Whole other ball game!

Well, I have to say that skiing in December is very different than skiing in March! Not only was this our first trip here alone...it was our first trip that wasn't over spring break. Some of our gear just wasn't up to -3 degree weather! We headed out as usual around 8:30 am and were one of the very first people to hit one of our favorite slopes. Tomahawk had maybe one or two ski tracks in front of us when we got there. Another difference was POWDER!!! Tons and tons of powder. I looked down as I started out on Tomahawk and my skis and feet up to my mid-shins were buried! It was kind of like learning something totally different to ski in this stuff. It was a lot more work!

By the time we got to Rendezvous (a hilltop restaurant) my feet and fingertips were numb. My socks and gloves just weren't what I needed. Roger had to ski the last bit without his goggles because they frosted up on the INSIDE and he could not see. When we got to Rendezvous his eyelashes were freezing together! After some hot cocoa and a little break we started to head back down the mountain to adjust our gear. We realized that it was only a little before 10am! OMG! Time flies when you are freezing!

I got new gloves and added my warmer socks, took a small break in the room and Roger headed back up. Roger hit some tougher slopes without me and was pooped. We met up later and went back to Tomahawk for one more trip from the top. Tomahawk was nice and we enjoyed our trip down the hill. We realized why there were so few people this morning though....apparently in Dec. people wait till a little later to let it warm up some before heading up the mountain. Sissies! :)

We have reservations tonight at Hazie's, a restaurant on the mountain top for our anniversary dinner. I am hoping to get some good pics up there tonight...but we will see. We did take a couple of goofy ones earlier that I will post for you.

Steamboat Springs, CO

We are now in Steamboat for the weekend. Roger and I that is. Tomorrow is our 22nd anniversary. Roger and I first came to Steamboat skiing with the youth group in highschool. This is our 7th trip here and our first ever trip alone. It is in the lower teens here and quite a bit colder that when we usually come in March. We came through a pretty good snow storm coming in, so the mountain should have fresh powder for skiing in the morning! I took a couple of pictures on the way up that I thought I would share with everyone.

Merry Merry Christmas!!!

The stockings are unstuffed, the packages are open, the mess cleaned up, the turkey and dressing are cooking and we have already eaten an entire pumpkin pie! I hope your holiday is going as well as ours is! We love and miss you all! Have the very merriest of Christmas holidays!

Tombtown, AZ

Well, we are in Arizona now. Our first day here, we all jumped in the bus and headed to Tombtown! Also known as, Tombstone, AZ. This a trip we took mainly because lil' miss Kylie wanted too. This was her 3rd trip down there and she is the reason we started calling it Tombtown as that is what she said when she was little. She doesn't call it that now and she corrects the rest of us when we do. Of course we do it anyways. We stayed in a bed and breakfast that had a balcony over looking the main street there (Allen Street). It was a neat place to stay, although probably funner at a busier time of year.

We did a couple of tours, like the haunted history tour that Disney has there and Bird Cage Theater. It was actually kind of neat to read and hear about all the history that happened there and already have seen the Tombstone movies. Obviously, not everything in the movies is acurate, but some of it ties to what they say in their narratives. We also rode the the stage coach on a short tour that was kind of nice, but we could have done with out the gas the horses were passing back our way!!! Nasty!!!

Kylie had been looking forward to the Haunted History tour and was really having fun, then at the end of the first scene they have little air hoses pointed at the audience and they go off with a popping sound. We all jumped at the first one...then the first thing she did at each location was to look for the air hoses! It was a walking tour where you pushed a button when you were ready to watch it and she scooted a little further back each time. It was cute.

Of course, as always we stopped at Boot Hill on the way out of town... I think it is a little strange to wander around and look at headstones, but I have to giggle at the one that says, Here lies Lester Moore, 4 slugs from a 44 - No Les No more! I guess Les is probably way more popular in death than he was in life!

Since we are back in Phoenix now, we are working on all the final details of Christmas and waiting for the arrival of the jolly fellow!

My husband..

You know, as husbands go, I lucked out and got a pretty good one. Of course, he isn't perfect, he is still a man after all. But when compared to other husbands/men....he get pretty darn good marks! I had been noticing lately that I had been getting a lot of good pics of him and decided to do a page dedicated to him. I know I don't tell him often enough (partly because I rarely see him lately!) how special he is to me and what a blessing he has been in my life. It is easy sometimes to take for granted those things/people who just seem to have always been there and that you can always count on. So during our anniversary month, I have done a page just about him.

