This Cracks me Up

Came across this on the internet the other day and Joe and I cracked up:

Doesn't it kind of look like Joe? 

Saw this a long time ago on another blog and got a good laugh out of it too.

Figured I would post these for the entire rest of the country

 that is freezing their you-know-whats off right about now.

It's supposed to cool down for us in the next week too.  Highs of 65.  Brrrrrrrrrrrr!  ;)

Thankful Thursday(on a Friday)

My days are all messed up this week.

Usually I am off on Wednesdays.  

This week we had to do some training for  new computer software so I had to work on Wednesday.

It really messed up my days.  

So yesterday I thought it was Tuesday.  But it was Thursday. 

So here it is Friday and I am just getting around to doing my Thankful Thursday.

I don't suppose you need a certain day of the week to say what you are thankful for though  :)

--I am thankful for the weather we have been having.  It has been in the high 70's every day this week. On Sunday it even hit 80. Strange for us for in January, but so beautiful.  It's supposed to cool down on Sunday and rain is in the forecast for early next week so we are going to enjoy this weather while we have it.  A trip to the beach is on the agenda for Saturday. And a bike ride on Sunday.

--I'm thankful for coffee.  Enough said.

--I'm thankful to have people I can vent to when my day has not gone well.  There is a lot of stuff I can't write here but thankfully I have a place where I can and receive amazing support.

--I'm thankful today is a non-patient day at my job. This week has been crazy stressful. Trying to learn new things and working with a Type A boss sucks.  So  glad  I can get caught up on the pile of charts on my desk without interruption(well, except for the phone).  And I get to go in late too.  

--I won something else on the radio yesterday!  I have some kind of freaky talent for being caller 20.  I won a $100 gift card to a restaurant that I love. We went there once for my birthday and it was so good. Now Joe and I can go out for our anniversary next month.  Yay!

--I'm thankful it is Friday (duh).  That one goes without saying I guess.

Project 52 Week 4

I chose this week's theme and decided it would be Peace. 

I have been searching for Peace in some things in my life lately.  There are a couple of things in particular I struggle with pretty much daily.  It causes constant inner turmoil. It is exhausting.

 I pray every night that I will come to a place of peace with these things but I am not having any luck.

When something is weighing heavily on my mind, one of the things I like to do is drive.  I love driving.  Give me an open road(no traffic-yuck), the windows down and the radio blasting as loud as it can get it and I feel free.  When I am in the car and behind the wheel my problems melt away for a litte while.  

Sunday I had the opportunity to drive down to San Diego.  I couldn't have asked for a better day for a drive.  Sunny, 75 degrees, virtually no traffic.  Perfect.

Driving down the 5.  

Of course it helps that this was the view out the window as I drove.  Don't worry.  I held the camera up and snapped a picture without taking my eyes off of  the road(thus the somewhat crooked view).

That brings me to the other thing that never fails to bring me peace.  

The ocean.  

As soon as I set my eyes(and ears, and nose) upon the ocean I feel the stress leave my body.

I stopped at a rest stop to breathe in the ocean air and take in the gorgeous view.

Tons of seagulls were out and about.

Beautiful!

This bus was parked at the rest stop with me.  Loved it.  The young men in the bus were eager to have a chat with me but I was running late and had to get back on the road.  Shame.  They looked like really interesting guys and were quite passionate about their subject (as you can see from their vehicle  :)

Once I reached my destination I was lucky enough to meet one lovely blogger and spend the afternoon with another and her beautiful daughter.  It was a perfect way to spend a Sunday.

And it gave me a little bit of peace, if only for the day.

Project 52 weeks 2 and 3

My friend Coley, who has also been doing this project, has been assigning themes to her weekly pictures.  At first this was intimidating for me, as I wasn't sure I would have pictures to go along with said themes. But then I found myself trying to take pictures to go along with the theme and it made me get my camera out more so I decided I liked that idea.  So I may or may not do themes every week.  Depends on my mood.  :)

Week 2: Food

My husband's home made Spanish rice.

For the first 16 years that we were married I did all of the cooking.  If I wasn't feeling well(which was a lot, when I had my uterus and Stage IV Endometriosis) we would fall back on frozen pizza or chili dogs for dinner.

Those were the two dishes my husband knew how to make.  When he lost his job I turned over the cooking tasks to him.  No way was I going to go to work every day and come home and cook dinner when he had been home all day. Same with the household chores.  If he was going to be home, he was going to do them.  I haven't done laundry in 2 years!

