I'll take random thoughts for 500, Alex...

You can click on any of these images to see a larger version and the credits:





I'm going to start this and future posts with a layout or two. Mainly because it's more fun to look at something nice rather than just read my mundane blog. I used to post every layout that I did, but that would require me blogging more often. I just can't make those kinds of promises... LOL. I should probably blog more than once a week. Heck, once a week is probably good for how often I've been blogging lately... LOL. For now, though, I'm gonna shoot for once a week and hope to do more.

Now... what to blog about tonight. Caleb just got back from a month long deployment to JRTC. Today was his birthday, so we celebrated by doing absolutely nothing except hanging out around the house and playing with the girls. He gave Taylor the choice as to what kind of cake to make, so she chose a blue cake with blue icing and blueberries in it. Can you guess her favorite color?

Hannah just got back from Florida yesterday, so we are finally a whole family again. She spends most of the summer with her dad, for those of you who don't know. It's hard to be without her for that long, but I'm learning to adjust.. There's always the phone and email, right? We played scrabble tonight. She loves that game, although she hates it that I don't let her win. Maybe that's wrong, but I want her to know that life isn't always perfect, and you don't always get to win. Do I always do my best when I play against her... probably not... but I'm not going to just flat out play horrible just so she can win. Anyhoo... it's always fun when Caleb plays. We get words on the board like "unwarned" and "zens." He's the master at trying to make up words that sound like they might be words.

Why do adults have to ruin all the fun in things for children? My two middle girls are Cars fanatics. I swear we watch that movie at least once a day. Every day. We have the soundtrack, and Taylor can tell you exactly what part of the movie is going on during each musical score. I used to pride myself that my children weren't big TV watchers. Now they just watch the same movie over and over and over. Anyhoo... I digress. My point in all this is that because they ADORE that movie, we have started getting them the little die cast characters from the movies. They are basically glorified Matchbox cars. But our girls LOVE them. So we start looking around online to find the ones that we don't ever seem to find at WalMart or Target. And guess what??? They are "collectibles." That means adults are ruining it for kids, and unless you want to shell out upwards of $20 per car, your kids aren't gonna have some of the fun ones. How sad. The only reason we want them is so the girls can roll them around on the floor and crash them into each other and squeal with delight. We're not gonna keep them in their original packaging and resell them later on for a higher price. I just think that's completely lame. Toys are for kids to PLAY with. They are not for adults to collect. If you are a collector of toys, I'm sorry to offend you, but seriously... are you kidding me? I'll stop ranting for now. I'm just sad that I have had to draw the line and tell Caleb, "No... we are NOT going to spend $35 for Guido and Luigi and the tractor." Even though I know my girls would love them.

I'm going to bed now. I'm sure the baby will wake up as soon as I fall asleep. She has impeccable timing like that. =)

A big fat YAY!!!

Check this out!!! I just found out on Friday that one of my all-time favorite designers (not to mention scrappers...) is letting me guest on her CT for a few months!

Sharon (ksharonk) creates amazing designs and layouts, as does her creative team, and I'm so thrilled to have a chance to work with them!

It's 8:00 on Sunday night and I am so exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open! I just put everyone to bed earlier than usual because I NEED SLEEP! So I'm going to post a few layouts I've done recently, and then it's bed time for this tired soul...

Here are my latest two layouts for ADSR. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can click on the "Scrappin Military Mommies" blinkie over in the sidebar and read all about it. (Click on the images for credits) For Challenge #3:

And for Challenge #4:

And here are a couple more that I've done in the last week or so:

OK... off to bed!

New stuff...

Lots of new stuff going on... I'll try to post it all in a few paragraphs, as I'm tired and need some sleep. Imagine that!

Gabrielle is smiling! Actually she's been smiling for about 10 days now, but I haven't blogged lately so it's news to the two people who actually read this blog... LOL. Oh the joy it brings to a mommy's heart when the little one who has been keeping her awake all night, every night, finally smiles. I have *almost* forgotten the nearly sleepless nights I've had for the last seven weeks. I haven't actually caught a photo of it yet, but I'll be sure to post one when I do. I also need to put up some photos of Caleb's family. They were here visiting for the last 10 days or so. I love them dearly. It was so great having them here.

On to scrapping related stuff... I'm on Kaye Winiecki's Creative Team (Blinkie's in the right sidebar. Click on it to get to her store at Pickleberry Pop.) LOVE her stuff. I'm super excited for the awesome opportunity to use her designs!

