Here I am...

so you can go here- DT MEMBER
sorry I don't know how to link it with a name....wait I did it! Yeah!

Okay so the picture is not that great but then I had to ask myself if I would like any photo of me. I hope my bio doesn't sound too corny...I could have gone on and on about the women thing. I really really do love that aspect about scrapbooking. You guys have given me so much. Thank you for all of your kind words.

my son getting ready for his band competition. isn't he cute all dressed up.

what a whirlwind weekend! I am finding that sometimes I am having a "doh" moment. Yesterday was a friend of a friend's bridal/bachelorette party. I volunteered my Yukon so everyone could fit in the same vehicle and we had a lady, pregnant, who was going to be doing the driving. The festivities were all starting at 5. Come one o'clock I was having some chest pain but it went away so okay. Come three more chest pain. Then while dropping my daughter off at a slumber party I was doubled over with chest pain. I call my nurse (Tricia) and she says get to the hospital it's probably heartburn but you have to be safe. Okay I listen. I rarely ever get heartburn. I did when I was pregnant but aside from one other instance that's it. I've always considered myself lucky. I can eat all the acidy food I want and no problems.

So here I am in the ER. They take me back I explain the squeezing feeling I'm feeling behind my chest bone. They take me back, my blood pressure is 104/64 or something. It's lower than it was last year-thanks to the exercise. So I'm getting hooked up to an EKG, then sent down for a chest x-ray-praying the years I spent smoking is not coming back to bite me. Then sitting and sitting and sitting. At least I had my own room. The doc comes in...umm yeah you were having heartburn. Heartburn I say? We did all this and I have heartburn. So he gives me something called a GI Cocktail. It's the nastiest drink in the world..mylanta, lidocaine, and something else but man is it gross but I instantly felt better!

I call my friends..I'm coming...they are eating penis cakes, playing penis games, drinking jell-o(my favorite) and I'm in the ER with heartburn. Ah well I got there and had a blast. Didn't go to bed until 430!!! Back up at 9 to start the day. They even decked my truck out in black and pink-fun times. I will post a photo of the eight of us when I get one! I also have to add that I fit into my favorite size 8 jeans and I was told, "I can totally tell you've lost weight, you look completely different from when Shane left." Love it. Now back to Sunday chores and later a little putt-putt! 

yummm

today was my second appointment at Dream Dinners! I had a blast and it was packed in there today. Love it. I had to take a photo of this lovely dish. It's Raspberry Cream Cheese Stuffed French Toast. I have always made a version of this at home but this is a little different. They had samples for us to try and it is delicious! I will be making this as one of my recipe pages for the swap (We have ten so far to swap with). Yummy.

No big plans this weekend. My son has his saxophone competition, individual and medley, we have our end of season bowling banquet. My son should be getting a few 17o patches. We have a date to see RV with Robyn Williams. Can't wait. I love his humor.

They started on my deck and will have it done by Wednesday. Margaritas mama cita! I have a scrapbook page in mind with Devin's softball pictures following the should/could format. Can't wait to do it. Will share when done. Have a great weekend everyone!

edited to add: oh my gosh I'm so excited!!!! A Million Memories (online scrapbooking store) was having a contest for 12 new design team members. It was in the email I received the other day and that day was the last day to enter....so a half hour before submissions were due I sent it in...a bio about myself and 15 pages......so.....I was chosen!!!!!!!! I'm so excited. I am doing a happy, happy, happy, happy dance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Still can't believe it and feel a little unworthy...so happy.

Dev getting ready to bat!
Dev hitting a line drive.
Dev safe on first.


So question for all you softball ladies out there. What is the deal with this and do major league baseball players play the same way..okay...so the first time Dev was up at bat she had first strike, second strike, and on the third strike that she swung at the catcher fumbled the ball and Dev ran to first and made it? So if your not out on the third swing, well just what is the rule? I thought the game was pretty cut and dry. On that run Dev stole second and third and then someone hit her home. If she hadn't run on that third strike it would have also been third out so it completely changed the game. 

