February 27, 2007, 7:23 pm

Doritos...

Just wanted to let you guys know that I remembered what had me so bothered in my post called "Why, WhY, WHY?!" from yesterday morning. There are now several different flavors of Doritos (in case you weren't aware), and the Jalapeno and Cheddar Doritos are absolutely delicious. Andy and I both love them. Once you start eating them, you cannot stop... it doesn't matter that your entire tongue is on fire and each taste bud is inflamed. Well, my problem is that the stores around here stopped carrying that particular flavor, yet they have all of the other 8 flavors. WHY?! Why do they tantalize me with something so delicious and then STOP selling it?!?!? I'm so sad about this.

Jacob...

Jacob is feeling quite a bit better today. He's not nearly as pitiful as he was the last couple of days. His nose is still all snotty, and he's still hoarse, but the fever is gone and he has more energy (although he did sleep a lot longer than usual during his naps today). He's so cute... he says "what's that?" to EVERYTHING he sees. He's so curious and wants to get into everything too. And because this post is kind of boring, here is Jacob eating pizza (taken tonight as my photo of the day):

February 26, 2007, 2:25 pm

More photos?

Okay, so the previous photo doesn't show the "true" color; it's actually a little darker than that. I wanted to get some photos that more aptly showed you how the new 'do looks so I took my camera into the bathroom to try to get some mirror shots. Yeah - you can see they didn't turn out that great. LOL I actually did get some things done today, even though it looks like I just played hairdresser. Oh, and I don't normally change my shirt multiple times in one day - but it's like 80 degrees, so the long-sleeved shirt I had on earlier was too hot. Just fyi.

Okay, so obviously I need to work on my aim when doing self-portraits in the mirror?

Jacob is like "Woman! Could you stop with the photo-taking shenanigans and PLEASE pick me up?!?! Don't you know that I'm SICK?!?! HELLO!!!!"

February 26, 2007, 12:54 pm

Because no change is boring...

February 26, 2007, 10:35 am

ANNOUNCEMENT:

Sometime today, in between my Monday cleaning, I plan on coloring my hair. After 11 years as a blonde, I decided to go back to my roots... uh, not quite literally, but close. I have tried letting my natural color grow back a couple times here and there throughout the 11 years, always to say "ugh, I hate my natural hair color, why did I waste the time letting it grow back?!" Actually, that's not entirely true. I like my natural color... what it USED to be... but after each child, it just got mousier and mousier, so now I hate it. Thus, all the dying. Anyway, I am going to dye it "light brown" today. I'll let you know how it goes. Photos may or may not come later. It depends on the results. I haven't been a brunette in a long time, so I don't know if I will like it or not. :)

Why, WhY, WHY?!?!?!?

Yeah, I recall having this title for a blog blurb earlier today, because something got on my nerves about something. But I can't for the life of me remember what it was, so I guess it wasn't too much of a catastrophe. I'll be sure to let you know if I think of it. :)

Poor baby...

Jacob is sick. He just got tooth # 7, and he has a cold. Snotty nose, horseness, cough, fever... he's so pitiful. Hopefully he gets better soon. He's only had a cold twice, and that's all he's ever been sick, and I think this is pretty much the worst one he's had. Those darned teeth coming in - teething always seems to cause some kind of illness. I guess it lowers the immune system or something (although some doctors would have you believe that teething has nothing to do with fevers and colds... five kids later, I'm here to tell you they ARE related... and that's a fact. Maybe I'll add that to the Petra Pediatric Medical Journal I plan to write). :-D

Later...

Remind me to tell you a story of my 80's serenade to Brittany on the way to school this morning, and how much fun it is to have an 8th grader. But for now, back to my cleaning... :)

February 24, 2007, 7:46 pm

There was a fire on Fort Hood today. Three of the neighborhoods were evacuated, along with everyone at the commissary and PX. I saw some of the flames from the highway, but couldn't get close enough to get any good photos (the only photo I did get is on my photo-a-day page at Scrapsupply). Andy's on duty tonight so the kids and I are going to watch a movie. Speaking of movies, here are a few more reviews:

Running with Scissors - ugh! We didn't even finish it (and we usually will sit through to the end to find out what happens). I thought with all the dysfunction and good actors, it had to be good. It was not.

