The end of April

I can't believe that April will be over tomorrow. All my boys are another year older, mother's day is around the corner, as is Father's Day and summer.

Today I woke up feeling awful so after putting Tommy on the bus at 8:30 I went back to sleep. Lazy, I know, but I just couldn't shake the nasty feeling I had. So I woke up and got the 3 of us dressed and ventured out to the store. Thankfully Tom was able to stop by the bank on a trip that brought him mainside on base. So, our garage sale is one step closer to being ready, we also found that it doesn't start until 9am so that is a plus. I hope we get rid of a lot of our stuff and we make a decent amount of money. We'll probably need to have another one in the fall.

I have a long list of things that I need to get done in the next two days. I am determined to cross off 90% of the items on my list. Tom will be gone all of next week so it will be an interesting week, especially since the two little ones have dr appointments.

Well, the hubby is getting rowdy with the kids and I can't concentrate anymore, so off I go.

kiddo cuteness for 4/29

lol Minutes ago Tommy just walked in the door. The other two terribly excited as always. The littlest man proceeds to pull Tommy's leg up at the most awkward angle and begins pointing at his shoe and saying "shoe". I tell Tommy he must want you to take your shoes off. So Anthony comes along pushes Tommy and to say he's sorry he removes both of Tommy's shoes for him. Ah, kids. I so wish I had my camera at that moment. :)

SSD FOB2Y 4/25

For the Sweet Shoppe Blog Challenge.

You Are An ISFJ

The Nurturer You have a strong need to belong, and you very loyal. A good listener, you excel at helping others in practical ways. In your spare time, you enjoy engaging your senses through art, cooking, and music. You find it easy to be devoted to one person, who you do special things for. In love, you express your emotions through actions. Taking care of someone is how you love them. And you do it well! At work, you do well in a structured environment. You complete tasks well and on time. You would make a good interior designer, chef, or child psychologist. How you see yourself: Competent, dependable, and detail oriented When other people don't get you, they see you as: Boring, dominant, and stuck in a rut

What's Your Personality Type?

Layout of the day!

I am so happy that Jule at TDC has chosen my Barefoot in the Grass layout for layout of the day! I've never had anything chosen for anything so this is exciting for me! I get a spiffy cool blinkie to sport in my signature too :)

Other than that my Monday was pretty normal. Although it is almost 11:30 and I have an odd feeling that little man may be sleeping. Could it be?

I did start installing the software to get our old video off of the Hi-8 tapes. It took a little longer than I thought and I had to install it on the desktop because the software wasn't made in a Mac version (at least not one that I found at Best Buy). I'm looking to acquire all of our software in Mac versions to help ease the process when we convert our desktop. Unfortunately it won't be in the immediate future as our desktop works perfectly fine. Tom does hate it though, and sees no need for it seeing as we both use our laptops more often. I am tempted to tell him though that I would use the desktop more if it was a Mac. lol

Those special tax incentives should be hitting a good number of bank accounts soon. I was hoping that it would hit ours today, but unfortunately it didn't. Tom and I have agreed to spend it though, at least I think. He wants to invest his portion in stock, which is cool, but then it makes me feel greedy for wanting to spend it on a new camera body. I don't really need the new body, but I really want to get working on my business. I know it's not so much the camera as knowing the settings, but it's partly the camera. I'm having a hard time justifying the price tag that comes along with the 40D.

Well, before I type up my whole inner debate over the camera on here I will share my fabulous layout. Til another day.



Psstt...little man isn't sleeping.

I'm tired, so tired...

DH and I stayed up really late last night. Partly because he got a phone call about one of his guys getting into trouble and so we had to finish up watching the episode of The Office that we had paused. He stayed up even later to wait for phone calls and I headed to bed at about 3:30 or so.