More exciting scrapping news... This layout

won the random entry drawing in last week's Digi-Dare. Doesn't seem QUITE as glamorous as getting my layout picked... but hey, I won't complain. I had fun doing it, and I won an INCREDIBLE prize. Wanna know what I won? Four gift certificates for $10 each. To four different AWESOME designers' stores. Amy Martin at The Lilypad, Karah Fredricks at Blue Flombingo, and Faith True and Nicole Pols (Windgefluester Designs) at The Digi Shoppe. To say I'm thrilled is an understatement! I can't wait to go shopping!

My online scrapping friend, Brynn, and I are partners in the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race 2. It starts on Monday, and I'm excited to get started. We have a team blog. You can click on the blinkie in the sidebar to see it. I'm sure we'll be posting our layout to it when we get started. I'm gonna have to be a better blogger. I won't be able to wait two weeks between posts... LOL.

OK. I'm tired and should really take advantage of my chance to sleep. This is the stretch of night when Gabby usually sleeps more than 2 hours, and here I am blogging. I have problems, I tell you! =)

Niters!

Another blog challenge...

This post is for a blog challenge posted on Nancy Comelab's blog. "Instead of a LO, let’s go out on a limb a bit and look through our pictures and find, you know…the ones that we just took because we wanted to try and capture on film some special little moment to remind us…and if you can, here’s the catch: Try to find one without any people in it…or at least for the subject." Considering that 99.9% of my photos are of my family, that ruled out a lot. But this photo, I think, is one of my all-time favorites. It was taken in Maui on our second-to-last day of our vacation in Hawaii. My sister, my brother and I had flown there with our respective families to do something that most people might consider not to be such a happy thing. We took our parent's ashes there. We scattered them out of a helicopter above the Waimea Canyon on the island of Kauai. That was where my parents wanted to be... together... because it was their favorite place on Earth. So anyway, I could probably post a picture of the little waterfall over which we were hovering when their ashes were scattered, but I won't. I chose this photo because this helps me remember the happiness of all the times we had for the two weeks following the day we scattered their ashes... laughing and reminiscing about growing up together and memories of our parents. Anyhoo... long story short... I love this photo and it makes me totally happy.

Frame by Nancy Comelab

And here's a layout I did with it a few weeks ago.

Click here for credits.

That's all for now... gonna go play with my little girlies!

Sometimes life takes over...

and you just don't have the time or the energy to blog... KWIM? I can't believe it's been two months since I last blogged! Not really. I can totally believe that. Quite a bit has happened since then. I gave birth to yet another little girl, so sleep generally takes precedence over blogging. As does changing diapers and nursing the little one, and playing with and taking care of her older sisters.

I'll try to do better, though. I can't promise that I'll blog everyday, but I'll try to stay a little more current.

Anyhoo... going to bed now. I'll try to post pictures of our newest addition tomorrow!

A few layouts and some exciting news...

Click here for credits.

Click here and here for credits and a larger view.

The top one might be my new favorite layout. It's so simple, but I keep finding myself drawn to simple... maybe I ought to try that more.

And now for the exciting news... Look over on the right hand side of this little bloggie poo! I am going to be joining 2 more CTs... DigiScrapShak (which is really cool cuz it's a store gig, and I'll get to work with lots of different designers' stuff) and Wendyzine Scraps (she's at Elemental Scraps, but I don't have a blinkie just yet.) So anyway, I'm super duper excited!

OK, going to bed now. It's the only time when my ankles aren't elephant-like. =)

Cankles and other random thoughts...

It's official... I have cankles. I've made it through three other pregnancies and never had them. Lucky #4... brings me big, fat, swollen feet and ankles. Seriously. You can barely see the bone on the outer part of my ankles. And the inner part? Not so much. Can't see that bone really at all. Oh, for those of you who don't know... cankles are basically where your calf meets your foot with no ankle definition whatsoever. I asked the good ole obstetricianologist (that's what Caleb calls him) yesterday what to do. He said to keep my feet up as much as possible. It was right then that I realized I was going to have to call Jeeves, my chauffer, and ask him to pick up my nanny and butler, as well as the maid, gardener, and chef so that I can sit around all day with my feet propped up. I'll get right on that.

On an even more special note, I think I broke my pinkie toe. For those of you who don't know, I sprained my ankle a couple of weeks ago. Now I have a toe that's fat and many different shades of purple and blue because I stubbed it on one of our kitchen chairs. That lovely bruising even extends into my foot. And for some reason, that little teeny tiny pinkie toe is like a MAGNET sending out an irreversible attraction to all three of my children to either step on it or bump it. I can't really wear closed shoes because it hurts too much, and leaving it uncovered... well, yeah... you see how that's working for me with my little girlies... Main point is... I'm a clutz. And it hurts.

