No place to be.  Just a lazy kind of do whatever you want and sleep in day. 

Although the sleeping in part didn’t happen quite as planned.  For some reason the last two mornings, I have not been able to make myself sleep in past 7ish!  Must be somewhere I caught back up on my sleep while I was sick and I have been praying that I stop sleeping my days away.

So I got up and played on Facebook for awhile.  I really try not to log on over there as I get sucked in and I lose track of time.  Then in an attempt to scrapbook, I went downstairs and tidied up the scraproom.  Of course I have a package of clear ornaments down there that I’ve been beading to put on the tree (Lillian taught me how to do that). And they take about 3 to 4 hours each to make and I thought it would be great to make 3 burgundy ones and 3 gold ones.  I had a total of three completed and a 4th half way done.  So I sat down and worked on finishing that one and starting another one.  I’ll have to try and remember either tomorrow or Monday to take a picture so I can show you what I’m talking about.  They really are quite beautiful!

Then I came upstairs and saw that Erica had tried calling several times.  She had spent the night at Eric’s parents last night.  She had developed a case of homesickness last night while we were all out watching Twilight (more of that to come), so I called her back to see how she was doing and she wanted to let us know it was snowing.  And wanted to get after us for not answering the phone last night.  I think this was the first time she went over there and was homesick.  It’s been really peaceful around the house this last week and I think we’ve all been connecting with each other better. 

So back to the Twilight.  I really enjoyed the movie!  I was so apprehensive about going to see it as I’ve never experienced a movie as being as good as the book.  But it was pretty close!  We even got Eric to watch it with us.  The only not enjoyable part was the two girls behind us that talked almost the entire time.  So I really do want to go back and watch it again.  Jackie is cracking me up over this whole thing.  She has been super obsessed with Pokemon for several years now, and I see her obsession moving towards Twilight and Edward.  My little girl is turning into quite the teenager now. 

I even made dinner tonight!  I know, for those who know me, homecooked meals are few and far between.  I made Lemon Chicken with Rice and Green Beans with just a little bit of bacon added.  It was so good!  Not a murmur around the table at all.  And to top it all off, Erica and I made chocolate cake with chocolate icing and sprinkles to be ready to eat after family scriptures and prayer.  Of course on a cold snowy night like tonight, we had to top it all off with hot chocolate!  Seemed like a nice ending to a great day.

I’m feeling so much better (maybe don’t quite sound it, especially singing), everyone is healthy (knock on wood) and am anxious to wake up tomorrow and go to church as a family!  I was so disappointed that we missed last weekend.  Off to spend some quality time with Eric before calling it a night.

It’s been a great day!  And so much to catch up on.  Feeling much better finally.  My voice has almost come back and I still have a cough, but I am feeling so much better than just a couple of days ago.  I don’t recall having a cold last this long before, well at least not quite so miserable for as long.

We got our tree up and decorated yesterday!  It looks so beautiful!  Miss Nora came over and helped us out with that as I knew she would do such a beautiful job and she did.  And to be perfectly honest Eric had no interest in climbing up and down the ladder hanging ornaments all day.  She is just too sweet!  She even let Erica carefully climb the ladder with her and put on the angel at the top.

Here’s what the tree looked like when she was done with it!  The bow at the top she just whipped up!

And she even made the mantel look beautiful!

While Nora was decorating, Ally and Erica and I worked on wreaths.  I wanted to make a matching one for the other front door and knew that Erica would want to help.  Lori came up with a great idea of buying her a small wreath and picks and let her do her own.  After Ally had seen my first wreath the Lori helped me make, she wanted to make one too.  So after a trip to Michael’s and letting the girls pick out their stuff (Ally totally on her own, and Erica with some help) we went to work.

Here is how Erica’s turned out with some guidance and her completely turning over the wreath making to me:

I tried to teach Ally some tips that Lori gave me, but Ally really wanted to march to the beat of her own drum, so I gave up and let her.  And wow did she ever do a great job!  She’s got such a gift with thinking out of the box.

She was breaking pieces off of one stem and hooking them with pieces of another and coming up with a whole new deal.  I love this flower stack she came up with.

Then afterwards Ally went for pedicures and she a manicure and me a backfill.  She had her nail polish peeled off her fingernails before we even left the salon.  Goofy girl.  She has been feeling very middle child lately and I thought the one on one time together would be good for her.  I hope she enjoyed being pampered.

