Thursday Night July 10th...JOIN ME ONLINE!

I am teaching a Masters Digital HM Storybooking (digital scrapbooking) online workshop. This is a company wide call. Join me and see what I am teaching. Come learn how to do this and much more:

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Happy 4th

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July. We had a great time. We went over to my friend Jen's house and celebrated with her husband Dave and their two children. Fireworks are legal in Va (small ones) so we bought some fireworks and let them off. Maelee loves the "sprinklers" (sparklers) and Delana was scared of everything and clung to Brianna's lap until the very end Jen got her to hold a "sprinkler"

Old Friends are the Best Kinds of Friends

Those Pics Above are from 2004 and the ones below are 2008

The week we moved into our house in VA there was a sweet single mother that moved in right next to us in that same week. Her name is Mindy and she had a cute three year old daughter named Taylor. We were there about a week before Mindy asked me if I would be interested in caring for Taylor during the day while she worked (she is one of the best hair stylists). I said sure. So that is how I became the daycare lady of the neighborhood. Mindy and I became good friends, like family, and Taylor and Malee became best of friends!!! They moved in Oct 06, the same week Delana was born. She moved only 45 minutes away, but here in VA that seems so far. But We have only seen eachother twice since they moved.....not enough. Taylor called a few weeks ago and invited us over. We were so excited to see Taylor. I have missed her. It was very oddly a cold day....very strange for summer so the girls could not go swimming. Instead Mindy did Manicures and Pedicures for the girls. Taylor did not get one....she was not excited at all about doing nails....she is a huge TOMBOY. Even on our way there in the car Maelee asked if Taylor was boy. I asked her why she would say that. She said, "because she does not like to wear dresses and she loves the Power Rangers." I then explained to Maelee what a tomboy is. Anyways, we had a great day. I love Taylor so much and I have missed her and Mindy. My hair has also missed Mindy very much. I wanted to share some pics of Maelee and Taylor.

Happy Day

I had the most wonderful day today! I have been fighting with Dell for the last three days about a power cord. They kept misplacing my order. One day I even got a battery in the mail from them. I was so disappointed when I opened the box to find a battery instead of a powercord. I know have very strong opinions about how terrible Dells customer service is. I lost the power cord for my lap top two weeks ago. I have been miserable without it. My powercord finally came today. I spent the day busy trying to catch up with work past due......I have four books to make for the dance teacher and for parents that want to order a copy. Here is what I worked on tonight.....it is far from done, still need to do the journaling and add a few more pages for some other classes.



http://tinyurl.com/6k8q9t



I also had a great day hanging out with my buddy Natalie. She is a young woman from church. I met her four years ago when she was 12 and I have always enjoyed spending time with her. She has been helping me with the kids. She comes at 7am to make sure that she is here when the Delana wakes up to get her out of her crib. Then she makes the girls breakfast......I am very spoiled!!!! The girls were picked up at 10am by another lady at church but Natalie decided to stay and hang out with me. She has her drivers permit so I braved it and let her drive my van so we could go get some greasy drive through food (chick-fila). The funnest part was hunting for money....with my foot out I am out of work and we are trying to pinch every penny we can. So Natalie and I hunted all over the house for every quarter and dime we could find in the house. It took a few minutes to count out $9 at the drive through window but it was fun. And her driving was great! I was very impressed!!! She can drive miss broken leg daisy around anytime. this is Natalie:

Blessed!

I may be broken, but it is when I am broken that I realized how blessed I am. I want to say thank you for all of the help I have received. I am counting my blessings and naming them one by one. (these are in no particular order of importance)

1. a husband that loves me, even though I am not always a fully functioning wife and mother
2. My children who make me laugh
3. Jenny Benny for taking my kids and being the one person that I could call and ask for help because her life is as crazy as mine (and her house is almost as messy as mine) and she GETS me.
4. Relief Society Pres that won't let me do this on my own....refuses to let me say no to help
5. Anne Havens for being the best compassionate service leader....she has my entire schedule down to a science and is sending someone over to help every second of the day
6. A mother that calls constantly to check up on me (she just called in the middle of writing this list.)
7. My home teachers for coming last night
8. Dave Prymak for chiropractic care
9. the meals brought in from the church.....especially desserts that made my day bright! brownies and caramel popcorn.
10. Reruns of great sitcoms to keep me company on TV
11. My laptop
12. Sylvia loaning me a power cord for my laptop because I lost mine and for tagging along to my Heritage Makers workshop on Friday
13. on that note, Heritage Makers. a fun hobby that I can do while down.
14. Lena, for the uplifting calls and for always being in more pain than I am. gives me perspective that I am not the only one in pain
15. SPOKT....my family's message board where I get to see and hear from all my family far away.
16. uplifting emails from my cousin Carol to keep me posted on her summer travels and for her desire to want to come visit.....it means so much to me.
17. Patiricia and Cynthia for cleaning my basement. Even though I can't go down there right now, I am looking forward to the day I can go hang out in my clean basement.
18. There are so many women at church that I want to thank. I have a list of people that are coming for the next two weeks to help me out....thank you to all of you ahead of time.
19. My pink cast that will help me learn and grow and become a better person.

