Hooked on beading!

JA and I spent some time with my Mom this afternoon while the others were at a bowling birthday party. There's a wonderful lady, Dawn Griffith who has a marvelous stamping blog. I am inspired by her. She also sells scissor charms for your SU! scissors. I was inspired to make some backpack charms with Julie-Anna. So that is what we did today! She put together 6 strands of beads to make two different charm sets. Then I made two cell phone charms for my Mom, came home and made cell phone charms for myself, and tried my hand at the scissor things. My scissor things, while they look beautiful, the lobster claws are a tad too small. So I'll probably be ordering from Dawn in the near future!! LOL!

So, am I giving up paper crafting for beading?! NO WAY!!! But I did enjoy the little break! :D

Happy New Year!! :D

So this Tuesday at TOPS we had our first meeting with our new executive. It was excellent to see some new and refreshed faces at the front! :)

The girls planned a 'New Year's" bash type of night for us. It's the start of a new TOPS year, so what better way to start? Koby spoke about resolutions. We talked about what they are, why we make them, why we succeed or fail, and how we can achieve success this year!! She challenged us to write down a few goals on a piece of paper, seal it into an envelope and hand it in. We'll get them back at the end of June, and see how we made out.

So, I'd like to share my goals with my readers. I'd love if you would comment on them, or just drop a line to reprimand me encourage me when I do or don't make the time to achieve them!! My success depends mostly on me, but also from the support of those around me.

Without further ado, here are my four goals for this quarter:

1. eat more veggies
2. get to Curves 3X a week
3. walk 5000 steps in a day
4. lost 10 lbs.

They don't seem unmanageable, and they even look achievable! I do want to increase my steps as the quarter goes on, but for now, I'm content with 5K.

I WILL SUCCEED!!!

My list for today

This is more for me than anyone else! LOL!

• take a nap
• load dishwasher
• feed kids lunch
• do Mom's taxes
• do Dad's taxes
• fold some laundry
• put away some laundry
• do some laundry
• get ready to go out for dinner
• make list for Michael for errands
  
• go to Curves

Ten Years?!

WOW, where did the time go!! Today is our tenth wedding anniversary!! I can hardly believe that so much has passed, and yet there is SO much more to come!!

The photo to the right was taken just two weeks ago in Florida. It's shadowy, but it has all the things I love in it - my family and sunshine! LOL!

God really knew what he was doing when he brought Michael and I back together! I remember the day that he came back to Bethel and I got the biggest hug ever! I fondly recall our first date - even tho my food was less than tasty ;) LOL I remember his proposal after our first date... I remember our one year of engagement full of ups and downs. I so remember how I felt the moment that the doors of the church opened and my Dad escorted me down the aisle... I saw no one but Michael... even though the church was full! I still have eyes only for him!

Things I'm thankful for in the last 10 years: (in no specific order!)

• having Michael as the love of my life
• Michael's unending patience
• Michael's goofy sense of humour
• our three amazing children
• a husband who loves God
• a house we can call a home (even tho it still needs to be finished rennovating!)
• the myriads of hugs I get every day from both Michael and the children
• saying "I love you" at least once a day (usually more!)
• hearing "I love you" at least once a day (usually more!)
• a steady job for Michael that makes him be a great provider for our family

The list could go on, and I may add to it over the day! :D

Spring!!

I firmly believe now that SPRING is here!! I was driving along yesterday, and didn't I finally see my first Spring Robin!! I'll have to dig out the book for the kids :) It's a very cute story about how this little girl goes looking all over the garden for her Spring Robin to have returned from the South. It's got lots of stuff about different Spring flowers (crocus, daffodils, fiddle heads, etc). As much as you all know that I love birds ummm, tolerate birds, am totally petrified of birds.. I do like this story, and I do like seeing the Robins return! :D

My throat is on fire... but stuff has to be done!

My throat feels like it's on fire. More accurately, it feels as tho someone is scraping a razor blade down it, with the flat side! It's awful. I did manage to sleep OK last night, which is a blessing. So this makes it 'official' that all three girls in this house have this bug. JA is on day 7 of it, so we are returning to the walk in clinic this afternoon. Ugh. Sophia has it, but she will tell you she feels 'marvelous!' LOL However, her droopy eyes, suffy/runny nose, and the ragginess of her voice will say otherwise! She's flaked out in my bed, waiting for Dora to come on.

In spite of this, the house will not run itself! So here's my to do list for today!! I find these lists extrememly helpful in accomplishing tasks!!

• get kids ready for school and on the bus
• fold and put away laundry
• clean the blue bathroom
• empty dishwasher
• tidy kitchen
• thaw chicken for supper (mmm, fajitas!)
• post day 2 of our Florida trip
• do Mom's taxes
• do Dad's taxes
  

I think that can be it for now! :D Don't wanna overdo things now :)

Florida Trip Day 1 on the road

It's our trip in review, with photos! I will share photos as I go, and detail the days we were gone :D It won't be all in one day tho!!


We left home on Friday March 7th at 4:30am, only 30 mins behind schedule, which for ME is really good!! The kids got up, hit the bathroom, and got buckled in. I gave them each their new cups with snack cups on the bottom, and away we went! They watched a movie right out of the gate, because, well, it was dark, so they might have slept, watched a movie!

We are blessed to have such excellent travellers in our children! Otherwise, we'd not be able to travel this way, ever.

We stopped a few hours into the trip for our first bathroom break. We were aiming to get to Rock Hill, SC, and we did make it!! We stopped at Subway for lunch, which put us behind about an hour or so. It was INCREDIBLY busy in there! We drove through the cool tunnels in the mountains of West Virginia, altho the first tunnel was down to one lane, and so we got stuck in traffic for AT LEAST an hour. Another minor slow down later caused us to lose about 3o more minutes. We stopped about 30 mins from Rock Hill and found a Pizza Hut. We got stuffed crust pizza, which the kids enjoyed, but I didn't! LOL! It just didn't taste like I thought it would! Then we piled back in the van, and made our way to Rock Hill. When we arrived, we tried to get a room at about 6 hotels, and nobody could take five of us without a big charge, or two double beds (and face it, Mike is too tall to share a double bed, I do like to have more than a corner to sleep on!). I was getting frustrated, and was ready to just say "go to sleep in the van, and we'll just drive all night!" Thankfully, we tried just one more hotel, and VOILA... 2 queen sized beds, non-smoking room, including breakfast... including taxes 55$. Can't go wrong there. It was 9:20pm. We got the kids settled, tidied up the van a little, had showers, and hit the sack.

It was incredibly foggy pretty much the entire way down. I think it was because we were crossing paths with the major blizzard that was hammering St. Catharines!! I have seen photos of the snow, and well, we didn't miss it!! There was still enough here when we got home!

Day 1. 1206 kms, 17 hours in the van, 3 movies, some traffic, and lots of fun!!