9 more months!

Hey, just a reminder.

Halloween is 9 months away.

For some reason that just doesn't sound that far! Yay! I'm saying this as I still have my pumpkin pillow that Beth found at Target, next to me. :)

I don't usually have Halloween stuff out this time of year. I'm not that crazy about it, LOL! Matthew fell in love with this pillow and confiscated it before I could put the Halloween stuff away. It is usually on his bed, but for some reason it is down here with me tonight. I guess just to remind me.

I also heard the kids talking about spring break today! Is this for real? When is that... in March?

I am all kinds of confused.

Wheeeeeee!

Another day of not much going on. T man is home sick again today. We had a lot of good snuggly couch time yesterday, and today looks like it will be the same. Which is ok because it is overcast and drizzling. Add to that one 6 year old who smells like strawberry shampoo, and dressed in one fuzzy cozy robe.


This past weekend Mike and I went flying up to Laughlin. It was a date night, and we went up just for dinner. We went in this really cool plane that Mike calls the 'mini cooper' of airplanes. It is small, but really fun to fly in, and Mike says just as fun to fly. I'll take his word for that!

We had a nice dinner up there and then headed home.

Coming into Phoenix from the direction that we were coming was so pretty. You can actually see the glow of Phoenix at night from so far away. When you finally come up on it, it is just gorgeous. - Mike had called in to get permission to do a touch and go at Sky Harbor airport. That was FUUUUUN! We came in behind a 737, and I loved being out there with all of the big planes. We landed and then went right back up again. I have to say that I admire those air traffic controller people. They are the masters of multi tasking. When you realize they are talking to you, plus all of the other planes up there getting them lined up to land. The neatest thing was when we were taking off from there, and I looked back. All of the planes that were getting ready to land looked like fireflies. It was cool.



our ride for the day -

Nothing exciting going on here. Which sometimes is good. Especially after picking up the kids at school today. I came around the corner to get into the pick up line and there was a fire truck with lights on (Our favorite truck # E252) I have to say that is the worst feeling in the world, and I know that every parent who came around that corner had the same thought as me:

Please don't be my child. Not that you want anybody's children to be hurt or sick enough for the fire department to be called, but it is such a sinking feeling when you don't know what is going on.

I don't know the whole story, but apparently the little girl is fine. But it just makes me happy to say that 'nothing exciting is going on here today.'

Well, maybe one thing... and I am totally giddy. :) New couches. Mike and I picked some out this morning. I absolutely cannot wait, even though I am trying so hard not to think about them since they won't be here until the middle of February. I have to agree with Matthew who didn't understand why you go to a store and don't come home with them. I want them now! But I have to be patient. Which I am not so good at. ;)

I love being a homeowner. Isn't it funny how some things that used to be so mundane are so exciting once you have a house? Like couches... and rocks. You know, after going through the landscaping process I know a little bit about boulders. Big rocks are EXPENSIVE. I drive by other houses, or shopping centers that have huge boulders and I know that a big old rock probably cost several hundred dollars to over a 1,000 for one about the size of my youngest child.

And how in the world did it end up to be Friday already????

a correction.....

I must apologize for my huge mistake on my last entry. BETH contributed the heart brad! ;) And what an awesome heart brad that it is! I believe it makes the WHOLE page! I have to give credit where credit is due. ;)

I also have within arms reach, the very cool tube of Cherry Coke chapstick that was in my little swap item from her too. So I'm sure that was part of my inspiration for that layout. :)

a 10 minute layout!

I SWEAR it looks so much better in real life!!!

I wanted to try a layout that didn't scream 'Kerry' the linear scrapper. This one was actually so fun to do.

I found this old picture of Megan when she was 3 years old. (Ignore the hideously ugly couch) I miss those days when she was that little. So many things went through my head. Man, I spent hours crying because I never thought I would hear her talk when she was that age. We went through a year of therapy. In her quiet little way, she was still my sweet, happy baby girl.

This was also a time of transition when Mike and I were dirt poor. So unfortunately I don't have many pictures from that time, and developing was expensive.