There were other random things I was going to blog about, yet now I'm tired after waking up at 4 am with my 18 month old who evidently just didn't feel like sleeping, so I'm gonna take a nap. Maybe if you are lucky I'll be back to finish this blog later... =)

Feel good movie and a layout or three, defining myself and C is for cookie...

Monday's blog challenge was to blog about a feel-good movie. Because I'm so punctual, I'm blogging it on Wednesday. That's how I roll...

I really can't think of one movie in particular that I watch that one could consider a feel good movie. I really like Say Anything, and anything with John Cusack for that matter. I'm also a fan of all those Meg Ryan chick flicks. Maybe Adam Sandler movies, because they never cease to make me laugh. Except Punch Drunk Love. Didn't like that one, although I went into it expecting it to be a typical Adam Sandler movie, which it wasn't. Anyhoo... I digress...

Here's a layout I did yesterday. I cheated and used the same layout for each of my girls. That's why I love digital scrapbooking. I switched out the pics, and voila! Instant layouts for three girls! And because this is my blog and I can do what I want... I'm gonna post all three pics so you can see my three little cuties in all their glory... Here's Hannah-

Click here for credits.

Just a little note about Taylor's... while one of my daughters has no fear, it is NOT Taylor. She's scared of lots of stuff. Including the slip 'n slide. So instead of running and sliding, she pretty much slow crawled her way down. Hence no cool splash action shots. We're working on that, though...

And Lexi's -

And last but not least... blog challenge #20... defining myself by giving you a word that starts with each letter of my first name...

Loving - very. But not to everyone. Just peeps I'm close to. The deserving ones.
Youthful - Maybe not in years, since I AM advanced maternal age... but I am in spirit!
Nutty - Yeah. Too much so.
Nifty - I'm not really sure if I'm nifty or not, but I use that adjective probably a little too much.

Not a whole lot of descriptive terms I could think of that start with Y. And although I WISH I was nimble, which I'm not now that I'm 36 weeks pregnant, I just couldn't put that in.

Oh... I have one more thing to blog about. Do you remember that song "C is for Cookie" that Cookie Monster sings on Sesame Street? If you don't, go find it here on YouTube. I want you all to share in the misery that is my life this morning. Now that my three year old knows how to press the back button on the DVD player button, we've listened to this song at LEAST 25 times. I haven't counted, but I'm quite sure we're at the very least at that number. And to make things even more fun... my 18 month old knows how to turn up the volume. So now we are listening to it at a much higher decibel level than is probably safe for little ears. And yes... I am letting the DVD babysit my kids while I blog... Bad Mommy...

Two layouts...

Click here for credits.

Click here for credits.

Fearful Friday...

No, today isn't a fearful Friday. That's just the title of our latest blog challenge. I'm supposed to blog about a time I felt fear.

The one time that REALLY sticks out in my head is when Caleb was in Iraq for his first tour. He had been there for about 4 or 5 months, and there hadn't really been any incidents at that point, at least that I had been made aware of, of Blackhawks getting shot down. Well, one Saturday in November, it's all over the news that there was a Blackhawk from the 101st that had been shot down. And I knew Caleb had been flying that day. And I hadn't heard A SINGLE WORD from him in over 24 hours... no email, no instant messaging, no phone call... nothing. I tried really hard not to panic, but I also hadn't heard anything from the family readiness group that is supposed to notify us when things happen. I went to church the next morning, still not having heard anything. I actually had to leave church that day. I was so scared that something had happened to him. People knew our situation, and they were asking me if he was ok. I choked back tears as much as I could while telling people, "I don't know... I haven't heard from him." (Keep in mind that I'm 6 months pregnant and way too emotional already...) Finally I just started bawling and couldn't stop, so I left the one place where I actually could have probably found some peace. Although I think it was in God's plan for me to go home, though, because as soon as I got home, I got an instant message from Caleb. He was completely fine, although he knew the entire crew from the aircraft that was shot down. They were in the same battalion, just a different company. At the time I didn't know this, but they shut down all communication out of the areas where the soldiers are living. They do this so casualty information doesn't get leaked before the families are notified. Makes sense, but it doesn't help when you are one of the ones NEEDING information.

Anyway... that's my story for Fearful Friday.