Eric’s parents suggesting going out for dinner for this Thanksgiving.  Not feeling real tied to the idea of sweating in the kitchen cooking all day followed by an evening of handwashing the china and crystal, I was all for the idea.  So we went to this bistro in Platte City this afternoon for a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner.  EVERYTHING was awesome.  And it was nice not to worry about if whether or not Erica was eating safe foods as Sandy had warned them ahead of time about her nut allergy and their grandson had just been diagnosed with the same thing so they were very careful preparing our food.

Here’s a few snapshots from the afternoon:

My thinking for the last picture was using it for our Christmas cards, but I’m not sure.  It’s not quite as “posed” as I would have liked it.  But then on the other hand it kind of captured everyone’s personality and would make a fun picture.

Oh!  I almost forgot.  My wreath for the other door!  Can you tell which one I made all by myself?

 If you can’t tell, its the one of the left.  It came kind of close to looking like the other.  You should have seen the glittery mess the three of us made in the Breakfast Nook.  I so should have taken a picture.  It was something to have seen for sure.

Several hundred dollars later, a billion appointments and 4 months later I finally have my permanent crown in my mouth!  Okay, probably not the most exciting thing to everyone else, but to me, I am so happy to finally have this one tooth taken care of.  You can bet I will be first in line for routine appointments and cleanings from here on out.  I have turned super obsessed over my whole teeth hygiene.  And we decided today after we get the girls into braces, that it will I will go next.  It will help with some of my issues.

As for the frog, can someone please get it out of my throat!  I’ve been sick all weekend long with this horrendous cold.  I was so hoping I could sleep it off Saturday so I could be at church Sunday, but no such luck.  It was just as bad if not worse by then.  Apparently I coughed so hard and so much all weekend that I have almost lost my voice.

Poor Erica is worried about that.  She asked me if I was going to die today.  I told her not yet and why did she ask?  She went on to tell me that my voice sounded like I was and to just cough and talk normal.  She has been so sweet and loving. 

In spite of not having much of a voice I thought that I felt well enough to go to the dentist to take care of the above issue and then off to the grocery store.  I thought for sure I was going to die by the time I got home.  Chalk it up to thinking I was feeling better than I was and trying to do too much.

Oh well.  That’s been my weekend.  Exciting, huh? 

It’s probably because I can’t breathe!  Out of nowhere I got hit with a cold.  I’ve been going along minding my own business and it just hit me earlier this evening.  Although looking back I really should have seen it coming.  Erica started getting snuffly Tuesday, but I kind of dismissed it as allergies. 

But it’s one of those colds that you are so stuffed up that you feel like you can’t breathe and then get all claustrophobic kind of feeling! 

Eric’s been such a sweety to me tonight though.  I came up from scrapbooking in the basement and asked him if I was running a fever, and I actually was.  Should have known when I was feeling chilly earlier, that I had to have been.  So he made me take a nap while he and Erica took Ally to a skating party.  Of course by the time he came back with dinner and I finally woke myself up, I was feeling much more rested.  And now I can’t sleep!  And did I mention, I can’t breathe?! 

I went shopping with my friend Lori from church at Michael’s and picked out pretty stuff to make a wreath and then to her house where she showed me how easy it was to put together a wreath.

It was so nice hanging out with her and getting to know her a little better!  And her house is so pretty!  And I learned a new crafty fun thing.  I had so much fun and loved it so much that when I got it home to put it on my door I promptly went back out to Michael’s to get more stuff to make it’s twin to go on the 2nd of the double doors on the front of the house!

It’s not too horribly late yet.  The kids are all asleep (Erica is even in her own bed) and I have no urgent cleaning to do right now.  But it’s too quite!  Eric left for another business trip this morning and I hate being home at night with just me and the girls.  I’ve always been like that.

I remember the first time Eric went for an overnight trip out to the missile silo just after we were married and while we were in the Air Force.  I was so terrified of being by myself at night he talked one of his very good friends into staying in the guest room while he was gone, just in case.

I’m past the point of needing someone to come stay with me to protect me from the house noises, but they do still make me jumpy.  So low light in the house is on, every outside light, and the TV.  No wonder I’m so exhausted by the time he gets home.  Oh well…

Anyway, I’m not back to not blogging.  Just a busy weekend.  Friday night was the kick off to Vickie’s 12 double page 12 x 12 scrapbook workshop.  She did such an awesome job designing everything and quite a bit was cut out.  I resigned myself very early on that I would not get everything done by the end of the weekend.  Which actually made the whole thing quite pleasant.  And I probably actually got more done than I would have if I came into the whole thing stressed into getting it all done.

I got back about 2 in the morning Friday night and then as soon as I woke up and showered Saturday I was back over there scrapping away.  I did drag myself away from the fun earlier Saturday night as I didn’t want to appear to be all hung over from the lack of sleep Sunday morning.