Dev and the catcher, Casey, she's on the local HS team and she's super good. She's super sweet and her mom is on the school board of education and is trying to get me to teach scrapbooking at various schools. Wants me to teach scrapbooking during home ec using measurements, depth perception, use of space, borders, perimeters.....that is way out of my league. I haven't given her an answer.

i did it!

i managed to change my grill's gas(propane-britt=)) can today. It only took a couple of hours. Well not even one but it felt like longer. I did lots of things that are considered manly in my home today. The problem with my gas grill is that the connection to the propane tank is a quick disconnect. The name of it is deceiving. I quickly disconnected, took my tank to Lowe's, got a new one, came home and realized I had left the quick-disconnect on my old tank. I had to go back to Lowes, figure out which tank was mine, have a man pliar off my disconnect, come home, and use pliars to put it on. I do have ignition on my grill-finally! I also purchased grass killer, hate to do it, for the area over where my deck will be, fire ant killer, which I have already spread in the lawn, shrub feeder,spread that too, and grass food.

Dev has a softball game tonight. All of the ones in the past couple weeks have been cancelled. I'm excited for her. She's been making great plays at practice lately. I'm tossing around a trip to Virginia...Brittany's got me jealous hanging out with my old friends...plus I'd love to see her...and I need a place to stay....lol and of course I could go see Tricia and her new son-he hasn't arrived yet but soon! 

received my pictures of the bluebonnets so i had to start scrappin' them. Well, I did one page today. It was sheet washing day and there is nothing better than crawling in bed at night on nice crisp, clean sheets!

so we are a go for the recipe swap! i will wait to see if anyone else bites but by friday we will have our list of people! right now it's at five. i think we should start at one a month and if we want to change it as we go-it's okay!

edited to add: we now have eight for the recipe swap! this is going to be fun!

so do you wanna?

one of the things i participated in at CKU-A was a recipe swap. I was designated soup so I made 15 6x6 recipe pages to swap. I gave fifteen and I got back 15 different ones with my own. I now have an album of people's favorite recipes. You don't have to have a photo of your recipe. You don't have to go crazy on embellishments. We can do more than one if we want to....there might be like five who sign up so if we did two recipes each that would be ten different recipes we get in return and I know most will be doing some CKUs and there will always be a recipe swap to add to it. Or we could start with a category like appetizers and every two months do two appetizer pages and at the end of the year we'll have a neat album of recipes. So you wanna? Comment on how you would like to do it if you are interested. Do you want to start with a certain category and do it every two months. Do you want to just make your favorite and that's it? Do you want to have the first one due the end of May? Everyone can mail them to me and I will mail them out to everyone and then maybe the next month someone else can take that responsibility. The photo is some of the recipes I got from my swap. If you don't like to cook it's a good idea for a gift come next Christmas! So do you wanna? 

happy monday

Today was pretty uneventful. Woke up early and fixed the kids waffles before school....out of milk! They were homemade waffles and not frozen so that makes me feel a little better! In doing this and feeding the neighbor's kid I managed to cause them to miss the bus. Our front door is the bus stop so I'm not sure how this happened.

They started fixing my fence today..finally!

My daughter's softball game was cancelled for tonigt so for the first time in months we are heading to monday bowling! We have decided that instead of a summer league (where the kids are the only ones bowling) we are doing the family league on Sundays instead, so I'll be bowling! A friend of mine and her children are joining in on the fun so that's awesome!

I am taking a class on-line specifically for my camera type. I'm psyched about it. It's for the Canon Rebel Digital XP. They email you each week with directions, an assignment, and I email instructor some photos corresponding to the week's course and the instructor critiques. I always keep my camera on manual settings but this is going to show me how to have more fun and it's only four weeks so I'm stoked.

