Matt & Jamie's Wedding

Storms in Bloomington kept us inside but it was a beautiful ceremony and a great party.
This is my favorite picture so far. Mike had the camera, so there aren't as many pics as *I* would have taken, but I'll share what I've got.

Daddy and Jamie dancing. Thank goodness it was a song I didn't know the words to, but I was still a little teary.



The cake tasting. No messy shoving or icing up the nose. :) I only had a bite but the cake was great. Zak liked the hard icing. There was lots left over, so Matt and Jamie can have some when they get back.

The locomotion line. The DJ had some great songs and most everyone did the locomotion, even Mike, as you can see.





Jamie's on her way to a cruise and I can't wait to hear all about it.

Blog Tag!

I’ve been blog tagged by Holly, a new friend from Memory Creators.

The rules are: List 5 weird things about yourself or your pets. Tag 5 friends and list them. Then, those people need to write on their blogs about 5 weird things, and state the rules, and tag 5 more people. Don’t forget to let the people you tag know by posting a comment on their blog!


Okay, so here are the weirdest things I can think of:
1. I don’t like when my food touches on my plate.
2. I eat each food separately.
3. When we rescued to baby kittens at 4 wks old, my dog nursed them (and produced milk)
4. I don’t think any of this is really weird. Weird is my normal.
5. I don’t have 5 friends with blogs.

That's it. I'm not so good at games.

Michigan v Notre Dame

For weeks, heck, for the whole last YEAR, Mike's friends and co-workers have been giving him heck over this game. Thank God (yes, I prayed for a victory) Michigan won or these guys would have been on obnoxious overload and Mike would have been in a funk for the next year.


Church this morning was great. If you haven't visited The Living Room, go check it out a leave a comment. We're going to add some more resources and maybe some study posts throughout the week.

I've been scrapping quite a bit this week. I joined a chat board (and ordered a monthly scrap kit) at Memory Creators and uploaded a few pages to the gallery. Check it out :)

Work tomorrow. I hate Mondays. And, I'm headed to DC this week so that means figuring out a wardrobe for three days. Hey, I did get a new suit last weekend!

Kids eat free

We eat out a lot.
Really, a lot.
And we have two children.
Seems like we'd take advantage of those "kids eat free" promotions that so many restaurants offer, right.
WRONG!!
We never go to a restaurant on those nights because every misbehaving child and his oblivious parent are there to get a freebie.
Well, tonight we made a mistake.
We left early, because I have work to do, and Mike chose Denny's. Note that I *am* naming names here.
We sat in a booth next to the hippopotamus family. These kids had NO table manners and the two moms(? grandma?) didn't care. The two year old liked to eat, with his hands, while standing up and facing us. Have you ever had someone stand over you and eat with their mouth open?
Now, imagine this ... it took >45 minutes to get our food. For nearly that whole time, I hear screaming, chewing children in my right ear AND we got no service. No coke refills, no "how you doin' hon", no "your food'll be right up". For 45 minutes.
Finally the food comes, but my salad is missing (guess I should've actually had that 30 minutes ago) and no food at all for Zak.
By this time Mike has politely asked Momma Hippo to corral her young (to steely stares) but we still have no drinks.
Finally after more than a full hour of waiting (and still no food for Zak), the manager stops by. She serves salad to the people who sat down 20 minutes after us and asks us if all is well. Boy, was she sorry.
As we left the restaurant, we passed the waitress carrying Zak's food.
We ordered pizza.

Now, maybe this is more about bad service than obnoxious children but it takes me back to a recent Sunday when we were eating at a Chinese buffet after church. Another place where you can't expect the cream of the crop, buffets.
There was a family having lunch that made me embarrassed to have gone to church myself. Dressed in their Sunday finest, the children banged silverware, stood in chairs, dropped food and yelled throughout the meal. It was like watching a train wreck.

And now, poor Aly. We tried her to warn that public school wouldn't be all fun. One of the things that drives her crazy: lunch table manners. Everyone chews with their mouths open. They talk with food in their mouths. This week, she quietly asked the teacher if she could move to a new table because she couldn't stand it anymore.

I don't get it. How has this happened? We chewed with our mouths closed. We sat up straight at the table. We couldn't see the TV from our seat. We ate out once a week, maybe. We finished our vegetables, or else. And now its OUR generation who has these obnoxious children. I just don't get it.

Actually I do. It boils down to my biggest pet peeve: self-centeredness.
If folks thought of other people first, they would discipline their children. They would hold the door open for other folks. They'd stop running yellow lights and cutting me off in traffic. The world would be a better place.

I'm not holding my breath.

The Album has Landed!

Nov 2008, ETA actual photos of the album.

After YEARS of scrapping, I have finally completed the gift album for Nana and Pawpaw. I started this album over two years ago as a Christmas present for Mom and Dad. I gave them a partial album (and took it back) that Christmas. I had the best intentions to have it completed by Mother's Day, our move date in July and Mom's birthday in August. The next Christmas came and went. Finally, today, it is done.
Well, mostly.

I bought a 12x12 album from QVC, and it has voice-recordable pages. I thought that it would be cool to have not just pictures of the kids, but the sound of their voices. I created 46 pages in this book, two for each letter of the alphabet (ok, not for Q or V-W-X-Y). For each layout, I tried to scrap a person and a place. I also used a technique that started with the letter. So for A we have Aly, the Aquarium and Acrylic Paint and Acrylic Stamps. Okay, so that is rather involved. No wonder it has taken me forever.

Anyway, the part that isn't done is the recording of the kids' voices. I also will be taking digi pics of each page. If I had a scanner, I would do a hi-res scan of each page. I am really proud of this thing.

So, the album is done and I'm on to the next project. I went digging through pictures to see where I left off --March 2003. But then I thought of doing an album for Isaiah. I only have about 60 pictures of him, and they are in a 'brag book' type album. I bought an album kit from QVC (hmmm, sounds familiar) that should make it easy to scrap these pics. The album is similar to this one except it is 12x12 and came with paper, stickers, letters, tags, die cuts and more. I already have two pages done and the third laid out. Much faster than before. :)

I'll post pics as soon as I take some. I'm going to have to take a trip to Boonville soon to make the album presentation.

Edited to add that I delivered the album to mom on the eve of Jamie's wedding.

Dolphins v. Steelers

I don't care for football so much, but a football PARTY, that I can go for.
Let's just say I hope the pictures never surface.
I remember that the Dolphins lost, because our host was sad.
And I will say that the bachelorette party was helpful, because those two glasses of water at halftime made all the difference in today's hangover status.

Now, when can we go to Broad Ripple?

A Passing

Zak and I love Animal Planet, TLC, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, etc., but even Aly likes the Crocodile Hunter, and now he is gone.

Why does this make me so sad this morning? Probably because some will say that he was a daredevil that never should have interacted with animals the way he did. Probably because he left behind his loving wife Terri, and kids Bindi and Bob, to deal with the thousands of visitors to his wildlife park.

My condolences to his family and to the nation of Australia, whose population crashed several internet news sites trying to find information on today's tragedy.

Rest in Peace, Steve