We actually made it to church Sunday morning.  It helped that we had an appointment with the Bishop before church though.  It was a good appointment.  I felt like a lot of issues I’ve been struggling with and how I’ve been feeling about myself lately were brought to light and a path towards good progress was made.  I have to say he is one of the most in tune Bishop’s I’ve ever known.

It felt so good to be back at church!  And I really missed being in Young Womens.  Those young ladies are just so awesome and are so unique and spiritual.  I can’t wait for Sunday to be here again!

Today was quite the busy day!  Just after getting up early to start the sheets through the laundry (so then the housekeepers can make the beds with them and I don’t have them sitting in the bottom of a laundry basket forever because I hate folding sheets), I dropped Eric off at the airport, went to breakfast with Erica, then we went shopping at Target, stopped by the house just in time to get her backpack and get her to preschool, to the nail saloon to fix my broken nail, before heading to the grocery store to stock the pantry and fridge back up, with just enough time again to through the groceries inside, to just turn around to pick the girls up from the bus stop on my way to get Erica from school and then off to shopping for church clothes for the older girls!  Whew!

And let me tell you!  Shopping for jeans and hoodies, no biggie.  I can do that in my sleep.  But dresses or modest skirts and blouses for church…  Ugh!  Apparently such a thing is almost impossible.  I was near tears by the time we finally found something.  And of course Ally is in an inbetween stage where girl clothes fit her around the waist but are too short and women’s clothing slips off here skinny little waist.  And there was NOTHING to be found in the juniors department!

But I was a woman on a mission, and we triumphed.  And not only did we find a new outfit for each of the older girls, but it will play double duty as their Christmas outfit!  Jackie found a pretty long black skirt she liked and a jewel blue necky sweater.  And for Ally we found a skirt that goes just below the knees (in the petite department) and a shimmery red blouse to go with it.  Put that with Erica’s black and sparkly silver dress we had found on our outing to Target and you have a picture perfect Christmas card!  Now to get around to getting everyone dressed up and posed smiling for pictures….

Speaking of Christmas, when we came home for Erica’s backpack we found our sprinkler guy had ordered and gotten our lights in a blink of an eye and was just finishing hanging them.  I forgot to program the timer before heading back out the door, so our lights were the only ones on our side of the block that weren’t on.  So I made Jackie go plug them in and then we drove around the house several times enjoying them.

Sorry I went on for so long!  And I’m so sure you really could have went on without having to read about every second between Friday and now.  But Eric’s working hard in his hotel room right now so I don’t want to interrupt him, and this is usually my chatty time with him before we watch one of our DVR’d shows and go to sleep.  So you all get to listen to me go on and on!  Aren’t you lucky?! 

Okay, I’ll let you off the hook now.  I’m shutting off my computer and going to find out who on earth keeps slamming their door downstairs!  They must not have read that they are asleep. 

Eric suggested yesterday that instead of straightening up or whatever to do something that would make me happy.  So I went downstairs and scrapped.  It took me a lot longer to complete this page packet than I intended as I was planning to just cut out the color copies of the paper piecings and be done.  But these ducks were just too cute that I HAD to paper piece them.

Here it is:

That Kara Ward is just so stinkin’ talented!

Cheryl tagged anyone who was interested to play along…I like this tag! It gives me something fun to blog about today!

1. Where is your cell phone? On the table next to me.

2. Where is your significant other? Upstairs in his office

3. Your hair color? mostly brown

4. Your mother? In Santa Rosa, CA

5. Your father? In Eureka, CA

6. Your favorite thing? I have to agree with Cheryl on this one, sleep

7. Your dream last night? I know I had one.  I just don’t remember what it was anymore.

8. Your dream/goal? Right now, to make it to the weekend

9. The room your in? My Scrapbook Room

10. Your hobby? Scrapbooking

11. Your fear? Something happening to one of my girls

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Right here, with hopefully all my girls close by.  (So weird to think that in 6 years, Jackie will be almost 20 and Ally 18!)

13. Where were you last night? Home

14. What your not? Cooking dinner like I should be.

15. One of your wish-list items? TV in the Family Room.

16. Where you grew up? Eureka, CA

17. The last thing you ate? Dark Chocolate M&Ms.

18. What are you wearing? My really comfortable lounging around the house, praying that no one comes to the door and sees me in it dress.

