Thursday, March 29, 2007

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Today is my Grandma's 86th birthday, we celebrated by going to her house for cake and ice cream tonight. I forgot my camera, of course, so I do not have any pictures from today.

As I said last year, my Grandma is one of the most amazing people I have ever known. There are so many things about her that I admire.

I give her scratch off lottery tickets every year. I used to go out and try to find her something that I felt she needed or wanted, but with so many kids and grand kids and great-grand kids, she says she has everything she wants and does not need anything. So, with lottery tickets, she can scratch and win, or scratch and throw away! This idea has caught on, and I think several of my other family members do this too, but I have no idea if she has ever won any amount of money on any of them. :)

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Happy Birthday Gage!

Well today, March 29th, it Gage's actual birthday! He is 5 years old today and here are some pictures from his party on Saturday:

The Cake:

Conor helping with the cake:


The Birthday Boy in his cool new shades:

Having cake:

I thought both their faces were funny in this picture:

And you can scroll down for video footage of the rest of the party.. the jumping.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Sam's Club

OK, let me preface this with the fact that I really hate to shop. And I hate malls. Yes, true. I do.

However.... I am addicted to Sam's Club. I have often said that I should be banned from going there. But they are not going to ban me.. they love people like me. I don't know what it is about going there that causes me to buy things that I don't really need, or that I could just as easily get a smaller quantity of them somewhere else, but something happens to me when I go there.

To begin with, the very first place I go when I walk in the door is the computer isle. This is probably why we have 3 computers. Because when they get low quantities and they are not planning to re-stock an item, then mark them down considerably and you can get some really good deals! I don't know how I didn't end up with 4 computers when a few weeks ago I was merely walking by the computer display and a Sam's associate walked up and changed the price tag on one of them - marking it down about $500! When I asked why.. he said that they were the last ones of them and they were replacing them with a newer model (with Vista on it) so they were trying to get rid of them. I stood there and contemplated the new price, trying to talk myself out of putting one in my cart.

I finally walked away and called Jeff.

"Tell me that I really don't need a new computer and that there is no reason in the world, not even a really good buy, for me to buy one now."

"Why, what's going on?"

So, I tell him. And of course I didn't buy it. He didn't really talk me out of it, I just kinda talked myself out of it while talking to him. Because I really do hate spending money. But I love getting good deals.

So.. this brings me around to my most recent visit to Sam's club - yesterday I went during my lunch hour because we needed a few things. I actually made a list so that I wouldn't forget anything, and there were 5 items on my list: Toilet paper (we really don't want to run out of this!), toilet bowl cleaner (I had used the last of what was in my bathroom over the weekend), sugar, foundation for Allie (she added it to my list and I'm not buying it without her present), and straws. I figured that I would get the straws at either a grocery store or a dollar store, I didn't really expect to find them at Sam's. So, a total of 3 things that I needed to get there.

I walked out with a total of 23 items (convenient how they total them on the receipt!). That is 20 more than I went in for! And among those items? Yes, you guessed it. I got a case of straws. 3000 straws. No, that is not a typo. I have, sitting in my garage, three-thousand straws. My rational? Well, at the dollar store I would probably pay $1 for 20-50 straws... and this entire case was only $10. That is a good deal. Never mind that it will take me 8.2 years to use all these straws if I use one every day. I just paid $10 bucks for 8 years of straws!! yay!

I've lost my mind I do believe. Jeff has yet to discover the straws, but I think I am safe since he doesn't really read my blog and I don't think he will notice this one additional box out there on the top shelf... :)

Oh, and the other 19 extra items were all needed items. I just remembered I needed them when I got to the store! (Milk, eggs, Orange Juice, Mt. Dew, stuff like that.. nothing out of the ordinary.. just food stuff.)

Is there an 12 step program for Sam's Club Shoppers yet? They have them for everything else it seems....

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Another of Barb's amazing pages...

Barb is starting to get me hooked on digital scrapbooking too.. here is another of her great pages.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Gage's 5th Birthday Party


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They had so much fun in this thing! Totally wore them out.

Gage... how old are you again?


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I didn't have the heart to tell him that today wasn't his actual birthday, and that he wasn't really 5 until the 29th... he was too excited about being 5! :)

Couldn't resist

And... while *most* of the kids were lured inside for cake and ice cream...

