Skeletor's Mommy

Scrapbooking

2010-12-09T09:41:00.001-06:00

I haven't been doing a ton of scrapbooking lately, but I have gotten a few pages put together. Mostly, I wanted my mom to know that I am doing my best to make good use of the awesome supplies she bought for me the last time I went to visit her. :) I've still got a ton to work with, and plenty of stories to tell. The problem is just finding extra hours in the day to put them together. I haven't made any pages about being pregnant yet, but I have a few ideas that could be fun. For now, this is what I've got. The middle one is kind of interesting because I used a divided page protector with 6 slots for 4x6 photos for something different. I like the idea of using one of these opposite a regular page in a scrapbook it to include more photos of an event without crowding the design.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

8 weeks

2010-12-06T21:47:00.001-06:00

I really started to feel sick this week. Still nothing bad enough to actually make me throw up, but bad enough to make me skip walking the dogs two mornings in a row (curled up in bed, psyching myself up to go in to work). The rapidly dropping temperatures are not helping things (or making me more eager to get out early to walk the dogs). Also, work has been fairly crazy as we ramp up to the holidays. On Tuesday, we were understaffed, we were supposed to changeover the front of the store, and we got a really big shipment that needed to be checked in. I was really overwhelmed and not feeling good that day. :( At least by the end of the week I seemed to be feeling better.

We're up to a raspberry according to TheBump.com. Adam keeps wanting to nibble at my belly because raspberries are so delicious. I'm excited that my mom has found a place and set a date for a baby shower. May is definitely a LONG way out, though. Not much else to report this early on, so I'll just post a weekly picture. I'm wearing the same shirt as the my first (week 4) picture, so it's pretty clear that nothing on the outside is changing yet.

No change in my disheveled hair, but at least I look a little happier about it this week. :)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

7 weeks

2010-12-01T11:46:00.001-06:00

Yes, I know it's been more than 7 weeks since I last posted here. :)

So then what does 7 weeks mean? Well, I'm 7 weeks pregnant! Crazy, right? And since my dad has been alternately bugging me about posting to my blog and about sending him "before" pictures of me, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone: a pregnancy update (with pictures!) on my blog.

For the first couple weeks I felt totally fine. If I hadn't taken that test, I definitely would not have guessed I was pregnant. The next week, my appetite felt kind of off. I'd be uninterested in food one minute and then starving the next. This week, it's been more of that and also a fair amount of just being nauseous. Today is actually one of my worst days so far. I started writing this blog post because my tummy was in no mood for breakfast when I got back home from walking the puggles. Still, it really hasn't been terrible. I've never felt so nauseous that I thought I would actually throw up, it comes and goes fairly quickly, and it's worst in the mornings so my afternoons/evenings are not so bad.

TheBump.com is kind of a cool pregnancy website. It has a baby size tracker that compares your growing baby to a fruit or vegetable each week. We started as a poppyseed at week 4 and now we've graduated all the way up to blueberry. Adam is super pumped for next week when we upgrade to raspberry - his favorite fruit. Thankfully, the full-term watermelon still seems very far away. :)

Mostly life feels very much the same right now. I don't feel physically different or limited at all yet, and since I don't smoke or drink or even drink coffee/soda that much anyway, I haven't felt like I've had to make any drastic lifestyle changes. Also, Adam and I are trying to keep a broad view on things and not get bogged down in details that don't need our attention just yet. Figuring out a schedule of visits, deployments, showers and eye surgery for Adam has been most important. The curtains for the nursery can wait. Right now, my attention is mostly on budgeting our way through the holidays. A certain puggle's emergency lump removal was a pretty hefty unexpected cost last month.

Now, I know that all my dad is interested in are pictures of me and my tummy. I've taken a picture every Sunday since we first got the positive test, but at this point, I could probably shuffle them all around and no one could guess which week is which. Yes, I'm a little round, but don't get too excited. I was a little round to start off with. I like to run, but like to eat even more. :)

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Hmmm...clearly I need to work on having less disheveled hair and less fake smiles.

Until next week...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

My throat is on fire

2010-09-22T20:16:00.001-05:00

I was really planning a nice post tonight. It's been a fun and busy past few days with work, football, keeping in touch with adam, running, hanging out with friends and miraculously winning my fantasy matchup.

Unfortunately, tonight my throat is on fire. My sinuses are a little congested, but everything else mostly feels fine. I feel sick, and more than anything, I just want to avoid getting any sicker. I mean, what would the puggles do if mommy got too sick to take them on walks? So tonight I am focusing on relaxing, with a little vitamin C on the side. And I think a little frozen yogurt might go a long way to soothe my scratchy throat. :)

I feel like I haven't posted scrapbook pages in awhile, so I might as well drop these in here to make this post seem more substantial.

Frank Gore already worked one miracle for me this week, do you think he can help me wake up feeling all better tomorrow?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Bingo babe

2010-09-18T21:42:00.001-05:00

I am not nearly hardcore enough for bingo. Me and a few of the CSO ladies went to Mary Esther bingo last night, and we came out sadly empty-handed. Our lungs, however, were filled with a great deal of second hand smoke. :) We had fun being completely clueless and giggly. I'm hoping to get som pictures from Crystal later because I didn't bring my camera.

The action at bingo was pretty intense, so I was hoping for an easy day at work today. Apparently, everyone else in Okaloosa county had the opposite idea, because the store was really busy from like 11:30 on. Jenn and I were the only ones there until 4 and neither of us were even able to take a full lunch break. Generally, though, I'll take a busy day at work over a slow one any time.

After work, I stopped at Target for dog food (my poor puggles would have had no dinner), and then spent the rest of the evening on the phone. I had really psyched myself up for a run before dinner (I had to convince myself after the busy work day that running was a better idea than sitting on the couch), but while I was changing I got a phone call from Adam. I hadn't heard from him since Wednesday. Obviously, we had a lot to talk about and it had gotten completely dark by he time we hung up. Now I'll have to wake up early tomorrow in order to walk the dogs and squeeze in a run before football starts. Definitely worth it, though. Having Adam away gives me more time to fit in my hobbies like blogging and running and gives me more latitude to try stuff in the kitchen, but there is no question that I am a happier Mary when Adam is here.

On a somewhat unrelated note: I think butternut squash is my new favorite food. I'd never had it before tonight and now I'm hooked. It's definitely going
on the shopping list again.

On another unrelated note: This picture of me and Willow is amazing. :)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Ortega St,Gulf Breeze-Harold,United States

Photo dump

2010-09-16T20:36:00.001-05:00

Well, today was pretty boring.

Today was: walking the dogs, going to work, working out, making pizza for dinner and now cooling off my burned tongue with watermelon for dessert

Since I don't have anything interesting to say about today, I figured I'd head back into the vault and post some pictures from the last few weeks while I was absent from blogging.

I took sadly few (read: almost zero) pictures at the doggie birthday party, and none were very awesome. I guess I was just too busy having a great time. To prove that it did happen, here are the best pictures I could come up with. (I know the last one with Lauren is pretty awful, but at least you can see the delicious spread of snacks I put out.)

I took lots more pictures the next weekend (Labor Day weekend) when Adam's mom, Ron, Ambre and her boys Jagger and Max came to stay. These are a few of my favorites.

Finally, here's some pictures of my "new" stove that we've had for more than a month now. :) Pretty snazzy looking, huh?

So what do you think? It was totally worth the wait, right?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Quiet time

2010-09-15T20:51:00.001-05:00

There are so few quiet, lonely nights in my life. I feel like I've been waiting and waiting for one in order to update my blog, and it just keeps eluding me. Now tonight, I'm finally alone and quiet...and blogging is not the first thing I want to do. :) Still, I'm here, and this is what I have to say.

The past few weeks have been pretty awesome.

Doggie birthday party: awesome
Visit from Mom, Ron and his family: awesome
NFL kickoff (and the quadruple team win): awesome
Putting off a real blog post to cuddle up with clean, soft puggles and watch a movie tonight: awesome
This photo: awesome

Good night.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Checking in

2010-09-04T06:54:00.001-05:00

I blame The Hunger Games.

I know I kind of fell off the face of the earth last week. I got my copy of the final book in the series and I was dead to the rest of the world until I finished it. After that, it was easy to continue to forget about blogging. Anyway, right now I've got a house full of company and no time for a full update, but I did want to get the ball rolling with a quick post here. Hopefully, there will be pictures of a fun weekend to follow.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Oil change fail

2010-08-23T21:43:00.000-05:00

Adam and I stayed in yesterday with the idea that we would go out to run our errands today. (I am off and he was scheduled to fly at night.) I had my doubts about getting Adam up and out of the house relatively early on a Monday morning, but we actually had the car loaded up with Goodwill donations and were on the road just after 10. About a mile away from home, though, we heard this really weird announcement on the radio. The local car dealership group (where we happened to be heading for an oil change in my car), was closed for the day in honor of their founder's death in 1983. It was totally bizarre and completely screwed up our plans. Even covering all the bases of our other errands and grabbing some lunch at Panera, we were home by 12:30. But now I have to go to the dealership after work tomorrow for the oil change, and also find time to vote in the Florida primary. Looks like I'd better tuck in the puggles and get ready for bed pretty soon. I don't really do well with less than 8 full hours of sleep. Adam prefers 10, but he's also extremely lazy. :) Of course, I can't sign off without posting some new pages.

I got these pictures of Adam's mom and Aunt Nancy while they were visiting this past April. I decided to use a ready-made sticker for the title, so it came together nice and easy. :)

This is a repost to see if Blogger is still messing up this picture from a previous post.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Life is good today

2010-08-22T17:47:00.000-05:00

I was feeling kind of crappy most of this past week. Not like totally crappy, but definitely a little. Adam was gone Monday throughout Friday. I got some disappointing news on Thursday. The weather was oppressively humid and it rained at least a little bit every day. I had headaches and sneezes and I generally felt on the verge of being sick.

I cant really put my finger on why, but today is better. The weather is still pretty gloomy, and my headache is still pretty much here. Yeah, Adam is here and that's nice, but he's currently ignoring me to get his schoolwork done and posted before dinner.

I think its mostly attitude. Today, I'm looking around at my life, and I just can't complain. There is a lot to be said for time spent watching your little dog play with a tennis ball. Or for comforting your big one when thunderclaps turn him into a shaking mess. In moments like this, it's so clear that life is really good.

You'd think that between this blog and all these scrapbook pages I wouldn't have to keep reminding myself. :)

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iPad pictures

2010-08-20T20:39:00.001-05:00

I think I'm ready for an early bedtime. I don't really know why, today wasn't really that long or tiring. I was off from work again, so I did some more cleaning up the house and picked up Adam from the airport at about 4. I LOVE how much nicer the house looks when it's clean and picked up. We'll just see if I can keep it this way while Adam is here. He has an uncanny knack for finding clear spaces and making piles of crap on them. :)

Anyway, I hadn't posted yesterday, so I thought I needed to pop in with a quick update. Here are some pictures from last week when I first got my iPad.

And a picture of Willow, just because I think she's cuter than me. :)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:High School Blvd,Gulf Breeze-Harold,United States

I want to remember

2010-08-18T21:01:00.000-05:00

I read an article in Newsweek today about the decline in blogging and other user-generated content (like wikipedia) on the web. It suggested that while contributing to the "greater good" of free online content was fun for awhile, now it just seems like work. It concluded that there needs to be some kind of compensation (special perks and access, if not cold hard cash) to keep the up the rate of publishing we're used to.

It got me started thinking about my own - too often neglected - blog. It doesn't necessarily fit into the context of the Newsweek article because it would be quite a stretch to claim any sort of regular "readership" on this blog. But the concept of compensation does apply. I blog because I am compensated. The problem is that the "compensation" is just for me, and it's delayed. What do get in exchange for the time I spend blogging? I get the opportunity to reflect and remember what my life was like and what was on my mind weeks, months, even a year ago. Since the payoff is some date in the future, I sometimes forget how valuable it is. This blog is a lot different from my scrapbooks, even if they serve a similar purpose sometimes.

The article said that between 75-90% of blogs are abandoned after a year. Basically, it renewed my resolve not to be one of those blogs. I want to remember today. I want to remember waking up early. I want to remember how much I like walking the dogs on trash day because I always have somewhere to dump their poop bags. I want to remember marking down candy 40% off at work. I want to remember using hand sanitizer like crazy and popping vitamin C because I'm starting to feel a little sick. I want to remember mowing the lawn even though I didn't really want to. I want to remember how awesome it is to be covered in puggles (or CIP as we call it in this overly-acronymed household) right now.

Oh yeah, and I want to remember these scrapbook pages. :)

I cut out some interior shots of Adam's new car from the brochure he got to make this page. I tried to keep it pretty plain to look manly.

This page was fun to make. I used a bunch of the newest stuff I had (it's hard to tell from the picture, but the background is a subtle, shiny gold), and the picture is a funny outtake in the bright sun this past Easter.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Ortega St,Gulf Breeze-Harold,United States

Remember when I used to post scrapbook pages?

2010-08-17T20:22:00.001-05:00

First of all, I just want to say thank you to the first genius who put together a warm brownie and cold vanilla ice cream. My mouth is very happy because of you tonight. :)

My computer is currently downloading a gigantic software update for my iPad, which means I can't just sit around and play with my new toy like I have for the past week. Instead, I popped in a video (The Italian Job) and am enjoying the aforementioned dessert. I did set up my computer to automatically sync my scrapbook pages with my iPad earlier, so I have a few to share. I know that blog posts are way more fun with pictures.

These pictures of Skelly and Willow were taken in the first few weeks after we adopted her. They were already doing well getting adjusted to each other. We still say that Willow's favorite toy is Skeletor.

I love this picture that my Dad took at Animal Kingdom, but there wasn't really much of a story behind it. (Ooh, look, pretty tiger!) I decided to just keep it simple so the focus was on the photo.

Now, I'd better get back to the movie or it'll get too late to finish it. Over and out.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The iPad - Week One

2010-08-16T16:12:00.000-05:00

So, in case it wasn't clear from my previous two posts: I got a new iPad! I realize now that in my frustration in not being able to post (or at least to type anything into the actual body of the blog post),I forgot to mention directly what brought me back to blogging. Of course, my Dad's gentle hints about whether or not I had abandoned the blog made their impression, too.

It's really amazing how having the iPad for only a week has changed my computing habits. Because I use it for most of my day-to-day computer stuff (checking email, reading blogs, etc.), I go to my laptop so much less frequently. Actually, I forget about some things I would normally do when I'm on my computer (like upload or edit pictures). Mostly, though, it's been really cool, and generally I think it's a good thing to use my laptop less. That was one of the main ideas: to help my laptop last longer by using it less. I'm still figuring out all of the ins and outs, and it's a fun process. Today, for example, my iPad case finally arrived. With that and our wireless keyboard attached, it's a lot easier to type things like a blog post this long. Overall, I think it was a great purchase. :)

Believe it or not, I have been doing more than just bonding with my new iPad. In fact, today I was a whirlwind of cleaning and organizing. I washed the dogs, cleaned up my bathroom, did dishes, laundry and got waist deep in putting away scrapbook layouts before I hit a wall about an hour ago. At least I have the whole day off of work, so I should have plenty of time to get a second wind and clean up the piles on my floor before bedtime. I also had good intentions of getting on the old laptop to print some pictures tonight, but I may give myself permission to put that off until tomorrow. It all depends on how involved I get in playing iPad games tonight. :)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

New app!

2010-08-15T21:46:00.001-05:00

Hooray! It looks like I found my solution for posting from my iPad. I'm a little bit bummed that it took $2.99 just because my blog is hosted by Blogger (there was a free app for WordPress), but I'll take what I can get.

It's not super easy to type long involved posts on the iPad keyboard. It's not too bad, but I feel like i have to "hunt and peck" more to make sure i'm hitting the right keys. Tomorrow I'll connect the Bluetooth keyboard we got and give that a try.

It's kind of early, but it's just about time to hit the sack. We have to leave the house before 6 tomorrow to get Adam to the airport. I can't say that I'm super excited about 5 lonely days coming up. I don't know what I would do without my puggles to keep me company. Thank goodness they are both such good snugglers.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Ugh! I finally signed in to update my blog and i can't type in the main text area! I'll be back tomorrow to troubleshoot.

2010-08-12T20:55:00.002-05:00

Scrapbook pages

2010-06-07T16:23:00.003-05:00

Yay! Blogger is working again. I tried to start this post earlier today, but I kept getting an error message from Blogger. As if it's not hard enough to remind myself to update the blog, I had to deal with technical issues. And I've definitely had plenty of technical difficulties to deal with lately. My printer is still broken and my camera battery situation is officially out of control. I fear that both may need replacing soon. :(

Until then, I've been doing the best with what I've got. I signed up for a Shutterfly account and ordered some prints to be shipped to the house so I can jump on the scrapbooking bandwagon again. I find it really difficult to juggle all of my interests at the same time, but I'm beginning to get comfortable enough in my running routine and the responsibilities of being a single puppy parent to find more time to play with paper. In fact, I even photographed some yesterday!

My dad took this picture when he was visiting in November. My newest Slice card had the perfect little "beach" word to cut out for the title, and that's about all it took to put this together.

I rescued this picture from a frame that I didn't want anymore and was donating to Goodwill. Whenever I'm kind of stuck with what to do for a page, I start cutting little squares and making a grid. It's just what works for me. I cut the "love" part of the title with another Slice card. :)

There's not much else going on to report. I'm working on finishing a few more loads of laundry before I take my bike for a ride along the beach this evening. I made sure that Adam showed me how to load up my bike in the car before he left, so I want to make sure that I make use of that skill. :) Then, I'm going to come home and make chicken parm and breaded zucchini sticks for dinner. Yum! Right now, my puggles look like they need a little attention. I think a short play session is in order.

Reboot

2010-05-26T13:20:00.004-05:00

I intended to write more on that last post, I really did. Somehow, it got published right after I wrote the title, and I didn't really have the interest in going back and editing it. Oops.

I was really frustrated that day because I wanted to play with scrapbooking stuff and I couldn't print any new pictures. I just couldn't get interested in other stuff around the house (especially not the mopping I really need to do), and I felt weird most of the day. I did have a great conversation with my friend Brianna from high school. (Hi, Brianna! Now I know that you are reading my super-nerdy blog.)