Stranger than Fiction - awesome! I loved this movie. It was everything I hoped it would be. "Harold vigorously shook the lamp repeatedly."

Marie Antionette - Oh man... this was the longest three hours of my life... or was it eight hours? It sure seemed like it. Sophia Copolla (the director) basically just dressed everyone up like they were from the 18th century and proceeded to shoot a music video. And they didn't even show the part where she gets her head chopped off.

A History of Violence - For some reason, I thought this would be good, and I was looking for something to watch while Andy was in Oklahoma last weekend. Violence doesn't really phase me in films so the extra close-ups of the guy's head that had been bashed in was no big deal to me. The slooooooooow plot and the super annoying wife of the main character drove me bonkers though. And I had to fast forward through a couple of way-too-gratuitous sex scenes between the main couple. Another "ugh!"

The Departed - Loved it! They totally threw me for a loop with the ending (something that doesn't happen a lot in movies - they're usually so predictable). Excellent script, excellent acting, excellent directing. There is some bad language if that kind of thing bothers you (I don't really notice, especially if the kids aren't in the room - which I wouldn't recommend the movie for kids [hello, it's a mob movie], but Andy and I enjoyed it). :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ROBYN, ISAIAH, AND CHRIS!! :)

From a post I started to write the other day, but never finished:

Why is the Golden Girls theme song stuck in my head? I haven't seen that show in YEARS, possibly decades... but "thank you for being a friend, traveled down the road and back again, my heart is true, you're a pal and a confidante, thank you for being a friend"... yeah, I probably have some of the words wrong, but I'm surprising myself that I remember THAT much of the song - it's not like I watched every episode or something.

A few photos from Jarvis birthday party...

I bought these funny glasses for the kids as party favors :)

opening a transformer. Jarvis also got a couple cars, some playing cards, and a new bike

blowing out the rapidly melting candles :)

February 18, 2007, 7:41 pm

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my favorite little 8 year old!!! We just took Jarvis out for his birthday (we're waiting to do cake and presents until Andy gets home tomorrow). We went to see Bridge to Terabithia and ate at Jarvis' choice - Jack in the Box. The movie was pretty good - better than I expected, and the kids really liked it. Jacob was even fairly good - I didn't have to leave with him this time {yay!}. I took this photo this afternoon right before we left for the movie:

8 year old Jarvis, who is growing up way too fast!

February 18, 2007, 1:44 am

For some reason, I just cannot seem to get to bed at a reasonable hour when Andy isn't here. When he's home, I can go to bed at 10 pm with no problem, but he's away and here it is almost 2 am and I'm up messing with photos and updating my blog. Oh well. :)

I have been wanting to make a keyring tag book with my favorite Scriptures on it. I got the idea from Rebecca, who makes lots of tags with quotes and verses on them. Since I didn't have a lot planned for today, I figured I'd start on it, and lo and behold I finished the whole thing. Woo hoo. Below are photos of each 'page' of my inspirational keyring (which I plan to keep near my desk to reference often... these are all verses I had written in my prayer journal so I can read through them over and over - I strive to live each of them).

February 17, 2007, 10:58 am

Okay, I don't ever talk about the celebrity gossip on my blog... but Britney Spears shaving her head bald? What's that about? Does she think she doesn't already have enough negative attention on herself?! Does she secretly have cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy so she shaved it all off?! All those are legitimate questions, but my FIRST question is this: WHY does some white trash girl from Louisiana shaving her head make the HEADLINES?!?!?!?! I can see at the back of the entertainment section maybe having a blurb, but front page news?! Wow.