Fingers crossed for my friend Britt-airlines lost her luggage with scrapbook stuff and digital camera inside! I'd be so mad.

last layout today. if you can't read the journaling it talks about how quickly he's changed this year. the black and white was taken in august and the color in february...i see a man trying to take face here. sad.


oh and desk is still clean-it feels so nice. organized space, organized albums. It has really helped!

sunday's pages.

after cleaning my desk i had to make a couple layouts. the first is of shane and i. we took these pics before he left for iraq. he's naked. i had on a pair of pj pants but i am topless-tmi?

the writing on the page is a transparency. it's one of my favorite lines and i believe it to be true.
this is of tricia and i and if you didn't know us you might think it's a lesbian page...we're just really close. i love it. 

clean, my desk is

i managed to do it. i organized my desk better and it only took a few hours...much shorter than the struggle i thought it would be.

the sad thing is, next page that gets created it will be messy again....at least i'll have this photo of what it once was.

happy sunday.

sitting at home today. jamming to some jack johnson cds'. reminds me of being in hawaii and going to the hale koa every friday drinking lava flows and listening to the music.

a layout of my friend brittany. i love this picture of her and her kids.
aquarium photos.
more aquarium photos.

tonight it's just me and my son. i see some take out in our future. my daughter is at a pool party. tomorrow is a double-header softball game and bowling party for end of season. busy busy. this weekend they are putting a deck on my house. i'm excited! things i love to do outside: read, eat, shower(always wanted an outdoor shower),just chill, have a drink with my man...gosh can't wait till he comes home!

enjoy the weekend-i will be trying to get some scrapbooking done! 

i scrap

anyone else? do you scrap? love the book so far. i'm realizing that i need to scrap more photos of who is important in my life other than my family.

and after last night i'm taking a picture of the damage to my fence, the lawnmower i can't start, the weedeater i can't hold long enough, and my tire, which went flat day before Chicago, and will be scrapbooking the things i cannot do while Shane is gone. It's so frustrating and while normally feeling strong when that happens I realize i'm still...
just a girl.
 

major hail storm!!!

Craziness in Killeen...who knew? We had a major hail storm tonight! We didn't lose electricity but weather was out of control! It must be going around. First Nicole, then Shane had a hail storm in Iraq, and now us! It's like the flu.

This is what my entire yard was covered in. The wind was blowing it right up to my front door. At one point I thought we were getting a tornado because I could barely force the front door shut! I've never been in such extreme weather before. 

Layout from today. Jenni Bowlin kit. Love it.
 

finally finished

I started these albums a year ago. They are of our trip to Panama City Beach and New Orleans from last July. I actually had Devin's pages(red album) done this time last year and Drake's I did last Saturday night. I had forgotten to bring my photos to my friend's house so I still wasn't finished. Today that was my agenda. Get it done! They can keep these in their rooms. Every year that we go on vacation I want to make them their own album.

See the cover of the album...new Rhonna Farrer acrylic stamps. I love them. I'm currently working on a page where I'm using them but I'm not done enough to post. I think they are soo cool.

Some new and exciting info you might not have wanted to know:
What causes an ice cream headache?
One theory places the source for the brain freeze in the sinuses, where the pain may be caused by the rapid cooling of air in the frontal sinuses. This triggers local pain receptors. Another theory postulates that the constriction of blood vessels in the roof and rear of the mouth causes pain receptors to overload and refer the pain to your head. There is a nerve center there, in the back of your mouth, called the sphenopalatine ganglion, and this is the most likely source of the ice cream headache.

Is it bad to crack your knuckles?
Cracking your knuckles is not as bad as people think. It does not cause arthritis. Cronic knuckle cracking may cause other types of damage such as: stretching of surrounding ligaments and a decrease of grip strength, but not arthritis. The pop sound is produced in the joint when bubbles burst in the synovial fluid surrounding the joint.

Why are yawns contagious?
People are unconsciously imitating others when they yawn. Humans are not the only species that yawn. Yawning is seen in many animals, including cats, fish, and birds, although we don't know what a yawning fish looks like.

**The above questions thanks to Why Do Men Have Nipples? by Leyner and Goldberg 

changing albums...well copied the idea

I have switched systems. I'd been wanting to do it since reading Stacy Julian's The Big Picture. I love it. I feel like a weight has been lifted...kind of like how I feel after wearing a bra all day only to release them at night and oh the relief! One album is all about us. It has a section for Shane, I, and each of the kids and one for the dog. Then there is a holidays album. A places we go album. A things we do album a birthday album and I still have one binder that I haven't filled yet! I'm completely content.