Yesterday was a good day to kind of "reboot" things. I worked most of the day, then came home for a run before dinner. I had some really bad stomach cramps about halfway through. I had to walk it out for 7-ish minutes, but I was able to finish pretty strong. :) Then, I made a nice dinner (pizza and roasted tomatoes) and watched tennis/basketball with my puggles. Tennis is definitely their favorite sport; tennis balls are their favorite balls. :)

Today is another day off, and I'm finally getting around to mopping that floor. With a few breaks for tennis and blogging, of course. Adam will be very pleased to learn that Safina lost in her first round match yesterday; she looked straight AWFUL. It's all payback for the smug attitude she had last year when she was #1 over Serena. She's just a whiny little Russian who chokes when it really matters. On the flip side, I totally have a little tennis crush on Jo-Wilfried Tsonga this year. A.) He's French B.) He's cuddly-looking C.) Instead of signing his name on the TV camera after his win in the 2nd round, he wrote "Love you, Mom!" How adorable is that?

Finally, I bought a card reader for my camera! Yay! This post is not lame! Here are some pictures of my flowers/garden that I took a couple weeks ago. Now, I guess I should go take some new ones to see how everything has grown.

Wandering Jew hanging basket

My raised bed vegetable garden

Close-up on the bell pepper plants in the corner

My printer is broken

2010-05-24T12:42:00.001-05:00

Mom's Video

2010-05-23T10:25:00.003-05:00

I want to keep this quick, so I'll post it rundown style:

I'm off today, hooray! I got in a (relatively) quick run this morning, and now I'm getting ready to pack a lunch and take the puggles to the dog beach in Pensacola. It's been a long time since Skeletor last went and Willow has never been. It should be interesting trying to wrangle them and all of our stuff by myself.
It is HOT in Florida.
Still no card reader, therefore no pictures, but I did make this short little video for my Mom. That's totally not lame. :)

Hooray for the weekend!

p.s. Dad, your video is one second longer than Mom's. I believe that is a statistically insignificant amount of variation, so scientifically, they are the same. :)

Naughty puggles

2010-05-16T19:41:00.002-05:00

No shopping trip = no new card reader = no pictures = another lame post

Today was far from uneventful, however.

It was gloomy this morning, so I had to shorten my walk with the dogs and we still got a little sprinkled on. Soon after we got home, it started to rain for real. Rain like I have never seen anywhere but Florida. So much for cutting the grass. (I was obviously really bummed about that.) Skelly got a little worried about the thunder, but other than that, the dogs were fine and chill all morning even though they had to stay cooped up inside.

At about 3, I took them over to Lauren's house so they could play with her dog Jack while we were out. We went to a baby shower for one of the CSOs in our squadron. It was kind of small, but still lots of fun. We didn't play any games; we just had some finger foods and chatted. It was nice, and I was grateful to know I wasn't leaving my dogs alone on my first day off since Monday.

Until I found out what they had been up to while I was gone.

Mike went to the store to pick up some supplies for a project he was working on in the house, and found TWO giant piles of poop and an ENORMOUS PEE PUDDLE IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS ROOMMATE CHRIS' BED. He doesn't know for sure who did what, but I know that my dogs were involved, if not totally responsible. I feel so embarrassed. It's like getting a call that your kid bit another kid in preschool. Obviously, I hate it when they make messes here or destroy my stuff, but it's so much worse when they do it to someone else.

It's a good thing they're so cute.

In other news, I was pessimistic all day that I would be able to squeeze a run in because of the rain, but the skies brightened just enough as we were driving home. It was already 6:30 when I got home so I had to run right out. (I made sure the dogs had PLENTY of time outside while I changed my clothes. I didn't want any repeat accidents while I was gone.) I made up a 25 minute playlist not very confident that I would be able to run the whole thing. It was seven songs long, and I was contemplating taking a short walking break after 4 songs. Something made me keep going, though, and I powered through the whole playlist. Yay! It was a good pick-me-up after feeling like somewhat of a failure as a puppy mommy.

My appetite is kind of off from the snacks and cake at the shower, so I'll probably just have something light for dinner and watch a new movie I got from Netflix. Hooray for no work (an hopefully better weather) tomorrow!

Lame post

2010-05-15T22:15:00.003-05:00

I'm not very good at writing blog posts and emails to Adam in the same day. Three years out of college and I'm out of practice typing so much. (p.s. It's been three years since I graduated? Madness.) This is especially difficult right now because I cut my left index finger while I was making a dog treat grab bag earlier today and it's currently wrapped in a large band-aid. Of course, those are not really good excuses, so I'm here tonight to post anway.

I've had two really awesome runs this week, even though I had to take two days off in between each. I did do some video exercises on my off days, so it wasn't a complete waste. I've got a full day planned for tomorrow, but I hope to try for a 25 minute run before dinner. My run on Thursday was a big part of pulling me out of my funk that day. It felt so good to accomplish that task I'd set out just for myself. It was so tempting to just blow it off and lounge around the house to make up for my rough morning, but ultimately I felt so much better doing something positive for myself. I still don't know if I'll ever love running itself, but the feeling I get after a run is absolutely worth every second.

On a completely unrelated note, I feel like these recent blog posts have been kind of lame without pictures. I think I need to bite the bullet and buy a card reader for my camera's SD card. Until then, I might as well end this lame post while it's short and manageable. It's about all my index finger can handle right now. :) Hopefully, I'll be back soon with some pictures. Maybe of my finger. :)

Dad's video 2.0

2010-05-14T22:04:00.002-05:00

Sorry. Somehow the last post published before my video had finished processing. Here we go again:

Dad's video

2010-05-09T09:46:00.003-05:00

I told Mom & Dad I was going to post this last night, and I almost forgot.

I don't really have time for a real update because I want to do some sort of workout before I leave for work at 3:30. I had a bad day yesterday, but talking to my parents, making a delicious dinner and seeing my friends Mike and Lauren for a bit made me feel lots better. Even if things get rough and I feel kind of lonely sometimes, I feel really lucky to be living the life that I have.

Without further ado, here's your video, Dad:
(I feel like pretty soon there's going to have to be one for Mom so she doesn't feel left out either :)

38:50

2010-05-08T10:01:00.002-05:00

My fastest 5K ever! Yay!

There's no other explanation for why I'm in such a good mood when I woke up at 6:30 on a Saturday. :)

Now I realize I've been more than a little behind in updating this blog, so in case you were wondering how I got to this point, here's the back story:

After our 5K with the dogs, I started to get the itch to run again. Between moving into the new house, trips, visitors, and Adam's deployment, running (and any other attempt at being healthy and active) kind of went out the window. Being outside on a beautiful day in the fun race atmosphere made me want to get back into the shape I'd been in last summer. So I set my sights on running another 5K. Soon enough, we found one that was being run on May 1st (5 or 6 weeks after the dog 5K). It was perfect because it was the last weekend Adam would be home before his deployment (fun family time) and because it was a "Sunset Stampede" at 6pm. Adam is NOT a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, so the fact that it was later in the day made him much more willing to come along with me.

When I started running, I went all the way back to Day 1 of the Couch-to-5K program. And I needed it. It was tough to think that I had lost a lot of the ability that I had built up last year, but I always felt so good after a run. As much as I might dread a run or think I had something better to be doing beforehand, I never regretted a run afterwords.

When the race came up last weekend, I wasn't all the way through the program. I also knew there was no way I was going to make the leap from week 5 to running the whole thing. I knew I would need to take some walking breaks. But I felt fine about that going in. I would have plenty of time later to keep training and get faster. I'd probably be a few minutes slower than last year, but whatever. I just wanted to do something fun with Adam, be outside and score a free T-shirt. :) I felt awesome during the race. I didn't really have a plan; I just ran when I could and walked when I needed a break. (p.s. Walking through the water stations is KEY. Walking and drinking is hard enough. Running is way too bumpy to hydrate properly. Because of this, when I get back to wanting to run the whole thing, I'll definitely wear a CamelBak for water since that's way easier.) To my complete surprise, I crossed the finish line in about 41 minutes. About 4 minutes faster than I did in July. How cool is that?

As we crossed the finish line, the handed everyone a flier for a race the very next weekend. Following my personal record performance, I was very interested. When I found out the race started at Navarre High School and the route went directly past my house I was in. I signed up this Wednesday. Even though Adam was gone and I wished he could be there with me, it gave me something fun and exciting to look forward to this weekend. (Instead of just work and hanging out at home with the puggles - which is also awesome, don't get me wrong.)

Anyway, today (after working until 9:30 last night), I got up at 6:30 to be ready for the race at 7:30. I did feel kind of lonely without Adam beforehand (and they were all out of t-shirts by the time I went to pick up my number :( ) The race was smaller than any others I had been in (I think they do the numbers alphabetically and I was #10.) I felt good through the whole race again. My mini-goal within the race was to run for the whole first mile. Unfortunately, there were no mile-markers on the course! (The streets were also NOT closed to traffic, which I thought was kind of weird.) So, I ran until the first water station, which felt like about a mile. :) Because there were no markers or people with watches on the course, I had no idea how I was doing time-wise. Believe me, I was quite surprised when I rolled up on the last straight-away and saw that the time was about 38 minutes. I booked it as best I could for the last stretch and made it around 38:50 (I don't have an official time, yet, but that's about what it looked like to me.)

What's funny is about an hour after the race, I had gotten home and showered and I took the dogs out for their walk. All throughout the neighborhood you could still hear the announcer on the loudspeakers from the school stadium as he was giving out awards to the winners. I busted out laughing in the middle of the street when I heard him announce that Mary Dunn had come in 4th place in the 25-29 female division. I wouldn't be surprised when we get emailed the official results if there were only 4 runners in that division. :) Either way, I had a fun morning and I'm super proud of myself.

Ok, that's more than enough gushing for one day. I still have to run to Walmart for some things and get ready for work. I hope this runner's high will help get me through the mad crowds at the Hallmark store tonight doing their last-minute Mother's Day shopping. :)

p.s. There is ANOTHER local 5K next Saturday morning, but I think I'll pass on this one. There's a farmer's market in Pensacola that just opened for the season that I think I want to check out instead. I will definitely be repeating my appearance in the Firecracker 5K, but I'm not sure about anything else until then.

Also, I'm attempting to post a video here that I took right after the race today (well, as soon as I got home) as a message for Adam. I'm curious to see if it works!

Seize the moment

2010-05-07T15:17:00.004-05:00

You know, there were a lot of times in the past month when I really thought about blogging. But then I got busy doing other things. I was working, I was getting into a new book, I was being more diligent about my running, I was spending time with my family. For awhile I thought that was OK. I was living my life instead of just blogging about that. And that's great. But after awhile, I was just kind of avoiding it. I hadn't done it in awhile so it wasn't as easy to pick back up again.

I'm finally here today to cut the crap and get back into it. In the moment, I might like doing something else more than writing, but looking back, I'm sad I didn't record thoughts and memories that happened last month. Now that Adam is gone, I'm more motivated to use my blog to communicate with him, my family and with myself in the future.

I'm about to head into work, and I can't find my camera cord to share some pictures I took today, but I'm not going to let that stop me from posting this right away. Seize the moment. :)

I'll be back again soon. Probably. :)

Whew!

2010-04-07T09:33:00.004-05:00

OK, I survived the whirlwind past 2 weeks.

Not that it was difficult, just that I've been very busy. First, I was spring cleaning and getting the house ready for guests, and then I was doing my best to be a good hostess and enjoy their company. I, for one, had a really nice week. I hope my guests will agree. :)

We went to the beach.

We went to base and visited the Air Park.

We went to McGuire's for dinner.

We stayed in the next night and made kabobs at home.

And for Easter, we took everyone to the Soundside Club for brunch.

Thankfully, I have today off to do some catching up. The house desperately needs to be tidied and I need to give myself some "me-time" to run and play with paper. I haven't done much scrapbooking recently, but I do still have a stack on my desk that needs to be glued together and finished up. I'll try to find some time for that later today and be back with photos.

Until then, I think I see at least one puggle who sure looks like he could use a belly rub. Here I come, baby boy. :)

The cloud has lifted

2010-03-26T17:41:00.002-05:00

Today was much better. :)

My puggles were much more...attentive...on our walk.

Adam is being pretty helpful in getting all that we need done for our visitors next week.

Of course, I still have tons to do.

Then again, I'm sure my expectations are unnecessarily large.

So tonight, we'll spend a little time at a squadron get together (i.e. margarita party), but then head home early-ish to clear out the "office" before trash day tomorrow.

At least that's the plan.

I know this is a short post, so I'll make it more exciting with some scrapbook pages.

Well, my 25th birthday was about 3 weeks ago, so here's a page I finally made about my 24th birthday. :) (Don't worry, I actually have at least 2 previous pages about my 24th.) Instead of a cake, Adam made me break-n-bake white chocolate macadamia nut cookies.

These photos are more recent, from Valentine's Day this year. Our special fondue dessert quickly turned into us just pouring the melted chocolate on anything we could get our hands onto. Absolutely delicious. :)

The planets are aligned against me...

2010-03-25T13:26:00.004-05:00

Let me give you an idea of how my day has been going so far:

On our walk this morning, Skeletor managed to pee all over HIS LITTLE SISTER.

Yes, one of my dogs peed all over the other one. Truly, it was more Willow's fault since Skelly was mid-pee when she literally just walked right into it. But still. On top of that, I fell on my ass because I slipped on gravel as I tried to stop them from pulling, started crying on the walk because I was so frustrated at the dogs and, as a result of the first incident, I had to spend 30 minutes when I got home giving them impromptu baths. Sigh.

Beyond that little bout of crying, I've been really trying not to let this all get to me. I started out the day cranky because I got my work schedule for the next week and it turns out that tomorrow is my only day off until Adam's Mom comes to visit for Easter. (I also have to work the first 2 days she's here.) I know I have a lot to do to clean up the house and clear out space in the "office," but I realized that being pissed off about it makes an annoying task even more annoying. I promised myself that I would do all that I could, and make sure I had "me" time to go running (which I don't always love when I'm doing it, but that makes me so happy to have accomplished). At 11:30, just as I stepped outside to run, it started raining. Hard. Sigh. I came inside and did a 15 minute TV-workout.

My work schedule, the dogs, this rain. I feel like everything is aligned against me. I'm getting a little tired of making lemonade out of these lemons. At the same time, looking back on this morning, staying relatively positive is the accomplishment I'm most proud of. Yes, I vented in this blog post, gritted my teeth more than my dentist would appreciate, and let a few tears roll out, but I also did everything I set out to do and more. I didn't abandon our leash training on the walk; I didn't ignore the dirty dog; I didn't just change out of my running clothes and mope around on the couch. Those are all things that make me proud.

I also got some more pages ready to post, so even if this isn't a very good transition, I want to get them posted:

A Pre-Willow page of Adam and Skeletor at home. I usually don't use a lot of yellow, but I love how this came out.

I love this picture of Adam and our friend Lauren. I just wrote a little bit about how it's nice to be friends with another puppy mommy down here. My favorite part of the page is the layered flower I made with my Slice. It's simple, but the colors make it more funky.

That's all for now, I'm heading into work in just a few minutes. I sincerely hope that the planets are more friendly this afternoon and evening. Please?

Scrapbook pages and a new plan

2010-03-22T10:04:00.004-05:00

For the past few days, I've been working on slowly getting my life more organized again. Now, I need action, not just planning.

First of all, I want my pictures/scrapbooks/blog postings/online galleries to be more organized. And I want to make sure that everything gets shared. Considering all the photos I have (not to mention scrapbook pages), this is pretty daunting. But you've always got to start somewhere. With that in mind, here are some recent pages I took pictures of yesterday:

See, I told you I was working on pages of our new baby girl. This is a collage of photos all taken in her first weekend with us. It was fun to make a page so pink and girly. :)

This one is not nearly as girly, but I think it still showcases her personality. She loves attention.

I figured I'd better post this one with the others to make my coverage a little more balanced. This blog is called "Skeletor's Mommy" after all. I guess I might have to consider changing it to "Puggle Mommy" or something like that. Just doesn't sound quite as badass, though.

Now beyond pictures/scrapbooking, I'm also reorganizing. I want to make more time in my life for fitness/running again. Walking the 5K with our dogs was fun, but it made me realize that I've let myself get too far out of the shape I got into last summer. I want to get back there and to run another race. There's one scheduled here on Navarre beach on May 1st (right before Adam leaves again), so I think I'm setting my sights on that. If I can finish it in about the same time my first race, I'll be happy. Heck, if I can stay on my feet for 3.1 miles, I'll be happy. :)

So today is my day off and I'm going to spend time editing and updating my online files and go out for a short run. Wish me luck. :)

5K with dogs

2010-03-21T08:48:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was fun.

We took the dogs to Destin for a 5K "Run with the Dogs." We signed up as walkers, though, since the dogs are not used to running with us (and because I haven't been running myself in far too long). Our friend Lauren brought her beagle, Jack, and we all had a great time enjoying the beautiful weather. I think it's a good thing we signed up to walk. Between two poops a piece from Skelly and Jack, innumerable potty stops, and long breaks at the water station, we ended up pretty much pulling up the rear of the pack. We still ended up finishing in just over an hour, which I think is a pretty good pace, all things considered.

Here are some before pics:

Adam pinning on his bib. We were numbers 127 & 128. Oddly enough, I was number 126 in my 4th of July 5K.

Sniffing out the competition at the start line.

I snapped these next ones during the race:

Adam and Lauren.

Our puppy pack.

The ladies (and Jack).

We took some cute pictures afterward, too, when we got free water, apples and bananas:

Retrieving our bags with our free t-shirts. Too bad their long-sleeved, so I only have about 3 more days this year that I can maybe wear it.

Happy and tired Adam, Willow and Skeletor.

Fabulous picture of Lauren and Jack.

Puggles love bananas.

Finally, we capped off the day by grabbing lunch for us at McAlister's Deli and stopping by the Dog Bakery in Fort Walton Beach to get our puggles a little treat (banana peanut butter ice cream):

Waiting impatiently for the first lick.

Digging in with abandon.