Since I'm on the celebrity topic today - Anna Nicole Smith... wow. My question on her is this: Why are so many of the news outlets acting like this is such a tragedy? Let's recap: She left her infant in the care of a friend's mother in the Bahamas while she went to Florida to party (and o.d. on who-knows-what kind of drugs); I don't think she's been coherent in public anytime in the last, at least, five years; she was a whore; she was a drug addict... if what the "nanny" says is true, I'm thinking that baby is better off without her... and shocked?! No... I wasn't surprised in the least when I saw the news that she had died. I'm amazed she lasted this long. It is sad that the state of her soul was most likely not what it should have been... but there were no surprises there. I'm sure we'll be seeing her name in the headlines for a while though, well that and Britney's baldness.

Andy is in Oklahoma for the weekend. He went to visit Coby (our friend from the Marine Corps days). I think it's been about 4 years since he's seen him. The kids and I stayed home to hang out, relax, maybe take in a movie, and I think I'm gonna scrapbook. :)

The kids want to go see Bridge to Terabithia. It doesn't look that great to me, but maybe it'll be good. I'll review it later, along with a few other movies that I remembered in the last couple days that I forgot to review in my post earlier this week, including two NOT-TO-WATCH flicks that I saw yesterday (I was a bum yesterday and laid on the couch and watched two movies that ended up sucking).

Now, I'm going to scrapbook for a little while before we head out to a movie and to do some shopping (for groceries - nothing exciting). :)

edited to add: Maybe Britney had a horrible case of lice that she just could not get rid of with that big mop of ratty hair, so she HAD to shave it to get rid of the little critters? Yes? Maybe?

February 16, 2007, 2:14 pm

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAVANNAH! :) (a day late - sorry)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALI! :) (today - I'm on time, yay)

Jacob is so silly. He was just sitting in his high chair this morning staring off into space with this strawberry sticking out of his mouth. He cracks me up! (and yes, his hair looks crazy in the mornings! LOL)

February 15, 2007, 5:13 pm

I've been scrapbooking a lot lately. I figured I'd add photos of a few layouts I've done recently (click on them to see a larger version at Scrapsupply).

February 14, 2007, 3:18 pm

Happy Valentine's Day!

My Pampered Chef party went well last night; it was fun and the desserts were SO yummy! (p.s. I'm taking orders until Thursday if anyone wants to buy something) :D

Andy had flowers sent to me today. Last night, during the party, he took the youngest four kids to play on the food court playground, to eat, and to the mall. He came home after the party (cause he's a sweetie and wanted us to have a peaceful party) bringing me a cookie cake he had ordered, and some monkey balloons! :)

February 13, 2007, 11:59 am

Ten books in my head that I'd someday like to write...

1. My labor and childbirth experiences (including why I love the epidural)
2. How to raise children (I can't write this until after I'm through raising my own, obviously... don't you hate it when people write books about raising children when a. they've never HAD children or b. they haven't finished raising their own or c. they've only had one or two kids and assume they know how to raise every type of child?)
3. My life story (not that anyone would ever believe it all)
4. A fictitious tale where I create my own original, yet intriguing, superhero
5. Something along the lines of How to be a good wife/How to save your marriage/How to avoid divorce... I figure I have lived through the experiences to be able to write that one with some depth of wisdom :)
6. A self help book on how to chill out (there's way too many uptight/worried/freaked-out people out there) [p.s. the first tip is found in I Peter 5:7... look it up]
7. A hilarious novel about something... anything... it just has to be funny
8. Top 100 movies of all time (I know there are already books like this, but they all include films such as A Clockwork Orange and other terrible films that never should have been made... my list will be ACTUAL top 100 movies of all time)
9. Worst 100 movies of all time that Hollywood claims are good movies (A Clockwork Orange, Brokeback Mountain and many other Oscar nominees/winners will be on this list)
10. A book of short stories... some true and some fiction

I'll let you know when I get them written... it'll probably only be another ten or twenty years before I get started. :)

February 12, 2007, 8:14 pm

Yuck...

