iHeartFacesKids entry - black and white

This is my entry to the iHeartFacesKids for week 7. The theme for week 7 is black and white. Thanks to doing the 365 project, I have a handful of b/w photos that I could enter. The ones of my boys fresh out of the tub though are my fav b/w's. This one of Anthony is probably my absolute favorite and the one that inspired me to get as similar shot of the other two.

why you should always check your hair before leaving the house

...because you never know who will knock on your car window while waiting for the teacher to open the gates for the PM kindergarten class.

lmao

I had been playing with the boys and just threw my hair up in a pony tail after. I usually don't spend much time in front of the mirror, ever. A few minutes each morning to brush my teeth is the norm. Sometimes 10-15 if I blow dry my hair &/or put on make-up. Of course last night I fell asleep without washing my face and hadn't yet washed my face before taking Anthony to school. The whole morning it felt like we were running behind, almost late. So, when I noticed it was time to take Anthony to school we just jumped into the truck. Normally we just sit and wait for a teacher to open the gates and Anthony jumps out and goes into school.

Not today, another mom came up to the truck because she noticed our Michigan plates. I was surprised so I stuttered, nice one Kelly, when she asked if dh was Navy. "No, M-M-Marines," I said to her. Ugh, I'm so smooth. No wonder I don't know anyone around here. lmao Anyway...she wanted to see where we were from in MI because she's from MI too. She seemed nice enough. Her son is in Anthony's class.

Then I must've totally looked like a freaking stalker, because I followed her nearly all the way home. If I hadn't turned on the street I normally do to get to my house it really would have looked like I was following her. lmao I think she lives on the street behind us, at least I think that is where that street goes. lol I just hope I didn't scare her. She looked so neat and put together. Dior sunglasses and pink track suit, and here I was my Simply Vera Wang sunglasses from Kohl's, Gap sweatshirt & black yoga pants from Target.

Almost time to go get the boys from school, so I'm off here to go check myself in the mirror before that happens again. lmao

Happy Birthday Little Man!

It's little man's birthday today. He's 3! I just can't believe it. The time has gone by so fast. He's grown up so much too, in this last year. I miss him liking to sit with me, now the only thing I'm good for is heating up some chicken nuggets and filling the good ol' cup-cup. Those days are behind us now, he's only going to grow more independent and aware of the world around him.

I spent a lot of time on the computer this weekend. I re-did my weekly 365 layouts. I used the templates I got from Jen Wilson. I hope that she puts out the week titles by themselves, I can't buy more templates. lol I may have to email & suggest it, I wonder if that's ok to do?

I also worked with Amanda Heimann's new kit Truly Yours, you can find it in The Digi Files #2, available now at The Daily Digi. Which, by the way, they have a great tutorial today on making eyes 'pop' in pictures. I even did a layout of Tom for a challenge at The Digi Chick.

I really should remove myself from the computer for a bit. Tend to the birthday boy & clean up the house a bit. We will probably celebrate his birthday tomorrow since we are expecting 2 packages of presents tomorrow. We are foregoing a cake this year and making a trip to Coldstone instead. We would just waste a cake, as much as we all love sweets & chocolate in this house, we just don't usually cut into the cake again after the birthday. We figured by going to Coldstone everyone could get what they wanted & it would all be eaten so no waste. Ok, birthday boy is in meltdown mode...

Happy Valentine's Day

Hope that you are all feeling loved today :) We had no big plans. The boys opened their goody bags from Grandma and enjoyed a piece of candy. Our cable company is offering 1c pay-per-view movies this weekend so Tom and I thought we would see which ones were available to see. The boys of course decided to play games instead. Right now Tom is out picking up our Chinese food order. It's the first time we've gotten Chinese food here, I really wanted some chicken chop suey, but it doesn't seem to be on the menu anywhere around here.

I'm feeling better, much better than last week, but still tender on my right side. I had to pick up Alex a few times this week and it wasn't easy. We also picked up the last of some birthday gifts for the little man, who will be 3 on Tuesday. I really can't believe that it's been 3 years.

I also managed to work on a couple of layouts over this past week. Two were for Christy Haig, a template designer at Digital Candy. She needed some people to make a few layouts with some of her templates so of course I offered. I love templates, I wouldn't get nearly as much scrapping done if I didn't use them. I really need to go through my scrap supplies though, I have a lot of things that just aren't my style anymore. When I was first starting out I think I downloaded nearly every freebie available. lol





It's almost 6pm and I realize that I should have taken my photo for the day before now. I hate that all of the lights in our house are orange and make my photos look horrible. I'm ok at removing the orange hue sometimes, but alot of times I get really frustrated with it. Like yesterday I just used a b/w action on the photo to make it look halfway decent.

With that, I'm off for tonight...going to play a Scene-It game with the boys or something.

what a {deal}!

Jen Wilson has her Project 52 items on sale until Tuesday....for 52c each!! Wow! I picked up some things, I'd better start downloading. :) I'm not happy with the templates I have for Project 365, so to try out a few for 52c is a bargain.

DH and I didn't eat dinner earlier since we were full from having sandwiches around 3:30, after our trip to Target. Now, it's 11:45 and we are both kind of hungry. Little man is still up to, go figure - he had about a 20 minute nap in the car on the way home from Target & the deli. I hope he goes to sleep soon. Tomorrow is the first "normal" day on my own. Today the boys didn't have school, so it was ok for just the 4 of us.

It's Sunday

It's been a pretty boring day around here. I've managed to get 3 loads of laundry done so far; well washed, dried and thrown into the basket. lol I made a really yummy and new to us recipe for breakfast this morning. DH and I saw an episode of Paula Deen the other day where she made this Blueberry Coffee Cake and it looked good. So while we were out yesterday we picked up what we needed to make it. I am so glad that we did, it was sooooo goood!