I love the name they gave the ice cream: Nutty Monkey. :)

After lunch at home I took a nap for an hour and then got up to go to work. This morning my legs are just a little bit sore, but our fun day yesterday was totally worth it. Sorry for so many pictures, I just wanted to post them before I forgot. Tomorrow I'm off so I'll try to be back with some scrapbook pages.

I'm Back!

2010-03-18T22:38:00.004-05:00

And better than ever!

Ok, probably not better than ever. Probably just about as good as I ever was. But I am back! And that's something.

I didn't really intend to neglect my blog for two (gasp!) months. As usual, real life just got in the way. Adam came home soon after my last post, and life was pretty hectic as we got used to living with each other again. Then I had a little glitch with Blogger. Something in my cookies got messed up, and anytime I tried to reach any blogger.com website I got a "Bad Request" message. Instead of dealing with it promptly, I got caught up celebrating Valentine's Day (chocolate fondue is dangerously delicious), interviewing for a new job in Tampa, and adopting another puggle. Oh yeah, and I turned 25 somewhere in there. Finally, a few days ago Adam cleared out the cookies from my computer and magically made Blogger work again.

Beyond this post, I'm not really going to try to look back and cover the time that I missed. I'll be moving forward from here on out. But until next time, here's a few pictures of Willow, the newest member of our family. I've already started on a few scrapbook pages about her, and I'll have those ready to share soon.

Spoo...

2010-01-20T19:22:00.005-06:00

It's oops spelled backwards.

When you watch as much tennis as I have in the past 3 days, these are the kind of gems you pick up. These commentators are on-air for like 14 hours everyday, and there's really ONLY SO MUCH meaningful information to convey. When they start to get off script, things get more interesting. :) I was giggling all morning over "spoo."

Haven't been doing much other than working in the past few days. I did get some loose pages put away and my scrapbooks more organized. I love how neat they look filling up my bookcase. :)

Skelly was an exceptional bed hog last night. I mean, he's ALWAYS a bed hog, but this morning I ended up squished all the way over to Adam's side of the bed. How does that happen? He's only two feet long? On a related note, he has no idea that Daddy is about to come home and kick him out of our big comfy bed at night. Poor guy.

I edited some more scrapbook pages, but the photos didn't come out very well. :( I really do want to get better, so I'm going to try some new things (like using a tripod) next time.

I love the colors on this page about one of Skelly's best friends, Jack.

This page makes me happy; it's just really simple, but really fun to look at. I used my Slice on some scraps I had to make the flowers, plus some buttons and letter stickers and that's it. The story that the picture tells (this gatorade jug was the closest thing to a vase I had for my birthday flowers last year because we had moved just 2 days before) really makes me smile, too.

Well, dinner is over and Skelly is happily chewing up a toy. I have tomorrow off to clean up and be useful. Tonight I'm going to catch up on my blog reading and watch more tennis. :)

Really, Nadal?

2010-01-18T12:57:00.002-06:00

Pink and orange? Really? Who convinced you that that was a good fashion statement for the Australian Open? I mean, I know you're into bright colors and not afraid to wear pink, but come on. This is just painful to look at.

Alright, rant accomplished. I opened up this window to update my blog and at that exact moment, Raphael Nadal made his Australian Open debut. His wardrobe choice simply could not go unmentioned. In other tennis news, WTF Sharapova? Way to lose in the first round and look like an a-hole after signing a huge new contract with Nike. I love tennis. :)

I heard on the radio that today (January 18th) is the most depressing day of the year. Something to do with the holidays ending, debt piling up and cold weather/short days. For me, today was a great day. First, the weather was beautiful (high up to around 60). Then, I took Skelly to the vet for a vaccine and he was sweet and well-behaved. :) After lunch (and Nadal fashion-bashing), I went shopping. I didn't get a ton of stuff, (Why is dark brown cardstock so hard to come by? Can anyone explain that to me?) but it's always fun to browse.I decided to work on organizing my new stuff tonight rather than make some new pages. Here are a few I made yesterday that I'm pretty happy with.

I think this one is based on a sketch over at Sketchy Thursdays, but I don't remember which one. Oops.

This one is absolutely my new favorite. I used a sketch from Becky Higgins in an old Creating Keepsakes (Oct. '08 maybe?) that my mom got for me this past Christmas. I love the pictures, the paper, the design, the story, everything. Oh, and the cookies we made were pretty delicious, too. It all just makes me smile. Nothing to feel depressed about for me today. :)

Football AND Tennis!

2010-01-17T21:34:00.003-06:00

Lucky me! Just after the Jets beat the Chargers this evening, and I was wondering what I was going to do with myself, I realized that it's already Monday in Australia and coverage of the Australian Open has started. Yay! It's been such a nice day to hibernate at home. :)

Tomorrow I have to take Skeletor to the vet to get the vaccines he missed out on last week when he was having problems with his appetite. He seems much improved since then (apart from puking up the nasty meat he found on the ground in our neighborhood), so I'm hoping it'll be a relatively quick trip. I hope to come home for lunch and then head back out to spend some of my Christmas gift cards. :) (p.s. I'm starting to notice that smileys at the end of paragraphs are kind of my thing. I like it. It's a happy little punctuation ending.)

Things have been good this week, if fairly boring. I generally feel good with where I'm at, and how things are working out. I've been trying to set more realistic expectations for myself, and it's really made a difference in my feelings of satisfaction. The way I see it, there's a constant current of stuff that needs attention pushing us back. Too often, I've let it push me back to far where I've had to flail around like crazy to get ahead. I want everything to be done perfectly, so I don't do it at all until I have enough time or energy to do it perfectly. Which is kind of ridiculous. There is no such place as "caught up," where there's nothing to take care of and everything is beautiful and clean. There is just life. Messy and imperfect. And that's OK. That's good.

Alright, enough personal philosophy. Here are two more pages I made this week. I'm still not very happy with my photos of pages, or with my photos in general. I still think bad photos are better than no photos. Maybe I'll pick up a photo book sometime this year, but I'm not going to set my expectations too high.

Scrapbook pages and a good mood

2010-01-10T23:59:00.000-06:00

Yay! I'm in a good mood today. Here's why:

I've been scrapbooking. I don't have to go to work for another hour, so I took these pictures with good light. :)

Skelly is feeling better after a few days where he didn't want to eat. We even heard that a dog park is being built in our neighborhood. :)

Adam is coming home soon. :)

That's it, but that's enough. :)

Never a dull moment

2010-01-09T10:53:00.002-06:00

So here's the story of yesterday...

The started off fine, even good. I was off all day, and that is enough to put a smile on my face in the morning. In fact, I was in a good enough mood to attempt to take Skeletor and Apollo out on a walk. Usually, Skelly and I go out every morning for about 35-45 minutes, otherwise he gets antsy and mischievous in the house. Since Apollo is visiting, though, they usually work out enough of their energy just egging each other on running around the house and the backyard. Plus, it's been CRAZY COLD here, so I haven't been too gung-ho about getting out myself.

Anyway, Skelly woke up and was whining at the garage door we always leave from like he really wanted to take a walk. I caved. It was a bad idea. We had to turn back after about a block for the sake of my sanity. Also, because Apollo was starting to wheeze from all the pressure on his neck as he was pulling, and I was starting to wonder how long my arm would stay attached at the rate we were going.

After that little mishap, we played around the house a little and tried to keep things tidy. After lunch I went to Walmart for supplies for dinner. I still wasn't sure until I got to the store and started wandering around what I was going to make (for the 319th family and for Mike and Lauren who were coming over to hang out). I got a marinade, some instant mashed potatoes, some frozen green beans and break-and-bake cookies. Not exactly gourmet, but good enough.

I left the dogs free in the house when I went to the store. When I got home, the only casualty was an old wooden ornament from the tree. Fortunately, I think I'll still remember that I was a Daisy Scout; I wasn't horribly broken up about it. I WAS pretty unhappy when I looked out to the backyard to check on the dogs a little later and found them shoulder deep in a giant hole in my backyard. I also found two smaller ones when I went out to fill it in. I guess I just have to hope that Skelly doesn't continue with this even after Apollo is gone.

The afternoon was fun. Lauren came over with Jack and the boys acted like any group of three boys. Skeletor was actually the most calm, but I guess since he's had all week with Apollo, fighting is not so exciting anymore. I was glad Lauren was with me to take the food over to the squadron family. We were both really confused because the house's mailbox was across the street, and we almost brought the food to the wrong place. After a bit of awkward small talk, we got out of there and came back to our house. Mike got back from work and we all had dinner. I was pleased that plenty got eaten. After dinner Mike and I tried playing 2-player New Super Mario Bros. Wii. We wasted about 40 lives trying to beat one level, but eventually it was too late and too frustrating. Maybe some other time. Mike, Lauren and Jack went home to chill.

Finally, the really exciting stuff happened. It was about 11pm. Apollo was already in his kennel. Skelly and I were reading in bed, about to turn out the light. He was squirming around trying to find a comfortable spot to lay, when I looked up and saw a weird lump on his butt. At first, I thought he might be about to poop in bed, but then I saw that it was pink. It was like the top part of his butt was swollen. Then I look at the rest of him more closely and I can see that his lips are pretty swollen. After a few minutes of freaking out and trying to decide what to do, I called the emergency vet and they recommended bringing him in. He went outside and pooped, but that didn't change the butt thing. I gave him a Benadryl I had from the last time his face got swollen from an allergic reaction, and we got in the car. Apollo looked fine, so I left him in his kennel and called Lauren to let her know where I was and had her check Jack. He was fine, too.

Forty-five minutes later, we made it to the vet. Of course, the swelling in both areas had started to go down. The doctor checked everything out (even expressing his anal glands "while he was in there"), and said it was most likely the same as last time: an allergic reaction to some kind of bite or sting. It likely wasn't a snake bite since that would have been a lot more painful. He gave him some more injectable Benadryl and some steroids for the swelling. A little after 1am we made it back home, very sleepy and $147 poorer.

Of course, I'm just glad that he's OK. I would do the same thing again in a heartbeat. He's my little boy, and sometimes little boys need trips to the emergency room. Whatever's going on, you can be sure there's never a dull moment. Sometimes I just wish these moments didn't overlap with my bedtime. :)

Three's company

2010-01-05T11:44:00.002-06:00

It's a little more crowded than usual here at the house. Somehow, when I was at the wedding on Saturday night, I ended up agreeing to puppy-sit the happy couple's 1-year-old German short-haired pointer while they go on their honeymoon this week. (They totally pulled a dirty trick. I mean, who's going to say no to a bride on her wedding day?) Apollo and Skeletor have been friends since Logan first adopted Apollo, and they get along pretty well. But Apollo is considerably bigger than Skelly, younger than Skelly, and also not neutered yet. Add to that Skeletor acting neurotic and possessive (i.e. sitting on my lap in the computer desk right now as I'm typing), and it's a lot for me to handle on my own. In the first few hours of yesterday morning I was seriously reconsidering my previous enthusiasm for adopting another puppy. Until they were both worn out and sleeping peacefully curled up on either side of me on the couch. Then it was just too cute for words.

Regardless, my quiet week with 3 days off in a row no longer seems so quiet. I also got roped into providing a meal for a family in our sqaudron on Friday (no idea yet what I'm going to make for them) and I have to pick up some provisions for the next care package being sent out. And I'd LIKE to get to my local scrapbook store, since it's having a 50% off EVERYTHING sale this week. Wish me luck.

Speaking of scrapbooking, I've decided to take a little break. It'll probably be only about a week. I just can't shake out of my "uninspired" funk. In the past two days I've started four different pages, hoping to get one finished and build up some momentum, but I just end up staring at the papers I've pulled out cluelessly. I think I need some distance and some fresh eyes. So this week I'm going to read, empty my inbox, tackle my to-do list and leave scrapbooking for next week. Maybe it will help and maybe it won't, but I just can't drive myself crazy staring blankly at my desk anymore.

Ok, time to finish addressing my Christmas thank yous so they can get in the mail today. And go check on the mysteriously quiet Apollo.

Uninspired

2010-01-02T13:27:00.002-06:00

I have the morning free before I go to wedding this evening. I should be filling my free time with something fun or something useful, but I can't really get inspired to do either. I feel like I should scrapbook, but I don't really want to. Or, nothing is really grabbing me and pulling me in the right direction. My papers and photos just don't seem to go together and I'm not motivated to write a compelling story to go with either of them. I haven't vacuumed either, even though you can see that the carpets need it. Which means that I really should have vacuumed at least a week ago.

Knowing that these weird uninspired feelings will pass doesn't make them easier to deal with now. I hate knowing what should be done and yet not feeling any desire to do it.

What a downer post. I didn't really set out for it to be. And I don't really feel BAD, just weird, and I'm thankful for that.

Since I don't have much else to say, I think I'll go collect my barking dog from the backyard and lay down for a little bit.

Checklist

2009-12-29T22:07:00.003-06:00

Write Christmas letter...check

Send out Christmas card....check

Feed, walk and play with Skeletor everyday....check

Max out part-time hours at the Hallmark store...check

Buy all Christmas presents...check

Mail all Christmas presents...check

Update blog...

Oh crap.

I'm really embarrassed that this is only my 4th post for December. Yeah, it's been a busy month, but that's not really an excuse. My problem is that I really want to keep my blog updated, but I don't really want to do the updating. This writing part is hard for me. I love looking back and reading what I've written, even if it's not always perfect. I get really frustrated writing, though. My thoughts don't really come out in a logical stream. I'll start in one direction and then jump to the end or go off in another direction entirely.

I'm trying to just accept that that's the way it is, and stop avoiding it. I've found recently that lots of things that I dislike doing are the things that end up giving me the most satisfaction. It's like running. It's tough while I'm doing it, but that's why it feels so good to have finished it.

Considering that this is generally the time of year for making resolutions, I suppose I should now declare my intention to dedicate myself to tackling more tasks that I don't really like in the new year. Here a few related intentions and goals for 2010:

continue to blog (shoot for at least 2x per week)
tackle some big projects around the house (like cleaning out the garage or extra bedrooms)
keep in touch with people (log on to facebook once in awhile, etc.)
continue job search
keep a positive attitude (How can I ask for more when I've already been given so much?)
get credit card balance under control
take a trip back to DC
ADOPT A NEW PUPPY!

Can you tell I'm excited about that last one? The breeder where we got Skeletor is no longer in business, so we don't really know where to start, but there are plenty of puppies in need of good homes out there. I'm sure we'll be able to find one that fits into our little family OK.

I think I'm going to try to work on a couple scrapbook pages before I head to bed, so I'll leave it here for tonight. I'll try to take some pictures of pages tomorrow before work. I'm struggling to come up with a new/better way of organizing my pictures on my computer, but I'm kind of stuck because I print all of my pictures at home and so I have to work with it's organizing software at least to some extent. Sigh.

New Moon

2009-12-07T23:05:00.003-06:00

Yup. I finally saw it. :) I liked it more than the first movie, which is interesting because I didn't like the book as much. It was actually my least favorite of the books. Even James, who said his friends at work were all making fun of him when he said he was taking me, ended up saying it was very entertaining. The awkward teen moments are absolutely my favorite part. It put me in the mood to start rereading the book tonight (I just finished Atonement - amazing), but I can't find my copy amidst the unpacked book boxes in our "office." :( Both the books and the movies are absolutely the definition of "guilty pleasures." You know while you're reading/watching that they're cheesy/corny/melodramatic, but you can't help but be drawn in.

In other news, I totally s-ed the b at the post office today. I forgot to bring Adam's address with me, and I knew I was going to use flat rate boxes there, but I didn't bring anything to pad the items I was shipping. Now I just have to go back tomorrow. And again at least one more time (probably several) to ship out the rest of my Christmas presents. I'm setting myself an absolute deadline of next Monday to have everything I'm shipping taken care of. I might need more time for my mom's gift, but since I'm taking it with me, I don't have to have that finished until the last minute.

I did have an awesome score today, though. I had to pick up a few things at Wal-Mart after the post office. While I was there, I decided that our money was looking OK for the rest of the month and that I could use some Christmas money from Adam's mom to buy a set of punches I've been wanting for awhile. They're $20, but that's a pretty good deal. Except when I went to the register they rang up as $2 instead. Ummm....I went right back and picked up another one for that price! I don't know if it was because they're going to clear them out or if it was just a register glitch, but I know that I was very lucky today! I took them home and started playing and I LOVE the look. They'll both get a LOT of use.

Speaking of scrapbooking goodness, I do have a couple pages I did yesterday to share. The light was not quite so perfect today, but I think we've officially moved past the shameful indoor nighttime pictures.

There's not much to say about them. They're good but not great, but overall, I'm pleased. I used the button they gave Adam when he tried out on the American Idol page and I found a photo of the Power Rangers logo to use as my title for that page. That was definitely the best character picture we got all week, and we didn't have to wait in any line.

Decent photos!

2009-12-06T18:57:00.002-06:00

Yay! I didn't have to go in to work yesterday until the afternoon so I remembered to take some pictures of my latest scrapbook pages with actual daylight. They turned out MUCH better. I made two more tonight, so I'll have to make sure get them photographed tomorrow in my (way too) short window of daylight.

This page I actually laid out awhile ago and just hadn't glued it all together. I like the simplicity, and that it doesn't look boring because of the patterned background. The picture is our last day in our Park Bethesda apartment in 2007. I can't believe that was just two years ago.

This one is really simple, too. I guess there may be a pattern/style emerging. I love the way the title looks and that was really just making do with the letters that I had left in that alphabet. And you've just got to love that picture of my Mr. Strong. :)

I don't think there's much else going on to share. I've been watching football and getting Christmas presents ready for most of the day. My fantasy team is getting beaten badly right now, and I'm sulking. I still have hope since my quarterback and #1 running back are playing tomorrow night, but right now it's ugly. I'm going (hopefully) to see New Moon tomorrow as long as I can get a hold of my friend James. I've been able to guilt him in to taking me since Adam's not here. Also, it's been COLD here (as in my car was iced up last night when I left work). WTF? This is not what I moved to Florida for. I think the weatherman said that it would get a little warmer tomorrow, but we'll see.

Sigh. I still have to finish my Christmas letter tonight so I can start mailing those tomorrow. Can't I just slip in a note to come visit my blog instead?

