Wish it were true....

I'm watching the Grinch. The cartoon Grinch. I adore this cartoon and look forward to it every year. I was so glad to get to see it the 1st day of December.

I can't believe how long it's been since I posted.

Since then, I got Jimmy a Wii for his birthday and I learned that video games could be fun. I've never really enjoyed video games since Burger Time for the Intellivision and Sonic for the Sega Genesis.

Since then Bubby turned five. I threw the greatest birthday party I've ever thrown. It was a carnival theme complete with games, prizes, lemon shakes, funnel cakes and corn dogs. Mrs. Cheryl made an awesome carousel cake.

Since then we've been to Disney World again. It was again amazing and we're really hoping to go back in Dec. of 2009 with my Mummy and Daddy and hopefully my sister Tissy and her family.

Since then, Izzy turned one. She's such a total joy and I absolutely adore her. I had fun trying to get pics of her and my two in their new fall shirts from Grammy and Pappy.

Since then, Krissy turned eight and had much fun at her swimming party at the Y.

Since then we've had many, many holidays. Most recently, Thanksgiving was great and we've decided to make the trip to Kraynak's on Black Friday an annual thing.

Since then my Steelers have won a lot of games (my favorite is probably yesterdays shalacking of the Patriots) and Troy P. has had a touchdown called back for no reason at all.

Since then, we put up our Christmas tree.

I have a ton of pictures to share, but right now I just want to watch the Grinch.

YOWSA!!!!

It's been over a month since I've posted anything!

First, Mummy tagged me so let me answer those questions!

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? It was a Sunday morning and it was the morning after I'd graduated from Geneva College! As we were driving through Beaver Falls last night, I saw all these college kids in their caps and gowns (I'm thinking it was baccalaureate) and it really made me realize how fast the past ten years went and how many things have changed!
2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order): Hmmmm. Not sure that I have five things that I need to do today. Let me think: (1) Download all the pics off of my digital camera. I have over 400 on there and I need to get them moved to the computer. (2) I need to back up the desktop and the laptop computers. I've not backed up either one this year and I really don't want to lose all these pictures! (3) Maybe I'll scrapbook some. I don't think I've done a single page since the last post in April and yet I've paid for a class and bought two new idea books! (4) Download the files from that class! (5) Post to my blog!
3. Snacks I enjoy: Almonds, peanut butter-chocolate milkshakes, and Dove chocolate
4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: I'd spend a month in Disney World at the Beach Club. I'd quit my job and stay home with the kids. I'd pay someone to come and organize my scrapbook room. I'd pay someone to come and finish the bathroom.
5. Peeps I want to know more about: I'm gonna skip this one for now until I can think of some people to tag.

So, what's been going on here. Jimmy was very proud to be one of a few of the Apprentices from his class chosen to compete in the carpenter contest at the school. He lost by two points but still got his picture in the paper!

I cannot believe that two weeks from tomorrow that he'll be a JOURNEYMAN! It seems like yesterday that we were sitting at camp trying to decide whether joining the Union would be a good move for him. It was a pretty big pay cut for the first year and that first year was HARD, but in his second year, he went back to the pay rate he'd had with the local contractor and in his third year, made more than he'd ever made. In his fourth year, he surpassed what I was making and made it possible for me to cut back to part-time in order to get Krissy safely off the school bus. I am so incredibly proud of him and thank God everyday that he gave me such a treasure.

Jimmy's been building a roof over my mo1

11m and dad's deck. It is really a lot of fun to watch him work. He is so precise and I love seeing the way he and my dad work together. They make a great team!

Krissy is counting down the days until school is out for the summer. She has her 1st grade field trip on Monday and I feel badly that I can't chaperone, but I only have so many vacation days and we're not supposed to use them from 3/1 - 7/31 due to it being our busy season.