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My sister and her friend Tammy decided to join in on the fun...
My mom did, too, but she snuck and did it and I didn't get any pictures or video!

Busy weekend

This has been a very busy weekend, lots of stuff going on. Friday was Jeff's 40th birthday, so the kids and I took him out to eat. Saturday was Gage's (my nephew) birthday party, for which I made the cake on Saturday morning. My sister rented a big air-inflated castle for them to play in and the kids had a lot of fun. I have pictures and videos that I will post, but they are at home and not on my computer yet, so I will get to that later.

I already posted about my frustrating Saturday night, and on Sunday we had a small family party for Jeff's birthday. Barb brought over a wonderful DVD she had made from all of their old family videos of her kids when they were growing up. So, I am thinking that I will just go to the same place she did and get the videos made into DVDs. I am still going to try my work bud's suggestion, but would like to just have someone else do them at this point.

I have already told the girls that they need to learn how to do all that stuff because I do not want to know anything else! My brain is just too full of information and I don't want to know anymore right now!! :) And they both seem to love to do stuff like that, so... they can just show me how once they figure it out! I don't want to read directions, I don't want to troubleshoot anything, I just want it to be done.

But, for the videos of Charlie, I will just have a professional do them. I am too afraid that the tapes will break if we try to play them too much. Some of them are from 1991. I also have plenty of home videos that I would like to do that with, too - they are a bit newer and I have the 8mm back up, so they aren't as much of a concern.

Anyway, I will post the jumping videos and the cake pictures tonight maybe, when I get home. The cake was of Squidward - which I had to free-hand because the cake supply store did not have any type of Squidward items! Tons of SpongeBob and Patrick, but no Squidward. He is one of my favorite characters - I love his sarcasm and I crack up laughing at him!

So, it was a pretty good weekend, much fun was had. Hope all is well with everyone!

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Frustration

I am so very frustrated right now, I don't even know where to start. I have spent a lot of time and money trying to find a way to convert VHS tapes onto DVD. I initially thought I could do it via my computer. I bought a "kit" that included software and hardware to attach both a VCR and a camcorder to my computer to allow me to transfer the videos to my computer, edit them, and burn them to a DVD. After countless tries and no success, I gave up on that particular "kit" and asked some techs at work how to do it. They gave me their advice on how to do it, and I followed it. Still no go. So, I gave up the idea of doing this via the computer and I bought a DVD/VHS player/recorder that said it would "burn my home movies to DVD with the touch of a button."

Yes, it did do that, but the video format is unknown to any other DVD player I have and will not play on my computer, either. The ONLY UNIT the DVDs will play in is the unit that burned them. How is this useful to me??? Is this a sick joke? I read all the instructions word for word. I followed every direction. I consider myself pretty adept in figuring these things out, but I have had it with this.

I have 4 VHS tapes of my brother that I want to put on DVD to preserve them as the tapes are old and might not last long. I used +R and -R DVDs thinking it might make a difference. I "practiced" on my own home movies as I didn't want to risk over playing the tapes of my brother. I want to make copies of said DVDs for his mom, our dad, and my sister - and whoever else might want one. But I cannot do it! All this time and money and no results. Words cannot even describe how frustrated and mad I am at this entire process. I am now going to see if I can just find someone to do it for me.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

I'm Normal!?!? :)

You Are 60% Normal

Otherwise known as the normal amount of normal
You're like most people most of the time
But you've got those quirks that make you endearing
You're unique, yes... but not frighteningly so!

Saturday, March 17, 2007

For St. Patrick's Day!

Your Irish Name Is...

Chloe Fitzpatrick
I have no idea how they figure this... how does Katie become Chloe Fitzpatrick? Oh, well.. :) Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Monday, March 12, 2007

Complaints

Well... I was out surfing the news stories and came across this one and thought I would give it a shot. I have already ordered the bracelet, and some for my family too (although they may resist at first...). Anyone else out there want to give it a shot?

I certainly know that it will be hard - no complaining about my slow work computer to my boss. No complaining about any of our vendors. Nothing but positive thoughts and positive comments. For 21 days. No complaining about my kids. No complaining about Jeff (oh, my... I don't know if I can do that.... :)).

I am certainly sarcastic about a lot of things too! I love sarcasm. How can I give that up?

