Best Halloween Costume EVER!

I know that this post isn't exactly timely, but I've been meaning to do it since Halloween and found the pictures when looking for some others.  So here it is!  Halloween in February!

After seeing multiple Halloween costumes that incorporated a wheelchair, we knew that we wanted to do something like that for James this year.  After some discussion and talking with James, the decision was made to do a Mario Kart-style costume and feature James' favorite Waluigi.  The first step was to order the costume.  We bought it from Amazon, although it would have been nice if we could have found it in a store.  It ended up being a size too small.  But we were able to make it work.

Jimmy then set about constructing the "Kart".  He took apart an old, not working Powerwheel Go Kart and painted it.  He managed to make it fit perfectly on the front of the wheelchair and even left enough room for James' legs.  I used yellow vinyl for the upside down Ls and purple vinyl for the flag.  Thank goodness for the Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot (too bad Provocraft ruined a REALLY good thing). 

The final costume was AWESOME!  He won a prize for participating in a parade and enjoyed the attention that he got at school.  

Even Katniss Everdeen was impressed!

Thanks, Mom!

I haven't updated this blog in over six months, but there's something I wanted to do publically. I wanted to say thanks fo my Mom.

On Sept 1st, Bubby will start school and for the first time in over eight years, my Mummy won't be watching one of my children all day every day (you'll still have them on vacation and holidays though, Mummy, so don't start cheering yet! LOL!)

Thank you for feeding them breakfast and lunch everyday. I know what a struggle that is with Bubby being such a picky eater.

Thank you for holding them when they fall and kissing boo boos that I couldn't be there to kiss.

Thank you for letting them call me when they need to.

Thank you for cathing Bubby every single day.

Thank you for changing all the poopy diapers you've changed.

Thank you for watching way more Blue's Clues, Backyardigans, and Dora than you've ever wanted to. Thanks for putting up with Hannah, Zack and Cody, Alex, Justin, and Max.

Thank you for holding Bubby through seizures and giving the medication everyday to keep those seizures away. You made it possible for me to go to work everyday feeling like everything was ok.

Thank you for holding your tongue when you think I'm doing things all wrong. I'm sure you've thought that once or twice *grin*.

Thank you for giving advice when I ask for it and talking me through to the answer I'm struggling with.

Thank you for respecting our wishes as far as spanking and discipline. I bet there were times that it took everything you had not to smack fingers or bottoms.

Thank you for watching them earlier in the day and later in the evening than you bargained for.

Thank you for the months and months you did all this for no pay. We honestly couldn't have done it without you.

Thank you for reading to the kids and playing computer games with them.

Thank you for listening when I've had a bad day at work even when your day at home wasn't a piece of cake.

Thank you for watching the kids when you weren't feeling well just so I wouldn't have to use a vacation day.

Thank you for never, ever making me feel guilty for working. As a SAHM yourself, it was probably hard for you to understand the need for me to work.

Thank you for coffee in the morning and peanut butter sandwiches and string cheese after work.

Thank you for putting Bubby on the bus in the rain.

Thank you for making my kids happy. They have toys at your house and truly feel like it is their 2nd home. I really appreciate that.

Thank you for worrying about them. Sometimes is sure is nice to have someone to worry with me.

Thank you for keeping your promise. You promised that you'd do everything in your power to make my life easier when I had a special needs child. You've kept your promise in every single way possible.

Thanks, Mummy for all the other things I'm forgetting. My life (and my kids' lives) is better because you are in it.

Love,
Mary

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!