Broken!

I have had such a crazy 2008!!! I was laid up for four months almost with a sore back and on Monday I broke my foot!!!!

So this is the story......Scott had the day off. We have been having a crazy weekend. You saw all of the posts about dance recital and scrapbook expo and so on. It is also summer Marine Corps parade season and wedding season for Scott's 2nd job at the catering company. Scott is rarely home and I have been crazy busy so our house has been severly suffering!!!! Scott finally had a day off. He wanted to spend the full day cleaning. I wanted to spend it playing of coarse since we never see him. We compromised and I sent him to the pool with the kids and I stayed behind to clean house. He was gone for about an hour and he called feeling a little lonely at the pool and really hungry. He called and asked if I would join them at the pool and if I would bring them some snacks. I told him that the cupboards were empty and we had nothing. He informed me that he had a secret hiding place above the stove for snacks. I quickly grabbed a chair without thinking excited about the stash. And I climbed up on the chair (that was already broken) and while I was still on the phone with him I came crashing down as I went to reach for a box of Nutter Butter Bars. I came crashing down. The dishwasher lid was open because I was in the middle of loading it. I cut my big butt on the dishwasher. Twisted my foot in the dishwasher and hit my left elbow as I came down on the Island and landed on my back. I landed on the same back that was out of commission for four months....somehow miraculously my back is just fine through all of this!!! Yay for my back. The phone went flying across the room, or so I thought, after hunting for the phone the next day we found out that it too landed in the dishwasher. I kept calling out for Scott to come home. I was not sure if he heard me or realized if I fell so I continued to cry out to my neighbors as loud as I could. So on top of all of this I have lost my voice, so don't try calling....I can't talk anyways. Scott and the girls came running in through the door. We shuffled out the kids to other people and off to the ER we went. I broke my foot in two different places. I got a cast on Wednesday.....If you know me you don't even have to wonder what color I got...PINK. I wished my sister Charlie lived closer to me. I know she would have this thing all bedazzled and bejeweled for me!!! I will still have it on when I go to AZ to visit in July....get out the jewels Charlie. This thing needs some help. So that is my broken story.....urghhh!!! What a year. My church and all my friends have stepped in to help. The Relief Society President was at the pool when Scott was on the phone with me when I fell. She heard him frantically rounding up the girls. I am in good hands. I try to look at the upside of it all.....I am going to DisneyLand in July and if I am in a wheel chair I won't have to wait in any lines!

Digital Scrapbooking Is Not A Crime!

I had the experience of being a working mother this weekend....and hats off to all working mothers! I set up a Heritage Makers booth the The Great American Scrapbook Expo. One of my friends from Utah, Trudy, flew out to help me. She brought a friend of hers, Sharon, with her. We set up on Thursday and we spent Friday and Saturday showing off our wonderful product. I was not there with them Saturday morning because of getting to be at Maelee's recital. But I did spend Saturday afternoon at the booth. After the Expo closed we went out to Downtown Old Alexandria and found a really nice Cuban restaurant to eat at. Thank you Trudy and Sharon for coming out! I could not have done it without you!

Trudy is my "Dream Buddy" In Heritage Makers, once you have reached a certain level, you are invited to the Cloward Family Cabin in the Mountains of Utah. The Clowards are family behind HM. I got to attend there what is called Dream Team. This is a three day intense life changing training. Each dreamer is given a buddy, and this is to be their buddy for life. I know that Doug put thought and prayer into each of our buddies. My buddy Trudy and I were matched up so well! I am who she was 20 years ago and she is who I want to be in 20 years. We are MOTHERS! We are so much a like! I love to be around her. I am so blessed to have her in my life. The book we are holding is a book that our Dream Team recently put together. We had put it together for Doug when he was diagnosed. His book is full of letters to him. We all went back into the book and decided to write letters to each other and I just received my copy this week. Trudy and I loved sharing our favorite memories of Dream Team.

The Expo was great. This was an expo for traditional scrapbooking so some were confused and appalled at the thought of digital scrapbooking. Many were glad to see a new way of scrapbooking and are eager to learn more about scrapbooking. I went over to one booth that was selling scrapbooking T-shirts. There were some cute ones but I told the lady that she needed some about digital scrapbooking. She asked me if I had any suggestions for some sayings that could be printed. I said one that for sure needs to printed is "Digital Scrapbooking is not a CRIME!" Some looked at our booth like it was a crime!