The spouse appreciation dinner they had last night was pretty lame. The childcare set up was messed up and they were running really behind. I was under the impression dinner was going to be shortly after arriving, but almost 2 hours later they finally cut everyone loose to eat. Alex started itching pretty bad and I got a knot in my stomach when the Chaplain announced that after dinner the Marines were going to be kicked out so that the spouses could "mingle" and he had some stories to tell or something. I don't do well with crowds, I don't do well with a bunch of people that I don't know, and I really do not do well with it being sprung on me. So, as childish as it sounds, we left. I couldn't stand sitting there knowing that soon I would have be by myself, my stomach was in knots, I felt nauseas and I was just going insane. To top it all off Tom acted like he was irritated with me and he proceeds to tell me that he's going to get into trouble for not staying and representing the command, etc. What I find amusing about all of that is that the Captain is going to be mad at him or whatever, but the meeting they had last night was because they wanted to address issues that they know they have about not getting the Marines time off to take care of their families. So, if I had known they were going to separate everyone I could have driven separately from Tom and after dinner I would have left with the kids. I didn't know, so I reacted and had to do what was best for me, as irrational as I know it probably sounds to some.

Thankfully I don't think that Tom is irritated with me any longer, he's got something else to deal with now. lmao

On the housing wait list

Ok, so since Tom is so super busy each and everyday at work I was tasked with faxing our application to the housing office. So, we are on the list! I made Tom call and verify that they received our fax when he arrived home.

I also ran to Giant to get bananas and 2 liters of Coke for drinks this weekend and to Wal-Mart for the movie releases of the week and a box of diapers for little man. Then I came home and didn't do much of anything else. Oh, wait...I did get 6 auctions listed on ebay. Cross your fingers that they sell, and for a decent price.

I discovered my debit card for one of my bank accounts is missing. Yeah, so I've got to tear the house apart and look for it tomorrow. I also realized that tomorrow is the 'last day' according the the county website to register Anthony for kindergarten in the fall. So, we will also be doing that tomorrow. I'm currently listening to Tom complain and have fits about the trash that is so full that it won't come out of the can without a fight. I wonder if he remembers he's the one that likes to push the trash down to cram more in?

Ok, now to finish this thing...I've only been working on it since about 7:30 or so, it's 11:45 now. So, here are the pictures that I was working on to share. So, since I forgot everything else I meant to blog about, I'll leave you with these. :) The boys decided that I couldn't make Anthony's bed after their bath, so I decided to play with my camera while they jumped and had fun.

3 boys in bed at 9pm?

Say it isn't so?! Ah, it was...but unfortunately it didn't last long. As always I wanted to take care of a lot of things while they were sleeping and I didn't. I sat on my fat butt and watched tv, played online and sent out another ring tone to myself. Not as productive as I would have liked. And now it would figure that little man is awake.

Today I stayed in bed until nearly 11:30am, of course this was after taking Tommy to the bus stop for school. Alex didn't get up until slightly after noon, I was surprised. We should have ran errands today, but Alex still didn't look good and I figured I will need the fresh air tomorrow after being cooped up with them all by myself for 2 days.

We set up the new Xbox, thankfully it works. So the boys have the old tv from our room, the Wii, and a 360 in their room. Which is the reason we had the entitled talk tonight, because they didn't finish cleaning up their room by 9 they didn't get to put on a movie. They have been real brats lately, I don't know why, but I've decided that it's not sliding anymore. I'm just tired of it.

I need to get some statues up on ebay to see if they will sell before we have the garage sale. I have the photos done already, just need to weigh them in a box and write up the descriptions. It shouldn't take long once I get going. I stayed up until 3:30 last night fixing & watermarking the photos. I'm hoping to make enough money either on ebay or through the garage sale to treat myself to a haircut and possibly a pedicure at some point.

Well, since I'm up I should go test some actions for my designer, I keep missing when she releases them for testing so the testing for CS3 has already been done. I really need to do something to earn my keep. lol

photography seminar & trade show

So today I find on the floor a tri-fold invitation to some 'Captivated By The Light' Seminar and Trade Show. It's offering a $30 savings if you pre-register online using a special code. I checked out the cities and there are quite a few within about 2 hours from here. I thought that maybe one of two of Tom's friends (the only two I trust with the boys) would watch them for a few hours. So, I finally got up the nerve to mention it to Tom (he's been testy all night) and he said maybe, what dates, etc. So, I got the mail and told him, oh yeah, nevermind, the one in Richmond is on the 5th - which happens to be the day that Tom leaves for Norfolk for the week. Ugh, this figures. So, now I figure we won't go because Tom hates to ask people to watch the kids and normally I do too. But I think it might be a good idea to get away for 4 hours or so, especially since the one in Chantilly is the 4th so we would get away together for a bit without the kids. So, he tells me he'll ask his one friend on Thursday after he gets out of the field.