Bubby is doing better and better with his walker. I had a day this past week where I was frustrated and didn't really feel like he'd improved any since we were at spina bifida clinic in March. But I'm back in postive mode and being very thankful that he's not had a single seizure since the docs upped his medication back on March 3rd.

And I'm back in Disney-planning mode! I was so sad when we came home in December. It was such a magical week and I couldn't believe that I had to wait two years to go back. I downloaded Illuminations, Wishes, Fantasmic, and the Festival of the Lion King show from Youtube and put them on my Zune. I made a slideshow of our pics and started scrapping them. But I still felt sad.

Then President Bush announced the stimulus and Disney announced Free Dining for part of August and September and I talked Jimmy into another trip. We're staying at Pop Century because Krissy really loved the pictures of it and staying at one of the Value Resorts just seems to make sense for us. We spent very little time in our room on the last trip and staying Value makes it easier to swing this trip less than a year after the other one! I've booked our plane tickets already and got them for $580 roundtrip, non-stop for the four of us. I think $145 per person is pretty darn good! So I'm researching dining and I've made my ADR's. I've changed a few and I think I'm pretty much done with them, but honestly, the planning is part of the fun of the trip!

Well the kids are hungry, so I'm off to get them some food. AND while I was typing out this post, I downloaded all the pics from my camera, backed them up and since I'm done with this post, I've completed three things on my list of things to do today!

Hope you have a great Saturday!

Been scrapping some

I got two layouts done last weekend and three this weekend. I'm taking a class from Janna Wilson and she showed a technique this week on different sized strips of paper. She only showed the technique with 12 x 12 pages, so I tried to resize the strips to fit 8 1/2 x 11. Not sure they look as good, but hey, I got three layouts done!

For this one from last weekend, I used a sketch shared by Bring Your Own Memories at Willow Traders for their anniversary. The paper and embellies are from The Scrap Room's March kit. It is the MM Noteworthy line.

This one just kinda came together. I used a kit for this one. Thought it was Scrapbook Sussies but I can't find it on their site, so maybe I'm crazy. Anyway I'm pretty sure it is the Basic Grey Phoebe line with some MM letters, but who knows.... It is an older photo of Bubby from when his primary means of getting from Point A to Point B was via a walker. Now he uses a different type of walker to get around.

These three are all using that Janna Wilson technique.

These are the pics I took Easter Sunday. I usually like to set up some fabric as a backdrop or take the kids outside for Easter pics, but I wasn't in much of a holiday mood, so I just sat them on the coffee table in the living room and took a few pics. They're not near professional, but the kids are cute, so who cares! I used the Scrapbook Sussies January 2008 kit and the Scrap Room March kit for this one. I love this SEI Ally's Wonderland paper and so I used it for both the Easter layout and the Cinderella one.

These are pics I took on St. Patty's Day. I like that these three layouts all use that same technique but I don't look at them and think "boy they look a like". This layout uses The Scrap Room's April kit and the American Crafts Kids line. I used the four asterisks as a four-leaf clover because you just doing seem to see a lot of St. Patty's Day embellies.

And I finally got one of the kids' Disney albums uploaded. Reminded me how many characters I still need to get pages done for. I did pages ahead of time for the characters that I'd expected to see at the character meals we'd books. But I didn't want to waste time and paper for characters that I wasn't sure we'd see. So I still have pages to do for Mary Poppins, Lilo & Stitch, Jo Jo and Goliath, Sully, Buzz, Woody, Bullseye, Aladdin, Rafiki, Jiminy Cricket, Pocahontas, King Louie & Baloo, and Remy & Emile. But of course I can't find the Heidi Swapp 6 x 6 page protectors ANYWHERE and so I have no idea how I'm going to add these pages to the book!

Jimmy has softball practice today and the kids and I are going to hang out at my mom's while he plays. Usually we'd go to practice too, but I think it is still too cold and honestly, I'm not loving the idea of him playing this year. He's hurt his back the past few years and I'm just afraid it is going to happen again.

