Crappy weekend for teeth...But not so bad for scrapping.

Yeah, teeth - that's right. Actually tooth the be exact - the very front one. Here I am sitting here munching away with my chips & Twizzlers & I feel something stuck to my tooth. I can't rub it off with my tongue so I go to the bathroom to inspect. Low and behold I've chipped my front tooth. So not cool. So totally ruining my weekend - no more smiles, no more going anywhere in public. And I've actually did that. Until tomorrow when I have to go to work, get an appointment & then show everyone when I explain the appt. So so not cool. I wore braces way too long to screw up my teeth now. Urrrgghhhh! So now I have vowed not to eat Twizzlers for a very long time (if ever again)!

Since I did keep myself pretty isolated, I dug out all my scrap stuff & started inking up my fingers. :)






Now I just need to clean up my huge mess. Figure out lunches/clothes for tomorrow. Get Dylan to finally fall asleep. Finish typing the letter to the apartment people. Figure out bank stuff. Put the clothes in the dryer. And then maybe - go to bed.

Fun little weekend...

This has been a pretty nice weekend. Especially nice since we had no school/work Friday & Monday. Woo hoo! And it's not because of the weather - that's even better! Friday me & the went to Springfield to get their pictures taken at Picture People. They turned out really cute so I was happy we went.





Then I did Michelle's mini-album class yesterday & got some scrapbook pages done. Michelle is one talented girl and is the most awesome teacher. Thanks Michelle!




And my mini-album:

And I was tagged by Michele so here it goes:

Here are the rules:
1) You have to post the rules before you give your answers.
2) You must list one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. (If you don't have a middle name, use your maiden name).
3) After you are tagged, you need to update your blog with your middle name and your answers.
4)At the end of your blog post, you need to tag one person for each letter of your middle name. (Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they've been tagged and that they need to read your blog for details.)

And mine should be pretty easy since I only have 3 letters in my middle name. :)
A - Antique lover
N - Never get enough sleep - maybe that's why I'm grouchy :)
N - Need hugs & kisses from kids everyday

I'll tag Em, Mary, & Suzy!

A whole lot of ice....

Is what we got Monday & Tuesday. Like probably around an inch total accumulation. Nasty, scary, slippery stuff. Luckily we cozied it up at the house & didn't even attempt to get out until late Tuesday. Today we started the thaw. The sun came out for a while & melted away a lot - enough to get the kids back in school for one more day (which happens to be party day) before their February break.

Here's just a couple fun shots here at the house:


Bad thing about being cooped up though - is now we have 2 sick. Jerry found out today he has pneumonia (along with his laryngitis) & Kalli has bronchitis. Me & Dylan are threatening to take off to some where warm so we don't get any of the nasty sick stuff.

And a little bit of scrapbooking:

WoOo HOoo!

The Giants won the Super Bowl! Okay so that's not too exciting for me but it definitely put Jerry in a good mood so YEAH! for the Giants!

Yesterday was another fun snow day. The kids played outside and worked on snow men. These were a couple pics from the day that put a smile on my face.



And here's what I've been up to today. Between just a relaxing day & keeping busy during the Super Bowl, I got a few layouts done. I just wish every weekend was this productive.

Snow Day!!!

Yippee! We actually had a honest, to goodness SNOW DAY! Not a whole lot of snow but enough to go sledding! And for it being the kids' first time, they were not scared at all. We loaded up this morning & headed to Aurora to hit the big hill at White Park. Here's some fun shots from our sledding:





And for some odd ball reason, I actually have a little scrapping mojo right now & have gotten some pages done. :) Always fun to do that & like them.

I'm such a slacker!

I have totally been slacking on my blogging. I guess I just haven't had anything really exciting to write about. And - sometimes that is a good thing!

I'm scoping out the weather tonight because tomorrow we're supposed to be getting 5-10 inches of snow. YUCK!



I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that if it does come, we don't lose power! Definitely not my ideal weather but I think I'm convinced to try making snow ice cream with the kids. Amy was talking about it today & how she could not believe I'd never had it. I guess we'll take a try at this if we get any snow. It can't be all bad.

And here's a few things I've created here lately. Nothing too impressive but I have been using up some scraps!

Update....

Between my stupid computer & the retards at Geek Squad, I am just about to throw this computer AWAY!

I did though, amidst all my computer hatred, decide to go get an external hard drive for our computer. And got an awesome deal on it! Now at least I feel a little better about the computer crashing knowing that all my pictures are saved. That is definitely a huge relief!

Anyways, I was finally in the mood to get on blogger & update and here goes the computer acting like a turd again. So, needless to say this post won't have any cute Christmas photos, no cute photos from Kalli's b-day, no photos at all. And that ticks me off. :(

Despite my grumpy attitude right now (which happens to be a compilation of this cruddy computer, my hatred toward the worthless Geek Squad, & this yucky head cold), we really did have a great Christmas. Kalli was more than happy to get her own cell phone. Yes, I know she's only 9 years old but believe me - she is on limited phone time. It just makes her feel awesome to say "I have my own phone". I don't think anything else topped that present for her. Dylan's thrill was with his Lego airport. He seriously had that 650+ piece set put together in a matter of an hour. They also got the Wii this year from Grandpee & Marsha & boy do they love that! Which I must admit Jerry and I are getting quite a kick out of it too! Definitely the coolest video game system ever. Christmas at mother's was fun too. I got lots of cute red stuff for my kitchen which was cool since I never seem to find red stuff. Lots of goodies, lots of family time, and a little bit of a break.