Oh well. I don't know if it will be beneficial, but at $20 each to go it's not bad.

I've got this layout I'm horribly stuck on, I just can't get the title to work for me. I took out some more boxes of stuff priced for the garage sale today. I unpacked 3 boxes that I packed up when we thought we were going to be moving. I managed to get down in the basement to pick up the ripped up boxes that Alex managed to destroy.

Oh, did I mention that last night Alex busted his face on the table while trying to shimmy down off the chair? Yep, he did. Wish I had gotten a picture of it, but making sure his blood wasn't flying everywhere was a bit more important. His tooth cut the outside of his chin and his top teeth got jammed up into his gums and there was a lot of blood. So he has a lovely fat lip today.

I probably need to go now...he's still awake and I'm getting very aggravated with him.

just another Monday

So, it was just another dreary Monday here. It rained on & off all day, just as it did yesterday, and apparently we have the exact same day in store for us tomorrow.

I felt very motivated to get things done today and thought I was getting a lot of things done until 3pm rolled around and I realized that I really hadn't gotten much done. I put clean sheets on my bed, and made it up all nice and neat. I also cleaned out the small closet that is in our bathroom, I threw things out & re-organized it, I also wiped down the sinks and sorted out the towels underneath the sinks. I put all the folded laundry away and did two more loads.

I've been lazy since Tom got home from work, I've been sitting watching the last of The Office Season 2. Good thing that I picked up Season 3 last week when it was $19.99 at Best Buy because the last episode of Season 2 made me wonder what happened! lol Tom is on his smoke break at the moment and I must say that I'm slightly irritated that he hasn't said anything about how good I've been doing about not smoking. It's 1 week today, it hasn't been an easy week. But instead of him letting me know how good I'm doing or anything, he tells me tonight that I should be proud that he went without a smoke for over 2 hours after we ate dinner. Sure buddy...I'll get right on that. Once you've decided to acknowledge that I've been trying to not have one for a week.

Yeah, I'm a bit irritated at the moment...sorry

my {poor} boy

Poor Alex, after going outside to play yesterday his nose started running and his eyes got all puffy. I thought for sure that it would ease up once coming in and it was just allergies. He looked so miserable last night so I went searching through our medicines to find something. We have Clairitin, but it said non-drowsy and by the time I found it it was after 11pm. So, he woke up even more miserable looking this morning and so we gave him some. I don't think it has helped him at all so I think Tom will be picking up some Benadryl when he runs to the exchange to get his hair cut. He's so happy though, so I'm not too concerned.

Of course I took some photos this morning as he was playing with his breakfast. I also made a couple new watermarks (anyone care to leave a comment on which one looks best?) to try out.



I also finished a two page layout for our day trip to Baltimore over Spring Break. Tom and I stayed up late and enjoyed rain and thunderstorms that we had last night. We slept in late this morning and since the bigger boys were being good when I finally crawled out of bed I let Tom sleep in until noon. Yep, that's right, noon. And do you know that when he came downstairs he was yelling (or raising his voice) at the bigger boys within 5 minutes? Ugh, come on man...

Making Progress

So, slowly but surely I am making progress in the de-cluttering & organizing of our house. I really wanted to focus on one room at a time to see the progress being made, but I've been fluttering from room to room, from project to project. I think my main reason is that it has been 5 days since I've had a cigarette and that is huge for me. I quit for two weeks, ok so I almost quit, back in February. Right around my two week mark was when we found out that our landlord's house might be foreclosed, I headed right outside. So, when I feel the urge to smoke I just move on to another project or room instead of going outside.

The new shelf with cubbies is put together and in its home against the wall. I spent the majority of the morning alphabetizing our movies, I also made a list of them so I can update our movie list on the family blog. We have 405. Yeah, I know...and that doesn't include box sets or tv on dvd sets. As I was going through them I made notes of which ones I would like to see removed from our collection, of the 405 I found 20 that I was certain I wouldn't care to see leave. When Tom got home from work I had him go through the cds to see which ones I wanted then I 'buttered him up' by suggesting he should play games for a bit, after awhile I sprung the spring cleaning of dvd titles on him. It was a hard process for him and he didn't agree with all of my suggestions, but we probably took 10 or more out. He's going to give them to his friend MS at work.