We thought Andy had food poisoning last week. He was up all night sick and then pretty much weak and out of it for a couple days following. He's really just now feeling back to his old self. We had dinner guests on Friday night, and towards the end of their visit, I started feeling pretty nauseous. I thought surely I had eaten too many Valentine sugar cookies (our dessert), but alas, around midnight, very soon after the guests had walked out the door, I began my several hours of puking-my-guts-out interchanged with sleeping-on-the-bathroom-floor-because-one-I-can't-make-it-back-to-the-bed-and-two-I-know-I'm-about-to-vomit-again fun. For those who don't know me well, let me just clue you in on a little secret: I hate to throw up. I'd rather give birth. Literally. I hate it, using hate in the strongest sense of the word. And this was no ordinary oh-I-will-feel-much-better-once-it-all-comes-out type of virus. This was the stomach flu from H-e-double-hockey-sticks (with a capital H). I thought I was going to die. Andy had told me how much it sucked days earlier, and really, I have to admit, at the time I thought "yeah, he should try going through labor - he'd never make it". Ha! This flu was about even with some of the worst labor pains I've been through. It struck the entire body and did not go away. Well, it seemed that way. Anyway, I was good for nothing on Saturday or Sunday, and am just now feeling fairly human and able to function today, although a trip to Wal-Mart nearly wore me out. Ugh.

Yeah, I realize that was a really long paragraph about puke... but it's how I spent my weekend.

Party...

I'm hosting a Pampered Chef party for a friend tomorrow night. I almost cancelled due to the crappiness of the weekend, but was feeling well enough today that I figured I could handle it (and the kids aren't sick and have drank their Airborne and the house has been completely disinfected - I really hope no one else gets sick - I'd feel really bad having a party and sending people home with a monster stomach flu). Anyway, it's all desserts (which the thought of still is making me nauseous - I remember throwing up for a long time afterward), and it should be yummy for everyone else. :)

Valentines...

The kids have spent the evening filling out their Valentine cards for their classmates and taping candy to them. They are so cute, watching them pick out which little messages are going to go to whom. Darby is so excited about her first school Valentine party! :)

Photos...

I have started my February photo a day on Scrapsupply. There are photos from almost every day so far this month (not from this weekend!!!). Click here to see them.

February 7, 2007, 8:45 pm

Oops...

So I was trying to finish up my entry for the Creating Keepsakes' annual Hall of Fame contest, but alas, I made a mistake. I thought the entry had to be postmarked by Feb. 10th, but no - they have to RECEIVE it by Feb. 10th (which makes no sense to me - they should go by the postmark, but I don't work there). So I have some cool scrapbook pages that I made (well, I think they're cool), but once again, I missed the deadline for Hall of Fame (after only 8 years of planning to enter), because there is no way I'll finish up and get it sent in time for them to receive it by the 10th, even if I overnighted it to them tomorrow... I was going to be finished and have it postmarked by Saturday; it won't be done tomorrow. Well, as I say every year, there's always next year.

I've been a busy, busy bee...

So remember how I have posted photos in the past that my dining room is split down the middle with bookcases to divide it into two rooms - one for dining, and one for my office and scrapbooking area? Well, thanks to IKEA, it looks much better now. It's still a work in progress as I still have some organizing and straightening to do, but hopefully I will post some before and after photos tomorrow if I get the chance. Did I mention that I love IKEA?!?! :)

14 Movies...

I know I haven't done movie reviews in a while, so here are a few that I don't think I've given you my opinion on yet:

Hollywoodland - don't and say you did. On second thought, don't and say you didn't. That's all I have to say about that.

Night at the Museum - Great, mindless entertainment for me and the kids (Andy passed on seeing it). We definitely enjoyed it.

The Holiday - went and saw this with my sister-in-law while in Nashville. I thought it was a totally cute chick flick. Jack Black was funny, as usual.

Little Miss Sunshine - Admittedly, I didn't know much about this movie before we rented it. I just saw the cover, who was in it, and thought "it has to be great." Yes, there were some funny parts, and yes, there was some witty dialogue, and yes, it was even pretty original... but wow - at the end I REALLY wished I had that two hours of my life back. Speaking of the end... HOW disturbing. Ugh. Why did I watch this movie? And it's nominated for a kazillion Academy Awards?! Are you kidding me?