 But there were only so many frozen pizzas and chili dogs we could handle.  So he started to look online how to cook different things and he taught himself how to cook!  At first it was kind of hit or miss.  But soon he got the hang of it and started cooking some seriously yummy stuff!

This is one of my favorite dishes that he cooks.  We have it either with burritos or soft tacos.  It is sooooooooooo good.  Whenever I ask him what's for dinner and he says "burritos" I get excited because I know we are having some yummy spanish rice with it.  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Now he has a whole repertoire of delicious items that he cooks. It rocks.

Week 3:  Friends

This is my dog Gizmo.  This is her little friend(say hello to my lee-tle friend).  

We call him "Bubbie".  Or sometimes "Hedgie".

Our dog is not nice.  She barks at people.  She has even been known to bite them.  She is small and she is convinced everyone in the world is out to hurt her(even though to our knowledge she has never been hurt by anyone).  

There are 4 people on this earth that Gizmo likes.  Her mommy, her daddy, my sees-ter and my Dad.

 Everyone else better watch out.

But she loves her Bubbie. She carries him everywhere.  She sleeps with him.  She throws him in the air and catches him.  She lays on her blanket with him and watches t.v.  He is on the very short list of things that she likes.   He is her friend.

Gizmo and her Bubbie.

It took me forever to get that shot above.  Here are some of the outtakes:

Look at me!  I'm tough!  You better watch out!

What was that????  Did you hear that noise?  I think someone outside is trying to get me!

YAWN.  This is really boring. Are we done yet?

Why are you using your loud voice?  

I'm trying to  do what you asked, 

even though I don't 

understand what exactly it is that you want!

 You don't have to get mad!

Daddy, can you help me?  Mommy is using her loud voice.

How's this?  Aren't I being a good girl?  

I'm sitting here real still and quiet with my Bubbie, 

just like you asked me to.

Can we please be done now?  This whole thing is making me tired.

Silly dog.

And here is one more picture for the theme "Friends".  Joe and I went to this bird store the other day and these two birds(parrots?  not sure) were sharing their afternoon snack.  So cute!

Under Construction

You may have noticed things look a little different around here.  I have been wanting to re-design my blog for a few months now, to something cleaner, less busy and easier to read.

Since I don't have the money to have a blog make over I decided to start from scratch and see if I could change things up myself. 

As you can see, I have a long way to go.  Joe is going to help me and I'm sure we can come up with something  I like without spending any money.

We shall see.

All You Need is Love

When you make craft items, you are often looking a month or more ahead at the holidays coming up.  I made this banner right after New Year's.

One of my favorite holidays is Valentine's Day.  Not so much because it is considered a romantic holiday, or even because it's our anniversary.  Actually most of  the time I wish we had gotten married on a different day, since Valentine's Day is so hectic.

I just love the hearts.  I love the colors. Red, and white, pink and purple.  I love lace doilies.  I love the giving of Valentine's.

I know a lot of people who don't like Valentine's day.  I can totally understand that.  I'm guessing Valentine's Day is for them like Mother's Day is for me. I loathe Mother's Day. If I could go to bed and hide under the covers until it was over I would.

But I really like Valentine's Day.


I don't usually make things for myself.  I love making things for other people and often I am so busy doing that I don't have time to make myself one too.


Not this time.  I made this baby just for me.

I heart this banner.  I love the paper.  It makes me happy.  I love the glittery letters.  I love the ribbons and tulle that I hand tied on to it.

Sorry for the crappy pic.  Still don't have my camera charger.



It is hanging above our t.v. right now so I can look at it all the time(yes I know Valentine's Day is still over a month away.  I don't care. The house looks so bare without the Christmas decorations).

Here is a closer look at the background paper I used:

Look at the animals on this paper.  So cute!!  I bought this paper at the scrapbook expo back in the fall, with dreams of all the cute things I would make with it when Valentine's Day came around.   Now that day has come.  I'm planning on making some cute cards with it too. It's called "Alphabet Soup".  How cute is that?

Love it.


I made a really cool Chinese New Year banner too but it's too long to take a picture of with my cell phone.

It's a shame too, because it's really cute.  (If I do say so myself).

 Modesty.  It's one of my endearing traits.  :)

Project 52

Every year at the first of the year I have attempted to do Project 365, which is taking a picture every day for a year.  Every year I make it about 2 weeks and forget to take a picture and feel like a failure and I quit.

I love the idea of taking a picture every day for a year.  I really do.  But it's not for me.