I even got the boys into the cleaning of their movie titles, out of all the movies I could find cases & discs for they got rid of almost a diaper box full. I am quite proud of them. We meant to go through their gameboy games tonight but we forgot. It feels good to know that we might actually be able to rid our house of this stuff that we haven't used and get some money for it.

Tomorrow Tom has offered to take the kids (all of them! although I don't think I'll punish him like that) to the commissary for some grocery shopping. I just might take him up on the offer of him going and me staying at home, I think I'll keep the littlest man here with me since he sometimes likes to try jump from the cart. The oldest two should be good helpers for him.

I think it's time for me to log off of here for the night. Little man is covering himself up on the floor with a blanket. Bedtime may be near???

ringtone update

So, I tried out the free ringtone service that Mobile17 offers. I was a bit frustrated because it said my first song had been sent, but I hadn't received it within 15 minutes of it being sent. So, I decided to try it one more time, within about an hour or so (after they confirmed it had been sent) I had my ringtone! They sent it as a picture message and one of the options after I opened it was to save as a ringtone. My first one was received this morning around 7am or so. After uploading my second try there was a note on the website that said Verizon users would experience lag time. So, I think it's a great service. The only thing I would suggest is downloading audacity to figure out exactly where you want your ringtone to start. I uploaded Bad Day and just barely missed the "Had a bad day" line by a second or two. I can see lots of possibilities with this though, we have over 12gigs of music!

Now, here are the pictures from the past couple of days. Last night I put together our new bookcase, while Tom slept on the couch. I had a helper too.

new cellphone {love}

So, our new cellphones arrived via FedEx this afternoon. When Tom came home he called to get them activated and we've been sitting here since finishing our dinner entering in our contacts and figuring out how to work all the gadgets. I found out that my laptop has bluetooth capabilities and can communicate with my phone. Bonus! lol I was able to get one song to transfer, but after that they all ended in failure. So right now I am waiting for my turn in line at Mobile17 to see if their service works for my phone. There is an article on Lifehacker about making a ringtone from mp3's.

Last night we ran out to Ikea to get my Expedit bookcase for the computer area. I was inspired by a post on Tara Whitney's blog about her loft space. So, being the copy-cat that I am, I went out and got the same shelf system and 5 baskets. I'm not sure how I feel about the baskets though they are a little lighter in color than I would like, so I might run to Michael's before settling on those baskets. It's sitting in pieces in the front room at the moment. I was hoping that I was going to have time to get it put together today, but I was more interested in a shower when little man finally decided to take a nap this afternoon. Maybe I will attempt getting it together in a bit, he's sure to be awake though. There's really no rush though, I can't move the cabinet with the glass doors by myself, so I should probably wait. We'll see.

Well, it doesn't look like I'll get to finish this with the pictures I wanted to post, so that'll give me a reason to post tomorrow ;)

i {heart} Ikea

Man, I love that store. I don't like walking around it with my children though. lol Each time we are there I forget that they have the kids play area that you can leave them at, I keep meaning to try it out. We went to pick up the Expedit bookcase that I wanted, along with the baskets to go in the cubbies. We picked up 5 baskets, I don't see a need for more than that, but we'll see. There were a few other misc. containers that I wanted to pick up but we ran right by most of the lower area so that we could get the kids some hot dogs (Alex crammed 3 bags of fruit snacks into his mouth before we made it to the elevator to go to the lower level).

I had high hopes that we would be able to get it put up tonight, but I don't think that is going to happen. Tom has to be at work by 5:15am which means he'll be in bed by 10 tonight. Maybe I'll start getting it put together in the morning if Alex decides to sleep in. We'll see, it can always wait until the weekend too.

3 of my 5 ebay auctions sold! :D That makes me happy, and hopeful that maybe I can sell some of this other stuff I have and get it out of here. I have quite a few USMC statues that I thought were going to be a wonderful keepsake when I first got them, now I just look at them and see the money I wasted. Figures.