*****

I used a bunch of things that were sitting on my desk, along with a few things that I got in a swap with my friends over the weekend. The Heidi Swapp words and the heart brad are from Michelle. Thanks Michelle! And the transparency and the tag I bought in Prescott.

The journaling says:

Megan loves all things girlie. Dress up gowns, feather boas and shoes. The more fu fu the better. Sometimes she will get dressed up and I get to eat lunch with a princess - tiara and all.

work in progress.

What a FABO weekend! Me and the girls headed up to Prescott for a scrap getaway at Lisa's house. As always, she is such a great host. Yummy food, and her house is GORGEOUS! Not to mention, there was snow on the ground, and little snow flurries when we went out to do a little shopping at her scrapbook store up there.

We left early on Saturday morning and Beth and I stopped to get all of the road trip necessities. Sodas, Starbucks, and pastries. It was just four of us this time, so we all were able to ride in one car.

Maddy was missing this year, but she had a pretty good excuse. She had her baby! Congratulations Maddy! Now I am expecting her to bring Sadie with her to the next crop so I can do some serious baby holding.

And Kaelene! She had a good excuse too! She got married! Wow. A lot of changes going on in our little group right now. Congratulations to her too!

Believe it or not, we all actually got quite a bit accomplished. I started 3 pages that I need to still do journaling on and add all of the fun stuff until they are complete. To me that is the best part, when you are almost done and you already have the foundation of the layout. I didn't have all of the embellishment stuff with me, so that is why I am finishing the pages up here.

It is always fun to spend time with these girls. Especially the amount of time that we got to spend together over this weekend. If a road trip doesn't tear you apart because you can't stand the thought of spending another minute with the people you are stuck with, it brings you closer together. (It was the latter with these girls by the way....) They all crack me up, and the things we talk about are equally funny. I love that scrapbooking has helped me to meet these people. I am lucky to have such great friends. (A little weird at times, but I love them anyway.) ;)

******

On another note.... but still going with the road trip theme.....

if you haven't seen Little Miss Sunshine. DO. NOW. I am always at the tail end of seeing great movies anymore since I rarely make it to the theaters unless it is a kid's movie. So when this came out on pay per view I couldn't wait to see it. OH MY GOSH. I can't even explain it. It is just an incredible movie. Every emotion...laughing so hard, then crying, then you just want to go squeeze your family at the end. (Also for me, it made me miss my VW even more!)

So another week begins.

hummingbirds.

When we moved into this house, there was a hummingbird nest in the ficus tree right outside the window. I got into the habit of checking all the time to see how mommy bird was doing, and if the babies had hatched yet. Finally one day, I put up the feeder, kind of in hopes that the mom wouldn't have to work so hard to go find food. (I mean, I would have appreciated if somebody moved the refrigerator closer to me when I had infants right?)

Since then the evil landscaping people have killed my ficus tree, and I put a new one in. It is much smaller right now, which kind of bums me out.

But the hummingbirds keep coming back. Lots of them! I still love to watch them, and they actually get kind of mad at me when I am out in the atrium. They will buzz and hover right by you like this is their spot... not yours!

Today it is raining, and I don't know if it does anything to make them more active, but they have been stopping at the feeder like crazy. Providing cheap entertainment for both me and the cat who doesn't realize that she can't jump through the arcadia door.

So I just wanted to share a picture of one of my visitors today. They are the cutest little things!!

In the Wiggles world.

I have good dreams, I have bad dreams. I have COOL dreams where I get to hang out with U2 and Edge and I are the best of friends. Last night though, all I can say is that I must really be exhausted. This has been a crazy couple of weeks. I have been really tired, and it is starting to show.

I spent all of last night (I would wake up and then drift back off into the same dream) as a stand in for one of the Wiggles. Now I haven't watched the Wiggles in years because Trevor was the last one who was into that. So I have NO idea where this came from. I just got a call, and had to replace Anthony for a few shows because they knew that I had seen them all and knew all of the words. I had the blue shirt and all. I swear, dreams are so dang weird. :p

Go Matthew! Go!

