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Washington, DC

F A L L I N G L E A V E S are a pain in the ...

This time of year - is pretty with the all the colors of the leaves - but man I hate to pick them up! It is like a never ending task. Rake them, bag them, turn around and do it all over again, and again, and again. Then I have a dog that wants to lay in the middle of them. Guess she thinks it is a dog bed or something.

Little Miss Gracie playing in them. Boy she thought it was too funny to mess up the pile after Tom raked them all up!!

Try to get two crazy dogs to sit still with a little one long enough to get a picture. Not happening - as you can see one of them is already getting up!

Then they decide to wrestle right in the middle of the pile. After they ran through them and spread them all over the yard. See told you it was a never ending job - had to rake them up again after they were done. Now they are all over the yard again - so looks like this weekend I (notice I said I) will be at it again! Mr. Tom starts to help, them disappears. He has to check the scores of the football games. Whatever!

Happy Fall Y'All!!!!

Hello - Hello - Hello-

Had breakfast this morning with Gracie at her school. We played with playdough, colored, did some puzzles and ate. It was fun!

Boo....

Just a quick Halloween card I made for Gracie and my niece Haley!

Can I get in MY bed or what????

So if you want to go to bed at my house, you better be the first one in there or this is what it looks like!! Can I get a spot??

So after the Tower of Terror...(read the post below)

So after the Tower of Terror, which at this point it is like almost midnight, we leave and go back to the hotel. We are all just about asleep when someone knocks on the door - it is one of Tom's teammates - go figure right. So his teammate is laughing soo hard, he can't breathe let alone talk. He finally tells Tom to come with him and tells him what is going on. (like I said in the previous post - they are all nuts). So to make a long story somewhat shorter - one of the guys called in a "we have a lizard in our room and can't get it out" call to the front desk and asks them to send someone with a big net to catch it. But it wasn't his room - it was another teammate and his wifes room, who were sleeping. So the rest of them are hiding outside waiting for the hotel crew to go to this guys door to catch a lizard. So they finally come with a box and a can of spray to get this thing, they knock on the door and wake the guy and his wife up at like 1:30 am, and of course they tell them they are at the wrong room. They hotel guy says well it has your room number. All the while, everyone else is hiding, watching what is going on and almost peeing there pants. So the next morning the maid bangs on there door at 7 am wanting to clean their room and wakes the guy and his wife up again. So then the same prank caller calls the front desk at like 9 am and tells them the toilet is overflowing and won't stop flushing and to send someone right away to fix it because the floor is flooded. No one goes there, that we can see. So we all go to breakfast, except the guy and his wife. So about noon we get a text message from the guy and his wife and he wants to know if someone is messing with them because someone from the hotel just showed up to fix their overflowing toilet. Of course we all denied it because we aren't even at the hotel, we are at breakfast!! We had the perfect alibi! This guy is freaking out, swearing that someone is messing with him. SO we never see the guy and his wife until we get to the airport and guess who is on our plane home?? The guy and his wife!! They start telling everyone about it, and I have never seen a bunch of adults lie and deny all while keeping a straight face!! It was a fun weekend!

The Hollywood Tower Hotel...

We went to Disney World last week with my husbands Coed Softball team for them to play in a tournament at the Disney Wide World of Sports complex. Anyway we enventually ended up at the Hollywood Tower Hotel aka the tower of terror, and thought I would share some funny pics with you. The pics are a little blurry since I took a picture of the tv monitor that they display the photos that they took of you on the ride as they are dropping you down! So look close and you will see what I am talking about. We got Gracie to ride with us, and I have never heard her laugh and cackle soo much in all my life! She was loving it and was begging to ride again. I think she ended up riding it like 10 times! So this is the outside of it - they take you on ajourney through the "twilight zone" in an empty elevator shaft and drop you down and shoot you back up in the dark! It is a great time!! Here is one picture of us - we are all in the front row. Grace and I are to the left and Tom is 2nd from the right. Look at his face! He hates heights!! If you click on the picture it will enlarge it.
In the next picture we are all on the right hand side and they came up with the bright idea to act like we were all throwin up! They are all nuts!! Tom and I are in the front row to the right and Grace is behind me, you can just see her head!
So in this picture they all decided to do the YMCA! I am telling you they are all nuts!! Grace and I are in the middle and Tom is in the back, he is suppose to be the C part of the YMCA, but he was holding on so you can't see the bottom of his C. Let me tell you they harrassed the heck out of him for messing up the YMCA. They made him ride again and then he was the Y. I missed that pick for some reason. But the whole way up to the top the gave him grief to make sure he didn't mess it up this time.The last picture is Tom and Grace in the lobby of the Hollywood Tower Hotel!!

Just a quick pic of my babies!!

They finally sat still just long enough to get this picture to put on my desk at work!

OK...well...

I have been out for a while. But I was at Disney World for a few days, then I started a new JOB, then my computer mouse was broken. So I am bacckk! But will have to post some things later - I am just too tired to do it now. So later tater!

It has been 8 LOOOONG Years....

