They're baaaccckkk!!!!!!

Last night Z went out the back door to go to the carport to cut up some pallet and firewood. He was only outside for a few seconds when he came back and said "Honey, come out here a minute..." I stepped out onto the sidewalk and he said "Listen...." I kept straining to hear whatever it was he wanted me to hear......and then, I heard it. Howling. Then yipping and barking, then more howling. Yep, the coyotes are back. Mixed in the the yipping and howling I heard some dogs barking, that sounded like it was coming from beyond the woods behind our house......then, we heard two gunshots ring out. We're not sure if the coyotes were in someones yard and their dogs were going nuts, or if the coyotes were actually going after the dogs. (most people keep their dogs outside around here.....bugs the heck out of me!) After we heard the gunshots, we heard no more yipping and howling. Now, the first coyote sounds I heard came from a huge field on the other side of our road, not from behind the house. So I can only assume there are a pack of coyotes once again roaming around. Tyler has been told he can not be outside at all unless Z or I are with him, AND our dog Licky is out. I do let Ty play outside by himself, but only if I am in the kitchen and he is on his swing set, which I can see through the kitchen window at all times, or if he plays on the porch outside the kitchen door while i'm cooking dinner. And both of those times he's only out for just a few minutes, and our dog Licky is out with him as well. We've also contacted the game warden to let them know that the coyotes are back and they said they would be keeping an eye out. The only reason this is such a big deal around here is, the last time they were in the area a neighbor of ours had a standoff with the leader of the pack, who tried to attack her dog and was NOT afraid of her or backing down from her when she tried to get her dog away. Ahhh, the joys of living out in the boonies!!!!!

Mail for the past two weeks

Mail hasn't been too bad....actually, yesterday was a great freebie/sample day!! For the past two weeks i've gotten:

- Glad Ziploc bag/Walmart
- Loreal Jelly Balm (WTH is a jelly balm?!?!)
- Gold Bond Lotion/Walmart
- Crest Headband/Vocalpoint
- Dentek floss picks
- Kotex/Walmart
- Pur water notepad/Walmart
- $10 Amazon GC/Energy survey
- Ponds Rejuveness
- $16 Opinion Outpost survey check (finally!! They sent me a check last November that wasn't signed so I couldn't cash it and I had to fight with them to get another one issued!!!)
- Neutrogena makeup bag/Shape magazine (SOOOO cute!!!!!)
- Huggies diaper/Walmart
- Red tote bag from Stouffer's Feed the Hungry campaign
- Family Fun Magazine
- Woman's Day Magazine

New layouts

I had been wanting to do a special digital layout about mom and I finally found some time to get it done.....




Here is one of Ty that I got done today as well......



I found the wordart from this site. She is amazing!!!!

I've been doing more downloading than actual digital scrapbooking, thanks to having dial-up. Hopefully i'll get a few more layouts done this week.......

WOOHOO!!!!!

This will be a short post, but I am SO STOKED that the NHRA Drag Racing season starts tonight!!! Woohoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


GO TEAM FORCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Snow and more snow....

We actually got a decent amount of snow yesterday!! I'd say we got about 2" total, which is alot for our area. Ty had SO much fun playing in it with the dogs. Our sheltie Honey just LOVES the snow.....in fact, when I let her out when she is sitting by the sliding glass door (her usual way of letting me know she needs to go out) she just runs outside with her nose in the snow and then will usually sit or lay in it.



I was really worried about how the roads would be when Z was coming home, but thankfully they let the guys leave early. He said most roads were fine, but our road would be a little rough in the morning, which also freaked me out since we had a doctor appointment at 8:45 this morning. It was rough this morning, but for the most part we did fine. I just looked out the window and it's starting to flurry out again......I just hope our road doesn't get much worse for when Z comes home tonight! :(

So, i'm a little bummed.......this weekend we looked upstairs to see what big baby stuff we had from when Ty was little and the only thing we could find was his Jumperoo. :( I have no idea what happened to his bouncer vibrating seat thing or his bassinet. Z said they may be at his parents in their attic, and I so hope he is right. I hate to go out and buy those things again when I know there was nothing wrong with the things we had from when Ty was a baby. I guess we'll have to wait until Z's mom or his cousin check in the attic for us. I did get a $20 Target gc that I want to us to get a few things for Chase....I love the baby clothes at Target!

Mail for the past few days

Still doing fairly decent here with the goods.....


- Two coupons for free power kid toothbrushes (had to email them as they sent the wrong toothburshes from their promo....I can't wait to get Ty a Spongebob power toothbrush!!)
- Orville popcorn/natural salt & pepper
- $20 Target gc from In Home Product testing (finally! now I can't wait to go baby shopping!!)

