In His Time

This is the journaling paraphrased:
I believe I am more content now at this point in my life than I have ever been. Now don't get me wrong. I still have things that I worry about, but for the most part life couldn't be better! God has surrounded me with awesome family and friends.

The family part came easy for me. Bill and I met in elementary school and started dating in high school. He is the best husband around. There's nothing he wouldn't do for me. He is truly my best friend. I know a lot of people go through their entire life and never have the special close bond that I share with my husband. He knows everything about me and still loves me unconditionally.

The friend area was a long time coming. I have always had good friends throughout my childhood and college life but for some reason in the town that I have lived most of my adult life, those deep meaningful friends seemed to alude me. I still maintained close relationships with friends in my hometown, but I still needed friends that I could count on no matter the circumstances that live closer....a friend to laugh with, a shoulder to cry on, a sounding board for me to pour my heart out or someone that I could spend time with and not do or say anything. I LOVE comfortable silence. You know you've truly reached a milestone in a relationship when you can sit together and not say a thing, yet be completely at ease. That's what I have now.

During the years that I have lived in this town, I have spent countless hours asking God to give me a group of Christian friends with whom I could be myself. I wanted to pull up stakes and move several times because I would get discouraged and a lot of it would be that I had made inappropriate choices for friends because I would start to get desperate and not wait for God's timing. During the last couple of years, God has opened my eyes to wonderful women that were sitting right there in front of me yet I couldn't see them for the tears in my eyes because I thought that God had forgotten about me. Lucky for me these are women in my own church with whom I share a bond that I hope will only grow stronger.

Thank you God for giving me such a beautiful family and awesome friends.

It IS a stone!

Well Bill does have a stone! Uggh. He saw the urologist on Friday and they did the IV piggy back thing where they inject dye into his kidneys and then take x-rays. He has one in the upper left kidney, but it's not low enough for the Dr. to get via surgery just yet. He gave Bill two options. Have a stint put in on Friday or go home with pain meds and tough it out until it drops low enough to get it out. Bill has had three stints put in a few years ago and the pain of one of those is as bad as the stone itself. So, he came home yesterday with the meds. It's not working out too well though. We were up until 4 am last night because he was hurting so bad, yet he won't let me take him to the ER. I still have an entire list of things that I need to get for Christmas. Still not entirely sure what I am going to do. I've already tried the local stores, so I really need to go to Monroe (30 minutes from here) to finish up. One thing I know for sure. Christmas will come whether I have those things bought or not.

Uh-oh!

My day is all planned out. Hair highlights and a cut at 12:30 and then Christmas shopping around 3 when Donna is finished with my hair. She's the one in the front row of the photo below...the one with that gorgeous long blonde hair that is NATURALLY that curly! While I was gone to the movie last night with my scrappy friends, Bill started having pain from a kidney stone. He hasn't had one of these in several years...not since he missed an entire MONTH of work right before we went to Cancun a few years back. He was in extreme pain last night. Had it been me, we would have gone straight to the ER. The pain lasted several hours along with the nausea. He finally fell asleep around 3am. If the pain comes back and we end up in the hospital....there is going to be trouble! Eeek! We have very little presents bought and we are planning to do the bulk of it tonight. I pray that the stone doesn't give him anymore problems until after the new year.

Lagniappe Ladies

The group of girls that I scrapbook with (some for many years) had an evening out...we had dinner at Tia Maria's, exchanged scrappy gifts, coffee at the Frothy Monkey, and then we went to the movie The Holiday. It was a perfect chick flick!! Here's a pic of us at the Frothy Monkey.

Guess what?!!

I am now a part of the Savvy n Sassy Design Team! I can hardly believe it. I'm so excited to be working with Rhea and Share on such a fun DT. Can't wait to get my hands on that YUMMY ribbon! Savvy 'n Sassy! The first ribbon kit is already SOLD OUT! They will be having four different ribbon kits a month so be sure to check it out! Here's a photo of the sold out kit for January just to show you what awesome ribbon is included in these kits! Don't forget that there will be 3 more kits for January!

Yes...it was MY nephew

that was being RUDE to David Letterman tonight! David just gave Chase a present on the show tonight! David said he came out to say hello to the audience and that he ended up calling the kid a name because he felt the 'fellow'...my nephew...was being rude! Chase is there with Brittany in New York on their honeymoon. He and Brittany are sitting on the front row. He is suppose to be on there twice tonight. Oh my gosh..what else could he have done!

Update: Ok....here's what happened. David came out to the audience during the Q&A before the show. He wanted to know if there were any questions. Chase spoke up and said...Yeh, I got a question. He really didn't have a specific question thought out. He was just going to ask something like...What did you have for breakfast. But, David turned to him and said...We raise our hands here, *sshole. Now this is Chase's version of the story, and those that personally know Chase KNOW he is prone to exageration so there really is no telling what actually happened.

Design Team News

I have some fun news to share with all of my bloggin' friends. I was asked this past weekend to join the design team for the Just Let Me Scrapbook Store! I am so excited to be included in Mary Beth's Design Team. This will now make three DTs for me. About 5 weeks ago I joined the Scrap Galaxy Design Team. This one is not associated with any store or kit, so you are free to discuss other scrapbook sites there. What a cool concept! You get so use to not be able to discuss other places or deals that you find, that it's a nice change to be able to freely talk about it. And there is one more that I've been asked to join....but it's a secret for now! Will update here when it's officially announced! I can't believe I have been asked to join not one, but THREE DTs...all in a matter of a few weeks!!! I guess it pays to apply to DT calls! I just started applying and as of now, I've applied for 4 and made 3! Awesome odds if you ask me.

High School Musical and Wedding in ONE Weekend??