We've never been to Michigan, have no ties to it, and none of us are even into sports. But Matthew HAD to have this hat. He would stop and look at hats when we would go to Target. When he got a Target giftcard for Christmas, he decided that he wanted the hat.

Why a Michigan hat? Actually, to him it isn't that. It is his favorite color (blue) and has a big letter M on it for Matthew. That is how he knows that it is HIS hat, and not his brother's. (His brother - L.A. Haha!)

I have to admit that he looks adorable in it, and he doesn't like to go out without it most of the time. Which in a way makes me cringe because we always get asked many times while we are out if we are visiting from Michigan. Pretty far from it actually since this little boy is a sixth generation Arizonian! Most people just kind of giggle when I tell them the story behind the 'M' hat.

A NONsleepover.

That is about what it was. Megan had a friend spend the night last night. It is a new girl who moved into her school right after Christmas break. They have been inseparable since last Monday.

The story that this little girl comes with just reminds me how important family is. How important my children are to me. This little girl couldn't live with her mom anymore. Her mom has a drug problem. She would go to school dirty and the other kids would make fun of her and throw sand in her hair. Long story short... she was officially adopted by her grandparents. They just moved here and moved her to a new school to get a fresh start. This is what amazes me. They are nice NICE people, and I admire them so much for stepping up to the plate and making a decision like this when they were in their retirement years. It can't be easy, but I'm positive it will be worth it. And so nice that this little girl won't end up lost in the system.

This poor little thing, you can tell, comes with a lot of baggage. She tries so hard to be friends with everybody and even tried paying Megan $5 for being nice to her after just a couple of days of school. :(

She was so polite to us. It just breaks my heart to think of what kind of life she has had already, at just 8 years old.

Just go hug your kids. Realize what a blessing children really are. They can go through so much and still have the sweetest little spirits, and trust us even when their trust has been broken by so called adults in the past. I am so incredibly lucky. Really.

Brrrrr!

It is freezing cold. In the 30's outside right now. Does not make for a happy desert dweller. I am going to go hide under a blanket for awhile.

Until then, here is a picture of my little stinker today. :)

This also goes to show Beth's theory that Arizona really does have a season called Fall. Today was a perfect day. I noticed when I had driven by my ward building earlier in the day that many of the trees had dropped a lot of leaves overnight. It looked so pretty with the bright green winter grass.

So when I picked up Megan and Trevor after school, we drove by and got out to play in the leaves. The kids had so much fun! They ran through them listening to them crunch under their feet, and the boys made a big pile that they would run and jump in. It made for about 30 minutes of fun, and a chance for me to get some pictures of the kids. (Megan calls me momarazzi since I am always following them around with a camera.)

I have to add that it is truly frightening how much Megan looks like me in this picture. Seriously, if those were green corduroy bell bottom pants and a necklace made of macrame', that is what I looked like at the same age! Genetics are a weird, crazy and funky thing!

blah blah mornings.

A new semester at school. It is hard to believe. The funny thing is, in this photo they look much less enthusiastic about going to school than they did in the first day photo!

It could also be that we ALL are having a hard time adjusting to getting up early again. Christmas break spoiled us. Me especially. Megan was so helpful, and when the kids would wake up in the morning she would make toast or pour cereal for everybody. Which made it possible for me to sleep until 9:00. Those were the days. It almost seems unfair to be up before the sun is even up right now.

I'm hopeless. I need caffiene.

*****

Punch buggy gone BAD.

Does anybody else's family play Punch Buggy? You know, when you are out and each time you see a VW beetle you are supposed to yell PUNCH BUGGY! I think the old rules are you are supposed to actually punch somebody next to you and yell it, but I have changed the rules in our family to no hitting.

Anyway... our point system goes like this:

Old beetle: 5 points.
New bettle: 1 point.

Today after we picked up the kids from school, Mike asked if I wanted to take the kids and do an errand with him to North Phoenix. OK, technically it is 'family time' and I knew we would get dinner out of it.

