just me

T minus 24

I have no idea what that title means, other than we are down to 24 hours until we leave.

Yesterday at work we had a blood drive called Got Blood? It was our Halloween promotion and the center sponsored a carnival for the kids. Kayla and Nick brought the girls and they looked so cute in their costumes.

Danika was a bat princess. She looked so cute in her little costume. She had fun bowling and playing the few games that we had going. With us being gone on Halloween, I was glad to get to see them all dressed up.                      Kaya was dressed up as Snow White. She looked so cute in the little costume. I know that she doesn't understand about Halloween, but it is so much fun to dress them up. She makes a perfect little princess. Kayla wants me to take a photo of her sitting with apples around her, so hopefully we will get that done later today.
Our to do list today is quite long.

• go to bank to get cash for trip
• go to pumpkin patch
• do laundry
• carve pumpkins with the kids
• pick up a few things at the store
• family photo shoot at Riverfront Park at 2:30
• finish packing
• my birthday dinner at Mom and Dad's (mmmmm carrot cake)
• take Roxie to my sister
• clean up the house a little bit
• double check to make sure that we have everything done
• try and get some sleep tonight
• visit with Renae and Del (they are coming to town today)

I guess with this long list I had better get going and get somethings accomplished.

Toodles!!

A Sweet Surprise

Can you imagine my surprise today when I got a call from my daughter, Kayla, at work. She calls me every once in a while at work, but today she asked me to come down to the lobby. I went down and there she was coming in the door with the grandkids and a bunch of cupcakes. My birthday is on the 29th of this month and since I will be gone on vacation, Kayla and Danika had made me cupcakes. They are chocolate with chocolate frosting and little mellocreme pumpkins on top. For the last 3 or 4 years Kayla has made them for me and brought them to work. The story behind the cupcakes is this, when I was in school, my Mom would always make these as my treats to take to school on my birthday. I have always loved them. When my youngest daughter Renae lived here in Billings she an Kayla would make them together. I have such wonderful girls!!! Thanks Kayla and Danika. It means so much to me that you keep this sweet tradition alive!!! The cupcake pictured is the one that Danika made just for Grandma. She told me "I made this one for you Granma, cuz it has lots on it". What a sweetie.

Only one more day of work and then vacation starts. I have lots to do in the next couple of days to get ready for the trip.

Saturday we will be celebrating my birthday with the family. We are going to my Mom and Dads house for dinner. Mom is making Chinese food and my beloved Carrot Cake. MMMMMMM I can hardly wait for that dinner.

Have a great evening and type to you soon.

107 hours

Ok, I am officially excited now. I have been working hard not to think about for the last few weeks. Now that it is just a little over 4 days left I am excited beyond words.

I am feeling much better now, not at 100%, but close. I still have the cough hanging on, but it takes longer for the cough to go away.

I have almost finished my duties at work that have to be completed before I leave on Friday. I hope to have all of the stuff that needs to be done for the next 2 weeks completed by noon on Thursday. If I don't have too many interuptions tomorrow I should get it completed.

I am making lists like crazy to make sure that I get everything packed and ready to go. I am also looking forward to Saturday, it is one of my favorite days of the year. We are celebrating my birthday at my parents house. I don't like the birthday part, but it means I get to have some of my Mom's fabulous Carrot Cake!! She makes the best Carrot Cake and it is my favorite. I always get Carrot Cake for my birthday. She only makes one of them a year and it is just for my birthday. She has made me one for as long as I can remember.

Remember to take a guess at how many photos you think that I will take on my trip. I will tell you that I know everyone who has guessed so far is way to low. (all except for Kayla and she is too high). I will have a great prize to mail off to someone who guesses closest. I will be sharing my photos with you.

Off to bed for me. Have a great evening.