I can't believe that tomorrow is Monday already. Why do the weekends go so fast???

Goodbye March (and my Gravy-Gravy)

March started out with the whole Girl Scout cookie mess on 3/1. Then during the night between 3/1 - 3/2, Bub had a seizure. My cat Ashley died. And my dog Gravy-Gravy died. My Dh got laid off due to lack of work and my sister was hospitalized due to exhaustion. An EEG showed that Bub may have some developmental delays and Krissy got a new teacher and she's struggling a bit with the change.

Other than Bub's spina bifida appointment being the best ever (they think he may be ready for arm crutches and he doesn't need to see orthopedics or neurosurgery for a year!), March was NOT a good month for me.

But April arrives tomorrow and hopefully April will bring warm weather, lower gas prices, and happier days in my house.

Of all the bad things, losing Gravy-Gravy was one of the worst. When I was a kid, I read Anne of Green Gables books and Anne often spoke of "kindred spirits". I felt that Gravy-Gravy was my kindred spirit. I'm not a dog person. But Gravy-Gravy was my kind of dog. He was mellow and just cool. He howled the most beautiful music and we even taught him to say "I love you" (he sounded a bit like Scooby Doo when he said "I love you"). He gave the nicest kisses and had the softest fur.

His mom had strayed in and my sister Tissy had always wanted a black lab and my Mummy couldn't send a stray away, so we kept her. Tissy named her Raven. Not too much later, my Gravy-Gravy (and a few other dogs) were born. I'd never felt about a dog like I did this one and so Mummy and Daddy said I could keep him. I'd named him Gravy-Gravy because he was brown, ya know, like gravy.

When he was just a puppy, he was afraid of steps. So I'd carry him up and down the steps and could frequently be heard saying "If you lift a cow everyday he doesn't get any heavier". I'd read somewhere that if you picked up a cow everyday that the cow wouldn't feel any heavier because you'd get stronger as the cow got bigger. I quickly learned that if you lift a Gravy-Gravy everyday, that he will get heavier. Much heavier.

One of the highlights of moving into our house was that I could bring Gravy-Gravy to live with us. But his mom still lived with my mom and dad and Gravy-Gravy was lonely without another dog. So we had to take him to back to live with my mom and dad. I remember that day. I made Jimmy take him back to my mom's by himself because I was so sad. But since mom and dad only live about two minutes away, I could still see and play with Gravy-Gravy. He loved his soccer ball and was so talented. He could throw it up in the air and then catch it!

Eventually he went to live with my sisters Pam and Pat. They had a little beagle named Mandy. Gravy-Gravy and Mandy got along great. Pam and Pat took such good care of him and he was very happy there. He had arthritis and didn't move as quick as he used to, but he was still a sweetheart. Last summer he escaped out of Pam and Pat's house and came down to visit at my mom's. He was tired when he got there and wasn't moving too quickly but we had fun visiting with him. We fed him dog bones and then Pam and Pat brought the truck and drove him back home.

Tissy called last Tuesday and told me that Gravy-Gravy was sick and that she was going to have to put him down (she's a Veterinarian). I went over to Pam and Pat's and told Gravy-Gravy goodbye. I took some pictures. He was still so handsome, he just looked older. His fur was turning white around his face. We laid him down on his dog bed and my sister's and I gathered around him. With one of his last breaths, he licked my face and then he closed his eyes and then he was gone. I was a bit disturbed because his eyes kept opening, but Tissy said that was normal.

Saying goodbye to that sweet dog was one of the harder things in my life. Rest in peace, my Gravy-Gravy.

And goodbye March. Bring on April!

Dreading Monday

Tomorrow is the five-year anniversary of the ultrasound that told us that we were expecting a little boy who would have spina bifida. I count that as the worst day of my life. It changed everything.