Making a list and checking it twice!

Why does it always seem like there is so much to do? I still have shopping to do that we have put off until we get to Phx so we didn't have to ship a bunch of stuff out there. I did do some online shopping and got a few things taken care of. Now I am trying to make sure we have all the clothes clean, ski stuff together, etc. etc. etc. I did stop long enough to do a new page last night. It is some of our Hawaii pics from 2007. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

Where are you?

I got an email from my blog (aka Liz) today asking where I have been. Well, I can't really say that anything in particular has been keeping me from posting. I have been working on more stuff around the house again, painting more trim work, putting out some decorations..etc I haven't done many scrapbook layout either, so my blog shouldn't be getting jealous of my Photoshop program either. I have done a tutorial or two and I did one layout, but that is about all. So, like I said, there isn't really any thing I can point to that explains why I have neglected my blog recently. I guess it is just one of those things that happens! ;)

I will post the one page I have done since I last posted....

Scrapping Fool!

ok..here are 2 more layouts that I completed and had not posted yet. I got a new kit from the designer today so I will be doing something with it soon.

Home Alone..

Well not really. Roger, Chris, Cameron, Justin (friend of Chris') and Jim left this afternoon to go pheasant hunting in Lubbock. Chris got one last year that we got mounted and it is now hanging on the wall in Roger's study next to Josh's deer. This is the 3rd time that the guys have made this trip. Papa Eddie was supposed to join them but he ended up getting sick and Oklahoma over Thanksgiving and had to bow out of attending. Josh was planning to go but ended up needing to work so he is here with me and Kylie. I don't think the trip is as much about getting anything as it is about just hanging out and spending quality time together. I know that is what Papa Eddie was looking forward to. He enjoyed the trip a lot last year.

Liz sent me a Dec. daily photo challenge and I have not been very good at keeping up with it, so I have to get on the ball with that one. I completed two more Christmas 2007 layouts today! At this rate I should be all caught up, uhmmm sometime in 2011! ;)

Christmas Wonder

I was contacted by a designer to be on her Creative Team. Basically this means I will get a free set of her kits and in exchange I will create a layout using it to be posted as a sample of what can be done with her kit. Here is what I created with her newest christmas kit. I bet Liz likes this LO!

Not much happening...

I don't really have a lot to post about. Roger made it home safe and sound last night and his meeting went really well. They have created a new department under him and added a good number of headcount. This is really good for him because they were struggling to keep up with not enough people to do it with and part of what he was responsible for was under someone else's control and that caused issues. It will now be consolidated under him, so he is happy.

Tennis has started back and I am now in Learn and Play 1. We drill for 45 mins and then play doubles for 45 mins. I am really trying to focus on dropping a few more pounds before the holidays so this should help!

I got one more page done..which is good since I am wanting to give some of them as a christmas gift. Thats all for now!

Know who your friends are...

It is important to know who your friends are...I have always thought I was Liz's favorite SIL. She has always been super helpful when I start something she has already had experience in. So I have really been trying to return the favor and let her know when I find out about anything new she might not know about.

But she has been holding out on me! I found out about a really cool time saving extraction tool last night, so the first thing I did was drop Liz an email to make sure she was well informed. I wake up this morning to an email that says...Oh, yea..I use it already. Hello...friend! Did you not think I was worthy to know about this? Just think of all the time it would have saved me! Now I see how you are....


;)

On a roll.....

Well Rog is off to NY again today for a couple of days worth of meetings. The upside to this is I get to work on my pages. I got one more done today while watching football and doing laundry. This one is dedicated to Mamaw.

One more down!

Ok...I got another page done while watching the game...I think OU may start pulling away now, but I didn't say that so I won't jinx them!

Home Sweet Home

Yay! We are back home again. As much as I love all of my family, it sure was nice to crawl into my own bed last night! It was really nice to get to see both of our families this week. The kids all grow so fast! We are so fortunate to have such an awesome group of people on both sides. The kids have such a good time playing together. That is the only sad part in that it would be nice if they could see each other more than just once a year.

I am attaching a new page that I did today.