The two younger boys and I ventured out today, thankfully they were good. We picked up a cd for Tom's birthday, I just need to think of something else to get for him. I also ordered our phones from Verizon today. And as it would be my luck, when I got on there today to order them they were no longer offering the free activation and free overnight shipping if you ordered by 5pm. Needless to say I was a bit irked, I waited to order them during the day today so that I could take advantage of saving $60 in activation fees. Oh well, they are ordered and we should have our spiffy new enV's in our hands in a couple of days.

Webkinz...need more Webkinz

Yeah, so maybe that's a bit over-dramatic, but that's about how I'm feeling at the moment. I had wanted to get the boys one each (for the older two anyway) and saw a couple for between $4 and $7 on Amazon. So, I asked Tommy tonight to pick 3 animals he'd like to have and he rattled off a wolf, a wild cat (tiger or something similar), and then he caught a glimpse of a black horse on amazon and he was in love. I sent him up to bed with a reminder that I didn't make any promise that we'd get anything because I didn't want to spend much money.

So, 15 minutes later I am the winner of 2 ebay auctions. lmao Impulsive much?? This cute little basset hound puppy and Tommy's black stallion that he wanted so much. 2 webkinz for less that $20, I think I did pretty good. I saw some that I wanted, but I really can't justify that. I'll just use the codes that Alex gets on his, at least until he's old enough to play with them himself. ;) lol

Tom and I decided on cell phones to buy. Our contract with Sprint ends shortly and we are going to switch to Verizon since MIL & SIL have it and so do a few of my friends. Maybe when we move out to CA we can just get local phone service and cut our bills down a bit. I originally wanted the Alias phone, mainly because they were running a deal buy one get one free. The price of one was $80, two weeks ago. Last week they were running $100, so I had to re-think the purchase. Tom checked tonight to let me know which one he liked and he said that the Alias' were running $130 this week! So, we've agreed on the LG enV, he wants his in green, and I'll probably end up with the white/silver one because although the orange isn't horrible - I'm not that fond of it.

I did ok today in my quest for organization and de-cluttering. I had about 6 rubbermaid bins in my room full of clothes for the kids. Now there are only 3, there are 3 packed moving boxes in hte basement, but they are packed full of baby clothes and blankets. Things that we won't need but can't part with, at least not yet. I used one of the empty bins to contain our pile of sweatshirts that used to live on the floor in our closet. Some of the clothes I was going to send off to Goodwill I set aside for Tom to take to work, someone he works with has a small baby and said that he would take whatever we would give him. So, he's getting a paper grocery bag, diaper box and plastic grocery bag full of stuff. I also went through some of my cd's last night (although I can't find our entire cd collection) and the ones I was sure I wouldn't want again I ripped onto my computer and set aside. I emailed my brother and asked him if wanted any of them and he said yes. So, once I have finished with my cd library overhaul, he's going to be getting a box of cd's.

It's just after 11pm and Alex is still awake, so I should try to go get something productive done. Maybe fold the load of towels that are still chillin' in the dryer...or maybe I'll just curl up on the couch and watch Meet the Robinsons with Mr Man.

{clutter}

I have lots of clutter. Things of all sorts are spilling out of every room in my house. We try to not keep things we no longer need, we try to keep up with recycling, shredding etc., but after a while our good intentions are derailed by something (usually our own laziness, but sometimes it's other things).

There are a couple of places that I would so love to have clutter free. My kitchen, our computer room and my room. I can deal with minimal amounts of clutter in the bathrooms and closets. The boys rooms aren't too bad; the toy room is another story but we deal with it the best we can. After all, we do have 3 small boys and while they are under 1 yr we can get away with telling family that they don't need toys because we held onto toys the others played with. Even this though is getting to be slightly overwhelming. There are things I just want to get rid of, but DH insists that we keep, and vice versa.

Today, while trying to watch There Will Be Blood, I came across this site called Unclutterer. There were a lot of neat ideas, wireless products and sites mentioned. Reading over that blog has given me some good ideas and hopefully some motivation to de-clutter and organize my house. I'm hoping to get some of it done this week. I need to make a plan, start with one room and finish that room before I begin another.