Black Hole

2009-12-05T09:46:00.004-06:00

I think last week fell into a black hole somewhere. There's really no other explanation for how it could be Saturday already. And Christmas less than 3 weeks away? Not possible. Overall, I get the feeling of running around but not really getting anywhere. That's why posting to this blog helps. It makes me step back and take stock and to realize that I HAVE accomplished quite a few things.

I have a plan for my Christmas spending and an idea of what to get most people on my list. Now it's just a matter of executing that plan. I have my Christmas travel plans under control (as much as I can control them). And though I don't have any of my Christmas decorations out yet, I do have a fairly clean house and time off tomorrow and Sunday to tackle that task. I just have to hope that next week doesn't get swallowed up by the same black hole.

I did manage to squeeze a few crafty things out of the black hole last week. BUT, part of my whirlwind of activity was buying 2 new albums and organizing my piles of pages, so a couple of the things I made got swept up and into the new albums before I took pictures. I might go back and find them, take them out and get good pictures. But probably not. I'm not very interested in disturbing the impressively tidy row of albums now on my bookshelf. I also worked on my first photo-less project with my scrapbooking supplies, but I can't share that either. It's going to be a Christmas present for someone who might check this blog before then, and I don't want to ruin the surprise. I'm really proud of it, though, so I'll take a picture before I wrap it up and try to remember to post it after the holidays. I do have a couple things from last week to share, so it's not a total loss.

I knew I had a lot of good pictures from the Kilimanjaro Safari at the Animal Kingdom, so I decided to go with a two-pager to get more on there. I used a page in a special issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine (that my mom generously got for me while she was visiting) for an outline of the design and then I found some zoo/safari stickers I had laying around and it came together really quickly after that. Obviously, my photo of the page is horrible, but I've already apologized about that several times.

I'm so glad my dad took these family pictures of me, Adam and Skeletor. I didn't have much to say about the photo, so I kept it pretty simple. I should have cropped the photo a little closer, but oh well.

Right now I think it's time for some lunch and then some work on my Christmas cards. I'm considering still farming out the writing of our yearly letter to Adam since he seems to have so much free time on his hands. I'll write him an email and see what he thinks about that. :)

Is it Monday yet?

2009-11-29T12:11:00.000-06:00

I know most people hate Mondays, but since tomorrow is my day off I'm very anxious for it's arrival. I knew that working Black Friday would be hectic, but I wasn't really ready for Saturday night. Since the mall was open until 10 (which it really didn't need to be, but that's another story), and since there were about 10 extra figures I had to tally and call in to the district manager, we didn't clock out until 10:59. I didn't get home to my Skelly until 11:40. That may sound lame to some people (or a lot of people), but that's past my normal bedtime. I was wiped out.

Needless to say, I'm not super excited about going in today at 1. But I am super excited about keeping my job and making money, so I'll go do my best to make "genuine" connections with our customers. Overall, I really do like my job and know that there are a lot worse ways that I could be earning a buck. I shouldn't complain.

I've still got Thanksgiving and thankfulness on the brain, and I just have to say that there's not really much to complain about in my life at all. I am extremely blessed and I know it. The things that do bug me are the little things. The big things in my life are great: Adam, Skeletor, our families and close friends, our home, our jobs, our plans.

OK, that's about enough sappiness for one post. I'd better post some scrapbook pages quick to change the subject.
Sidenote: These photos are only slightly better than the last batch I posted. My photography skills seem to be regressing somewhat recently. It might have something to do with the constant battle over batteries I've been having with my camera.

OK, the colors came out a little weird in this photo, but I really like this page overall. It's a funny picture of Adam and the other seniors in his ROTC detachment on their last day of LLAB. I used my new FaLaLa design card to make the title. I like that it's definitely good for more than holiday pages.

I wish this picture was better because I LOVE this page (or 2 pages, I guess). I found just any random picture from every year that we've been together and the page just kind of fell into place with some scraps I had.

OK, time for lunch and then I'm out of here. Only one more day til Monday!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T13:30:00.002-06:00

I have a lot to be thankful for today:

I got to talk to my husband, so I know he is safe, (relatively) happy, and well-fed.
I'm currently curled up on the couch watching football with the cutest puggle ever.
Earlier this morning I made some delicious cranberry oatmeal white chocolate cookies.
I talked to my parents, who are on their way to enjoy Thanksgiving with my brother and his wife.
I am leaving in 5 minutes to spend the rest of my Thanksgiving with some friends here. Skelly will not be coming to dinner, but is invited to hang out with one of his best puppy friends, Jack, while we're gone.
I've got pages and pages of scrapbooks to look through and help me remember all the other little things I'm thankful for everyday.

I promised Adam I would take a lot of pictures for him today. I also have a couple new pages to share, but work will be pretty nuts for the next 3 days, so I'm just hoping to make it through taking care of myself and the Skeletor. THAT, I know I can do. And I'm thankful.

Bad pictures of scrapbook pages

2009-11-24T19:33:00.003-06:00

I did not realize how horrible these pictures were until I started edited them. Unfortunately, they wouldn't be any better if I retook them today since I spent all my hours of natural light walking the dog, getting ready for work and working. Sigh. Obviously, that means there's not much of interest to report. I guess I'll just upload some new pages and cuddle in with Skeletor. We got Bolt from Netflix; I think he'll like it. :)

This is the other page I made with sketch 36 at The Scrappiest. I made this one a lot more linear and blocky. I don't really like how it turned out as much as the McGuire's page I posted yesterday, but I think it has more to do with the papers. I was trying to use up some older paper, and you can kind of tell that it's made with "leftovers."

I REALLY like this page. It's what I want my style to be more like - simple and straightforward. It's also a story that I've been wanting to tell for awhile, about how good we are at taking long arm photos. Mostly Adam, since he has a longer arm.

Now whatever impression you have of these pages, imagine them 10 times better, because that's really how much better looking they are in real life.

Winter...

2009-11-23T17:43:00.003-06:00

OK, so maybe I was outside with the dogs in short-sleeves today, but I'm still getting affected by the changing season. It's not the weather, it's the light. It's SO DARK already (5pm)! It makes me feel like curling up and doing nothing since it feels so much later. For some reason it seems a lot more sudden and jarring this year. I just can't seem to get used to it. I'm fighting it, but not very effectively. Maybe I'll try to vacuum around here a little later. Or maybe I'll just watch the football game...

I did accomplish the one big errand I had set out for today: I returned the wheelchair we rented for my dad to the medical supply store. And BONUS, I found a big Jo-Ann's craft store in P-cola that I had never been to before. DOUBLE BONUS, it's only about a block away from the Hobby Lobby in P-cola. How convenient. :) I showed remarkable self-restraint and didn't buy ANYTHING. Money is a little tight for the rest of the month until we get paid. It's OK though, our Disney vacation was totally worth it.

As soon as I got home Skelly and I took a drive over to visit Lauren and Jack. The boys had a great time running around and rough-housing and Lauren and I had some nice girl time. I fact, we made another play date for Wednesday before I have to go to work. I'll probably have to make my pumpkin chocolate chip cookies to bring for Thanksgiving while they're here, but that should be fine.

Now...I still have some older pages I haven't posted here yet (I just hate posting more than 1 or 2 at a time because I feel like they can make a post super long), but Adam has requested that I try to post my newest ones. That way he can see what I'm working on while he's gone. So here's my first batch of the pages I made this week while he was gone. Love you, baby! (Oh, and I REALLY apologize for the horrible quality of these pictures. I took them no tripod in my extremely poorly lit living room. Yet another annoying side effect of early nightfall.)

I was trying to catch up on my blog reading yesterday and I finally saw this post (from Oct. 28) on the Mosh Posh blog. I loved the look of the page in progress, so I decided to try a rare 2-pager. I like putting more full-size pictures on a page, but I always feel like there's SO MUCH space to fill up. Having an idea to borrow made it a lot easier.

This is my attempt at mixing and matching papers for a monochromatic layout. I love these pictures at McGuire's (and I wanted to document this location tradition), and I printed them that size so I could mix in the "Official Irishman" card from the restaurant, too. I used this sketch from The Scrappiest because I liked the look of a grid on top of a grid. I made another page that I'll share a little with the same sketch that came out very different. It's cool when that happens.

100th post!

2009-11-22T11:34:00.003-06:00

Yay! This is my 100th post on my blog! I'm pretty proud of myself for keeping this up for so long (even if sometimes I only post once a week), and I really love looking back at old posts. They're really funny sometimes.

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot to report on today. I've been working steadily and training at work to be a keyholder. I finally have a full day of nothing in front of me today and I'm pretty excited about it. My fantasy football team has slipped a little bit in the past two weeks, but I' pretty OK with my team for today. I'll be half-watching the early games today while I clean up and make some scrapbook pages, but tonight when the Bears are on I'll be super-psyched up and ready to go. :)

I've still got some pre-Disney pages to share, so I'll just post those and keep this short. I've got a full day of relaxing I need to get to. :)

I've had these pictures of Adam's homestay room in Brussels printed for awhile, but I haven't known exactly what to do with them. They're just not super-compelling, you know? Anyway, this is what I finally came up with. I also used up some travel stickers I've had for a long, long time, so overall, I'm pleased with it.

This is pretty much one of the girliest pages I've ever made. Which I guess is ironic if you think about it. If most of the pages I make are not girly, why would the page about the place where I make those pages be girly? I think the answer is because scrapbooking is a pretty girly hobby. And that sometimes I like to try different things.

OK. That'll do it for me today. Let the football begin!

Too busy...

2009-11-19T14:06:00.003-06:00

But that's a good thing.

I've been running around pretty steadily since Adam left, and it's made the time in this first week fly by pretty quickly. Now I have about an hour until I have to leave for work (with a quick stop at base on the way), so I thought i should at least start writing an update here.

Keeping in touch with Adam has been better than expected. We can write emails back and forth really easily and we've even webcammed to see each other face-to-face twice already. Skelly has been doing a good job as the deputy man-of-the-house, especially yesterday when I had to leave him for 13 hours while I was in Panama City for Will's graduation and didn't make any messes or have any trouble.

Speaking of Will's graduation, it was a really nice time. I got to meet his parents and his cousin and we all had a good time just hanging out and going to dinner. Adam was there in spirit and on a stick. Unfortunately, in my rush to get out the door on time I forgot my camera at home so I'll have to rely on the kindness of Will's mom to forward me some of the shots that she took. They'll be in town for another few days, so I might get a chance to see them again later this week. That would be nice, and I'm so glad I have friends like Will close by to keep me from being a social hermit.

I have managed to start a couple of new scrapbook pages with my Disney pages but I don't have pictures taken or edited yet. Did I mention that I've been busy lately? Well anyway, I've got some pages that I finished up before my parents' visit to share first anyway.

This is one of my recent favorites and is hanging in a place of honor on my curtain rods right now. It took about 10 minutes to put together with just a couple pieces of paper and stickers. I love when they're easy but I still love the finished product.

This is a great picture of Adam's Mom and Grandma. We had a full day of walking around Fort Walton Beach and Destin and it was HOT that day. Our relaxing dinner at McGuire's was especially welcome that night. :)

Well, how about that? I actually managed to finish this post before work. I'm quite proud of myself. Now I just have to feed the dog and head out the door. :)

Things are settling down...

2009-11-16T22:26:00.002-06:00

Well, mostly.

It's been a pretty crazy few weeks, with visits, vacations and last minute preparations for deployment, but now that's all over. Things were a lot quieter today. Both my parents and Adam's mom called to "check up" on me, but I have to say that I'm really feeling fine. Maybe it just hasn't sunk in yet, but I'm not feeling especially sad or lonely. I cried a little at the airport, but the rest of the day has been pretty OK.

It also may have helped that I had to deal with my garbage disposal breaking this morning. At first, I just had to laugh. Literally the very first moment I was on my own, I had a major breakdown on my hands. I tried what I could from troubleshooting tips I found online, but eventually I had to call for service. Unfortunately, they can't come until tomorrow morning. And you know what kind of sucks? Not having a working kitchen sink. Sigh. It might even be worse than not having a husband to cuddle at night. Nah, I take that back.

For the next few days I'll be busy at Will's graduation and working, so I don't know if I'll update details/photos of our vacation, but I will definitely be working on pages about it. In fact, I just finished gluing a new one I out together during football tonight. At least there's a little silver lining in so much time alone. I expect to get A LOT of these vacation pictures scrapped. :)

Today's the day!

2009-11-01T07:37:00.002-06:00

I've been all over the place in the last few days with Adam coming home, ironing out all the last-minute details for my parents' visit and, oh yeah, did I mention that our fridge died and we are now waiting for a new one to be delivered on Wednesday? Sigh.

Despite all that, I'm excited and up early today (daylight savings time certainly helped). There's just a few more things to do around the house (change out linens and vacuum mostly), and I'd really like to go out and get a few things at the store. Objectively, we are running low on a lot of stuff (food-wise) and with guests coming I feel like being understocked is even worse. I wish things were more perfect in a lot of ways for this visit, but more than anything I'm excited that they're finally coming.

I don't know how much I'll remember to update in these next two weeks, but I'm sure I'll have lots of memories and pictures at the end. Happy stuff to keep with me when Mom and Dad go home and Adam leaves for his deployment. That makes me feel better. :)

Fantasy domination! (and a haircut)

2009-10-27T10:44:00.000-05:00

I am a fantasy football machine! I am NUMBER ONE in my league. My poor husband is still hanging out in the bottom half, but I am on my way to sweet, sweet victory. I don't know what it is, since the last two years I played fantasy I ended up pretty low, but this year has been awesome for me. The first few weeks I thought it was just luck, but my guys have been consistently good. My draft strategy of absolutely no research until an hour before has really payed off.

Gloating aside, the only other semi-interesting news I have to share is that I got a haircut yesterday. Once again, I let it get WAAAYY too long in-between cuts. Well, part of the problem was that it was so long last time I got it cut that they didn't quite cut it short enough to begin with. That is NOT the case this time. It's shorter than it's been in a long while, and I really like it. I still have to hop in the shower and really style it today, but when I do, I'll come back and post a picture. I'll just have to figure out a way to secure it while I am running since a ponytail is pretty stubby and silly-looking now. (And on the subject of rain...please stay dry until noon so I can go out and run today before work. Please.)

Finally, even though I'm beginning to lose hope that I'll ever get updated on track, here are a couple more of my scrapbook pages. (I'm thinking that if I'm still this behind at the end of the year - which is definitely possible with lots of extra time to scrap while Adam is deployed - that I'll just have one gigantic post with all of the leftover pages so I can start fresh in 2010. I can dream at least.)

The papers that I used on this page are not very thick or strong, so it kind of ended up a little battered. Overall, I still like it because I think it complements the picture of Adam in Cyprus pretty well. Again, the title is a little rough because I handcut it, but that's OK.

I used this sketch from the Bella Blvd. blog (say that 3 times fast) for my 2nd Christmas page. Looking at it now, the white shape looks kind of plain and the title looks a little disconnected from everything else, but I'm just my own worst critic.

This page and these photos make me smile every time. My journaling reads, "It's very difficult to get a good picture of us after Adam has been drinking and popped some popcorn." So true.

Lonely...

2009-10-26T11:11:00.003-05:00

So....only one person from work managed to come by yesterday. That kind of hurt. Especially with Adam being gone. It's going to be a tough deployment if every day feels like this. I just have to remember that it won't. That I'll be busy with work and preparing for the holidays and two months is not a very long time at all. And I'm lucky that I've got my scrapbooking hobby and all of my old albums to looks through to remind me of good times spent together.

Today I'm going to keep working on eating the "party" leftovers, finish my laundry, get a new book at the library and maybe even get a haircut. If I'm really motivated, I might even start trying to unpack some books in the office/reading room.

I'll even post some scrapbook pages to get me in the happy memory mood.

This is a lovely (or at least decent) addition to the study abroad album. I used this sketch from So Sketchy!

I love these pictures on this page because I feel like they really give an idea of Skelly's personality. He LOVES to be the center of attention and get right in the middle of whatever you're doing. He's so obvious about what he wants, and it's so heartwarming to be loved so...insistently.

Even though it's so simple, I love how this page came out. I based it on this page I found online, and I feel like all the pieces are there that need to be. A funny picture like this one of Adam and Briana at Wurstfest should speak for itself.

Alone...

2009-10-25T11:23:00.000-05:00

So, Adam left early this morning for a week-long TDY. Football Sunday just won't be the same without him. At least I've got some people from work coming over in the evening, so cleaning up the house and making up some food will keep me busy. For the rest of the week, it'll be more of the same since I'll be cleaning up for my mom and dad's visit (they'll be on their way this time next week, whoa). I also have to keep up my running and enjoy the quiet time/scrapbooking time since I probably won't have a long stretch like this until Adam leaves for his 2 month deployment.

Not much else to report because all I did last night was work one of the most boring shifts ever at the Hallmark store. Nothing to do, no customers, and Toby and I were both deeply tired. It's a miracle we made it to 9pm.

I've got a couple more pages from August (before the move) to share before I head out the door to walk Skeletor. He'll be much more willing to just chill with me on the couch and watch football later if we go out for a walk now.

This page is not actually as crooked as my photo makes it seem. The rest of its flaws are, however, real. I mean, I like the photo and the idea of that title, but I feel like nothing on the page goes together really well. But I'd still rather put this in my album than start from scratch again.

I'm pretty happy with this simple page about Adam's Grandma and Grandpa Borla from Christmas last year. I think I used a sketch, but it's been such a long time I can't remember where I got it from now. Maybe from this Canadian website?

I like to end on a good note, and this is my favorite of the three pages. I loved this page when I found it online, and I pretty much copied it exactly for my page about Adam's fraternity. The white, gold and blue are the fraternity's colors, and I added the red for just a little bit of "pop." The only thing I don't like is the roughness of the letters in the title because I hand-cut them. I wish they looked more smooth and sleek.

Beautiful weather

2009-10-23T22:34:00.002-05:00

If I could control the weather, I would ask for about a million more days like today. Except for maybe the crazy rain in the morning. After that, it was simply amazing. I had a great time walking Skeletor in the afternoon and running in the evening was SO pleasant. Well, the weather part at least. The running part was a little rough, but that's what makes it so satisfying when I'm finished: that it was hard and I did it anyway.