Thankful

It is so easy to get caught up in the day to day of living that we forget the many blessings we all have. I am so very thankful for our family. No matter what happens I have to remember that we are so blessed to have the kids. They really are good kids. I need to remember not to sweat the small stuff. I am thankful for our extended family and that we all have relatively good health. So today, I want to say thank you to the good Lord above that he has blessed us with all he has and pray that you and yours have a safe, happy holiday season.

May God bless and keep you all!

Today was a huge step..

A HUGE step in my mother's life. She was the last person in the entire world to finally switch off of dial up and onto cable internet! She also added a wireless router so now, she, Roger and I can all sit in the living room on our laptops at the same time. It is great for more than one reason...probably mostly because it drives my dad absolutely crazy! He doesn't do the computer thing cept to view the pictures from his trail camera.

Since we have been here I have done 3 pages. These are from the pictures I took at Madisson's birthday party. We sure have got some cute kiddos!

Today's post is actually a comment/reply to Liz from yesterday...since my reply was longer than most of my posts I decided it could be my post for today and you can all feel my pain! This is more a rant I guess...Sorry. I learned it from reading Liz' blogs!

We bought a new router and Roger bought new internal cards but we hav not installed them yet. We have tried the old net gear usb cards that worked fine before. We have tried the new 2 wire cards that AT&T gave us. It is both my laptop and mine and the kids DT's.
The system work pretty darn good before we tried switching to U-Verse which is fiber optics. We could not keep a signal. The router/gateway kept issuing an IP address and then pulling it back resulting constant dropping and reconnecting. I tried for 4 months probably spent 45 to 50+ hours on the phone with tier 2 tech support or with a tech here to no avail. We gave up and switched back to DSL. Which more or less fixed the problem for a while.

Now I can barely surf or work on the computers because everything is SOOOOOOO slow!!!! It will go from 54mbps to 1mbps in just nothing and then jump to 12mbps and then back to 1mbps. We have about decided we are going to just hard wire everything with cat 5 and say forget it.
AT&T was here for another reason the other day and the guy said one of the cables a tech made us was bad and that was the reason we had problems before and that we should try the U-verse again. Where was he when all those other techs were here trying to fix it! Do they only have one guy that knows what he is doing? I just don't think I can go through all that again right now. Maybe somewhere in the future! Like maybe 2011 or something!

I know..I will have Roger take Jim somewhere again and you and Mary can come over and you can fix it! Deal?

Ok. My laptop is now cured of its nasty nasty virus. I almost have it all put back together. I am still fighting issues with our wireless connectivity and it is driving me absolutely crazy! It is like paying for DSL but having dial up! I was so frustrated earlier today I actually sat in my chair and cried! Sad..I know.

On a happier note...I have two more pages to post and share with you all. Well, with Liz and Nana...I think ya'll are the only ones reading this! I am really enjoying the digi scrapping. There is so much to learn!

How bout them Cowboys!

Maybe if I tell myself I don't care who wins before every game..we will always win? Ya think? We had a really good time at the watch party. I made this page of the pictures I took to send to the people who attended. We were on the 20th floor of a downtown Dallas building with an awesome view of the Dallas skyline!

Go Cowboys! (Crossed fingers)

OK, yes my fingers are crossed but I have decided to focus more hope on OU doing well this year than the Cowboys. However, we are going to a watch party tonight and that is no fun if your team doesn't win.

I am not going to have a lot of time today so I thought I would go ahead and post the page I made last night, which I happen to really like if I do say so myself! Have an awesome day...I have to go get ready for church!

Ok. I am going to tell a story on myself in this post. Roger, Kylie and Cameron decided to watch a movie (Troy) tonight that we have already seen. Since my laptop is dead with a virus (a whole other story which is not funny at all! ), I decided to excuse myself to my little corner of the world and digi scrap! So since their show was really loud and distracting, I put my headphones on and cranked up the ipod. Now we all know what happens if you are wearing headphones while listening to your favorite tunes....you sing along! And since you can not hear yourself...you don't usually do particularly well at it. Well as you can guess...I was typing merrily along minding my own business, quietly singing along to my favorites (or so I thought) and bouncing/dancing in my chair to the rhythms. I am not sure why I turned around but there behind me snickering was Cameron soon to be followed by Kylie.

So the moral to this story is to DANCE like no one is watching...but they might really be watching.

I have also added a pic of a page I did for an online sketch challenge. It is only one page so far.