It has been 8 long years since I opened my home daycare business and tomorrow is my last day! I don't know whether to cry or be totally excited that I am on my way to a new adventure in life! It is sad, but I am so glad that I got to be a part of some very special childrens little lives and I hope that I brought a little bit of caring and stability into their fragile little worlds. I have watched many of them from infancy right up to school and still see some of them around from time to time. My have they grown, but I can still recall all the quirky things they used to do. I could go on and on. I will spare you of that. But I must vent just a little, but before I do, to all you parents out there (if they ever read my blog) that allowed me to be a part of your childs life - THANK YOU! I totally enjoyed them all! Now to all of you out there that always felt the need to be late (yes I am talking to you, the one that lives around the corner from me), I know that you were home everyday by 5 pm, yet you were always late to pick up your children!! Hello - you live around the corner, DUH! To all of you that paid me late, and made me ask you to pay me - shame on you!! I was never late to open my door and feed your children breakfast, lunch, snack and sometimes even dinner! How dare you pay the person who takes care of your children late, and then have the nerve to walk in my door on Monday morning and tell me all about your fun spending spree weekend - um that was my paycheck! Please take the time to treasure your children, and stop running around like chickens with your heads cut off. Make them breakfast and get them ready to school in clothes that aren't all wrinkled, because I would undress them and iron their clothes and them send them to school (yes I am talking to you again around the corner)! Don't share your stupid stories and all of your family drama with your next daycare provider, like telling me about your sex life and all it's craziness! Stop trying to make people think you are more than you are - you can often judge a book by it's cover!! Yeah - you really can, trust me! And finally to you, the one that still owe's me money - I am almost to the point of no longer wanting to be a "nice" person anymore, so pay up!! Finally I leave you with this, Little Miss Gracie, who if it wasn't for daycare, I would of never had her in my life! These are the moments that I treasure the most! So to new beginnings!Little Miss Grace at 4 months and look at her now. All grown up at the tender age of 5. She has become my shadow, my partner in crime, sort of! The crime to torture Tommy, my husband. Oh she has him wrapped around her fingers and she's not letting go!

3D Design Challenge

3D Design Challenge is having a little "3D design challenge" going on over at there blog. If you participate, you could win this super cool Urban Tote Bag! I almost forgot about the challenge. It took my like 15 minutes to whip this out!

I am soo tired I am ready to fall over. We gave our dogs some pills from the vet to "ease their anxiety". They are absolute freaks when you try to cut their nails. Anyhow it almost completely knocked them out and that totally freaked me out. So needless to say I was up till about 2 am with them making sure they were ok. I also slept half the night on the floor with them. Do you think we got their nails cut??? That's a big fat NO! They still would not let us cut their nails. It took all last night and most of today for the medicine to finally wear off of one of them. Talk about freaking me out!! I spent all day bugging the dog to make sure she was ok. I will never give them that again! Oh and here's the best part of it all - the male dog decides today he will let me cut his nails - no problem, no drugs, no questions asked. Although Tom did hold him a little. I could of killed him this evening!

Scrapdango Contest

Srapdango is having a great contest! You have to create 2 layouts and a card based off of some sketches. This first layout is based off a sketch by Lucy Chesna.
This next layout was designed by the owner of Scrapdango, Carrie Leavitt.
The card layout was also designed by Carrie Leavitt. You were to design a card based off of the sketch you chose for your layout and you had to use the same colors.

What a C R A Z Y mess...

When you have crazy curly hair this is what is looks like when you wake up in the morning!!

She turned the BIG 5!!

Little Miss Grace turned 5 the other day! We went to Chili's for dinner, her choice of course! She was loving it when the waitresses came out and sung happy birthday to her!

What do you think....

about my new banner?? You could make one here at scrapblog! It's free, it's fun and it's super easy!

One of my FAVORITE layouts...

So a while back I created a sketch for a layout and this is my take on it!
This is one of my favorite layouts with two of my favorite people - little Miss Gracie and my husband Tom. I love the little pose that she has going on! This was from one of our summer vacations to Navarre Beach in Florida.
Another view of the layout showing the dimension along with some hand stitching that I did.

Pencil Box

So I made this pencil box out of a paper mache box. I used my cricket machine for the letters, Stampin' Up! ribbon and ink, MME designer paper, Making Memories flower, Inkadinkado clear stamps and some little jewels to add some sparkle!

One Sheet Box Challenge

I made this cute little box using this template from 3D Design Challenge. It is a super easy to make and only uses one sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 cardstock. I made a see through window in mine!
That way you can see the goodies inside!!

The Big Day

My good friend got married on September 5. Here are a few pics of Amy and her new husband Brett from their big day!!
She got him with the cake, but he got her even better!
Amy and my husband Tom.The two Amy's. It is too funny that we have the same first and middle name!

Here comes the bride and groom collage...

One of my friends is getting married tomorrow so I made her a collage as part of her gift. The blank squares are for pictures of them from the big day. The brown paper, ribbon, wedding dress and the leaf cutout square are from her bridal shower and wedding invitations. I thought it would be cute to use them in the collage, since they are part of the big day. Click on the pictures to see it in more detail!

Collage Layout...

I did this collage for my mom's good friend who adopted a little baby. Sorry for the glare - should have taken a pic before I framed it!

Mini Album

A mini album I created by using a template to cut shapes out of card board then covered with designer papers and embellishments. This first pic is my mom and my niece.
My mom and Grace at christmas.
Tom and Grace in Disney 2006.
My niece Haley at softball after receiving the game ball.
Another pic of Grace, Disney 2008.

Ahoy...Matey!!

Kids meals at Peg Leg's come in a sand bucket with a pirate eye!
So Grace had to put the bucket on her head...
and so did Uncle Al!! We tried to talk Big Dog into too, but wasn't having it!
Grace with Peg Leg Pete!