Beyond the walk and the run, I didn't accomplish much today other than finally watching Step Brothers with Adam. Apparently we were the last two 24-year-olds on earth who hadn't seen it. It was better than I expected for a movie with such a ridiculous premise.

All-in-all though, I'm going to have to say it was a great day. Adam is leaving for a TDY exercise for the next week and I'll miss him and days like today. So now it's time to brush my teeth and snuggle him in bed. I've got some layouts to post, too, since I realized these are still from my August folder of pictures. I'm not sure I'll ever get caught up.

This is a fun page from our trip to Las Vegas in 2006. Not a whole lot of patterned paper, but the bold colors are more than enough. I love Uncle John's face in the first picture.

I'm pretty positive I used a sketch for this one, but I can't find it in my bookmarks right now. All off the paper came from a coordinating stack (how easy is that), and I cut the "$8" with my Slice. The story of Adam's wooden sword from Budapest was too priceless not to document.

Here's another (relatively) old picture: me on our honeymoon in 2007. This was the longest zipline we rode and the only one that Adam had time to take my picture after he was already unloaded at the back end. That was a really cool experience.

If you've made it this far, congratulations and thanks for looking. Good night.

Fall is here!

2009-10-19T12:23:00.000-05:00

I had begun to lose hope that this day would ever arrive here in Florida, but finally it seems like autumn has arrived. I'm currently curled up in my desk chair wearing sweatpants and hoodie while Skeletor is cuddled in the blanket on our bed. Yes folks, for the first time in God only know how many months, we actually needed something more than a sheet overnight. I'm excited. Fall is my favorite season. My biggest hope would be that the weather stays like this until April when it warms up for spring and just skips over winter. That's not that outrageous in Florida, so we'll see.

Running in the cooler air is something new for me though. I started my Couch to 5K program in April, so it had only been warm and then HOT before. I might have to look into more cool weather gear, since I'm definitely getting excited for my 2nd 5K in November. Adam said he would come out and run with me before the football game tonight. :)

I'm off today so I'm taking it easy, but kind of tidying up the house since hopefully we'll get to hang out with Briana tonight. She is coming to Pensacola to do her water survival training Tuesday-Thursday, and we're hoping to spend most of the evenings while she's here together. Yay! I think James is going to come over tonight, too, so it'll be a mini-reunion. Ahhh...college memories....

Anyway, I'm about to go search for some lunch, but first I'll upload some pages I've still got clogging up my computer.

These pictures are from WAYYYY back (you know, Christmas 2007). I LOVE pictures of baby Skeletor. I think I used one of the sketches at Pink Sketches, but I don't have it bookmarked so I don't remember which one.

See? I told you I love pictures of baby Skeletor. This one is funny because he's wearing a t-shirt that we couldn't resist buying (it said "naughty" on the back - too appropriate), and it was the first time we realized that our cute little puggle was a little too thick in the middle for dog clothes. Since then, his wardrobe has mostly consisted of the occasional bandana.

I used a bunch of scraps I had left-over on this page. I like it, but it's a little matchy-matchy. I really like the picture of Mom and Dad wearing headsets in Adam's SIM complex, though.

Alright, tummy is growling so I guess I'd better get in the kitchen.

Bachelor Party!

2009-10-17T23:42:00.002-05:00

Extremely weird night.

Adam is on his way home from Logan's bachelor party. They had to cut the night short because some of the guys they went out with (on a converted school bus turned party bus no less) got too drunk and sick. That left only 4 guys in the expensive bus. At least that's what I know right now. It should be interesting to sort all of this out in the morning when people are (hopefully) more coherent.

I had a good night anyways. The guys started the night grillling out and drinking at Mike Pierce's house, so his girlfriend Lauren and I met two other girlfriends and had a fun night out just hanging at TGI Fridays. It's good to spend some time with girls and talk about our silly boys and the way things are in the military. Lauren, Beth and I are all gearing up to deal with our first deployment, so it's good to know that other people are in the same boat.

Tomorrow's going to be a full day. I plan on running the morning (race training, woo!), then I have to work from 12-6:30, and finally, I have to watch my Bears beat the crap out of the Falcons on Sunday night football. Hopefully I'll be back with an update on Monday and maybe even a couple scrapbook pages.

Cheers.

Layouts!

2009-10-15T13:49:00.004-05:00

Ok, I am SERIOUSLY behind in posting layouts here. Since I only have a few little things to report about, I'm going to upload quite a few today.

First the news:

1. Adam's deployment date has gotten moved up again. Things should still be fine, unless they move the date up again. So, keep your fingers crossed.

2. Adam is going to hear the First Lady speak at Eglin today. I couldn't go with because I have to work tonight. :( At least I sent him with the camera.

3. I'm pretty sure I'm going to sign up for another 5K on November 21st. Adam will be gone, but Will said he would come to town and run with me. Yay for races! Now I just have to get back in race shape. If I was ever in race shape....

Now to the layouts!

This is Adam cutting his birthday cake. I used this page as my inspiration, but kept it simple and I like the way it all came together. Adam's face in the second picture is priceless. And I'm pretty proud that I got away with using flowers on a page about Adam. :)

I love the way this page came together with just a few scraps. I usually don't think far enough ahead to match my papers to the colors in the photos, but I think the red of my shirt and the peek of yellow from Adam's undershirt really bring the whole thing together.

I shared this picture on the blog a few months ago and I finally got around to making a page about it. The page is not perfect (I don't like the crooked title), but I'm glad I saved this memory anyway.

This one took some work, since I seem to be so low on red, white and blue stuff, but with this sketch and the punch-out stars I think it came out well. The labels were a free download I found somewhere online and printed on red cardstock.

Well, I think that'll about do it for me today. I'd better hop in the shower and pack up my dinner for work. I have more pages to share, but they'll have to wait for another day.

No excuse

2009-10-14T16:40:00.002-05:00

Yes, it's been FOREVER since I updated my blog. No, I don't have any excuse. I haven't been working an more than normal, I haven't gotten any more accomplished around the house than normal, and I haven't been working out more than normal.I guess I've just been a little lazier than normal.

But now here I am to make up for it. My scrapbook situation is almost completely under control. I even remembered to take a picture of my workspace last night after I had clean off the tabletop and Adam installed the last part of my curtain rod hanging system. All I need now is some brilliant organizational something to get rid of the stuff that's in the plastic drawers and files underneath the desk and move it to the bookcase.

The whole set-up.

My work surface.

My favorite part: my curtain rods (as you can tell from the thumbs up). I've got some of my newest/favorite layouts clipped on the top one and all of my alphabet stickers clipped on the bottom one.

The bookcase just to the right of the desk.

Close-up of the top of the bookcase. I need more pretty stuff on top and better organization on the other two shelves.

The lateral file behind the desk. Again, I need to put some pretty stuff on top.

Sigh. Adam just excitedly bought some steaks from a door-to-door salesman for this bachelor party he's throwing this weekend, but on closer inspection the steaks are tiny (6-oz. strips) and he ended up paying $16/lb. Now we are going to spend the rest of the night trying to figure out how to return them. I'd better go see what I can do to help.

Time flies...

2009-10-03T15:45:00.001-05:00

Even when you're not having fun. Even when you leave for work just when your husband is coming home from work two nights in a row.

It's not really that bad, but it's not really that fun either. In any event, time definitely appears to be flying. We've been in the new house for more than a month and we're already gearing up for Adam's mom and grandma to come visit next weeked. I feel like I JUST updated the blog, but the truth is it's been awhile.

On Tuesday night after work, Adam and I went out and RAN for the first time here in our neighborhood. It had been altogether TOO LONG. I only ran 15 minutes total in 3 intervals and was still sore the next morning. And the next morning. I wanted to run again Thursday, but since I still felt a little stiff, I decided on a walk instead. I walked to the library and back (it's about 1.5 miles from the house). It felt really good to be outside and to be doing SOMETHING instead of sitting around inside feeling sore.

I was going to maybe go out running for a little bit tonight, but Adam wants to head into Pensacola to pick up some stuff (a book for his grad class and the tennis racquet he had re-strung). I am supporting this change in schedule because there's a good chance we'll stop at Office Depot and maybe buy a desk to be my scrapbook desk. Hooray for clearing off the mess I've made on the coffee table!

Anyway, I've got just a couple older pages to share before we get in gear and get out of here. Enjoy!

These are funny pictures of Adam and Skeletor with Skelly's head buried so he looks headless. There's not much to say about the layout, it's pretty basic.

This page is simple, but I like the way it turned out. I think it all works together since the picture is simple, the words I wrote are simple and the design is fairly simple. It's based on an older sketch at 52 Sketches, 52 weeks.

Monday Night Football...alone

2009-09-28T11:47:00.003-05:00

Yep, Adam has to work at the squadron duty desk tonight, so I'll be rustling around for some dinner and watching the game all by myself. Once I get a few more things knocked off my to-do list I'll settle in and hopefully do some scrapping during the game with the big coffee table all to myself.

I went to my local scrapbook store today (it's more than 30 minutes away, so not very local and I've only been about 3 times since we've lived here) because they had 40% off everything but cardstock today. It sounds like they're having trouble staying open, so I hope this wasn't my last trip there.

With all my new goodies and my free time tonight, next on my list of priorities is hooking up my printer somewhere so I can print a few new pictures to use. Since I can't think of anything else to report, I'll just upload some more pages I had finished before the move.

I like the way this simple page came out. The sticker with the Pledge of Allegiance came on a sheet of stickers I bought a while back and was one of those that looked really cute in the stores, but then when I got it home I thought, "When am I ever going to want to use a sticker with the Pledge of Allegiance?" It still may be a little weird, but I like what it adds to the page. I went with using it in a general patriotic way instead of specifically on a page about the Pledge or something.

I used this sketch at Pink Sketches for this page, but it's not my favorite. I DO like how the pink border on top of the blue kind of looks like cake frosting and kind of ties into the page. I made cakes for a dessert to serve during the Super Bowl and Briana and I decorated them for the teams playing. Her cake was clearly better since her team, the Steelers, won. That meant we dug into that one first.

Pictures! (Bedroom)

2009-09-27T17:05:00.005-05:00

First off, WOOOO! Football! My Bears pulled it out and the end AND I'm officially 3-0 in my fantasy league! I love it!

We went out Friday to McGuire's for a CSO get-together and that was fun. Mostly the later part hanging out with Brian and his girlfriend. I had to work last night, so it was less exciting. I did finish the new Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol that Adam bought last week. It was definitely entertaining and I liked it. Very similar to The DaVinci Code, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I've been doing a little bit of scrapping and gluing while watching football today (I'm not glued to the TV since neither of our teams were being shown here in Florida.), AND since now I know where my camera cord is, hopefully I'll have some new pages to share soon. All I need now is my printer hooked up and my long-term furniture solution and I'll be a happy, scrappy camper.

Until then, here's the other half of the pictures of our new furniture: our bedroom!

This is the view when you walk in. (Sorry for the crappy lighting.)

Here's a good look at the QUEEN-SIZED bed. :) No, the sheet set didn't come with the puggle, but this is his new favorite spot to be found. Or more accurately, his new favorite spot is directly in the middle of the pile of pillows. He's a sucker for anything soft and cushy.

A close-up on the sheets and the puggle. We still need to find a lightweight blanket to match for when it gets a little cooler.

This is my bedside table to the right of the bed and the new location of Skelly's bed (AKA our old sheet set's comforter). He's doing pretty well getting used to sleeping there.

A shot of my dresser. I LOVE the big mirror.

This is the media console and our SECOND HDTV. 32" is so awesome in the bedroom. And I really love the way the furniture looks in our bedroom. It looks really good and just makes sense in the space.

Finally, here is a view over the bed to Adam's chest and bedside table. The drawers aren't quite as deep as our old furniture, but we have extra drawers in the media console so it's all good. This morning, Adam and I were hanging out watching the news a little before getting out of bed and he said, "I love our grown-up furniture." I totally agree.

I can't resist sharing this picture. First of all, I love how his toy matches our sheets so well. And second I love his coy little look with his head facing away but his eyes still looking at me. I just love my little boy.

That's about all for now. I think it's about time to fire up the grill for some cheeseburgers to enjoy before the night game.

Pictures! (Living room)

2009-09-26T13:50:00.007-05:00

Adam found my camera/computer cord! Yay! So I cleaned up (as best as I could with half of the room still filled with old furniture) and took some pictures of our new furniture in the living room and bedroom. Here's what our new living room looks like:

This is what you see on the right when you come into the living room from the front door. Our couch is so much bigger than our last one and very soft and comfy. Then there's the chaise and the coffee table, too. The only thing we want to add is a nice solid bookcase or something in the dead space in the corner between the couch and chaise. Right now it's hiding Adam's Playstation and other game systems until he decides what to do with them.

Here's what the couch and chaise are all facing towards. Hooray for HDTV and our classy little media console. The doors swing out for tons of DVD storage. Notice the empty bottom shelf hopefully to hold a surround sound system sometime in the near future. :)

Here's a close-up of the couch and coffee table. The throw pillows were included when we bought it. Try to ignore the boxes still piled on the other side of the room. :)

And a close-up of the chaise. It's covered in microfiber, so it kind of changes color depending on the light or which way you brush it.

This is the coolest feature of our coffee table. You can be sitting there with a snack or something and think, "Dang! That's kind of far away. Oh wait, BAM! It's right in my face." :)

And here's a look from the kitchen into the living room. This is probably my favorite part about this house's layout - the openness from kitchen to living room.

Today I...

2009-09-23T22:18:00.003-05:00

I kind of forget that I still have a stack of scrapbook pages to share. It seems like since I'm still not in a new routine, I've completely lost my old routine. Anyway, it's late and I'm ready for bed, so here's 2 pages I made last month and a quick run-down of what we did today.

Picked up Adam's car from having an oil change
Got a few things at the commissary
Made beans and zucchini for lunch
Did some dishes
Convinced Adam not to take a nap and go shopping in P-cola instead
Forgot the HDMI cable we were going to return to Best Buy
Looked at 3 stores for scrapbooking desks and didn't find anything super promising
Got dessert before dinner at TCBY
Came home and made a quick frozen skillet
Made a scrapbook page about Skelly's favorite birthday presents
Intend to read some more of Dan Brown's new book before bed

This is our little Monkey in the WWI trenches in Ieper, Belgium. After I figured out how to cut the paper so you could still read the words properly, the page came together really quickly and I like it.

This is another pretty quick page of Adam and his best man, Jon, on the wedding day. I like using more than one picture on a wedding page since I have SO MANY of that day. I've made a lot of pages using a single photo because I want to showcase the really nice photography, but at that rate I'll never document the whole story.

Mission blog post: accomplished. I'm out.

Guess what I did today?

2009-09-21T20:26:00.002-05:00

Actually, a lot of things.

What I'm most excited about though is that I made a scrapbook page. Yay! I stopped at Target after work on Saturday, and when I just happened to walk through the scrapbooking aisle I found an album kit (matching album, paper, stickers, etc.) on clearance. It was the perfect thing to let me put together some pages without having to pull out ALL of my stuff.

On top of that, I got my home phone working again and called the cable company to get the low-down on getting HD service on our brand-new, totally awesome, best housewarming present ever. I already love the 42" beauty on our new entertainment console, and it's only going to get better when all of our sports and TV are in HD.

Throw in a load of laundry, a few boxes unpacked and a healthy dose of kitchen clean-up and I'd call this a pretty good day off. Add special deals at Papa John's for Military Appreciation Week and Monday Night Football and I think it's going to get even better.

Oh, and I won my second fantasy football matchup in a row. :) It's been a good day.

FURNITURE!

2009-09-18T12:14:00.002-05:00

If I still needed any more proof that I am an adult and getting old, here it is: my absolute JOY in finally having my new furniture delivered.

It. is. awesome.

I took a whole bunch of pictures yesterday after Adam and I got everything put in exactly the right spot, but since I have yet to unpack my cord that transfers pictures to my computer I don't have any to upload here. Soon, I promise. I'm really loving how it fills up the space and makes it feel homey. And probably the best part is that the coffee table pops up to table height and I have devious plans to use it as a makeshift scrapping table until we pick out a permanent solution for me. :)

There's not much else to report right now. I'm off today, so I've got big plans for laundry and unpacking. I'd also like to lace up my shoes and take a first run around the new neighborhood, so hopefully the rain and the heat will cooperate.

...and we're back!

2009-09-14T15:14:00.003-05:00

San Antonio was a lot of fun! Briana's family is really nice and she swept the Nav school awards (not surprised). We had a lot of good meals and good catching up time and we even stayed out until 4:30am on Friday night. Skeletor had an awesome time at Camp Bow Wow, and was even able to spend some time with us and his Aunt Briana at a barbeque on Saturday. I am really impressed at how much more relaxed he has gotten as he's gotten older. He did great traveling in the car (12 hours each way) and with the kids at the barbeque.

I was surprised at how weird it felt to be back where we used to live. Adam and I felt so old remembering the stuff we used to do "way back" when we lived there (6 months ago). Being back at home is kind of weird, too, since we're still not completely comfortable here. Boxes are still unpacked, I don't remember where I've put stuff away, and our new furniture won't be delivered until Thursday so we're still sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I really want everything set up and finished, but it's so hard when we don't have the big pieces in place yet. Plus, it's just overwhelming sometimes and hard to know where to begin. But I shouldn't complain. We have plenty of time to get things the way we want them; we're not going anywhere anytime soon.

I'm really missing scrapbooking recently. I think it would help give me a break from thinking about the house. Right now, there's not much I can do at home but watch TV (on our small bedroom TV sitting on the mattress on the floor) or unpack/organize the house. It's kind of boring. Buying new furniture so I can set up a space to scrapbook here is next on the list, but I still don't know exactly what I'm looking for. I don't have a clear picture of what I need or what would work in the space. Maybe I'll start looking up desks and tables online.

Until I get that all hammered out, I'll have to be content with looking back through my albums and posting my backlog of pages here.

This is Adam and me at Texas Land & Cattle for Valentine's Day this year, only about 5 days before we moved to Florida. There's not much story to the picture other than that, so I kept it simple.