Well...I stayed up last night and did page 2 of the Smalling Thanksgiving pages. I think it is going to take me at least 4 to 6 pages to do Thanksgiving for 2007. I like this page because I was able to put lots of pictures on it. It seems that my blog is turning into a place to post my pages! But I guess that is ok also. Roger made it home safe!

I think both babies are doing good. Schaffer is pretty stable. Presley was so small (2.5lbs or so) when she was born that she has more to over come. We are a family of strong people so with lots of prayers and love I know they will both be fine! Thank you for your continued prayers!!!

The learning never ends!

Well, as you can see I am learning more about how to spruce up my blog page. Liz helped me a tad today but I faked my way through most of it myself. (Having the instructions on a website helps a lot, don't tell!) I finished another page last night that I have included for your viewing pleasure! Not much else happening around here...Rog has been in NY but he comes home tonight. That is a good thing...him traveling is bad! :)

Digi Scrap Pages

Well, it rained this morning and yesterday. So, I have spent some time completing some of the pages I started. I will try to post them here so you can see what I have been up to. This is a test to see if I can get them to post! OK..so they posted but rather than post all of them here, I think it would be easier to add a link to them in my Snapfish account. So here it is.... http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=260883674/a=26789369_26789369/t_=26789369

Weekend recap!

Ok…It is Monday morning and rain has cancelled my morning tennis workout, so I figured I would put together a weekend recap post. Since I am typing, I will start with me. This will be quick and easy…I spent way too much of my weekend working on re-organizing my digital scrapbooking supplies. This was extremely time consuming because I have made so many downloads of freebies (love those freebies!!!) that I already have a ton of stuff. (Thanks Liz!) I also wasted a huge amount of time trying to re-format my laptop that has a nasty virus we can’t get rid of. This would be easy to do if I had the Gateway recovery disc, but the bank can’t find it! So I am stuck waiting for them to locate it. IF they can’t locate it I will have to order one from Gateway – which has a FOUR week back order for them right now! Rehashing that was more painful than I expected! On a lighter note, we did get to visit with Courtney, Mary and Liz for a couple of hours on Saturday. They came over and Liz shared my frustration with my laptop and the girls had fun playing. Mary is getting old enough that she and Kylie can play some without someone right there with them. (Chill Liz…Mary is fine)

Cameron has the first day of school basketball tryouts (now that football is over), we should know by Wednesday if he makes the team. His football team had the best record of the 3 freshman teams this year. Woohoo. Josh started working at Fossil at the outlet mall this weekend. He said he really likes the Managers, so hopefully that will be a good learning/growing experience for him and his bank account! Chris is still doing his fire academy training and trying to find a job where he can get closer to fulltime hours. Ms. Kylie has one more class in her first tennis lessons. She is really enjoying it and Roger and I were surprised at how well these kids do at this age.

The Cowboys were off this weekend and if things do improve soon, this will probably the first and last time I mention them in my blog this year! The Sooners beat A&M…Roger and Jim made the trip to College Station to watch the game. I am glad they won…it sucks to go to a game when your team loses!

I plan to start posting some of my Digital Scrapbook pages for everyone to see soon.

Please pray for my cousin’s little boy Schaffer, he is in heart surgery right now as I type this. They expect everything to be okay. Also, my other cousin’s granddaughter was a preemie and is still in the hospital, so please pray for Presley and her mom Megan who was in the hospital also with a staph infection she got while in the hospital to have Presley! Thanks!

PS..I will work on making shorter posts! :)

Do I really want to start this blogging thing?

Well, since my sister-in-law (who is a blog-xpert) found out I have a blog that I have posted on only once over a year ago, I guess I should try and make it a habit.

Things that worry me about starting and maintaining a blog are…Is this going to become just one more thing on my to do list? Am I going to be compared to Liz – Not as funny, too brain dead to figure out how to do the cute backgrounds she uses instead of the canned ones I am using now or how to figure out how to post pictures? Will the whole world think we are both strange and dysfunctional now instead of just her? I am I going to be sorry I gave her the opportunity to pay me back for the smarty-pants comments I made on her blog? Will anyone read it anyways...do I really want anyone to read it? I worry about these things you know!

I guess I could change my picture to one of someone other than myself so if I ever meet a total stranger on the street who has read my blog, they will never know it is me! Friends and family members already know the truth about my sanity so nothing more can be done there… But you know, if Liz doesn't tell anyone this is here and I don't tell anyone, it could take years for anyone else I know to even find out! Shhhh....this place is a secret!