Mail goodies so far this year

Mail goodies have been pretty slow so far this year....I hope they pick up soon!! ANyhoo, here is what i've gotten so far this year:

- Cambells Select coupon for free soup (shoptext)
- $15 amazon gc
- $3 Pinecone payment (paypal)
- $5 cash (Home Product Institute)
- $10 Starbucks gc
- Nature's bounty tote (for some reasond they sent me 2?!?)
- Benefiber sample (walmart)
- The Dog book
- Soy candle samples (they smell SO good!!)
- Nutrasweet samples
- Quaker Chocolate Drizzle mini rice cakes
- Ziploc freezer vacuum w/2 freezer bags
- Sunsilk shampoo
- Organic chocolate chip granola bar

Some new digital LO's

Of course I still have LOTS to learn. Plus, i'm hoping to find some more embellishments that I can download faster......I so wish I had faster internet so I could download some really cute kits. :(

Mommy and me:



Fall fun:



Trick or treat:



Fish:



Wink:

Pics from Tyler's 5th birthday

We just had a quiet birthday again this year. Here is a picture of his cake....it's a chocolate cake/chocolate chip ice cream cake....YUM!!!



He couldn't wait for me to cut it.......






Here he is wearing his new helmet from pop-pop (it's got Lightning McQueen on the helmet and knee pads) and riding his bike from mommy and daddy.....







As I said, it was just a quiet birthday with just us and that night when I tucked him into bed he told me, "mommy, I had such a great birthday!" I still can't believe my baby is 5.............

Haven't posted in awhile

I'm so sorry it's been so long since i've posted! I have officially become addicted to digital scrapping. Well, my addiction is finding kits and things online and downloading them.....and since i'm on dial-up, downloading can take hours so I usually just start a download then walk away from the computer. I have done a few layouts I would like to share in another post. Hopefully i'll get them up today.

Anyhoo, things have been ok around here. I finally got the dresser down from upstairs and have it in the playroom. I would like to keep it in there and maybe get something I can keep diapers/wipes so they will be handy. I still need to finish going through all of the toys in that room and put away things Ty doesn't play with anymore. Although, everything I put something away he comes along and says "But I still play with that!" I want to try and get as much reorganizing and cleaning done before I get too far along and can't do much else. I want to make sure things are semi-presentable before our company comes along in May/June. We're getting super excited about our big ultrasound this week! I can't wait to find out if we have to buy some pink/girlie things or wash up some of Ty's baby clothes. I also want to go back upstairs and see if we still have our baby bouncer and bassinett. Tyler loved his bouncer, so i'd like to have it on hand for Nibbles. I know we'll still need to buy a swing, but i'm hoping we still have the bassinett. Hopefully we'll work upstairs this weekend so we can see what we have.....

So today we had our first snowfall. It's still coming down but it's super wet and barely sticking. Tyler had a blast playing in it, though!






It's so pretty outside....I love this kind of snow!!

Birthday wishes

5 years ago today I was sitting in a hospital room staring at a little human being all wrapped up in a blanket, falling so much in love I thought my heart would burst. These past 5 years have gone by way to quickly. I've watched Tyler go from being a helpless infant to being a very smart and independent young boy. He is such a sweetheart and has blessed us with so much love and joy.


Happy 5th birthday, Tyler Kenneth!! Mommy and daddy love you so very much!!!!

AHHHH!!!!

I had been vacuuming the kitchen carpets earlier and when I was almost done I turned the vacuum off and just left it in the kitchen, since I still had a little more to do. Well, I got side-tracked (as usual) and started clearing a spot in the playroom to bring Tyler's old baby dresser down from upstairs so I could start putting things in it for Nibbles. Well, I got the spot cleared and saw it really needed to be vacuumed. So I unhooked the hose from the unit so I could get all the dog and cat hair along the wall, and just left the unit itself in the kitchen.....hey, the hose is supposed to reach over 6ft, right?!?!? WRONG!!!! I was only a few feet away from the unit and the freakin' hose TORE where it attaches to the wand!!! It tore pretty bad, but thankfully I was able to attach it still to the other end of the wand and for now the vacuum itself still works, I just can't use the extension hose until we get a new one.

I can not believe I broke my Dyson!!!!!

Something new!

Ok, so I decided to take the plunge and give digital scrapbooking a try. (like I need yet another excuse to sit my butt at the computer! LOL) I love to paper scrap, but all of my scrap stuff is upstairs and it's SO cold up there right now!!! Plus, I just wanted to see what all the talk was about with digital. So far, I really like it!! I downloaded the free program Gimp to give it a try and I just didn't care much for it. I decided to give my Photoshop a try, and so far it's working great! The only downside is, I need to download the free kits and things, and being on dial-up takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R! I downloaded a kit last week that took almost two days to finish. I'm thankful that I found a site that let's me download things in the kits separately for dial-up users, which has helped tremendously. The site is: http://www.shabbyprincess.com. I love all the free kits they have there! Here is the first digi LO I did:





I still have so much to learn obviously, but it' so much fun learning new things!! I think i'll work on downloading more things today while i'm trying to get some housework done. I'm so glad I gave digital scrappin' a try!! (I bet I regret saying that one day when no housework gets done due to digiscrappin...LOL)