Problem is, I am forgetful. I forget to take my camera with me when I leave in the morning, or I forget to take  a picture at all that day. I had even be known to "fake" a day or two, by posting a picture for a certain day that I actually took another day(gasp!).   I am an all-or-nothing person, so the first time I missed a day of the project 365, I threw in the towel.

Project 52 is the same idea, but you take a picture once a week instead of every day.  I can do that. I mean, I think I can.

The other reason I decided Project 365 wasn't for me, is that I don't have a nice camera.  I had to get over the idea that this project is only for photographers.  People who have nice cameras and take awesome pictures.

I had to look at it more of a documentation type of project.  Simply documenting your year, one week at a time.  When I did my year in review post, I realized that I did a good job of taking a picture once a month.

Now to see if I can do it once a week.

Never mind the fact that I left my camera charger at my sees-ters house at Christmas so my camera is dead.

Sees-ter?  Can you please send me my camera charger?  

I have been using the camera on my old Iphone for now.  Not the best quality, but it works.

So here's what I'm going to do.  I'm going to try and take at least one picture a week.  Some weeks I will take more.  Probably others I will take less.  But I will try to take at least one per week.

I will post them all here, just so I have a place to keep them but I may not post every week.  We'll see.

So here are two pictures I took over the first 10 days of January.

January 2nd.  A friend asked me to make a Tet banner.  It was fun to make.

Taken January 4th. I guess technically this picture wasn't taken by me.

  But this is about documentation, right?

Taken January 5th

Mountains near my work, January 6th.

This is the view from my desk. Awesome, No?

That's all  I have for last week.  Can't wait to see what this week brings!

Birthday Goodness

Yesterday ended up being a good day.   Even though I was dreading it.  :)

I know I mentioned casually here that I had cried about the fact that I was turning forty but the truth is, I was really freaking out.  My apologies to the friends I know in real life for the phone calls, texts, and e-mails I sent over the last 2 days lamenting my upcoming birthday.
And also, thanks for being there for me.  

I have the best friends.

By the time I woke up yesterday I was feeling much better and my birthday was really nice.

My Co-worker DeAnn celebrated with me on Tuesday, since we aren't in the office on Wednesdays.  She really went all out to make my day special.  

Thank you DeAnn!  

If I don't look thrilled in this picture, see above about me freaking out about turning 40.

Love these candles

She did all of this, and even got me a gift card for a massage.  Coincidentally, my sister got me a gift card for the same place so it looks like I will be getting TWO massages.  Woo hoo!  

On my actual birthday, Joe and I used a gift card we had to go to lunch at Ruby's.  

Our Ruby's is overlooking a lake. It's really pretty.

View from our table

Do I look any older?

 Joe knows my love of sour candy and he brought me a whole bucket of sour belts from Costco. This is not going to help me with my NY's resolution of kicking my sugar habit.  

A veritable boatload of sour candy.  I need to exercise restraint when eating these.  

The Red Velvet cake from Costco is To.  Die.  For.

I have been dreaming about it since we had it at Lisa's house at Christmas.

Cake!   I put an unspecified number of candles on the cake 

but it was enough that it looked like it would burst into flames

 if I waited one second longer to blow them out.

 I had a ginormous slice.  For dinner.
Seriously, that's all I ate that night for dinner.
It was my birthday, o.k.?

Lisa sent me this yummy shower gel.  I can't use it without singing 

"Put the lime in the coconut and drink em both up" over and over and over. 

 Drives Joe insane.

(It's coconut lime scented)

She also sent me this really cool wallet.  Sorry the picture is so bad.

I lost the charger for my camera(again).  

Another one of my NY's resolutions was to be more organized.

Failed again. This is why I don't make resolutions.

Isn't it cute though?

Inside the wallet was a gift card to Target.  PLUS she got us a gift card to go out to eat.

 She really went overboard with the presents(as usual).  I'm so lucky!!!

Thanks Sees-ter!

Joe got me a cute little datebook as well,

 which I desperately needed to help achieve my goal of being more organized.  

Overall it ended up being an awesome birthday.  I am so blessed.

P.S. on my very first day of being forty I did the stupidest thing.  DeAnn and I were on our lunch break and we went to the post office.  We left the post office and were walking over to the place we were going to have lunch.  I was walking along and  looking into a store window(not where I was going at all) and I ran right into a bench that was in the middle of the walkway.  Because I was walking kind of fast and I didn't see it at all, I slammed into it HARD.  Like so hard my whole body jarred and my teeth clacked together.  Of course my legs came out from under me and I fell face down on the bench, landing on my right arm and my left knee.  

OWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!  

Oh man it hurt so bad.    I am such a klutz!  Now my arm is turning lots of pretty colors and it is extremely tender to touch.  Aside from being hurt I was so embarrassed I wanted to die.

Not the best start to my 40's!

You Say It's Your Birthday

It's my birthday too, yeah!  That's my favorite birthday song.  I sing it all the time to people on their birthdays, even if it's not mine too.   But today when I sing it it's true.



Today is my seest-er's 40th birthday.  I like it better when I phrase it like that.  My sister's 40th birthday.  Not mine.


O.K. it's mine too.  Blah.  I'm not excited about this one.  I don't want to be forty.  


 I'm not where I thought I would be at 40.  


Where I hoped I would be.  


I'll be perfectly honest, I have cried the last two days over this birthday.  How stupid is that? To cry over a birthday??  But I did.  I am feeling better about it today.


Heck, I should feel lucky to be having birthdays at all.  


Age  just a number. Right? You're only as old as you feel.  Wait, that one doesn't work for me because some days I feel really old.  Whatever.


Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah.  I'm forty.  And my sister is too.


Happy Birthday Sees-ter!


In honor of our 4oth birthdays, I dug out some pictures of me and my sees-ter over the last 40 years.  I honestly have no idea of some of the dates, so I'll do my best to guestimate.  Some of these have terrible resolution. Sorry bout that.

A few days old.    No idea who is who here

I'm guessing about a year old.  1972 maybe?  I think I am on the left.

 Or maybe the right. 

Oh, I don't know.  One of them is me.  

Any guesses? (Joe says left)

Two(or so) years old.  Really crummy pic. I actually have no idea which one I am in this picture. You know what's funny?  I couldn't tell in a lot of these pictures and Joe had to have a look and tell me.  Is that weird?  That I can't tell myself apart in pictures?  Don't answer that.   I think the answer is Yes.  The quality is so bad not even Joe could tell in this one.

       9 years old I think.  1981 or so.  I loved that ski jacket.  

And who wouldn't?  It's so fashionable.

I think this was the same year. 

 I only put it in here because of the roller skates I'm wearing.  

I never took them off.  I think I even slept in them.

A year older than the last picture I think

Strange but I can't find any pictures between age 10 or so and 8th grade. 

Just imagine 3 or 4 years have passed.

8th grade.  1984/85

Senior year.  1989 grad party

                                        I think this was around 1991 or 1992.  Love Joe's hair!

We had matching bangs for a couple of years.  

             And we had our very own table for Christmas dinner, which is made of awesome.

No idea the date but taken sometime after that last picture but before the next one.

Mid-90's with our horses.  I'm kind of surprised I don't have a ton more of us 

riding together, seeing as those we spent every waking hour from 1984-1994 at the stables, 

 but if I do I can't find them.

This was one of the last Christmases that my Mom was alive, so 1995.   Or 1996.  

I'm really bad with dates.  And math.

Late 90's

This was the year before Cameron was born.

                                                   Christmas 2000, with her crazy dog Junior.

Cameron's first Christmas, so 2001

2003, Disneyland

This was taken in China.   August, 2004, on the Pearl River Cruise. 

 I loved being in China. 

 Except for the heat, it was the best trip of my life.

Gracie wouldn't look at the camera 

because she really wanted a drink of that soda Lisa is holding.

Also 2004, later in the year.  For some reason we decided to go out to 

The RainForest Cafe on New Year's Eve to celebrate our birthdays.  

It was really crowded.  And Grace was mesmerized by the sparkler on the sundae.  

2006

This is one of my favorite pictures. This was our 35th birthday.  

2009.  Scrapbook Expo

Christmas 2009 skating at the  rink in Union Square

Summer 2010.  My friend DeAnn took these great pictures of us over the summer.  

I chose this one because I LOVE the look on Grace's face.  

Can you tell she was done with the picture taking at this point?  LOL.

Feb. 2010  Cruise to Mexico

Christmas 2010

                                                                

You say it's your birthday

It's my birthday too, yeah

They say it's your birthday

We're gonna have a good time

I'm glad it's your birthday

Happy birthday to you!

How lucky am I that I get to share my birthday

 with someone as awesome as my sister?

Hopefully we will have many, many 

more birthdays to celebrate together.


FORTY!!!!(gulp)