I found these "old" pictures of me and Adam at a Nationals game our senior year at AU and decided to scrap them. I think it came out pretty well with just one little scrap of patterned paper. I REALLY need more red, white and blue supplies considering that my husband is in the military and our school colors were red, white and blue.

Well, I think it's about time to do just a little more unpacking and settle in to watch the final of the US Open...and then a Monday Night Football double-header. :)

In San Antonio!

2009-09-10T11:04:00.002-05:00

Yay! We made it to San Antonio in just about 12 hours of driving yesterday. Skeletor was very good in the car and slept nice with Aunt Briana on her couch last night. Now we're getting ready to take him to Camp Bow Wow for a few nights and meet Briana's parents later.

I don't know if I'll have time to update the rest of the weekend, but we should be home sometime on Monday.

Hooray for being on vacation!

So much has happened!

2009-09-06T15:27:00.002-05:00

And I feel like I haven't had a second to sit back and reflect on it (or share it on my blog).

I'm happy to find a free moment today to update on all that's been going on. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to share since I currently have no idea where my connection cord for the computer is. :) I'm sure it will turn up soon. Even when I do find it, I didn't manage to take any pictures of moving day or the first few days in the house. Especially last Saturday when we did most of the moving, I was running around absolutely non-stop and my mind was completely not on my camera. Since then, I've tried to take some pictures of the house-in-progress, and I definitely took some good pictures last night at Skelly's birthday party. I really wish I had my scrapbook stuff ready to go!

But....we're in our house! And that's what's really important. We had a little financial hiccup/scare on Thursday before we went in to sign our closing papers. We had been told that we were going to get all $1000 of our earnest money deposit back, but all of a sudden our realtor was calling us saying that lending rules had changed as of August 1 and we were going to have to bring $140 extra to the table and not get that $1000. Thankfully, a few hours of negotiations figured everything out and we did get the earnest money back.

We were originally told that we would be able to pick up the keys first thing on Friday morning when the paperwork became official. Turns out they really meant that we could have the keys as soon as all of the money had been wired and allocated into the right hands. Which meant that Adam had to leave for his training flight before they were ready at 1:30pm and I had to go over with a carload of stuff by myself. About halfway through unloading the boxes I went to flip a switch in the closet and saw that the light wasn't working. Oh wait, none of the lights were working. In fact, the power wasn't on at all. I wasn't about to stick around in a house with no A/C, so I went back to our rental and called the power company. Even though Adam had scheduled the changeover the week before, the guy I talked to said there was no record of any of that. He gave me a new account number and told me that it SHOULD get turned on later that day. The next 2 times I went back that afternoon it was still off (and HOT).

Meanwhile, I got a call from the cable company that they were over at the new house waiting to turn on the cable. I had been told they would come first to our rental house to pick up the equipment, so that's where I was. I hustled over as fast as I could, but it turned out that he couldn't set up our system with the power not turned on anyway. Oh well, he would be back in the area again the next morning.

It was a very draining day and almost nothing went the way that we had planned. But Adam and I were very happy to find at 8:30pm when he was back from his flight and we headed to the new place together for the first time that the power was finally back on. After unloading one more car-full and stopping at McDonald's for dinner we collapsed back at the rental house to rest up for an even busier day the next day: moving day.

Well, I think this is a long enough update for now. I need to get going with Adam to Lowe's to pick up some more stuff for our grill and garage. Hopefully tomorrow we'll go out and buy our mattress and furniture, but I might have time to post about moving day and our week since then.

Day off! Yay!

2009-08-25T10:32:00.002-05:00

We're only four days away from moving day, so this is not exactly shaping up to be the most relaxing of days off. I am excited about the idea that I don't have to cram in as much "doing stuff" as possible in the morning and early afternoon because I have to go into work at night. The only possible issue I have is that the property management company has said that they want to show this house to potential renters, maybe today, and I don't know when that will happen. And obviously, the house is not in ideal condition since I've got half-finished projects and boxes piled up just about everywhere, but I'll do my best just to make it as presentable as possible. I've still got a week before I hand over the keys, and I'm not worried about having it perfect by then, but today is another story.

Another little wrinkle in our moving plans has come up, too. Apparently all of the guys that we were counting on to help us move on Saturday have been invited to a wedding that night. So they'll be able to help us in the morning, but are probably going to have to cut and run to get ready sooner than we thought. I think we'll still be OK, since we only have a few pieces of furniture that really need more than just me and Adam to move and we can focus on those first. Let's hope so.

I still have plenty of scrapbook pages to post (according to my photo-organizing software I have 133 since starting the blog), so here's today's batch:

This is just an easy little page about our hike in Switzerland while we were studying abroad. I used a paper that already had a bunch of different stripes, so all I had to do was add the title, journaling and one more brown flower.

I loved this sketch at 52 Sketches, 52 Weeks and I love my page even more. I feel like it has just what it needs and nothing else. And that cute boy in the picture doesn't hurt either.

Well...now that my little break for updating is over I guess I'll get back to workin' it. The highlight of my day will be a trip to Walmart after lunch to get some lightbulbs and cleaning supplies. :) Gotta love being a real adult.

I don't want to go to work today

2009-08-24T09:48:00.002-05:00

Remember three weeks ago when I said I was ready to get going already in moving into the new house? Yeah, I take that back. I'm freaking out about not being ready for moving day on Saturday. I'm still really excited to actually get into the house and start making it feel like ours, but I feel like there's still so much to do and so much that we need to get. Even though we're just moving across town, with all the new furniture and new responsibilities, it feels like a whole new world. Anyway, I've just got to do my best to do what I can before I go to work today. I wish I didn't have to go in tonight (especially since I've worked everyday since Wednesday), but that's just life. I've already taken Skelly on his walk and started some cleaning and some packing. I'm taking a short break here to post this and to watch some tennis we Tivo'ed this weekend, and then I'm right back in it. I've still got lots more pages to upload, so here's today's batch.

I love this one. Other than the fact that I want to fix that loose piece of hair behind my ear. :) I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but I used a whole bunch of travel-themed word-strip stickers I had laying around to outline the blue paper. And I cut the cute little green flourish with my Slice Wedding card.

This page documents a uniquely Floridian experience for us. Letting Skeletor outside at night brings the prospect of letting geckos inside involuntarily. I took these pictures the first time it happened when our friend Will was visiting. I used this page as an inspiration and it came together pretty quickly.

So many good finds

2009-08-23T08:21:00.004-05:00

Adam and I went out shopping yesterday before I had to go into work, and we were extremely successful. We found a TV that we liked for a good price, agreed really quickly on a mattress that we liked (and found out it will be 60% off right when we're looking to actual buy it), and even found bar stools, a scrapbooking desk, and possibilities for a grill and patio furniture that we were not specifically looking for. Oh, and we also saw a cheaper version of the sliding-door dog door that we had been considering at Petsmart. And we ordered our little boy a doggy birthday cake. :) He turns two on Saturday, but since that's our big moving day, we're going to have his doggy friends over to the house for a doggy party on the next Saturday. We'll give him some of his presents this weekend, though, like a new ball to play with in his new backyard.

Anyway, even though all that shopping made me pretty tired a work last night, it definitely put me in a good mood. Now all we have to do is figure out if we can afford all of the stuff we saw right away and what are the top priorities. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to consider that while the Hallmark store is empty today. :)

I'm off to walk the puppy and get in the shower before I head off to work. But first, here's just a couple more pages hanging out in my computer.

I used this sketch (from the Canadian site Scrapbook Star) for a page about Adam's "out and back" to Key West. Again, he is nowhere to be found in the pictures. :( You probably can't tell from the picture of the page, but the title is actually glued onto and old button that I found with Adam's childhood stuff. He had tons of really ugly buttons for no reason; they were not special at all. I was going to make him get rid of them when I realized that I could used them to add some dimension to my scrapbook pages. And voila, here it is.

I love this page and the sweet picture of me with puppy Skeletor. I copied this page that I had bookmarked months ago. I'm glad I went back and used it here since I think my page came out very nicely.

Self-imposed scrapbook hiatus

2009-08-22T10:22:00.002-05:00

That's it. I'm done. No more scrapbooking until I get myself settled into the new place (and I still have no idea exactly how I'm going to set up the space or what kind of furniture I need to buy). I've got less than a week until moving day, and if that wasn't enough to encourage me to pack it all in, I ran out of page protectors yesterday. I definitely don't want to have to move any pages not in protectors, and I don't really have the time or money to run out and get some more right away. So the hiatus begins. At least I have quite a few more pages to share here on the blog, so that might help ease the withdrawal. :) And hey, maybe I'll update here a little more often. But I'm not making any promises.

Oh, I have to tell this story about me and Skeletor that happened earlier this week on Tuesday (mostly just for myself, I don't want to forget). We've had a fair amount of rain on and off this week as the remnants of Tropical Storm Claudette came through, but I really wanted to take Skelly on a walk that morning. I even checked the radar on Weather.com before we left and thought that we would be fine. Unfortunately, it started to POUR when we got to the top of our street (a little more than five minutes from home). Skeletor hates the rain and getting wet, so he was really antsy. I decided to start jogging with him to get home a little faster, but he wanted to RUN and was pulling hard. Halfway down our street I decided to let Skelly off the leash to run his little heart home. He bolted out ahead of me, but I could see him fine. Just like I thought, he knew exactly where he was going and turned at our driveway headed straight for the front door. The funny thing is that the loud rain had woken up Adam at home and when he realized that we weren't at home he knew that we must be caught outside somewhere. He was about to get in his car to come find us, but when he opened the door, Skeletor ran right up to him. I was still about 2 houses behind so he didn't see me yet, and he was REALLY confused for a minute. Maybe I got struck by lightning and Skeletor ran to get help. Anyway, we all made it home safe, even if we were SOAKED. Skeletor was really unhappy with getting so wet and he spent the rest of the morning wanting to be really near to us. For awhile, he would whine if one of us wasn't physically touching him.

Other than that, here's a couple pages to share.

I like the way this page turned out with the same picture 3 times. I think it does a good job highlighting the pink shirt in the middle one. I used the same idea that I used for this page I made earlier this summer because I really loved the way that one turned out.

And just a little something for Adam's Air Force book. This is him at his scarf drop last summer (hence the Randolph paper). I think it's a cool picture, but all he says when he sees it is that he looks "totally bald." He's really sensitive about that. I think he's silly.

Distracted

2009-08-20T18:56:00.000-05:00

Only one week until we sign all the paperwork and officially buy our house! We still won't be able to take possession of the house until next Friday, but since we couldn't find a time for everyone to meet on Friday, we're going to have the walk-through on Thursday afternoon and then go straight to sign everything. I'm super-excited since it means we get to have the house ALL day on Friday. :) We're still planning on getting the U-Haul and doing most of the moving on Saturday so we'll have friends free to help us, but we might take a couple car loads of boxes over on Friday and claim it as our own.

I do want to apologize for being distracted from pretty much everything else by this whole process, and I promise that soon I'll be able to focus on things like blogging, scrapbooking and running again. I need to remind myself that no matter how much changes, life goes on. I know it's going to go on with or without me, and I'm definitely ready to hop back on soon.

Anyway...I do have some backlogged scrapbook pages to share, so what am I waiting for?

A simple layout of some young European travelers that I hardly recognize. Especially that guy with the super-short haircut. :)

I like this page based on the sketch for mixer #22 at Mix it Up! I didn't actually play along with the whole challenge (to use stars made out of 5 different materials) since I didn't have a lot of embellishments around and I like the way my page looks without them, but I did use the sketch pretty much exactly as it was. I LOVE the pictures of Adam in bed on Thanksgiving morning.

Life with TWO puppies

2009-08-15T10:20:00.003-05:00

Yesterday and today we got a little taste of what life is like taking care of two puppies. Mike and Lauren went to New Orleans for the night, so we've been watching Jack for them. It's been working out pretty well; the only thing that's really tough is letting them out since we don't have a fence here and we only have one tie-out cable. I think it will be fun to have Jack stay over again once we've moved into the new place with a fence (and hopefully soon a doggy door). It's good practice if we're seriously thinking about getting another puppy for ourselves (and I think we are).

We left the little boys at home for a little bit and went to the movies last night, too. I definitely recommend that you go out and see District 9. It was a really interesting, unique alien movie. Even if you don't like alien movies, you should see it.

Finally, I promised in my last post that I would update on my scrapbook pages: today is day 123 and I have...123 pages! Yay! I don't have to work until 4pm today and we've just gotten back from taking the puppies on a walk, so hopefully I will have some quiet time to do a little bit more scrapping today. Probably next weekend I'll have to pack my stuff up. :( Until then, here's a couple more pages to share:

This page got a weird shadow on it when I photographed it. In real life, the blue background is all one color. At first, I only made this page with the title and the woven looking paper, but Adam told me it looked too bare, so I found the yellow flowered paper and cut out some of the pattern to give it a little something extra. I think he was right, I like this better now.

This is a cute little page of Adam's friends and flightmates on their snorkeling trip in Key West. I wish that he had gotten someone to take a picture of him, but it's too late now. My favorite part of the page is the layered circles with "08" inside.

Alright, now it's time to watch some women's tennis (woo US Open Series!), get in the shower, find some lunch and then get some packing done. Plus, find some time for scrapbooking. Wish me luck.

Ready for late dinner

2009-08-13T20:59:00.002-05:00

It's been an interesting day, but a good day. Adam had a weird split schedule and we took a brief nap in the afternoon before he went back in to work. I also wanted to give myself a break this morning since my allergies have been acting up a lot recently so I didn't take Skelly on a walk (instead we went out at around 6:45pm). Which means that all in all I feel a little discombobulated. It's 9pm and I haven't had dinner yet, but that's OK since Adam just got home and now we still get the chance to have something together. On that note, I think I'm going to go scrounge around the kitchen and watch some more preseason football with the hubby. :) But first, here's some of my latest pages. I'll update on my page-a-day challenge tomorrow. I promise.

I'm not quite sure if this is nerdy or cool, but I've got a ton of Air Force pictures and not much red, white and blue paper to use, so took the stars paper and some Air Force stickers and this is what I came up with.

I really like this page about Aunt Nancy and Uncle John. I got the felt flowers on sale at my Hallmark store (they're super beautiful in real life) and I cut the title and shape for my journaling with my Slice. Also, great use of scraps if I do say so myself. Only three small pieces of paper were harmed in the making of this page (except for the background paper of course).

Just some pages

2009-08-11T21:16:00.002-05:00

Cleaning, packing, loving the family. Budgeting myself like crazy to make sure we have all that we need at the end of the month. Scrapbooking a little bit to stay sane. Thank goodness for Tivo and HGTV. I need something on in the background while I'm working and there is NOTHING good on TV at 2pm on Tuesday. I'm about to watch one last episode of Battlestar Galactiva with my husband and then start thinking about bed time, but I've got a couple pages to share first.

I'm not crazy about this one, but what are you going to do. I love all the pictures and wanted to use them all, but I think the size of the pictures was too hard to work with. Oh well, it is what it is.

I like how this one turned out. I saw a card at my Hallmark store with kind of this design and I though it would be cool to adapt it to a scrapbook page. I used more foam squares to pop up the title, and I don't like that you can see them a little bit behind the letters, but it was impossible to cut them any smaller.

Shaking off the funk

2009-08-10T14:11:00.003-05:00

Ok, so maybe I already took a two-hour nap today and it's only 2pm. And I haven't taken a shower yet. But with that being said, I am starting to feel like I'm shaking off the weird funk I've been in for the past few days. I've done a lot of packing (almost depleted my current stash of bubble wrap actually), tidied up the out-of-control kitchen and even vacuumed in my office space. Plus, Skelly and I went out on a (god awful hot) walk this morning and I made one new scrapbook page. I feel good. I know that next week my work schedule ramps up a lot, so I need to get a lot done this week because moving is now less than 3 weeks away. Also, I was ridiculously psyched for NFL football to start yesterday, even if it was just the Bills and the Titans in a pre-season game. Football season is SO fun.

In terms of scrapbooking, I haven't had any big days with tons of pages, but I'm still plodding my way to a "page-a-day" pace. I know I can do it soon. Here are some of the ones I've been working on.

Adam and Briana at the squadron Christmas party last year. I drew the curve freehand to try something new. "Silliness" was cut with my Slice Wedding card. Big surprise. :)

I'm really happy with how this one turned out. I used sketch #37 from Pink Sketches and I tried my hand at "distressing" the paper for the first time. I think it came out really neat and it fits with the theme of the page, like Skeletor was chomping down on it. Plus, Adam really loves the fake-out photo - Skelly was actually chewing something underneath the bag of M&M's.

Feeling weird.

2009-08-07T15:59:00.002-05:00

I don't quite know what's with me today. I haven't been motivated or interested in doing much of anything. I did scrapbook a little and clean up the dishes piled up in the kitchen, but somehow it's 6:30 and I can't really point to much of anything else that I did. It sucks. I guess I'm just going to post some more pages I've got on my computer and hope that tomorrow is better. :( Sorry to be such a downer.

More of that cold looking paper from American crafts. I really like this page and the title cut with my Slice. And I have to give Adam credit for coming up with the title; I didn't like it at first, but now I think it works.

I based my page on this one I found on a blog that I follow. My page is cute but not quite as good. I do really like the pictures and the idea of the title. I was worried that the pictures would look/seem too small, but I think in general that's OK.

I have to work tomorrow night, so maybe that will give me a kick in the butt to be useful in the morning. Until then...

100 pages!

2009-08-06T13:33:00.002-05:00

Yay! I did it! Since I started this blog and began taking pictures of my scrapbook pages, I've made 100 pages. Actually, I hit 100 on Tuesday, and I've kept on gluing, so now I have 111 pages (yeah, I was pretty scrapbook focused the past few days). Woo!

And in case you hadn't figured it out yet, I'm a pretty huge nerd. So I calculated how many days it's been since my first blog post (April 15), and it's been 114 days. I am dangerously close to having made a page a day since I started the blog. Sounds like a challenge to me. My new goal is to catch up to "page-a-day" pace before I have to pack up all of my stuff for the move. I'm sure I'll miss at least a few days from my hobby doing all the moving, and I don't really expect to keep up the pace forever, but I think it'll be fun for another week or so.