I managed to install my new OS and not screw anything up. The only thing I think I might've not backed up or made note of is some free 8x8 photobook codes. Oh well though, I might be able to track them down. I love the new OS, it looks so neat and is pretty easy to use so far. It's been really nice to have a clean slate to start with also.

I decided to give our family website one more try. I kept getting the invoice to pay for our host service and finally I just couldn't take it and paid it. lol So, we have one more year to try to make a go of gaining more of an audience for the blog. I know it doesn't help when I don't post, which is why I am going to show Tom how to post so he can write also. I'm going to try to post 2-3 times a week. Since I'm doing the Project 365 that should help, on days there's nothing to say I can just post a photo. Hopefully we'll get some family to pop their heads in and say Hi once in a while. I think my MIL reads it, but we've had no comments (other than some lovely spam) in about a year.

If you haven't noticed I changed the blog look, yet again. I know, I know, I'm sorry. I just can't help myself, I see cute templates and I feel the need to change the look. I wish I had the patience and time to sit down and figure out exactly how I wanted it to look and then figure out how to make it that way. At least with this last template I installed all my sidebar information stayed. I always hate when I change templates and all my sidebar information that I plugged into the widgets is just gone when you hit Save.

Well, I should publish this, it's been sitting here waiting nearly all day. My photo for the day is posted, the kids are sleeping, DH is packed for the field just in case, and he's given himself a fresh haircut. It's almost midnight and my back is killing me.

misc.

So, when I sat down I wanted to write about a big realization DH and I had since my surgery, but I didn't want to be a downer. So, I'll wait til another day, I've been depressed enough for a few days.

Instead I'm going to do a lot of linking up today. :) Thought that maybe someone else may be interested in some of the things I've found in the past couple days.

So, at The Daily Digi today they have a fabulous paper bag hybrid tutorial.

Darcy Baldwin is having a font contest, I'm thinking about submitting something, I've been wanting my handwriting as a font for a while, no time like the present, right?

I've found a new vampire book series I'm going to be ordering as soon as I have some extra money to do so, it's the Sookie Stackhouse Series.

I love the look of all the layouts I see using Natali Designs, and now I really want her All You Need Is Love kit, it's 20% off too!

The Cooker's Blog has some great recipes and a cute recipe template free for download.

Yesterday I ordered my Mac Box Set, it shipped today! I'm super excited to try out the new OS and be able to get our camcorder movies useable. So I've been organizing, deleting and moving things to my EHD to have everything backed up before the new install.

Since I got the new OS and iLife for my computer I'm considering getting DH this Xbox hard drive. It makes sense for us, we can rent movies through Netflix on our Xbox, the boys have an Xbox that only has a 256 memory unit, so they can use the old HD. The bonus is that it comes with a data transfer kit so that we can pull off our info from the old drive to the new one. I know all too well how proud DH is of his gamerscore. lmao

I've kept up with the Project 365 for the most part. Only 2 days missing, but with the last week and a half we've had I think it's understandable. Tom and the boys took pictures for me for when I was in the hospital and once I got home. Which reminds me, I need to snap a shot for today. Speaking of Project 365, I really want this 365 kit from Gina. It's just too expensive, I can't justify the price right now...though it's packed full of goodies. lol She has a bunch of additional add-ons as well, it'll just break my bank. I have got to figure out a way to get on that creative team. ;) lmao

Well, it's about dinner time, I should wake up the hubby and see if I can attempt to make dinner tonight. I'll leave you with my 365 shot from yesterday...my boys sitting together, reading after homework time. I used the Better Black and White tutorial from The Daily Digi to get the black and white conversion.

being sick {sucks}

So, I've been out of commission since last Sunday. Saturday was spent with Anthony being sick, I woke up Sunday morning thinking I was getting the stomach flu he had the day before. I stayed upstairs in my room all day. Around 3 I told Tom it was too much, so he called our insurance and asked about the approved urgent cares, etc. So, off we went. Around 4 I was at urgent care, by 6:30 I was in the hospital. Around 10:30 I went into the waiting room to tell my husband and boys that they could go home, without me. They decided to keep me, after an ultrasound it looked like my gall bladder was inflamed & I had gall stones. So, sometime after midnight I got a room, and at 4pm on Monday I was being prepped for surgery. I came home Tuesday. Wednesday Alex was up every 1/2 hour - 40 minutes getting sick. Friday it was Tommy. Yesterday Tom and I didn't feel all that great. Today Tommy doesn't feel all that great again.

I'm hoping they feel well in the morning, I have a dr appointment, and I don't feel comfortable driving on the expressway right now. I can't wait to have these staples removed, they are starting to itch a bit, well one is, I think it's because it's sticking out a bit.

Thankfully Tom was able to take leave to stay home with me while I was recovering. I'm not supposed to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk for 1 week. So, Alex is far out of the question. lol I'm hoping that they let him come back to work, but not send him to the field. They are doing some training right now with some foreign military and they are supposed to go out on ship sometime this week. I think I can manage daytime stuff as long as I don't need to pick up Alex for a few more days, but I think I'll be tired at night and will need a break. We'll see, if it's bad enough I guess he could take more leave.

Let me tell you though, I felt horrible not being able to hold my baby when he was sick. He's the only one that likes to sit with me when he's sick and he just cried and whined and was miserable. According to Tom they were all upset when they left me at the ER, I saw Alex was upset. It all broke my heart. I sat in the hospital room by myself for most of the day Monday, Tom and the kids came up for a bit and left a bit before my surgery. It sucks not having any family in the area to help in times like this...it reminds me of when I had Anthony and Tom was deployed to Iraq the first time.

Anyways...I shall stop rambling now....got to love the stomach flu!