So...those are my rambling thoughts for the night. My organization & de-cluttering may start tonight, Alex is still taking his "nap" and it's 8:40pm. Or, maybe I'll get the inspiration I need to finish up the 2pg layout I started today.

{26} so far this year

I'm sure that title doesn't make sense to anyone but myself. ;) So, here's the explanation (<- is that the right spelling???): I've done 26 scrapbook layouts so far this year. I can't remember what my goal was, 150 or so I think, but I don't think I'm too far behind. Sure, I probably won't reach 150, but that's ok. Now, if I could keep up with the 3-4 a week I might make a dent in some of the photos I have. I don't expect to scrap them all, not all of them are worth scrapping. I do want to scrap the photos that do have stories to go along with them.

Here are the two layouts I finished last night and today. The one of Alex I am pretty happy with, but I'm not totally in love with it. The one of the 4 boys I do really like.

The weather turned out to be really nice today so Tom got outside and cute the grass for the first time this year. The boys played outside and we had a nice day. The two older boys are currently sleeping and Alex is upstairs watching Surf's Up. Tom is playing COD4 and I'm chillin' blogging for the day. I'm itching for some other people to bid on my ebay auctions though, I've got watchers on nearly all of them and only one bid. C'mon people - bid! You know you want to. ;) lol

Yay...Friday

So it's finally Friday. I know it seems as though the last weekend was just here, but since we wet out of town it kind of feels like we had one really long week. Tommy didn't have school today, and as I suspected, he still woke up early. The sun is shining and it's supposed to be a beautiful day (then we are supposed to get another cold front this weekend) so the kids and I are going to be headed outside to play for a bit. Right now they are brushing their teeth & getting dressed and I have a few things that I want to finish up before we head out.

I was able to get a layout done last night. The TDC had a scraplift challenge of Kresta this week so I decided that I needed to try my hand at a scraplift again. I'm looking forward to the weekend and getting some scrapping done. I'm hoping to get at least 2 or 3 done this weekend.

My ebay auctions aren't doing well so far. I've got 5 things up and only 1 has a bid, and that's the item I started at 99c. lol I'm hoping that someone will bid on a few of the other things I have. Otherwise this stuff will just continue to sit in my house because it's stuff I won't just give away. Well, there really wasn't much for me to say today and Anthony just got done brushing his teeth, so I suppose I should go now.

Wednesday Already?!

Wow, I can't believe that it's the middle of the week already! Tommy has a short day at school tomorrow and no school on Friday. I sure hope he sleeps in on Friday, I know I plan on it! ;) lol I just went through his folder from school and one of his reading quizzes says that they are 78% through the school year. I really can't believe that time has been going by so fast. It is currently homework time at my house, Tommy is on his last worksheet, which will mean in a few short minutes I will be bombarded with questions about playing games.

I finished a layout the other night, I'll post it later, I'm using the desktop at the moment. I boxed up some baby clothes that we are keeping. According to my dear, sweet hubby we are seriously considering another. lol So, with that being said I figured I would box up the clothes we were keeping so that hopefully *cross your fingers* TMO won't come in here in un-pack it. I was thoroughly frustrated when they unpacked so much of my stuff when we moved from NC. They threw things in boxes together that just didn't make sense. Besides the fact that it took forever to sort through the clothes again, I had everything divided into rubbermaid storage bins by size.

Anyway...I need to go do something productive before the hubby comes home...the house looks like a tornado just went through it.

ETA:
I've been some-what productive since posting earlier. I've listed some things on ebay, DH came home and he made dinner so I cleaned up some old emails and here is the layout I finished the other night. Tom is set to play games tonight so maybe I'll get some time to do another.

{sad and busy weekend}

This weekend was a sad one. Our good friend Chris left for his 3rd deployment on Saturday. My heart hurts for his wife (and one of my greatest friends), who is 2 months pregnant, and their two children. Having gone through the deployments twice myself, once with her as a friend to lean on, it pains me to know that she's going through this yet again. Tom and Chris have done so much together at the same time that Sam & I are used to commiserating with each other as to the lousy common sense the command has and horrific timing of field ops and events. She's going to be with family while he's gone and I hope that brings her and the kids a sense of comfort and stability.