Anyway, I may have that many pages finished, but I don't have that many posted, so I'd better get to work on that. Here are two fabulous pages featuring my big manly husband.

This first one is a pretty recent picture of Adam digging into the carton of ice cream. I picked the colors because they looked kind of cold to go with the ice cream theme, and I think they ended up looking really good with the colors of his blues uniform.

I based this page on another (way more girly) page I found here. You can't tell very well, but I used "pop dots" for the first time on this page, to make the little embellishment under the title look more layered and dimensional. I like the way it turned out.

Alright, it's getting time to make my dinner and head out to work. I did already make two pages today and I'm off tomorrow, so I'll be back with more to share soon.

Thanks for looking!

No big news

2009-08-02T13:56:00.005-05:00

Not working for the past few days has been relaxing but boring. Mike's girlfriend Lauren moved down last week with their beagle Jack and Skelly loves having a new friend up the street. We all had a fun evening tonight, and Adam and I scored an awesome free dinner because Lauren was baking up some lasagna. Even super picky Adam was loving it.

The best part of my relaxing but boring days has been plenty of time to scrap. I'm still working toward 100 pages. I know I have that many in my pile to be glued, but I don't count them until they're completely finished. If I get some time to glue tomorrow, I'll definitely get there. :)

I used a sketch for this one that I found at So Sketchy! I added the arrow because I felt like I needed to fill up some of the dead space but I didn't really have a lot of journaling to say about this picture. I'm not sure if it's perfect, but it's good enough.

I like this cute and funny page about my need of a haircut. Adam can't look at the picture without laughing out loud.

That's about all for now. Only one more day fully off, so I'd better get a lot done tomorrow. :)

Cookie dough is crazy delicious

2009-08-01T10:32:00.002-05:00

And crazy dangerous. I'm pretty sure I just ruined my lunch. What is it about this substance that drives perfectly rational people to consume irrational amounts of the stuff? Of course, I blame the troops. If I hadn't baked cookies to send in care packages, I wouldn't ever have any leftover dough just hanging out in my fridge.

Sigh. What's done is done. At least I plan on running later. That's a start, right?

We got a little bit of late start yesterday, considering that Adam had to be back on base at 3pm. We didn't quite hit every stop and I ran around like crazy in Hobby Lobby trying to decide what to buy in 10 minutes. That being said, it was generally a nice day. Not sure what's on tap for today other than cleaning up after the cookie fest and continuing to pack. We've been talking about going to see Harry Potter again, and I'm hopeful I'll have some time to scrapbook. I'm super motivated now that I know I'm so close to 100 pages.

Here's the latest:

I'm pretty sure I love this one. I know it's really simple, but that's all it needs. I used this page as my inspiration. For some reason, I admire simplicity in other people's pages, but I feel like it looks like I took the easy way out on my pages. It's silly, though. I just need to get over it. p.s. I used my Slice Wedding card to cut the word "groom." I mostly wanted the Wedding card for the font and the shapes it makes, but I've still got plenty of pictures from my wedding and I'm sure this card will get lots more usage.

This page is not crooked, I promise. It's only my (lack of) photography skills. The most interesting thing about this page (I think) is that I didn't use any patterned paper. Also, other than the background paper, everything else was from my scraps pile. So pretty good, considering all that, eh? Notice that the title was cut (yet again) with my Slice Wedding card. :) I told you I would use the hell out of it.

Layout count

2009-07-31T10:00:00.002-05:00

Drumroll please.....

Since I started this blog (first post on April 15) and started taking pictures of my scrapbook pages to share, I have made....

90 pages.

In 3.5 months. That seems like a lot. Even to me. And this doesn't count the 7-10 pages I've still got in the pile that just need to be glued together. Wow.

Alright, I'm sure no one else thinks that's interesting or cool, but I'm really impressed. Maybe I'd better stop blabbing and just post a couple of these numerous pages.

I wish you could see the photo on the page better online, because the face that Will is making is absolutely priceless. I was trying to recreate this page I found online, and I think it came out pretty well. I used the Wedding font with my Slice to cut the title AGAIN. My favorite part about using the die-cutter to make titles is that you always have exactly all the letters you need. When I went to glue this page, I couldn't find one of the "t's" for the title. I must have just gotten blown off the page while it was sitting on my desk. But no big deal. I still had a scrap of the black paper to just go back and cut another one. :)

I LOVE this page. First of all, the picture is came out really well, and I think the proportions of the picture fit really well with the rest of the page. I used this cute page as a guide, but obviously used a military theme instead. After about a week of cajoling, I managed to get Adam to write some thoughts and memories about his Detatchment Commander Colonel Taylor for the journaling, and I'm happy to get some of his perspective into my scrapbooking.

Adam had to go in early to give a PT test this morning, and he has to go back for some sort of brief at 3pm, but right now we're going to head to Pensacola to spend the rest of his birthday money and scheme over appliances and home improvement stuff at Lowe's. Maybe I can even convince him to stop at the Hobby Lobby up there. :)

Lots of me time...

2009-07-30T17:02:00.005-05:00

Hooray! What a good day. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with another six in a row (my boss scheduled me off for the LONG weekend even though our travel plans feel through), but that's a worry for another day. For now, things are going well. I've been cleaning, packing, scrapping and running errands. I LOVE feeling like I'm getting stuff done. Adam won't be home til after 7pm most likely because of his flight schedule, so I should be able to squeeze in a run before dinner, too.

Well, since that has none of the drama necessary for an interesting blog post, I'll just finish with some recent pages. I got pictures taken of a few more today and I'll update tomorrow with how many I've made since starting the blog.

Part of me feels like I've scrapped way too many pictures from Adam's birthday/4th of July weekend already, but part of me still loves all of the pictures I've taken (AND the pages I've made so far) so I don't feel so bad about it. I thought this picture of Adam and Mike Alcide at Adam's birthday dinner came out really nice (good job on the matchy shirts, boys) and it gave me a chance to write about our friends living just up the block. The little diamond shapes were just part of the pattern of another sheet of paper. I thought they turned out cute as little embellishments.

I'm torn about this page. Sometimes I look at it and like, other times it just doesn't look right to me. It's kind of a shame because I was trying to recreate this page that I thought was so cute. Mine definitely doesn't do it justice. But I do love the picture of my little puppy acting like he owns the laundry, so I'm happy that now it's in my album forever.

Uninteresting

2009-07-29T09:29:00.004-05:00

So, I feel like I should be updating my blog more often, but then I don't have much to share. I'm just working, cleaning and packing while we wait to hear about our appraisal and repair requests. There's still more than four weeks until we get into the new house. Sigh...

At least that means that I don't have to pack up my scrapbook stuff anytime soon. I've been scrapping and gluing a lot in the past few days, but unfortunately my glue sticks are getting low again. Good thing I get paid tomorrow. :) I really hope that I'll be able to set my scrapbook stuff up even more efficiently in the new place, but I don't have a perfect vision of what it's going to be yet.

I guess that's all for now. Here's some scrapbook pages I've worked on in the last few days.

This is one of those pages that I kind of struggled with. I felt like I just didn't know what to do with the patterned paper background. I didn't want to cover it up or fight with it, so I went really simple with everything else. I kind of based the layout on a sketch in Scrapbook and Cards Today magazine. You can download a digital copy of the magazine from their website completely free. Score!

This page was also somewhat problematic. It's really hard for me to scrap pictures like these that are really nice, but don't really have a story to tell. It's just my mom and Adam's mom at our rehearsal dinner. Since I don't have a clear idea of what the page is "about" I have a hard time moving forward with the title, the design, etc. But after all is said and done, I think it came out pretty cute, and I'm glad that I can include this cute picture in my scrapbook.

I feel like there's something I'm forgetting...

2009-07-28T08:40:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah, blogging! I always have such high expectations of blogging, but then never get around to it. Well, I was thwarted from taking Skeletor on our walk this morning by a storm that decided to blow in just as we were leaving the house, so I think it must be a sign that I needed to come back inside and post this update.

My weekend was pretty quiet. Adam had to work furiously on his final paper for his first online grad class since he pretty much left it all for the last minute, but he did have no problem making the deadline on Sunday night and already got his grade for the class by Monday. Hooray! He got a 96.4. Good job, baby. Anyway, since he was busy I mostly did my own thing. I cleaned up a little, packed a little and wasted time on the computer a little. I did have to work on Saturday night, but on Sunday I got a little spurt of scrapbook momentum and put together about four pages. Yay! I think I'm going to take and edit some more pictures later today and get an estimate of my total page count since starting the blog.

I skipped the scrapbook pictures in my last post because there was picture overload as it was, so here's a peek today at what I've been clearing out of that big pile on my desk.

This page was done with the help of this sketch posted on the Noel Mignon blog and also with the help of my pirate-wannabe husband. Since the picture is of him on a trip to Key West without me, I had to coerce him into writing the journaling since I didn't know the story behind the picture. (Though knowing him, I could guess.)

I like how this page turned out a lot. It was a little tricky to figure out how to make the inside cut out of the patterned paper using just my little trimmer, but I think it looks good. I also really like the photos and the kraft paper background. Usually dark brown is my go-to for a background, but I might have to start using kraft more often.

New house pictures! (Master edition)

2009-07-24T20:50:00.006-05:00

OK, I promise this is the last of it. I know I went a little picture crazy, but it's my first place, so what do you expect. Anyway, if you haven't seen the rest of my picture posts, keep scrolling down to see other parts of the house and the outside.

Ok, so this isn't in the master suite, but just outside it. When you go into the nook off the living room toward the bedroom, this little closet is on the left. When you turn right you're in the master bedroom.

I really like the size of this bedroom. It's spacious without feeling like it's too big or like we need more stuff to fill it up. The sliders out to the backyard are nice, too.

View of the master from the opposite direction. The door is into the bathroom.

As you enter the master bath, the vanity with two sinks is on the left. I don't really love the counter tops or the fixtures (or the light fixtures), but what bugs me the most is the empty space in between the sinks. I would much rather have some more drawers and stuff than a place to stow a chair. Without any medicine cabinets, I really don't know where all of our stuff is going to go.

There is this closet, which is fairly large and deep, behind the door (so, immediately to your right as you come in from the bedroom). Adam is used to keeping his toiletries in a closet, so maybe this will work for him. This closet might also be a good home for a hamper if we want to hide it.

This is the stand-alone shower. Nothing really too exciting or cool. It would be nicer if it had a glass enclosure instead of a curtain, but a curtain will have to do. It's directly across from the sinks, between the linen closet and the tub.

The soaker tub is nice, but not quite as big or deep as others I've seen or the one here in the house we're renting. But then again, I've only used the one in this house once in about 5 months, so maybe it's not such a big deal.

I do like that the toilet has a separate door from the rest of the bathroom. It makes it nicer when two people are trying to get ready at the same time. The toilet is on the left as you walk in, just past the sinks.

Finally, the closet. Yes, only one closet. This will be the first time since we've lived together that Adam and I will share a closet. Good thing it's pretty big. I think it has as much space as our separate closets now. The only annoying thing is that the door gets in the way of about a third of the space, so you have to go inside and close the door to have access to that stuff. Other than that, it's pretty standard, pretty nice. I AM a little worried about getting Adam's cooties from having my stuff so close to his, but these are the risks I'm just going to have to take if I want to own my own house.

Obviously, not much else has been going on around here. I've already started packing and gathering stuff ready to move into one of the extra bedrooms here. I've already nabbed several free boxes from work. Other than work and the essential stuff, I haven't really had time for much else. No scrapbooking and not even a whole lot of glueing. I still have a (slightly smaller) pile sitting on the desk needing attention. But with five weeks until closing, I think I'll probably have some time to play again before I have clean up and pack. I will post some more pages soon. I also had a couple of unlucky days where I couldn't run, but I hope to get to that sometime soon, too.

Now I'm off to catch up on READING blogs, and maybe even to sneak into bed early with my book. I hope everyone loves our new place as much as we do. Come on down to Florida and visit!

New house pictures! (Inside edition)

2009-07-24T12:46:00.008-05:00

Whew! It's harder than I thought to upload all of these pictures and add comments to help make sense of them. I've still got another batch of pictures (master bedroom/bathroom) coming next that I'll start working on when I get back from taking Skelly to the dog beach.

Make sure you keep scrolling after this post to see pictures of the OUTSIDE of the house.

This area is kind of tight, so it's really hard to take pictures that really make sense of the space. Essentially, this is the mini hallway (to the right when you come in the front door) where all of the extra bedrooms and bath are. In this picture the first extra bedroom is behind you, the first open door is the second extra bedroom, the closed door is a closet, the next open door is the bathroom, and straight ahead you can see a little bit into the third extra bedroom.

Here is a little bit closer view of the bathroom and the sink. I really like that the bathroom has 2 sinks. I feel like 4 bedrooms with only 2 baths is not exactly ideal, but the 2 sinks makes it a little more practical.

This is the inside of that hallway closet. Not very big, but plenty wide for extra towels and things.

This is the third extra bedroom and the one with the biggest window facing out to the street. I wanted to get a picture of the funky shaped wall as you enter. I like how the previous owners have those pictures there. Adam is checking out the closet. You can see the big window in the second picture.

Moving on to the kitchen. I really wanted to get a picture of these cabinets because you can't see them anywhere in the pictures of the listing. This is on the right as you enter the kitchen (next to the fridge obviously). It adds more counters and more storage space and I love it. P.s. I'm totally loving the color of the cabinets.

This is a picture of inside the pantry. It's a small door, but there's a lot of space inside. You can tell there's alot of walk-in space since the previous owners keep their high chair tucked away in there.

In this picture you can see that the sink and the dishwasher are built into the island.

Last kitchen picture. This is just a close up of the stove. It's probably my least favorite part of the house, but it's no worse than our stove in Texas and I know that stuff like this can eventually be changed.

Just a detailed look at the wood-burning fireplace. Can't wait to hang some Christmas stockings here.

The coat closet, yay! Not very common in Florida (or Texas for that matter). From the front door, the coat closet is the second door on the left before you reach the living room. The laundry room that leads out to the garage is the first door.

And speaking of the laundry room, here it is. It's pretty small and pretty hard to get a good picture, but basically you walk in from the garage and the washer dryer and these shelves are on your left. Then you exit out into the main house hallway on your right. I like that there are two rows of shelves in here for more storage.

Also in the laundry room (on the wall opposite the washer/dryer) is the home security system keypad. Right now it's monitored by Brinks, but I think ADT can also monitor the house with the exisiting equipment.

And finally, the last picture for this post. Looking from the living room-ish back to the front door. Adam really likes the floating shelves, so we might have to do something like that ourselves.

New house pictures! (Outside edition)

2009-07-24T11:31:00.006-05:00

Things are going SO well with the house. Maybe a little too well. It's kind of freaking me out. Mostly now I'm a little paranoid that there are still 5 weeks until closing because our current lease isn't up until the end of August. It seems like we won't have much to do but pack and worry that everything stays carefully in place. The past week has been so busy, and we've made progress everyday. Without that to keep my mind occupied, I'm just going to sit around worrying because I can't say that everything is 100% official until closing.

But I don't want to do too much complaining. I know that it's a good thing that we haven't had too much difficulty securing our loan and that the house is in such good shape. I'm also excited that yesterday we got to go inside for the first time since last Wednesday when we saw it for the first time. I brought my camera and a measuring tape with me during the inspection, so I have some more detailed pictures to share. You can see more general pictures at the listing here (click on the picture of the house to see more).

The outside of the house from the north (the house faces east). I really just wanted a picture of the Coldwell Banker sign because I has the little red star that says "Sale Pending." Hooray!

These two pictures are for my Grandpa. When my mom was buying her first house he grilled her about everything the house had, but she was stumped whe he asked her where the outside water spigots were. Well, there are two at my new house. The first one is at the fron of the house to the left of the garage (you can also see the house's satellite dish), and the second is on the back of the house. And don't worry, Grandpa, I also have a sprinkler system that covers all of the grass and landscaped areas. :)

See. Here's Adam and the inspector checking out the backyard sprinklers. No, sadly the grill on the right will not stay. We'll have to put that on our wishlist.

Speaking of the backyard, here are a couple more pictures. The pictures in the listing give a good idea of how big the backyard is generally, but there's also a good amount of space on either side of the house. Each side is about 14 feet wide. Each side also has a gate to get in and out, but the one on the south side (the picture with Adam) doesn't open all the way (it gets caught on the ground).

Now to the front of the house. There's a nice covered entry way, so when you're fumbling for your keys, you don't have to stand in the rain. It also has a pretty new looking Pella storm door. You don't see that a lot in Florida. The front is all landscaped with cute little shrubs and plants. The sprinklers are built into it, too.

The mailbox is big. Plenty of room to send us fun packages. :)

The garage is a little smaller than the house we're renting now, but I think we'll manage just fine. There's a neat little line of hooks running along the right-hand wall that will probably stay.

I didn't want to go up into the attic (pull-down stairs in the garage), so I made Adam take few pictures for me. There's not a ton of storage, but I don't think we really need much. The house has four bedrooms and plenty of closets.

OK, that's enough pictures for one post. I'll be back in a minute to post some inside pictures.

Almost official

2009-07-19T21:49:00.003-05:00

So things have been pretty crazy in the last few days. Tomorrow, we put down our earnest money and are officially under contract to buy a house. I'm SO excited and SO nervous at the same time. I just want everything to go smoothly and I don't want to make any mistakes. It seems like we're doing things right so far, but how am I supposed to know for sure? I've never done this before.

With all of this house stuff and working, I haven't done much of anything else lately. I'm looking forward to a day off tomorrow to take care of everyday stuff. We have to turn in our money and really get the ball rolling on an inspection, but other than that, I want to run some errands, maybe hit up the library and clean up this house with moving in mind. I do have a couple of pages to share that I made/glued earlier this week.

I really like this page of Adam at the beach on the 4th. It's kind of based on this page I found while perusing scrapbook blogs. My title didn't work out so perfectly. I feel like it's kind of crowding the picture. I cut all of the stars and circles with my Slice.

