been doing a little cleaning up and trying to figure out why ACDSEE has decided not to work on my desktop computer, that program drives me NUTS sometimes. So, I'm on the laptop so that I can work on my 365 layouts before tomorrow.

The other day I made some carmel corn, it is soo sooooooo yummy, I took some to work and we pretty much finished the rest of it, so I just popped up some more popcorn, the old fashioned way on the stove!, to make another batch, well, as soon as I pick up Meg, the second part of the recipe requires putting the carmel corn in the oven for an hour, but flipping it every 15 minutes.
ok, off to enjoy my last few minutes of quiet!

New clothes, a new do and a wasps nest!

2009-07-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

It was a busy week, good thing I took a few days off work! On Tuesday we went out school shopping, that was fun! The kids actually did really good shopping together. Trevor is old enough now to go find things he wants and then bring them to me, which makes it easier for me to get what I need for Meghan. I also gave him a budget, I figure now that he wants $50 pairs of shoes and $45 pairs of skinny jeans, a budget was in order. He then he wanted to add that if he stayed under budget I would give him that amount in cash! yea, whatever!!! But, it really did help us stay on track and I told him that we would be getting ready for fall/winter as we go along. It's so nice that I can still shop on the clearance rack for Meghan and she doesn't care! I think we were pretty successful, I spent almost the exact same amount on both of them, but Meghan got a whole lot more for the buck!

We also went to Wal-Mart and stocked up on some school supplies, I LOVE the school supply isle, I'm sure it will take us a year to go through all of this, Meghan also picked out a new backpack and lunch box, I can't believe that my baby is going to kindergarten! Trev is using his backpack from last year and had decided he doesn't want a lunch box, he wants to use paper bags!

On Wednesday Mimi wanted to get the kids a new outfit for school, so we all went to lunch, went and got Meghan a new, big girl hair cut and then they went shopping.

Meghan got a dress, a pair of pants and a cute shirt, all of which I haven't taken a picture of yet, and these shoesTrevor on the other hand opted out of actual clothing and just wanted shoes! R.E.D. shoes! And I don't know if you can see in the clothing picture above, the jeans he picked out are PURPLE!!! We told him that he couldn't wear them together! Thank you Mimi & Grampie!!!

I am actually afraid that he doesn't realize the brightness of these! He is a bit "color blind" although that is not what they call it, but he can't see a lot of colors, Mom and I were laughing wondering how he sees the jeans and shoes and if he were seeing the colors as they really were, would he still pick them out? Guess we'll never know, and as long as he likes it, that is all that matters!

And then we have this living in the eaves above the little door going out to the backyard

that is Daryls project tomorrow, to get rid of them!!!

Camping in Columbia - Part 2 - Pinecrest

2009-07-23T18:13:00.000-07:00

We got up Sunday, had breakfast, yummy breakfast burritos that Steph made, seems to be our traditional camping breakfast, I love them, don't know why I don't make them at home? Daryl walked with the boys over to Columbia, they really wanted to go

~~see the town~~ I mean, buy candy at the candy store, so they took a quick trip while I packed up a few things so we could head up to Pinecrest.

Looks just like I remember it from when we used to go when I was a kid. Last time we were there was in 2004, Trevor and Hayden were 7 1/2, Meghan was only 8 months old, Levi was about 17 months old, Cayden was in Gina's belly, and Aida . . . well she was still a few years away from making her appearance! I was looking for a picture to post and Meghan came over and said "who is that sitting next to Aida?" Too funny, it was Meghan sitting next to Levi, my what 5 years will do!

We packed a picnic lunch and ate real quick when we got there, Meghan was very excited to get in the water! She has been a fish since day 1 ~

Have I mentioned how much I love my kids feet?

Meghan and Daryl made a few sandcastles, we were very unprepared with the water and sand toys

So Daryl went to the little store to see what he could find, he came back with an air mattress (hummm . . . to bad we didn't have this the night before for the boys to sleep on!)

so they all took turnes floating around on it.

I think we packed up around 4:30 so we could get back to camp and celebrate Cole's birthday with a yummy dinner and a little more swimming, of which I have no pictures of the swimming, but it looked just the same as the ones from the night before!

Monday we tried to get packed up and out early, I think we made it by 11:30, wanted to get home to see my dad who was in town for a few days.