He likes it! Hey Elvis

As Jacob was showing me a Family Guy movie clip on his iPod touch, he noticed our cat enjoying a gross cookie and grabbed the camera.

(this is our loft coffee table, so please pretend that you don’t notice the mess)

I’d brought the cookie upstairs to get a picture of him for my Project 365 (see post #362) and then I handed him to Jacob, who put him on the table.

I am beginning to wonder if it wasn’t really a cookie for cats. It was pretty gross, but Elvis licked this guy for couple of minutes.

 

Glad that at least one member of this household was able to enjoy the little guy.

A Christmas memory

One Christmas memory of mine is the year my mom and dad went out and bought a REAL tree. We’d never had a real tree in my lifetime before then. I remember being so excited and how I couldn’t wait for them to get home with our first real tree.
Our house had a big picture window looking out to the front and when they got home, my dad stopped in front of the window to display our new tree. My heart sank. Imagine, if you will, Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. I wondered how they could have bought such an ugly tree. I remember the biggest smile on my mom’s face. Oh how that woman loved to play tricks on people. (Something she’d learned growing up)
It turned out that the tree was beautiful on the other side and that only about a third of it was a Charlie Brown tree. They must have gotten a great bargain, and my mom, being the incredibly smart woman that she was, realized that we would just put that tree in a corner and that back side would never be seen. When it was decorated, I felt like there had never been a tree a beautiful as ours.

(this is just a photo I grabbed from google images…and we never had a fireplace, either.)
Of course this is a great memory. But one thing makes it even better. Our cats. You can imagine that a tree with not many branches on one side and the other side all decked out in ornaments might not be so balanced. Add the weight of one curious cat and you have a recipe for a very funny story. Yup, that tree went down with the cat. Broke some ornaments and spilled the water out of the tree stand. I can only wish there had been home videos back in those days and that one had been pointed at that tree.

Thanksgiving and other stuff

Today I am testing out Windows Live Writer for my blog post today. If updating my blog and inserting photos this way is easier, then I’m all for it.

We spent the morning with all the kids. Jason made bacon and eggs and I made French toast. Once we were finished, we sent our kiddos off to their other parent’s homes to eat their Thanksgiving feast. No, the boys aren’t standing on a platform, and the girls aren’t standing in a hole.

Since Jason and I were alone, we went to share my sister Suzee’s turkey and fixins. We had a good time (even though Jason spent the better part of it setting up the Jones family wireless printer).

As you can tell from these pictures, the guys all stayed in the office while the women folk set up for the meal.

See how lovely Suzee’s turkey is? It was delicious, too.

Beverly was also alone with no kids, so she carpooled with me and Jason to the other side of the world. I don’t think Suzee and I could live any further apart and still be in the Greater Phoenix Area.

 

Thank you Jones family for including us in your Thanksgiving feast. We’d love to get together with you more often.

We are armed....Finally

Today, Jason and I went to Caswells Shooting Range. We've been looking at hand guns for a while now and today we "pulled the trigger".  Lucky for me that today is Friday, because it was ladies day. My lane fee, gun rental, ear and eye protection were FREE. We just had to pay for the ammo.

Before today I had never shot a hand gun. I was actually shaking when I stepped up to take my first few shots. I got to try out a 22 the firsts time. It was small and probably wouldn't do enough damage to really be used for protection. Next I tried out the 9mm. I loved it. Check out that Bad Guy target! Not too shabby for a first timer! I was shooting from 25 feet. Next time I'll try for a longer distance.

Here's the Springfield XD 9mm. Ain't it a beauty? I hope it won't be too long until we can get out and do some target practice out in the desert.

As you can tell, I am one happy mama. Just tell the bad guys not to bother coming over to our place....unless they feel lucky!

Fun with the internet

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BlackBerry saves my Project 365

I have been taking a picture every day (well, almost every day) for this whole year. I'll admit that there have been a few occasions where I've had to go back and find a photo to make up for missing a day.

As this year winds down, I find that getting a picture taken each day gets easier instead of harder. This is because I have been taking more pictures with my BlackBerry. I've always got it with me. I have a wonderful camera that Jason bought me for my birthday, but I don't have room for it in my purse. Most of the photos from around my house are taken with my Canon PowerShot G10. But I have been using the BlackBerry's camera more and more while I'm out, or at home if there isn't time to run and grab my good camera.

There are only 62 more days left this year that I need to document with my daily photos. I'm almost amazed that I've followed through on Project 365 since it really is a huge commitment. I'm always somewhat behind on getting the photos posted to my other blog where I journal about each photo, but usually no more than 2 weeks. Now if I could just get caught up with the scrapbook side of it!

Scrapping again

The University of Montana Grizzlies were in Flagstaff again this year. They play the NAU Lumberjacks in Arizona every other year. Of course Jason and I went up early for the tailgating party. I ended up scrapping some of my photos from our day. (click the photo to see it larger)

I used a template by Simply Yin. It was part of the Digi Files 8 over at The Daily Digi. Except for the tiny tabs (by Katie Pertiet) everthing else in the layout is from Dani Mogstad's kit Softly Falling which is also part of the Digi Files 8.

Elvis

This cat could be fatter, but not much.

Snap out of it!

I hate feeling down. Of course we all have days when we feel like that, but I've been having those days a lot lately. Depression runs in my family (and I'd taken medication for it after my second son was born) but I don't think I'm at that point. Perhaps I'm bored. I do go through a low point whenever I finish a project, and my 2008 vacation scrapbook is done and I don't have anything else planned. But who knows.