But I am going to try.... anyone else? I ordered 10 bracelets with the thought that I could get 9 more people out there to try it with me. Anyone? Hmmmm?

I have a little while to practice - the bracelets are free so they are overwhelmed with orders and it could take up to 5 weeks to receive them. So... that gives me 5 weeks to either practice or to get it all out of my system and complain a lot!! heehee

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Daylight Savings Time

Well, we lose an hour of sleep tonight. As I am not a morning person, I do not like this time-moving-forward-an-hour-thing. I love the one in the fall where we get an extra hour, but this one... not so much. I did, however, try to take full advantage of this losing an hour on Friday at work. At 4:00PM I asked my boss if we could just go ahead and move our clocks up an hour. He almost fell for it... he thought about it a second, then saw the mischievous look on my face and said, "NO! Absolutely not!"

*sigh*

I did try...

Works in progress...

Well, since Barb asked to see what I have been working on... here they are. They are not complete, I am still figuring out how to do some stuff, and these are definitely works in progress! It takes me a LOT LONGER to do them and they are not nearly as well put together as hers... but... I'm working on that. :)

Here is a page from our trip to Vermont:


Here is one of my favorite pictures of the girls - I love that they are laughing so naturally.

And here are some pictures that Allie and her friends took when they spent the night - apparently the "rolling of the eyes" is "the thing to do" at the moment... and that lip thing... I don't even know how to describe it..

That's it, so far...
*Update* I asked Allie what that was all over her in the picture (she told me before but I forgot) and she had an absolute fit when she found out that I put her pictures on my site. She said, "I did NOT give you permission to use my pictures on your site!"
"Too bad, I don't need your permission. I own you, you belong to me - therefore, I can post whatever I want."
"But they are MY pictures!" (She was laughing so I know the protests were just to give me a hard time.)
"But they were taken with MY camera and they were downloaded to MY computer. So, they are mine!" :) Ha!
Oh, and the stuff all over her? Finger Paint. I guess she doesn't understand the concept of using just her fingers. :)

Friday, March 09, 2007

Internet Explorer 7.0

I am very frustrated with Internet Explorer 7.0. Microsoft has these "automatic updates" and my computers are all set to automatically get the updates and install them at work. Until this week, I have caught the IE7 before it installs and stopped it, unwilling to deal with that change at the moment. Well, it finally snuck by me and got installed. So - I decided that I would give it a shot. And I am not liking it. I cannot see pictures on my blog or any other blog on this computer at work (it is beside the point that I am blog surfing during work hours...!) and I do not know how to make it show them to me! Other than that, it is slightly irritating to have to look for all the buttons on the top that are in different places and have a different look to them. I can get used to that. But the no picture showing thing is what makes me not like it.

Just a small little rant. :)

My favorite songs... (and this is to I can listen to them at work, too!)









Thursday, March 08, 2007

Irish Conor

Well, if you read the comments section on my wedding post, you knew Barb was going to be making something creative... and she did! I swear, it amazes me how quickly and wonderfully she does stuff like this:


Jeff got me Adobe Photoshop for Christmas and I have done a few pages, but nothing even close to what Barb can do! Hopefully I will get better at it!

She actually has some animation on the one she did, but that did not come across here. *Update - if you click on the picture and enlarge it, the animation does show! :) How cool!

Thanks, Barb, for all the wonderful things you do with the pictures of the kids!

Monday, March 05, 2007

Wedding

We went to my cousin Stacie's wedding on Feb. 17th and below are some pictures from the wedding and reception. Jeff was unable to go because he did not make it home in time and Ceara had gone to her mom's for the weekend. Allie made herself pretty scarce during the reception, so I ended up not getting any pictures of her. I did get a video of her dancing, but it was so dark you can't make anything out! Anyway, here they are:

Stacie and David's first dance as husband and wife (I was trying out the black and white feature of my camera for some of the pictures):
The Father/Daughter dance:

Gage and Conor hanging out:
Waiting for the food and dancing to begin:
Conor shed his blue dress shirt for just the T-shirt underneath after he began dancing... he was dancing all night long. That attributed to his rosy cheeks, as did the strawberries he kept eating. Here he was trying to wink for me:
Just plain silly:
Winking in black and white:
And one in color:
He was very tired at the end of the night, and fun was had by all. :) It was a beautiful wedding and reception.