19. Your TV? In the evening after dinner

20. Your pet? None.

21. Your computer? Compaq Laptop.

22. Your mood? Beaten down, but trying to be optimistically hopeful.

23. Missing someone? Not really too much right now.

24. Your car? Cadillac Escalade.

25. Something your not wearing? Shoes

26. Favorite store? Right now, Scrapbook Page

27. Your summer? It was great!  Had a nice long family vacation and spent lots of time at the pool.

28. Love someone? Yes, but it’s a secret!    Just teasing.

29. Your favorite color? Pink

30. When was the last time you laughed? About 10 minutes ago.

31. Last time you cried? This afternoon

I tag anyone who wants to play…it’s kinda fun!!

So I went for what was supposed to be my last appointment for my crown.  If you will remember I started this whole process in July after I lost part of my tooth on our Summer vacation.  All because I didn’t get it taken care of a year prior when that tooth first started bothering me.  Anyway, it resulted in a root canal, a post, crown lengthening, then I had my impression for the permanent crown 3 weeks ago.  I went in today and there was too much of a space.  And being the wonderful dentist Doctor Pope is, he thought it wouldn’t be right to let me keep it and walk out the door.  So there will be adjustments made to it, and hopefully it will at long last be fixed for good in about a week and a half. 

Sigh….  As for he marriage part….  Satan is really trying hard to beat me down right now.  See this getting back on track and resetting my priorities has meant more time praying and reading my scriptures.  Well we can’t have that.  So, I thought it would be way fun to be fighting off and on with Eric instead.  Talk about draining.  I was so ready to give up last night until Eric pointed it out to me.  So hopefully we are okay now.  What really bums me out though is I was supposed to be at the Young Women in Excellence last night at church.  Not only do I feel like I let my two daughters down, but the leaders and young women at church. 

Okay…  As promised.  I took a quick picture of that Pirate Princess layout and uploaded it to the computer.  Now before anyone gets to thinking I created this out of the blue on my own, hold your horses for a second.  I’ve been in a creative block for awhile now, so I did a search at 2 Peas and found two layouts using the paper I wanted to use, that I liked a lot.  So I combined the two layouts, changed a few things and came up with this :

The journaling says:  “Aaarrr!  Finally I was able to finally convince you to be a Pirate Princess for Halloween so I could use this cool paper!  You were just too cute all dressed up though!  You worked for almost a week perfecting your “aarr”!  It was too funny, especially when you involved your whole body!  You had quite the opportunities to wear your costume – Trunk or Treat at church, dance class, Pre-K party and Halloween night!  Which scored you lots of loot in the candy department.  Love, Mom”

Can you believe it?!  I think this being on a schedule and getting a better handle on my time is going to do pretty well for me.  The trick will be to stick with it long enough to make it a habit. 

I’m feeling so much better today.  I’m wondering if maybe it was all just post election stress.  And now that I’m focusing on other things, it will be just fine.  I have a funny story about the whole possible pregnancy thing to share though.

I picked the girls up from the bus stop as I headed over to Staley to pick Erica up from Pre-K and thought it would be interesting to see what the girls thought about if I was pregnant.  So I told them that I took a pregnancy test and Jackie’s face lit up!  She was all what did it say?  Are you pregnant?  I’m looking in the rear view mirror and am watching Ally’s reaction and she is fuming.  Pick up Erica and told her that I might be having a baby and she informed me that we already had one.  At least Erica and Ally were relieved to find out I wasn’t and was pulling their leg.

Okay…  I know this is a little bit on the late side, but I really wanted to post Halloween pictures too.  So without further ado here they are.  If I get myself, the camera and my camera cord in the same room as the Pirate Princess layout I did for Erica’s album I’ll get a picture of that posted soon as well.

We actually decorated the front of the house this year.  I took this in the daytime, so it didn’t pick up the lights and the fence like I wanted it to, but my night shot didn’t turn out very well.

Here is Erica, our Pirate Princess:

And Ally.  It’s actually a mobster costume.  But she thought it would work as a Bodyguard costume, however by the time of Trunk Or Treat at church she was a Successful Business person.  That girl cracks me up!

And Jackie went as a Medieval Queen. 

Here is my first attempt at a group picture of all three of them.  Jackie wasn’t in a good mood at this point.  Ally was picking at her.  And Erica was trying really hard to cooperate so we could go in and eat pizza and then off to Trick or Treat.

And finally after eating pizza and Jackie cheering herself up a little bit more and realizing the grumpy pictures were going to be what ended up in the scrapbook we did a retake.  Erica was a little less interested in cooperating, but she went through the motions.

As an effort of making myself more productive, I’m only allowing myself on the computer daily for one hour, so I’m about at my time limit.  Plus Erica kind of really likes school and isn’t a fan of being late, so I need to get her out the door.  And then after I drop her off, Eric and I are going to that Five Guys Burgers over off of Tiffany Springs for lunch.  So until tomorrow…