We are playing our game, and I am all smug because *I* have 13 points. It is always pretty exciting to get a 5 point car, let alone 2! I was pretty stoked. Mike only had 3. He was driving, so he had a handicap, but he yells faster than I do, so it works out even. I also might add that this particular game was getting so heated that the kids bowed out and we decided to do teams instead. ;)

So feeling bad for the poor guy, I come up with a new rule. "If you see a VW THING, you get 20 points!!!" I haven't seen one in years, so I figure I'm pretty safe with coming up with this silly rule. I was throwing him a bone, right???

Would you believe we passed by a VW restoration place???? In less than 10 seconds, Mike calls PUNCH THING! PUNCH BUGGY....blah blah blah. I stutter and can't even call a one point bug. I'm just yelling, "Aaaa! Aaaaa!" Mike got FIVE 5 point old beetles and a freakin' THING! 45 points in one shot. Next time I'll keep my mouth shut. I'm a sore loser. :p

I know....it's long. Grab a soda and some cookies or something and read.

Before Megan was born, my mother in law gave me this great book. It is called Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach. It has been well read, and has marks on the cover from being carried around in suitcases from the trips it has taken, the moves to various houses, and several pages are dog eared. It is a simple book, each month kind of has a theme, and each day has a date and you can read just one page. It is a cool book to have throughout the year, as it starts on New Years Day. I also have enjoyed that over the years that I have owned this book, the meaning of it changes with your life.

Can you tell I love this book? Anybody who is into the current trends with scrapbooking would really like it. It is kind of along the lines of what Ali talks about with the everyday stuff being important.

Today's little entry is titled: Standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst. Here is my favorite paragraph from the page:

The revelation that we have everything we need in life to make us happy but simply lack the conscious awareness to appreciate it can be as refreshing as lemonade on a hot afternoon. Or it can be as startling as cold water being thown in our face. How many of us go through our days parched and empty, thirsting after happiness, when we're really standing knee deep in the river of abundance?

Then I peeked at tomorrows entry, which made me think when I was sitting on the couch just relaxing and looking outside earlier today.

How happy are you right now?

Do you even know? Most women know what makes their parents, partners or children happy. But when it comes to an awareness about the little, specific things in life that bring a smile to our faces and contentment to our own hearts, we often come up short....

blah blah blah...

then this:

What is missing from many of our days is a true sense that we are enjoying the lives we are living. It is difficult to experience moments of happiness if we are not aware of what it is we genuinely love. We must learn to savor small, authenitc moments that bring us contentment. Take the time to slowly arrange a bouquet of flowers in order to appreciate their colors, fragrance and beauty. Sip a cup of tea on the front stoop in the sunshine. Pause for five minutes to pet a purring cat. Simple pleasures waiting to be enjoyed. Simple pleasures often overlooked.

Let us grasp a new idea this year. Let us grasp the awareness of what it is that makes us truly happy. Let us consider our personal preferences and learn how to recoggnize, then embrace, moments of happiness that are uniquely our own.

I know that this is an epic long blog entry for me, and thanks if you have read it all! LOL! I love this book. It is kind of like an owners manual for life. It reminds you of things when you start to get busy and caught up in other things and whooshes me right back to a level where I know that I am OK. I normally don't get all this 'woo woo heavy' on my blog, but in everything I have been doing today I keep thinking about it.

So the small everyday moments that make me happy include: getting an email from a friend or family member, that first moment after school when I pick up my kids and everybody is happy to be going home, watching my cat lay in a patch of sunshine coming through the window, (Laura knows the spot since she and the cat had to fight out who got to sit there!) snuggling with my kids on the couch on cold days like today, completing a layout that I LOVE, and that first sip of a coke in the morning! I know there are more, but those are the first that come to mind.

I'm scrapping tonight. So I'll post something later!

head vs. heart

I am not allowed to go to Petsmart ever again.

Last night after dinner we went to Petsmart to get some food for the cats. First of all, Megan and I head over to the horse stuff. I miss having a horse sometimes, and just the feel of picking up a bridle or running my hand over a saddle just FEELS GOOD.