I had the most hectic weekends. I still have not recovered. My step-nephew has been planning on getting married since last July. Apparently he assumed that we knew he wanted Carley to sit at the guest book. Well, ummm...he told us last Friday! YES! Eight days before the wedding. Talk about being aggrevated. We had bought tickets to take Carley and a friend to see the High School Musical Concert in Bossier about 6 weeks ago AND we had great floor tickets. Well, Thursday night we decided we would try to rearrange our entire weekend to attend the wedding. Still not sure if it was worth it.


So, within 48 hours I had to:
sell our Bossier tickets
buy Dallas tickest for Sunday
buy Carley a dress and everything that goes along with that
buy me something to wear
rearrange everything with Carley's friend so she could go with us to Dallas



We managed to get it done. Nicole B. (Carley's friend) went to the wedding with us and then we traveled Saturday night to Terrill and then Sunday on to Dallas. We bought the Dallas High School Musical Concert tickets around midnight Saturday night once we got to the hotel. Apparently Ticketmaster released some tickets and we were able to get pretty good seats. I have to say, this concert really was VERY entertaining. This was the first concert that Bill got to attend with Carley. That was part of the : he had to go to the concert with us. No way was I going that far without him with two pre-teens into a city like Dallas where I am not familiar with the area. He think he really enjoyed watching her.

Gingerbread Houses

We've continued our holiday tradition of getting together with Jenn and her boys to decorate gingerbread houses. It went a little better this year...no major arguements or meltdowns. Last year I distinctly remember a huge meltdown over candy canes of all things! Some of the candy canes to decorate the houses were broken and then it became a huge arguement over whose candy canes were broken. Anyway, that was last year, and this year there weren't any major ones...although the roof on Bryce's house started sliding down after they were finished. It had been quite a while and we were surprised that it hadn't hardened already. So here we are...Jenn and I trying to reapply the roof so it will stay...both of us holding up various parts of the house. We finally decided it wasn't going to work this year and told the kiddos to get in position and we would would put Bryce's in front of him and HOPEFULLY I could snap a few photos. Here's the result. The walls ended up caving in but the roof eventually dried in place.

The simple things make the best memories!

I had the best day today and didn't really do anything momentous...just normal everyday life. It started out really early this morning. Well, at least it was early for me to be dressed and out! LOL A close friend of mine, Jenn and I headed to Shreveport for lunch and to shop at the BoardWalk. It was really cold....at least cold for us here in Louisiana...in the 30's, but it warmed up to the low 50's. This doesn't happen very often. It was a neat experience...shopping all bundled up, walking along the river with Christmas music playing. We haven't been able to spend much time together, just the two of us (no children!). I really enjoyed it. We've tentatively discussed doing a girls' trip to New York next Christmas. Hopefully it will all work out. I've never been and would love to visit NYC.

We got back home fairly early and then Bill, Carley and I headed down to another close friend's house 30 minutes south of here. Yet another SaturDATE. They cooked chili and served hot dogs and nachos. HOWEVER...a drive in restaurant that was in the small town when we were growing up closed a few years back. Well the previous owner decided to reopen that old hamburger joint. It's called Wot-a-burger....it's not the chain hamburger place that I've seen around. Actually it's MUCH better. Anyway, I just had to order a hamburger, fries, and a child's steak finger basket and see if it really was the exact same food. Oh my gosh! I missed this place and I am SO glad that they are back!!! We headed over to the Carters and just spent the evening (stayed until midnight) in their back yard around a bon-fire. And yes, we roasted a marshmellow or two!

SaturDATE

They say only two things are certain in life…death and taxes. Well, you can add one more thing to the list... SaturDate. Yes, SaturDate. For nearly 14 years now we have had a standing date for Saturday with the Carters, with few exceptions. We usually end up catching a matinee at Tinseltown and then dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. Thanks to the opening of our new theater and restaurants in Ruston, we’ve been able to mix in a few local movies and meals. We’ve been celebrating our SaturDates for so long now, I can’t imagine ever going through a weekend without one.



Last Saturday, the Carters came up for supper. We ended up going to Ryan's...great place for kids because we don't have to worry about them having to be quiet. Afterwards we came back to our house and I got all the kids to lay in a circle so I could run up on the landing to take a photo. I needed it for contest that I had been in for 9 weeks. We were to use a sketch that had a circle for the photo. I was the only one that actually used a round photo....thought surely that would be unique enough to set my LO apart from the others. Here's the photo and the LO that was created. I'll eventually add a few more things to it....things that I didn't think I could add until after the contest, but things I think it still needs to balance it out.

Scrapvivor Contest on Scrap Galaxy

I wanted to share with everyone about an upcoming Scrapvivor Contest on ScrapGalaxy.com

Scrapvivor on ScrapGalaxy.com

Here are the details:

SG ScrapVivor: Prepare to out wit, out last and out scrap your opponents! This exciting contest is going to be full of twists and turns. All members (except Design Team members) can enter this contest. Entries can be submitted starting December 1 to the gallery in the ScrapVivor section. Submissions will be accepted until December 23, 2006 at 11:59pm. The SG Design Team will section the 10 finalists to continue onto the next round of ScrapVivor which will start on Jan 5. Each week there will be certain challenges that the finalists have to accomplish. Voting will be done by all Scrap Galaxy members each week by voting for their favorites. The person with the lowest amount of votes each week will have to leave the competition. Each of the finalists will take home a prize, and the final ScrapVivor winner will take home the GRAND prize as well as the title: the very first SG ScrapVivor!

So come on out and let’s see who is the ultimate ScrapVivor! For your entry into the contest, this is what you need to do:

One page (12 x 12) layout featuring why YOU should be the ultimate ScrapVivor in the Scrap Galaxy competition. Be creative!! Think outside of the box! But most of all – Have Fun!!

Post them into the ScrapVivor section in the gallery