I do enjoy coming across things that make me smile. This is one of the latest things that I've seen that was good enough to share:

It's coming!

I'm just days away from turning 40. I pretty much still feel like I'm in my 20's. Things are the same. Except for having a 16 year old son and a 13 year old son. And being married for the second time. And having 2 step-daughters. Yup, things are basically the same.

I had a disturbing thought. If I live to be 80 years old, then I am middle aged. Wow. Those words conjure up mental images of women with grey hair and frumpy bodies. Scary.

(By the way, I tried to add some pictures to this post but blogger isn't working correctly)

Good for a laugh

I have Tracey's facebook wall post to thank for this little number!

Scrapbook layouts

I'm actually trying to get a whole scrapbook done from our 2008 Montana vacation. Believe it or not, I have 6 layouts completed and I plan on 3 more double page spreads. Here's what I've done so far....

All the layouts use templates from Simply Yin (she offers wonderful freebies!)

Huckleberry time!!

Before I met Jason, I would have thought that a huckleberry was just a character from a cartoon. A couple of years ago on our Montana trip, I went with Jason on a huckleberry finding mission. We were successful in finding a patch of the elusive little berries and now we make sure that each time we go to Montana, we take a drive up the mountain to our spot with the huckleberries and spend as much time as we can picking them.

We were fortunate to be going a few weeks later in July this year. I say fortunate because the huckleberries had more time to get ripe for us. Jason and I drove up alone one of the first days we got to Montana to scout out whether or not they were ripe and hoping that they hadn't been discovered by the locals. We had our first hint that the huckleberries were close by when we found a big pile of bear poop on the road. It was purple-ish...which meant that there were definitely berries nearby!

Do you see that tiny little berry? THAT is a huckleberry. Just click on the photo to see the details full size.
Jason took a picture of me with my baggie of berries since I'm usually the one behind the camera. Now I have visual proof that I was really there! LOL...

After a week of vacation, the kids were ready to pack up and head back to Arizona. They had no more reason to stay since the cousins had already gone back home to California. We told them that we were going to go pick berries one more time and if they wanted to leave a day early, then they had to lose a little sleep and go huckleberry picking with me while Jason was golfing with his buddy, Scott.
Here they all are with their own baggies of berries. Well, there were so many more left and Jason really wanted to go back out, that he and I went back later that day and picked some more. I was amazed to find that we were also surrounded by wild strawberries. They were EVERYWHERE! Here is a handful that I picked. They were really small but were super sweet and delicious.
The strawberries went into my tummy right away. I think I should have picked some more to share, but we were not there to pick strawberries.
So now we have 3 baggies like this in our refrigerator with fragrant, tart little huckleberries. Now I understand why they charge up to $40 for a gallon of these things. It took us at least 2 hours of picking to get this much.
I'd tell you to come by and try some, but by the time you get here, they will be all gone!

Rope swing at Twin Lakes

One of the things the kids looked forward to on this Montana trip was going back to Twin Lakes near the cabin so they could swing on the rope swing they found last year. We were all very happy that it was still there.

Jacob by the rope

Jared has the rope and Olivia and Parker wait for their turn.

The bravest kids use the make shift ladder to get a lot more out of their swing.

Jared out on the rope

When they got bored with the swing, the kids practiced skipping rocks before we took off.

You have to make sure you find a good rock to skip.

Everyone looks to see how far the rock makes it across the lake.
We didn't stay as long this time that we did last year. Sadly, Samantha had to stay behind at the cabin with her dad since she wasn't feeling well because of blood sugar problems from her diabetes.

Counting down

We are only 9 days away from our annual summer trip to Montana. And I have done NOTHING to prepare. I haven't looked at my wardrobe or planned a grocery list. I haven't even colored my hair or bought a new bathing suit. Of course, I might not need a bathing suit this year since there is a very good possibility we won't be getting out on the lake.

I need to get excited about this trip so I can stop worrying about the long drive in the truck with 4 kids. They did pretty good last year, but we only had one child who was remotely happy about going.

This was them as we pulled out of our driveway last year. See what I'm talking about?

This summer, our kids will get to enjoy the company of the Burman cousins as well as the Albright cousins. Jason and I are hoping this will make it a more enjoyable experience for the older kids.

This is a photo from 2 years ago of the Burman kids with 3 of our kids at The Circle (actually, our 4th kid is there but seems to be hiding). I think they are all smiling because they were going to have ice cream. I know it always makes me smile.

It's time to buy some hair color and get my lists together so I will be ready to enjoy our family vacation. I might even go get me a new bathing suit and hope for time on a lake shore for a little swimming.

A day for scrapbooking

I made myself sit down and actually do a scrapbook page. Last weekend I joined my sisters Suzee, Margaret and Beverly, my niece Kacie and Bev's friend Terri for lunch at Claim Jumper. Our life long family friend Chris and his son joined us in time to buy us dessert. It was a lot of fun but unfortunately it didn't end so well because of a heated discussion about something from when my mom died. Anyway, here is the scrapbook page I did this afternoon....

Template by Yin, Artimia kit with additional items from Katie Pertiet

I are not smart

I must be truthful with you. I don't always do the smartest things. Let me give you an example of the most recent dumb thing I've done.....
This is a really dumb thing to do when you've just recently lost 20 lbs. Yeah, making Toffee Crack is something you only do if you want to gorge yourself on high sugar, high fat treats.
I even went the extra mile and added pecan pieces and some melted white chocolate bark to the top.
And since misery loves company I wanted to share these images with you and perhaps you will visit this website for the incredibly simple recipe for this highly addictive snack.