Went to Target today because my son wanted a new book to read after his testing periods are over with tomorrow. They are doing the TASK tests and today he had three hours of sitting after he was done. Who am I to say no you can't get a book. We went looking and I found a book called Why Do Men Have Nipples? One or both of the authors are doctors so I picked it up and for a cheap price I can have answered all the things I've been curious about for years. Here's some below...and do I have to refernce them...you know which book I'm talking about. Also, I have it on good authority that Tricia will be starting her blog tomorrow. I helped her upload pictures to www.scrapbookpictures.com today and feel confident she will be posting tomorrow....it's entirely possible she lets us down but here's to the hope of it all! Some examples below:

What causes rumbling in your stomach ?
boborygmi-gas being moved through the intestines.
A normal part of digestion. Generated from muscular activity in the stomach and small intestine as the food and gas and fluids are mixed together and pushed through the intestine...louder when the stomach and intestine is empty.

Why does poo float?
It is gas that makes poo float. Increased levels of air and gas make it less dense and threfore cause it to float.

Where does gas go when you can't fart?
If it doesn't go out it simply goes away.

Why can you ignite a fart?
an avg. fart is composed of 59 % nitrogen, 21% hydrogen, 9%carbon dioxide, 7%methane, 4%oxygen. Less than 1 percent of it's makeup is what makes a fart stink.
Temp. of a fart at time of creation is 98.6 F
Farts have been clocked at a speed of ten feet per second.
A person produces about half a liter of farts per day.
Women fart as much as men.
The gas that makes your farts stink is the hydrogen sulfide gas. This gas contains sulfur.
Most people pass gas 14 times per day.
Farts can be ignited. This is due to the hydrogen and the methane. The proportions depend largely on the bacteria that live in the human colon that digest, or ferment food that has not been absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract before reaching the colon.

So is this completely boring to you or are you as fascinated by it all as much as I am? If I find some I find interesting or think others would like to know I'll throw it out there for you! As you can see I sound a little obsessed with gas...my husband is the king of it so yes I'm really reading to find out if it can be stopped. After reading it just goes away there is no more excuses for him like,"it's not healthy to hold it or I can't just keep it in there." Yes he can! Liberated in more ways than one today...good things. 

way to start off the week!

Headed to Dallas this morning to do a little lunch with my friend Britt and hit some scrapbook stores. As usual she had our itinerary all mapped out and we got lost only once. I think that was my fault for not knowing which way north was. We ate at Le Madelines and it was awesome-again!
Excuse how sloppy I look. What is up with me? Tired? Drank too much Saturday night? Sunburn dragging me down? Drove two plus hours? Our boobs are touching in this photo...glad something is touching my boob-been a while. This was taken at the Scrap Bucket. Everything is in a nice shiney bucket.
For you northerners: It was over 100 degrees here today. It's only the middle of April! I hope this is no indication of what summer will be like. 

love this one too.
here's the photo of Chico. Decided to post it afterall. Do you see a little mean, ugly Chihuahua? How do you spell Chihuhua anyhow? 

Stillhouse

Went out to Stillhouse Lake today. The dog loves it out there and so do the kids. It's real nice and they have a shallow area for the kids to play in. If you don't have a boat you wish you did. I was wishing....I can wait for Shane to get home.
Jesse stands watch over the kids swimming. She has always done this and most of the time she's out in the water swimming circles around you wanting you to swim closer to shore. All the kids at the lake today wore her out. I'm so lucky to have such a good dog.
I can't wait to do a layout with this photo. I also took one of the clouds. The cloud formation looked like a dog we used to own named Chico. He was a little chihuhua that had three mangly teeth and he wouldn't shut up. I took a photo of it but upon looking at it I can't tell that it is him. Now to tender my fried back. I forgot to ask the kids to put some sun block on it!