Back to about 75%

Wow, what a difference between yesterday and today!! I am feeling so much better. I have spent most of the weekend resting and sleeping. Today I went and got my hair highlighted. I really like the way that it turned out. It has a total of 5 colors in it now. Blonde, caramel, mocha, my natural dark blonde and a bit of gray (that is natural too). I have not had my hair highlighted for almost a year and I wanted to get it done before we leave for vacation. I will try to get a photo of it tomorrow so that I can share it with you.

This afternoon I was wanting to do something but knew that I should rest, so I decided that I could go into my scrapbook room and create something. I had a great time and got a few things done. I made 2 layouts and 5 cards. Take a look and see what you think?

 
I am trying to stay busy so that I don't think too much about our trip. I had to laugh at Tony today. He kept calling out of my room saying "Chris come look at this". When I got in the living room he was using Google Earth to look at Disney World. We looked at the resort that we are staying at. It was in 3D so it was pretty cool. After about 3 or 4 times I told him to stop that I did not want to see anymore or I would not be able to focus this week. It is going to be hard to stay focused, but I have to. I have lots to do this week at work since I missed most of Thursday and Friday. I will get it done and being busy will make the time go faster.

One of the days in Disney World we are having lunch with the "Princesses",
so I am hoping that I can get a photo of the "BEST" Princess for Kayla. I know everyone has their own idea about who is the best princess, but for Kayla it is Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty).
I don't really have a favorite Princess, I like them all. If you were to ask Lesli, Renae or Danika they who their favorite princess is they would all have the same answer.
They all love Ariel, so I will need to get a photo of Ariel too. I know that I will be taking lots of photos. Anyone care to take a guess at how many I will take in the 10 days that we are gone? There may be some blog candy in it for the winner. I will not know how many until be get back from our trip. I am not sure what the blog candy will be yet but it will be something fun.

Well it is time to get ready for the work week. Have a great evening!!

7 days and counting...

Just 7 more days and we take to the skies. We are all so excited to go on our vacation. 3 years ago we went to Disneyland with our friends David and Lesli. It was their first trip to Disneyland and we all had a blast. We created some wonderful memories.  We have been planning this trip to Disney World ever since then. None of us have ever been to there so it is going to be so much fun. It really just feels so surreal right now. We are all looking forward to different things that we have planned to do.

One of the things that I am excited for is that I get to celebrate my birthday in Disney World. How cool is that?? I have actually never gotten to go anywhere for my birthday. Having your birthday the 29th of October it is just not the time that you go somewhere on a trip. While I was little we were always in school and then when I got older I got married and had kids and then they were in school, so we could not go anywhere then either.  Our plan is to be in the Magic Kingdom on my birthday. We will be spending the day with Mickey and friends. I just can't imagine being gone on my birthday. Kayla is having a bit of a hard time with it, and the fact that we are not going to be here for Halloween either.

We will be eating diner at Tony's Restaurant in Magic Kingdom. That is the restaurant that Lady and the Tramp had their romantic spaghetti dinner in the movie. Who knows maybe we will even get a photo of Tony and I sharing spaghetti. I love that movie. It will be coming out on DVD again soon and I will have to get it when it does. I don't know if I will have spaghetti or something else that night. I am not a big spaghetti lover but I just might have to have spaghetti for the photo that we could get. It would be a cute Christmas card photo. I guess we will see.

On October 28th the Tinkerbell movie comes out on DVD and we will be in the Kingdom that she resides over so I am thinking that I will need to purcase the movie there and of course any cute little pins that they will have to commemorate it's release.

On the bright side I am feeling much better today and actually feel like I will survive. I hate getting bronchitis, it just knocks me flat on my butt. I have had it so many times and no matter what I do I still get it.  The meds that the DR gave me are really helping. The cough syrup was making me sick to my stomach so I just got some Vicks Chesty Cough and have been taking that. I slept really good last night and took a nap today so hopefully I am on the mend.

Have a great weekend!!

8 more days and feeling like crap...