I took over 80 pictures at the barracks while we were waiting to see him off. I wanted to capture happy moments with him & his family, but once the buses arrived you could feel the mood of everyone drop and the tension of the impending goodbyes rise. I looked at Sam and noticed an odd look on her face and took one look in the direction she was facing, saw the buses and my heart fell. I immediately asked her if she was ok and offered to take her daughter so that they could have a moment alone. I know how it was when you were so busy with chasing the kids around, trying to keep them happy but out of the way of the Marines who were busily trying to get last minute things done, by the time it came to send the guys onto the bus it felt like you had no time. I tried very hard to keep it together, but as Chris made a last round to say goodbye to those of us that were there for him I couldn't contain it. Tommy asked me if I was sad and I knelt down to explain (he vaguely remembers Tom leaving last time, he was 3.5y when he left the 2nd time) what was wrong. I told him that that moment, saying good-bye to Chris, was almost as sad as saying good-bye to Dad. That Chris was very important to us as a family and how I felt sad that his kids were going to miss him. At that moment, I felt even worse because he then began to cry, which in turn made me cry more.

I won't post pics of the day until I have the ok from Sam, but here is one of the four boys hanging out together. I'm also trying out my new watermark for my photos, let me know how it looks.


I've had some time on my hands since the house is quiet and went browsing the WWW. Found this abso-freaking-lutely cute hybrid craft idea. I swear I am going to try a hybrid project here soon. Maybe I can convince the family that a quick trip to Michael's won't kill them. lmao I really want to try a project like that, it's adorable and seems super easy to do. I only need to buy 98% of the materials required to do it. ;)

easily {tempted}

Shopping does tempt me so easily. Especially online shopping, it is just So easy to throw things in your virtual cart and keep shopping. The reason I mention this is because of a sale email I received from Victoria's Secret yesterday, it was something about their sweats. I didn't want those, but I wanted to see if they had any clothes at a good deal, so I checked it out. I then found some sweats, a matching sweat jacket and a cute tee that I threw in my cart. Holy moly if the total wasn't $95! Good thing I don't need them that badly, but I was very tempted. My other horrible online temptation, shopping for digital scrapbook supplies. Again, it's so easy to see something cute, say oh it's only $3 and add it in the cart, and another, and something else and checkout. Then do it all over again at another store. lol They just make it so easy now!

I spent my first $3 on scrap supplies this month, I'm trying very hard to really scrutinize my purchases. I have so much that I haven't used yet, I will eventually, I don't generally buy stuff I'm not fairly certain I'll like.

Dinner is in the oven now, I should probably go to start the veggies. I have to start yet, another, load of laundry to try to keep up since we are heading to NC this weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to take lots of pictures - maybe if it's half way decent we can take the kiddos to Onslow Beach for a few minutes before Chris is due at the barracks.

blog {makeover}

I am fully aware that my blog header says Blog Title. lol I didn't want to take the time to edit the header if I wasn't going to like the layout. The jury is still out on the layout, but I must say that it's much better than the plain jane blogger layout.

Recap of today, because it's already after midnight and I want to go to sleep before 1am. Boys went to the dentist, no cavities! Yay! We came home, Tommy stayed home for the rest of the afternoon because he would have only gone back to school for about 2 hours. I know that it probably mattered, but it was nice this afternoon. I found my debit card and found out why we weren't able to activate them over the phone. Also noticed that some of the siding came off the side of the house today, which meant a phone call to Mr Landlord.

I organized some pictures and cleaned off the hard drive on my laptop. I figured out some cool tricks in iPhoto and edited some photos. I didn't get many edited, but a couple, no one will leave me alone long enough to complete a project. Which is why I haven't scrapped in over a week - each time I get an idea or the creativity strikes, Tom is too involved in his video game and the kids suddenly need something.

April is upon us, which means for those of us with monthly desktop backgrounds it is time for the switch. I downloaded a really cute one from Shabby Miss Jenn for our desktop, I spent a lot of time sorting through the photos and getting it nice, so I don't know what I'll use for my laptop. There are a lot of cute ones out this month, one from Eva Kipler, Shabby Princess and Misty Cato.

Ok, so I'm out for the night, until tomorrow...