Then over to look at the kitties. (You know, because it really isn't a store, to the kids it is an indoor zoo where you have to go look at all the animals, fish, birds.....) OK, so I KNOW I don't need anymore cats. Remember me? The one who used to hate cats? Well there was a big yellow tabby named Benjamin. He looked like Morris from the old commercials. He was cool. I had to be strong. No more cats.

Then a little yellow lab puppy that was supposed to be in the training class comes running up to me with total cuteness. Mike and I have said that when our current crabby dog is gone, we will get a lab. Not that we are hoping for anything to happen to missy, we are just planning you know.

I get over the giddy little puppy and Mike finds me. He tells me about this woman who was getting rid of a 3 month old black lab puppy. Oh noooo. Please don't tell me that. Mike and I kind of looked at each other, kind of like a staring contest to see which one was going to give in or be the sensible one. I wanted to give. I was this close to giving. A lab puppy??? CUTENESS!

Then I realized how little time I have as it is. A dog let alone a puppy takes so much time right now. I finally had to be the hardass and say we didn't need a dog. Especially if Mike is going to be gone for lengths of time.

So, I am never going there again. There is way too much temptation.

small rant.

Small rant. I swear, 2Peas seems like a bunch of old women sitting around trying to think about things to gripe about. Grrr.

Except Michelle and her happy post about Cathy Z'z blog being back! (Which I am totally giddy about too!)

forever friends.

Wow, that dark photo really shows how much lint is on my scanner!

This is quite possibly the easiest layout ever, heck it's almost criminal! All it is, is a photo and a sheet of 7 Gypsies paper. I really liked how the words fell on the paper along with the photo, so that I didn't want to add anything else to take away from it. I like to pretend I spent hours in Word layering all of those letters. ;)

This is just one of my favorite pictures from the day after Christmas when we were outside playing with new toys.

New Years Day!

I could probably copy and paste my entry from last year, since that is exactly how last night went. All that waiting up until midnight, only to be dissapointed by the total lackluster welcome of the new year by our neighborhood. Let's face it, we are a typical suburban neighborhood with lots of little kids. There are some parties, but for the most part I think people just fall asleep and wake up in the new year.

The kids stayed up and we stood outside in the cold. Finally we yelled happy new year and went back in. Mike and I were SO tired, but kept trying to stay up since the kids were excited. About 10 minutes before midnight he said, "I should have thought about this two hours ago...change all the clocks back two hours so we could have gone to bed at 10:00." Next year I am going to remember that. We could even turn on the New York station on the satellite to prove to them that it was officially a new year. Heehee!

*****

Today we took the kids out to lunch and then to Freestone park. We brought their new scooters with them. They were so funny. Instead of staying on the sidewalk, they found these huge dead grassy hills that they would ride the scooters down. They had a great time. The best is that they wore themselves out running back up the hill before going down again! Hopefully that means tonight an earlier bedtime for them. They need to start getting back into a schedule anyway since school will start again in another week.

Megan got a pair of Heelys yesterday. They are the shoes that have the skate wheel in them. She has been practicing so hard to get the right stance to actually skate on them. It must be a lot harder than it looks. I secretly wish that I had a pair. Could you imagine being able to push a cart around Target with a pair of those? Not that I want to cut my shopping time in half, but think of the square footage I could cover with those! Wheeeeee! I could knock down any other woman headed towards a clearance endcap like one of those roller derby girls.

Happy new year! I am actually so happy that 2007 is here. Not that 2006 was bad, I'm just happy to get a fresh start. To know that there aren't any major holidays or birthdays in our family for several months. I don't even have any resolutions to speak of. I know what I need to do, but if I write them down or even label them as resolutions, I'm bound to give up on them. I have to admit that I plan on doing the 'photo a day' thing, since, well, I pretty much do anyway. No big jump for me there, but I'll try my best to post them throughout this year. Um, starting tomorrow! Haha!

This should be a very good year! Best wishes!!!!