A couple of weeks ago I started feeling a bit like I was getting bronchitis, so I started taking some cough syrup, and cold medicine. After a few days I started to feel better and thought that I had whipped it, but this morning I got up and was not feeling well. I got ready and went to work and as the day went on I was feeling worse and worse. I was coughing so hard and could not stop. I called and got in to see my Dr. Well guess what the bronchitis kicked my butt. I got some antibiotics and some good cough syrup with codeine and with any luck I will be feeling better soon. I have got to rest and drink lots of fluid, my Dr told me that if I don't I could get pneumonia and then there will be no trip to Disney world. Please keep good thoughts for me, I have to get better so that I can go on my trip.
I am off to take some more cough medicine and get to bed. Have a good evening.

The countdown begins...

In only 9 more days we leave for our vacation. We have been planning it for quite some time. At 9 AM on Oct 26 we are headed for Disneyworld!! I am very excited. We have never been to Florida or anywhere else on the East Coast.
See you soon, Mickey and friends!!

7 1/2 months old

I just wanted to share a couple of photos of Kaya. She is 7 1/2 months old now and such a good little baby.
Every month since she was born I have taken a photo of her with a rabbit that I call Violet. When Kaya was born she was so small that the rabbit could "hold" her and now 7 short months later they are the same size and Kaya can hold the rabbit. It is just amazing how fast they grow and change. The first photo is the first one that I took of Kaya and Violet and the second is the one from this month.

I have one more photo that is one of y favorite photos of Kaya.

I just love it that you can see her 3 little teeth in this photo. She just has the most contagious smile. Love you baby girl!!

I also want to wish my friend, Lesli a very Happy Birthday!! Today is her birthday and she deserves a great one.

After all of the snow we had this weekend, it is almost gone now. We only have about 3 inches left. We were very lucky in that we did not loose any limbs on our trees. There are so many limbs around here that have broken. Two streets away from us there were 3 cars that had limbs fall on top of them. The amount of damage to trees is astronomical. There are still 200 homes without power, they have been without power for 4 days now, I am hoping that they will soon have power restored. Hold good thoughts for them that power gets restored soon.

Have a wonderful week!!

24 to 36 inches!!!!

Wow what a weekend this has been. We had a winter storm advisory out for last Friday and the rest of the weekend, and this morning we got up to a little over 2 feet of snow. There were places in the city where there was as much as 36 inches of snow. I must say that as much as I dislike snow it is beautiful today.

I got up early to let Roxie outside and just got dressed and went out. While she was taking care of business I walked down the alley and looked at some of the damages that at occurred overnight. As I was standing at the edge of the alley I heard a very loud cracking sound and right in front of me a huge limb fell to the ground, then another and another. The neighbors behind us and to the left one house had lost 4 large limbs off of their tree. Sad but I guess it is just natures way of pruning the trees.

Tony and I spent about 2 hours outside shaking the snow off of our trees, shoveling and digging his car out of the driveway. After we got that done we took Kayla and Nick out for breakfast as they had no electricity. After we ate and they went back home, Kayla called and  said that their power had been restored. They were very happy to have heat again.

Roxie loves the snow and we have just had so many laughs watching her run around in the snow. She loves it!!

I have taken over 100 photos of this storm. I have a few to share with you now and I am sure that I will have some to share all week long.

This is the view out of our front door yesterday morning:

This is the view out of our front door this morning:

Here are a few more photos from this snowstorm:

We are exhausted this afternoon and just sitting in the house relaxing. We are going to go to my parents for dinner and visit with my nephew who is home from college this weekend.

Have a wonderful rest of the weekend.

Winter storm warning!!!

It can't be it is barely October!! It is true, we have a winter storm warning, the possibility of getting 19 inches of snow over the weekend. I hope that we don't get much, but I guess we will see.

Have you ever stumbled onto something that you shouldn't have, found out something that is a bit unnerving and you can't tell anyone because you are not supposed to know? It really sucks when that happens. Now I just have to let it go and move on. It is hard to do but there is nothing else that I can do but let it go, so that it what I will do.

Well off to the Dr. and hopefully a weekend of scrapping and cooking some yummy comfort food!!

Enjoy!!