This one is kind of similar (I really liked the color palette for boy pages for Adam), and the pictures are even more outstanding. This is how I found Adam when he was supposed to be getting ready to go to the store on his birthday. No sketches this time, just me, and I think it turned out pretty well, considering.

That's all for now. I think I'm going to hit the hay early since I had a long day with church, work and serious discussions with the husband. We shall see what tomorrow brings.

Did we really just do what I think we did?

2009-07-16T21:00:00.004-05:00

Did I seriously just offer to pay $214,900 for something?

Oh. My. God.

We'll find out by tomorrow at noon if the seller's agree to our offer on their house. If this seems sudden, it is. We saw this house for the first time yesterday morning, but it was too good to pass up. Of course, I'll update tomorrow whether they accept or not, but until then there's not much to do but wait. Guess I'll try to put my mind on other things by posting some scrapbook pages.

Just a real simple one I did with this cute picture of me and Adam in Budapest. I like that it's kind of subtle.

This one is cute and simple, too. I used this sketch posted on the Write.Click.Scrapbook. blog (definitely one of my new favorites). I cut the title with different sized letters from my Slice. Not bad, huh?

Profoundly tired

2009-07-15T21:49:00.003-05:00

What is it about sitting quietly in the dark for three hours that makes you so exhausted? I don't know man, but I came out of the theater after watching Harry Potter and all I wanted was a nap. Fortunately, I was able to fight the feeling and still get a lot accomplished this afternoon. We went to a Jo-Anns on the way home and found albums I like (FINALLY!) on sale 40% off. Then we stopped at a bike store to order Adam a new post for his bike since the current one keeps slipping and screwing up his seat. Even once we made it back home I escaped the lure of my bedroom. We played with Skeletor, did some talking to banks about home loans AND I got out and ran for about 25 minutes. Now, after dinner and some TV time (along with some time putting pages into my new albums) I can literally feel my eyelids getting heavier. I will soon be tucking myself into bed, but not before I post a couple new pages.

This page came together really quickly with the help of this sketch from the Mix it Up! blog. I especially like the way the hand-drawn border lines came out, and I think you'll definitely see more of that in the future.

This one came together with the help of my pizza pan. I wanted to add a curve, so I traced my pizza pan onto the patterned paper. I thought I was pretty clever. :) As you can see, I used my new Slice design card again to cut the title. I still absolutely LOVE that font. I think the page LOOKS cool, but I also really love the picture and the story. I'm really glad to be including memories of other people in my life, not just me and Adam. I want to remember everybody that is important to our lives. I just know that I'll really appreciate this years down the road.

In another thought....the Harry Potter movie was flippin' awesome! Even Adam totally loved it. Money is a little tight right now, but I'm already thinking of reasons to go see it again. (Number one on the list is the crappy seats at the front of the theater that we had to sit in today. I'm sure it'll be even better at a reasonable distance.)

Yesterday's post

2009-07-14T20:30:00.000-05:00

Our internet has been acting up all day. It’s definitely not the most reliable, and today there were some wicked (but short, thankfully) storms that I’m sure didn’t help the problem. The point here is that I’m typing this up in Word so I can (hopefully) post this quickly tomorrow morning. See how dedicated I am?

Anyway, my lesson for today is that To Do Lists are awesome. I got so much done today, just by looking back over the list I made this morning and working (relatively) methodically to cross things off. I ran errands, I did dishes, I sorted laundry and I also finished my book and made 2.5 scrapbook pages. I also threw in a 24 minute run before dinner. Can you tell I’m excited? I’ve really been needing a day like today, where everything gets done and I start AND end the day in a positive mood. Unfortunately, it's the kind of day that makes for boring blogging. So I'll keep it short and just upload a couple pages I've glued in the past few days.

Meh. I don't know how I feel about this page. It's kind of lame. Mostly I just wanted to try to make a flat little bow with my ribbon and the rest of the page is secondary. It kind of shows. Oh well. The pictures are still really cute. I think Adam looks a lot younger in the picture of him, but I guess that makes sense since it WAS four years ago. Kind of a scary thought, actually.

Clearly, this one is awesome. My idea was just to make sure that the awesome picture did all the work. I used this page as a template for mine and just added the man figure and the border of words to make it more...me. Also, I love that this picture of my husband is now out in cyberspace for the world to see. I love him. He makes me smile everyday.

It was a good day...

2009-07-12T16:38:00.003-05:00

And I think I'm about ready to hit the hay. Or at least brush my teeth and get into bed with my new book. (The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell; It's about the Massachusetts Puritans and she has a really funny writing style while still getting interesting historical points across. I'm definitely going to pick up some of her other stuff later.) Right after I finish up this post. I promised my dad on the phone the other night that I would post a page that I made using my brand new Slice design card, aka my present from my proud parents for finishing my first 5K.

I cut the scalloped hearts, the title and the shape behind the title all with the new card. I can not even tell you how much I LOVE that font. I am going to use the HELL out of it for a long time to come. The picture is pretty cute, too, huh? Well, at least that good-looking dude. He looks so handsome and mature. He must have just turned 24. Of course I have to mention that this awesome page would not have been possible without the inspiration of this page. It really helps to have a template to work from with bold patterns like these.

This page is one of the many that had been desperately calling out for glue in the past weeks. I finally got it all put together and I think it looks pretty nice. A handsome man in the picture always helps things. Just see the above picture for further proof. This one also had some help, this time from a sketch. I found it here while browsing around A Cherry on Top eyeing up supplies I would buy if I won the lottery.

All in all, today was a good, relaxing day. I took Skelly on a walk, Adam and I went to church, and then we came home for lunch and scrapbooking time. We went to play some tennis before dinner and then had frozen pizza and a sidedish of Battlestar Galactica. I also got some more pages glued so hopefully I will be back tomorrow with more to share. Yay for two days off! I worked quite a bit last week as our store got ready for our Ornament Premiere (woo, that first hour Saturday morning was NUTS!), so I'm enjoying the little breather. I do have to work all day Tuesday, but I'm off Wednesday and there's a chance Adam will be, too. Can you say Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? :)

Didn't she used to make scrapbook pages?

2009-07-09T11:31:00.004-05:00

Have no fear. The glue has returned! And it's a good thing, too. The pile of pages needing to be glued together is getting a little out of control. I made a small dent the day before yesterday, but I think there's at least 15 pages still waiting for attention. I haven't managed to do any more today because I have to go into work tonight, and I've been trying to clean up around the house this morning. But I did get some pictures taken and edited. Yay!

Me and my bridesmaids midway through the getting ready routine. I used this sketch and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I made the flower with my Slice and some adhesive pearls.

I know, no one is in the mood for Christmas, but I saw a page at Nick's blog (scroll down to see her "just be" page) and really wanted to re-create it. I think it all came out pretty well. And honestly, I've had a hard time recently with the "event" kind of pages, so I was happy to get this one done pretty easily. I'd like to have a good mix of "event" pages and "moment" pages to look back on years from now.

Can't think of any other interesting new to share. All I'm doing is catching up on gluing and counting down until Harry Potter comes out on Wednesday. :)

Back to the grind...

2009-07-07T10:54:00.002-05:00

My race is over, but my running is not. I'm still looking for another race to sign up for to really motivate me to keep moving (and moving faster!), but until then, I'll keep making things up as I go. I'm really hopeful that I won't lose momentum now that my big milestone is over.

I can also get back to the grind of scrapbooking today. I FINALLY got some more glue sticks yesterday! Yes! I wonder if two will be enough to tackle my backlog of pages, let alone any new ones I'm itching to work on. Especially since some very nice parents I know just sent me a new Slice design card for finishing my 5K. :)

I'll keep this short since there isn't much else to report. Adam and I are both off today, so I think we're going to head to Pensacola to pick up his birthday present: an XBOX 360. I'm so proud of him that he waited until he had time to play with it and saved up gift cards from Christmas to help pay for games instead of buying it right when it came out. Plus he can get a lot of good games cheaper by getting them used.

Race Recap!

2009-07-05T12:01:00.007-05:00

I did it! My race was yesterday and I did it! I finished it, I ran the whole thing and I had a lot of fun. It took me about 45:30, which is pretty slow, but I don't really care.

That's me in the pink shirt and capris crossing the finish line. :)

So here's how it all went down:

Friday the 3rd was Adam's birthday, so we wanted to go out with friends for dinner, but not stay out too late since the race started pretty early on Saturday. We went to a nice steak and seafood restaurant on Okaloosa Island and ate outside with a beach view.

Then we came back to our house for cake. It was not beautiful, but it was delicious. Adam also opened his presents. He liked the book, season of Battlestar Galactica and LEGO plane that I got him. :)

Briana and Will were spending the night with us because they were running in the race with us. Obviously we wanted to hang out a lot since we hadn't seen Briana since we left San Antonio, but we needed to go to bed relatively early. So we played a few games of Scattergories, I made my playlist for the big day and we got to bed by midnight.

We were on our way to Pensacola just before 6am. Of course there was basically no traffic and the place was easier to find and park near than we had thought, so we were pretty early. We got our numbers (I was 126), our tank tops and our bags and we still had about 45 minutes until the race started. We walked around a little park and stretched out some. (Well, everybody but Will stretched out. He's a rebel.) We were also eyeing up the other runners. There seemed to be an overabundance of cocky runner guys not wearing shirts and incessantly jogging to warm up. We could see where the starting and finish lines were, but had no idea where the route would go. At least we knew that the car wasn't far (about 2.5 blocks) from the finish line, so we could grab the camera quickly for some post-race shots. We decided kind of at the last minute that everyone was going to stay with me and run at my pace.

(pre-race Mary)

Finally, there was some action and everyone moved over to the starting line. They had some poor low-ranking airmen in their blues uniforms (i.e. wool suit pants and jacket) present the colors for the national anthem and then we were off! We were toward the back of the pack, so it probably took at least 30 seconds to get to the official starting line. Briana and Adam starting chatting as they were running and got ahead of me. They got about half a block ahead before the realized that their "slow" pace was too fast for me and waited around for me and Will to catch up. This happened again at least 2 more times. Whatever.

There was water at the first mile and we made it there in just under 15 minutes. By this point all the serious runners had passed me, but I was still just doing my own thing. For the next mile or so the route went on the highway right along the water, which was very pretty but also very hot and facing into the sun. Also, pretty early into mile 2, I started seeing the really fast runners coming back toward us to the finish line, so I knew that I had to make it to a turn-around point and then make it back to that point. Those first guys I saw probably finished the race in a third of the time it took me. But, I mean, I was wearing a shirt and the drag from my shirt probably cost me at least 10 minutes. :)

Also during mile 2 was when I noticed power walkers starting to pass me. Whatever. I just kept doing my own thing. When we got to the turn around, just before the start of mile 3, Adam decided he was going to press ahead and run faster to the end. That way he could get the camera and be waiting at the finish line. Even at the old age of 24 he was able to turn on the gas and get to the finish in about 37:45. Good job, baby! There was a time clock at the start of mile 3 and I got there right about at 30 minutes. At that point, I knew there that I was going to finish. I felt slow, but fine and I knew I wouldn't let myself wuss out in the last mile. I saw Rosie who works with me at the Hallmark store behind me when I made the turn and that made me feel a little bit better. I knew that she was a registered walker and I would have felt really lame if she was one of the people who passed me.

The only little hiccup I had in the last mile was that the playlist I had made was only 40 minutes long, and I needed another 5 minutes to keep me going. Not really a big deal, I just had to unclip my iPod from the back of my pants and replay my last power song "Heart of a Champion" by Nelly. It worked out pretty well, though, it ended for the second time just as I was handing my number to the volunteer at the finish line. I was definitely breathing hard and pushing it to keep it up until the finish line, and I didn't feel very good for a few minutes right after I stopped running. Walking around the park at the finish line helped a lot. I got lots of hugs and high fives and everyone was very proud of me. Here we are in all of our post-race glory. And no, I didn't sweat profusely from my neck, I just poured half of my last water cup awkwardly over my head. It felt good for a second, then just felt soggy.

So that was it. My first of hopefully many more races. I promised Briana and Will that next time they run with me I will be faster. Now I just have to find the next one to sign up for to keep me going. I'm pretty sure I'll be out there tomorrow morning, making sure at the very least I don't get any slower.

I'll be back later to share some pictures and stories from the rest of our awesome 4th of July!

I don't want this feeling to go away...

2009-06-30T08:48:00.002-05:00

Yay! I had a successful morning run! I was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to happen. And that was starting to worry me, since the race on Saturday (eek! this Saturday already?!) is in the morning. Thank goodness, I felt AWESOME on my run today. Well actually, it took me until about halfway through to really feel like I hit my stride, but at the end I was loving it. My last two minutes I was running really fast because I felt like I really had plenty left in the tank. It could not have been more different from my last run on Saturday morning. It was SO HOT that morning and for the last part of my run I was heading directly into the sun. I had to stop early and even walking the last part of it to get home was really draining. This time was a lot more cloudy and I adjusted my route to avoid to much "direct-sun" running. I also brought Adam's Camelbak with me.

Alright, I guess that's enough post-run gushing. I just wanted to capture this really positive attitude right now to remember the next time I have a bad day running. There IS a good reason to keep going.

I finished the Couch to 5K program!

2009-06-25T11:36:00.003-05:00

Yay! I've still got more than a week until my actual race, but yesterday I completed my last run in the "official" training program. I'm so happy that I made it all the way through, but still a little nervous about the actual race. For one thing, it's going to be very different to run with a big group of people. I hope I don't get jostled around too much or pushed to a pace I'm not comfortable with. Another thing is just that I haven't actually run the full 5K distance yet. From what I can estimate (since I run in the streets and not on a track), I've been running just under an 12-minute mile, meaning that my most recent 30-minute runs have only taken me about 2.5 miles or so. I'm going to keep running this next week, but the first time I attempt the 5K distance may be race day.

Adam took the dog on a walk yesterday while I was running and met up with me to run the last 7-8 minutes with me. As we were cooling down and walking the rest of the way back home, we started talking about the progress I've made, and I realized that right now I'm probably in the best shape I've ever been in. Nine weeks is definitely the longest I've ever maintained a serious exercise routine. So I may not be the thinnest I've ever been, but I'm in better shape. I can't think of any other time in my life when I could have finished a 30-minute run. But I have some mixed feelings about that. One the one hand, I'm proud of myself for the improvements I've made and the accomplishments I've acheived. On the other hand, it's kind of sad that THIS is my high point. I'm still overweight and pretty slow. I'm not in GOOD shape. My personal best is a pretty low bar.

I AM confident that I can and will get in good shape, and that I'm moving in the right direction. I'm doing my best to let go of the past. There is absolutely NOTHING I can do to change what I did or who I was in the past. I can only make changes and live the way I want to NOW. And to be honest, I wouldn't REALLY want to change anything in my past. It has made me who I am now, and given me the perspective to appreciate where I am now. Sometimes it's just hard to remember that.

Other than running, I've been spending A LOT of time this week watching Wimbledon. Since the Australian Open this year, I have been such a tennis fan. The only thing that would make it better would be some glue, because glueing scrapbook pages together is perfect for watching tennis, since I only have to pay half-attention to both. Since Monday, I've watched almost 9 hours of coverage everyday because I just leave it on in the background. (Obviously yes, I've got it on right now. Go, Venus!) I've got at least 10 pages that need to be glued, and this is the last one I've got saved on my computer.

I let the patterned paper do pretty much all the work on this page. Just a title, some journaling and 2 little punched stars. I think it works though.

Unintentional running hiatus

2009-06-24T10:10:00.003-05:00

The planets were aligned against me late last week. On Wednesday (a week ago) I ran as planned and everything seemed fine. Well, it was not easy, but I ran 30 minutes just fine. I planned on "officially" finishing my Couch to 5K program with a last 30 minute run on Friday. Until our house-hunting appointment at 4pm got moved to 5pm and we didn't get home til 7pm. I was hungry for dinner and there wasn't much sun left. I didn't go running. Saturday we spent with Will at the Gulfarium. I had hoped to get the run in, and even told Will to bring running shoes to come with me, but once again we got home hungry and tired and after a full day (almost all of it spent outside), a run was pretty much out of the question. And then Sunday my day was full from 8:30am as I headed to church until 7:30pm when I got home from work. No time and definitely no energy to run.

Finally, on Monday, even though I had plans for dinner with other CSO wives in our squadron, I knew I HAD to run. I went out at 4:15pm, even though the heat index was near 110. I got some BAD stomach cramps about halfway through and had to stop and walk, but when they got better I started running again and finished it out.

I HATED not running. I was so disappointed in myself for not finding a way or sucking it up and going out after work. Even though I didn't "complete" the run and the program on Monday, I was really proud of myself for doing it even though it was not that convenient and SUPER HOT. It was amazing how quickly I seemed to lose the mental momentum and positive attitude. But I'm determined to get it back just as quickly. Today, I'm going reinforce my renewed schedule. I'm going to go out and finish the whole 30 minute run. No more excuses and no more feeling guilty and unaccomplished.

In other news:

Adam and I have been doing more house shopping. It's still very much in the beginning stages. For me at least (and I think for Adam, too), I feel like we're kind of treading water and not moving forward. We haven't found anything really exciting and the homebuilders that we've talked to have not been very flexible or helpful. One of our problems is that we're pretty comfortable where we are. Sigh. I wish we could just buy this one.

On the job front, I'm still weighing the options for my next move. What I'm leaning toward is just finding a full-time job, any full-time job. The things that I'm sure I would like to do in the future (teacher, translator, European specialist) are just so few and far-between especially here in Florida. I need to be open to anything for the moment, because I never know what I might end up enjoying.

I've been reading my Harry Potter in French and still doing a little bit of scrapbooking. It feels good to be more well-rounded. I still haven't re-supplied on glue and this morning my printer ran out of color ink, so the balance is likely to stay the same for another little while. On that note, here are some of the last of the pages I have organized on my computer.

After our wedding, that is. This is the only picture I have of that day, as opposed to the 2000 I have of the day before. :) I like how I named the little "potty people" Mr. & Mrs. Dunn.

This one I had some inspiration from the Studio Calico blog. I really liked the idea of a busy pattern for the background and a solid color to hold the title. I cut the title and the green flowers with my Slice.