We wanted a boy so badly. DH was quite an athlete in high school. He wanted a little boy to follow in his footsteps. And I wanted that for him. Upon that ultrasound, that all changed. We hoped that he wouldn't end up with hydrocephalus while he was in the womb because that would cause brain damage. We hoped that someday he'd walk. We hoped that the nerves wouldn't be too badly damaged during the c-section that I'd have to have.

We lived for 4-1/2 months on that hope and went for weekly or bi-weekly ultrasounds. I'd get sick before each one.

I wouldn't give my boy up for anything in the world, but I'd sure heal him if I could. I hate that I watch him struggle with everything. Walking is a struggle. Talking was a struggle. He has difficulties with the right side of his body. He wants to draw a heart and can't. He's currently unable to write letters, although he can recognize them. He has a seizure disorder. I hate that when we get together with other kids, many times he sits with us because we're afraid that he'll get run over since he primarily gets around by scooting.

And tomorrow, on the five year anniversary of "the" ultrasound, I take him to spina bifida clinic. He'll have an eeg to make sure things are ok, since he's had four seizures since January 15. I had to keep him up until 10 pm and I have to get him up at 5 am and keep him awake until they start the eeg at 11 am. The last time they did an eeg was February of 2004. I remember this distinctly because the leads for the eeg somehow gave him an infection in his scalp and he ended up back in the hospital to have surgery to drain the infection. I don't even think this is necessary. They finally listened to me and increased the dose of his anti-seizure medication. Since they increased the medication...not a single seizure. The last time the med was increased was in September of 2006! He's grown a lot since then!

I always hate these appointments because there's always something that they want changed or improved, but this one I'm truly dreading. I don't want him to have an eeg. I don't want them to tell me how his right side is weak (Yeah, I know it is. And if Dr. Leland Albright hadn't nicked that blood vessel, I'm betting Bub wouldn't have the trouble he does).

Thankfully we only go to spina bifida clinic twice a year. The rest of the year, we deal with his disabilities the best we can. Twice a year, the focus is on his disabilites. The focus is on seizures, right-side weakness, his bladder, his hips, and his shunts. The rest of the year the focus is on Bub. Twice a year, the focus is on Bub, the boy with spina bifida.

Compounding my dread is the fact that the route that we've taken to Children's Hospital for what feels like 7000 times, is under construction. I'll be taking a detour. AND the fact that he needs to stay awake for the 1 hr travel time. Thankfully my sister Pat is going with me. She'll help Bub stay awake and help me stay sane.

The only good points about the trip in to Childrens...I get a whole day to spend with my Bubby and they have awesome chocolate milkshakes.

Prayers for a good appointment would be much appreciated.

Saturday

Today I'm watching Rachael Ray while burning DVD's. I just finished a movie that I'd started using muvee autoProducer back when my Uncle Keith died in September. We'd run it on my laptop at the funeral home and I'd promised copies to my aunt and my cousins. My uncle's sister had loaned me some other pics and I scanned them in when I got them, but still had to add them to the movie and then last night I found a few more pics to add. So this morning I finally got it finished and I'm in the process of burning the second DVD (although I'm out of DVD's so I'm only going to be able to do a couple today).



DH is at a "Step Up to Foreman" class today and I have no idea how long he'll be gone today. We have to go to the funeral home tonight. My mom's cousin's husband died on Wednesday and we need to pay our respects tonight. They'd been married 57 years and he was a very devoted husband, father and grandfather and an all-around nice guy. He'll be missed. We've also been invited to a birthday party for my cousin's son. He'll be 8! That's the reason I wanted to get the DVD's made today, so that I can give them out if we make it to the party.

And we're hoping to squeeze in a viewing of Horton Hears a Who sometime today. Not sure if that will happen or not.

My mom has started a blog and has inspired to "pretty-up" mine some and post a little more regularly to it. So I've been working on the layout while I burn the DVD's.

I have a spreadsheet to get done today and it is pretty involved, so it is taking me longer than I'd hoped. So I'd better get on to that or I'll never get it done.