The Illusionist - we rented this earlier this week. It was awesome. We loved it! I highly recommend it. *I should add, though, that I thought it started off a bit slow and I wasn't really expecting much from it, but it got better as I watched it, and I thoroughly enjoyed it*

Employee of the Month - There were some funny parts, but all in all, it was a really, really, really, really, really stupid movie. Don't watch it unless you are incredibly bored.

Open Season - I may have reviewed this one already. I took the kids to see it when it came out, and if memory serves me correctly, it was really funny in some parts and kinda slow and boring in other parts. Average animated flick where the kids really love it and they try to throw in some adult humor to entertain mom and dad.

Miami Vice - Eh. It was okay. Lots of action if that's your thing, good acting, kept my attention, but I would've changed some things. I doubt very seriously I'll ever watch it again; once was enough.

The Devil Wears Prada - Cute movie. Mindless entertainment with a few laughs thrown in.

Invincible - Great movie. Me, Andy and the kids all loved it.

The Black Dahlia - Seriously, there was NOTHING at the video store that day and it had good actors in it, so we thought, why not? Yeah, we turned it off after about ten minutes. Those first ten minutes TOTALLY sucked, and I'll never know if it got any better. I'm guessing it did not.

The Last Kiss - I like Zach Braff, so I thought we'd give it a try. Ugh. I hated it. I was literally yelling at people in the movie while watching it "you are so stupid" and "hello dude - she's a whore" and "are you that much of an idiot?"... so no, it's not on my recommended to watch list.

The Da Vinci Code - Yep... we finally rented it to see what all the hoopla was about. First, let me just say that I cannot BELIEVE that so much controversy surrounded this film. The story sucked, the acting sucked, the directing sucked... the movie sucked. Don't even bother. I think the producers are the ones that started the controversy because they knew how much it sucked and they had to figure out SOME way to get the crowds in the theaters.

Superman Returns - I loved it. Kevin Spacey made a fantastic Lex Luther, and the guy they picked to play Superman did a GREAT job of emulating Chris Reeves without being creepy. I am way, way into superhero flicks anyway, but I really enjoyed this movie. There was some talk that people didn't like the relationship thing with Lois living with the guy and that whole scene, which yeah - they could have left that out - but I still thought it was a great movie (and hello, it's Hollywood - they don't think about morals when making their movies!).

Okay, so I guess that's enough reviews for now. Let me know if there's one that I missed and if I've seen it, I'll review it - if not, I'll watch it and let you know. We currently have some rentals out so I'll let you know how those go after I see them. :)

February 6, 2007, 8:23 am

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSH (a couple days late... sorry). :)

It was everything I hoped it would be... and more...

One word: ikea! I had never been, not ever having lived near one, and they opened one up just north of Austin a couple of months ago. On an impulse, we drove down there when the kids got out of school yesterday. I loved it! They have SO MUCH STUFF! And it's all so freakin' affordable!!!!! I won't tell you how much we ended up spending, but let me just tell you that my ebay profits came into good use (and I'm glad I had saved them!). :D Andy was putting together some things last night and instead of the usual "what is this part for?" and "these $#^%#$%$ screws don't fit!!!" (okay that was exaggerated - he doesn't cuss when putting things together, but I do normally hear some frustrated sounds)... but instead I heard "this stuff is GENIUS!" as he just popped it together with no problems at all. Photos will come later of our purchases. I'm so excited... they had some things we had been looking for for a while, but had not found anything that we liked AND was in our price range. SO excited! :) Did I mention I love ikea??!!!

ikea is now jacob's favorite place too, because it is where he had his first ice-cream (actually frozen yogurt) cone (which he TOTALLY approved of!)

waiting on dad to load up the van, enjoying their frozen yogurt (which is only a dollar, by the way) :)

honestly, I showed MUCH restraint in my shopping! :)

I wonder how many times people have said "why is that woman taking pictures?" since I take photos of everything everywhere. I actually did notice a couple of people looking at me strangely as I took photos of the sign from the middle of the parking lot while Andy was loading the van. Whatever. :)

February 3, 2007, 12:16 pm

HAPPY BIRTHDAY THERESA!!! :)