The day before Kalli's b-day her bball team was in a tournament & actually won first place. YEAH! She's getting her trophy tonight so if I ever can get the computer to work, I'll have to post pics of her with it. Last Sunday, her birthday, we went skating. Lots of fun but very, very exhausting.

And then we had nasty weather on Monday - like freaky tornado weather. Yes, very odd for January. We spent most of that evening hunkered down at my work in the basement just because I don't think these apartments are all too safe. Luckily for us, nothing was damaged real close to us (like what usually happens when we have tornados). Monett got hit & Republic got hit so it pretty much hit, picked up over us, & then came back down on Republic. I think I've even heard there were like 6 total tornados on Monday night/Tuesday morning. We were just very lucky not to have any hit us.

And that's a small update (sadly with no pictures) of what's been happening in my world. And hopefully sooner than later, I'll be back with lots & lots of pictures.

So what now?!?!?

Last week we had quite the exciting week. Jerry got the shingles. Not cool. Not fun. And so not the person that needed to get them. He's not the best when he's sick anyways, so with this just imagine how super cranky he was.

The best news of the week though was when I got the camcorder to work. It hadn't worked since the house fire and I wasn't too sure it would ever work but I plugged it in, charged it & it WORKED! And all the tapes so far seem fine. Guess all of them needed some major drying time to work! It means so much to me to be able to look back at those videos and see my babies & hear my babies voices. So so very grateful that I still have these. Now I need to figure out how I am going to transfer them over to DVD.

Well then we have yesterday. Yesterday just topped it right off. Jerry is NOT having any good luck. I'm beginning to believe he has nothing but bad luck now. He was told that he "was no longer needed" at his job. His job that has really been a good thing for him. And the sad thing was it seems to be for no apparent reason. Just Wednesday he received his evaluation & was rated top on everything...and now this. I really can't understand the reasoning behind this man's thinking on how he could justify firing someone 11 days before Christmas. It's one thing to fire someone after just giving them a great evaluation & it's another thing to do that & do it right before Christmas. I'm so sad & stressed & wishing this was a bad dream. But then I keep telling myself that things happen for a reason. Hopefully this works out for Jerry that this quick release gets him starting full time with Frito Lay. He's been working with them for 6 months now part-time and was wanting to work himself into a full-time position. Maybe this is why this is happening. Maybe things will hurry up & be better. Maybe this will make everything better in the long run. Or at least we can hope.

So as I am going to stray away from thinking about all that again, I canNOT believe Christmas is so close. I really don't even know if I'm going to get all the presents taken care of before Christmas. I'm just hoping at least one of the family get togethers happens AFTER Christmas! I know that sounds bad but I really dread facing the cold weather, crowds, and long lines. Next, yeah next year, I'm going to start early. Like January early so maybe by next December I'll be totally set on presents. That's my plan.

I've wanted to do some scrappy things for gifts this year but as it seems, I swear the month of December the time does some sort of warp time speed thing. Like I wake up at 6:00 and before I get a chance to look at the clock again, it's 12:00 pm. Then it's all just a blur - getting home, cleaning up, fixing dinner, helping kids get homework together, getting them rounded into bed and then I end up in bed by 11:30 and wonder what the heck I did all day. But I did finally get something done today. I sat down and finished mother's window. She made comment about how much she liked my other one, so I thought she may like one for herself. Hopefully she likes it.


So now I've got to figure out how to get Dylan to bed, get this huge mess cleaned up, and get my videos onto the computer (if anyone knows how to do this - please do tell, I would be ever so grateful!)!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas....

Just a few fun lights around the house. Now on to work on the rest of my to-do list.

A little creativity going on...

Don't quite know why I've actually been productive this weekend. Maybe because I've waited all week to sit down and scrap (since I was all out of glue). Maybe because this whole digital thing has me thinking differently. Who knows. But it's nice to crank out so much in one day. :)

Here's my first digi attempt (from earlier this week). I still need to practice with it though because I'm not super thrilled with it.



And since I'm pretty proud of my two smart kiddos & how quick they picked up digital scrapbooking. :)

Here's Dylan's:

Here's Kalli's:


And here's everything I got done tonight. Some are better than others but they are done. All 6 of them!!

I'm the biggest geek ....

EVER. Yeah seriously, I am. I'll admit it. I guess I'm just easily amused & excited over the smallest, miniscule little dorky things. Dorky computer things to be exact. Yeah, I got so excited when I figured out that I could run letters/labels/practically anything from the school's SIS system. Then came the Parent Portal thing. Oh yeah - that's cool. Totally cool that parents can look up info on their own kids (even though they probably should already know anyways but that's beside the point). But then today, well today I found another totally dorky thing that I am fascinated with - it's a little program called Gimp. I love playing around with photos and for the longest time I've wanted to buy myself Photoshop. Well that's not ever gotten around to happening so I decided to check at work & see if we had any licenses & if they were available for home use. Turns out - nope, only school license. Bummer! That is until I was directed to this Gimp program. Although I've never worked with Photoshop before, I kind of get the jist of how it's created through there (thanks Michelle!). Well this FREE program seems to be doing some of the very same things that you can do with Photoshop. How cool is that? Free plus seems to be very similar! I am so stoaked. I have ideas running through my head for Christmas cards & even attempting digital (eek! can't believe I'm saying that). Anyways, that's my nerd spill for right now. Fun fun stuff! (Did you see my banner? Totally created with that awesome freebie program!)

And just since I don't like posting without adding pictures, here's a few of my latest creations: