Let's Close Out 2008 and Get On With 2009

For Thanksgiving we visiting my family in Raleigh for the weekend. We call it 'Thanksmas' because that is also when we exchange gifts with my family. I won't go into a lot of detail except to say we had a great time as usual and to show this one photo. (Naturally, as is my Thanksmas habit, I took very few pics for some reason.) The following pic is of Roan with his new Lightsaber by Grandpa and Grammy. Now, you should know that between Kai and Roan they probably have at least 8 lightsabers of different shapes and sizes. THIS lightsaber though, is blue, lights up, and has sound effects, hence the awed expression on his face!Amy and I went shopping on Black Friday as usual. Even Dean got it on the fun this year. Dean, Brad, and Dad went to a Duke basketball game at home. Amy and I went to see Twilight. It was fun seeing Andrea with her 7mo+ belly. Before we went home, I took a few pictures for them. Here is a digital scrapbook page I did with those pics:

The background paper is from 'Dinner Party' by Shabby Princess and Sara Carling.

Everything else is 'Wild Weekend' by Peppermint Creative.

Template by Cindy Schneider

They are obviously very excited because it's almost time! She is due January 31st and I plan to go up there the minute I hear she's in labor. Can't wait!

Last month Roan was recognized as a "Heart Act to Follow". This is a special award given each month (at school) to kids who demonstrate living the 'habit of the heart' such as:

• Taking responsibility for self and others
• Acting with courage and compassion
• Practicing forgiveness and humility
• Resolving differences in constructive ways.

This month, Kai was reconized as a "Heart Act to Follow".....twice!

For Christmas this year, we were supposed to go to Connecticut. Unfortunately, it didn't work out for us to go this time. Dean flew up to Connecticut after New Year's to briefly see the family. Christmas as home was nice and quiet. We had a friend over for Christmas dinner. Our family gift was the Wii Fit. We had a lot of fun with that the rest of Christmas break.

I finally got a job! I am officially a Substitute for the Richland 5 district. Yesterday was my first day. I was a cafeteria monitor! Heehee. It went well. I'm just very glad I was able to find a job that would accomodate my kid's schedules.

Last bit of news is that we are finally trying to sell our house. We have been here for 11 years! When we moved here, we had one 20 month old daughter. Now we have three! We are way overcrowded and need a bigger place. We've got a lot of work to do. We've already put what feels like half of our furniture/belongings into storage and now we've go some fixing up to do.

Well, Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

I Know, I Know....

...I need to get back on the blog ball. I'll try to catch up soon. Right now I'm just going to talk about a scrapbook challenge I'm taking up called 'You in 52'. Debby's Dare is going to post a question every Monday for this year. You use the question to inspire a scrapbook page about yourself. Debby says most scrappers spend their time recording the lives of family, friends, pets, but not a lot of themselves. So by doing this challenge, by the end of the year you will have enough pages for a whole album/book about you that you can pass down to your children. The first question of the year is "Who has been the biggest influence in your life?" Here is the page I made:

(Digikit 'Funky Retro' by Vicki-A Work in Progress and Sweet Blossom Designs)

The journaling says: My parents met in college and married three years later. They trained to be missionaries. In fact, I was almost born in Mexico. However they felt God leading them in another direction. My dad became a pastor! He served as an associate pastor at Calvary Assembly of God in Orlando, FL. until taking the position of Senior Pastor at a small church called Maranatha Chapel in Clearwater, FL in 1973. He served in this capacity for 25 years. I grew up in this church. My parents are the most faithful people I know. They are by far they biggest influence in my life through their constant love, guidance, and most of all, Godly example. My father LIVES the biblical definition of Pastor and my mother IS the Proverbs 31 woman.

I'm really looking forward to this challenge and I'll try to post my page here each week. BTW, Happy New Year!

Happy Birthday, Sherry!

Day Trip!

On a spontaneous whim, we decided to take the family on a daytrip to mountains to see the fall colors. Believe it or not, we had never done this before! We drove up to Brevard, NC and wandered around downtown. We visited the ‘Coolest Toy Store on the Planet’, a Christmas store, and a fudge shop, yum! After lunch, we drove over to Pisgah National Forest and visited three of the waterfalls there. I even brought my tripod so we could get a family photo.

Then we headed back towards home and stopped at Caesar’s Head State Park. Here we got to see a beautiful vista of the fall colors right before sunset. The kid's enjoyed climbing all over the rocks and visiting 'The Devil's Kitchen'. It was beautiful and we had a wonderful day!

Fall Festival

Here are a couple pics of my kiddo’s at the Fall Festival held by New Heights Baptist Church. They are just down the road from us and do a great job. They have free popcorn, cotton candy, funnel cakes, hotdogs, chips, lemonade, roasted marshmallows, games, prizes, hayride and inflatable rides. They do this every year and it’s all free! This year they even gave every child a free stuffed animal!

A Fresh Take on an Old Hobby

I have to admit that one of the reasons for my lack of blogging, is that I’ve got a new hobby! Actually, it’s an old hobby reworked. I’ve been scrapbooking for about 12 years now. I used to scrap every Friday night at my local scrapbook store, but it closed almost a year ago and since then I’ve had very few opportunities to scrap. I don’t have the space for it at home and my church group only gets together once a month. Also, I’ve been losing my ‘mojo’. I needed something new and fresh, that I could do more easily at home. I found it!

A couple months ago when I went to my church scrap night, I had injured my back. I asked a friend to lift my heaviest bag out of the van for me but then I put everything else on my own shoulders. Yeah, stupid. Anyway, my back seized up and I almost ended up on the ground. It took half an hour for the muscles in my back to relax. As I was sitting there in a painful, awkward position, one of my friends arrived with her scrapbook stuff…a laptop. I had toyed with the idea of trying digital scrapping, but hadn’t yet been motivated enough to figure out how to start…until that night. I don’t have a laptop yet, but I do have photoshop on my computer at home, so I started to learn how to use it for digital scrapping. I found out that there are so many places on the web that you can download FREE digital kits. I was like a kid in a candy store! I love it! I enjoy scrapping again.

My church group had been planning our first scrap retreat. It was coming up in late October. So I worked on getting a good portfolio of kits and had it all organized. When the retreat came, all I had to bring was my computer! There were 3 other digital scrappers there besides myself. It’s a new age of scrapping! (my behemoth monitor did look a little silly next to their laptops, but I didn’t care!) We had 17 people at the retreat and we had a great time. I can’t wait to go again next year. Eventually, I’ll have a laptop….

Here are a few of the digi-pages I’ve created. I’m still learning:

If My Son Was President

My ten year old son had to write a paper this weekend about what he'd do as President of the United States. Here it is:

If I Was da Prez

If I was President, I would reduce the amount of trash in landfills by encouraging people to recycle more. I will also hire some people to plant about one million more trees because people have cut down trees and do not replace them.

I would try to help all endangered species by making poaching illegal. But I will not make hunting illegal if it is done for survival. Animals used to be everywhere but since we arrived, animal populations have been decreasing due to pollution and poaching.

One thing I know kids will love: I will BAN HOMEWORK!

I would be famous for eating the most fudge in one day. I would tell scientists to make me a flying monkey. I would ride my monkey all day long. I would also get Lego sets for free! My office would be surrounded by Lego sets. If I had children, they would play with the Lego sets.

I will also paint the White House gold.