This weekend I will continue my battle with the clutter monster.  I started in my girls' room and I'm not sure it will be complete even after the weekend.  But here's to tryin'!

• I would like to scrub the carpet and get rid of just about everything my daughters have accumulated.  Seeing as that last part won't really be likely until say Monday at 8:07 when they get on the bus, I'll settle for the carpets, a clean closet and possible going through their clothes.  As you can see from these photos, I really have my work cut out for me.  I have a feeling that I'm going to be drafting the help of those little pigs sweet little girls.

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  I want to make some cards, possibly some Valentines and maybe a few Easter.
• Finish my daughter's birthday invites
• Make some of Okie's chocolate boxes or something similar for a few "Here's a little pick me up" gift for my son's preschool staff.  It's a long story that will have to be saved for another post.
• I need to stain to shelves for my craft room so I can put some more cartridges on them.  If all goes well maybe I can get my hubby to hang them.

What do you want to accomplish this weekend?

*On a personal note*  My mom called a little bit ago and said that my grandfather is not doing well and may not make it through the weekend.  He has been suffering from Alzheimer's for quite sometime now.  He doesn't know my mother or his other children.  He doesn't know me or my children.  I would appreciate your prayers that he doesn't suffering any longer and that my grandmother, who has been married to him for 61+ years, can find the strength to say goodbye.

It is Thursday and time for my "What I learned this week posting."  Feel free to play along and let me know what you learned.

• I learned that having a long weekend with the kids can actually be fun.  Sure there were times when I thought, "When do you go back to school?"  but there were also times when they played dress up, and hide and seek, and made caves out of the couch cushions.
• I learned that going to Stuff-mart is never a good idea.
• I learned that I can defeat the clutter monster in my house. One. Room. at. a. time.
• I learned that Facebook is more hassle than it is worth.  Please note:  If we weren't friends in high school I have no desire to be your friend now.  Why do you think I didn't include my maiden name?  It's because I'm hiding from you.
• I learned bloggy buddies can really cheer you up.

What did you learn this week?

I feel quite exhausted.  I think the clutter is winning.  I'm almost out of wine.  However, my carpet is clean in my craft room.  Most of the clutter is gone or contained.  I found some things I need to put on Ebay.  I have some drawers I need to clean out that will probably contain more things I need to put on Ebay.

Warning:  Do not be alarmed by these before pictures.  They can invoke a strong desire to contact those crazieeee beotches on Clean House.  Trust me.  I can't tolerate them.  Or Oprah.  Or Scrapbookers Annoymous...

As predicted we had a snow day today.  We got about 3-4 inches of snow and a nice layer of ice on top which creates that "Look Ma, I'm walking on the snow and not falling in illusion."

Seeing as all three of my children were home with me all day, and we spent about 2 1/2 hours sledding.  I'm still pretty impressed with all that I got accomplished.

My son's room is clean, organized and has freshly scrubbed carpets.  I went through his toybox, cleaned off his bookshelf and got rid of the "baby" books and I cleaned out is dresser.  Don't tell anyone but he still had A LOT of 3 toddler pants in his drawers and he turned 5 in October. 

It's about time I get rid of the floods he's been wearin' to school.  LOL

Mama Kat's assignment this week couldn't be more pefect for me as one of the writing prompts is to write a letter to someone who annoyed you this week.  I have high hopes for this letter and by high hopes I mean that I won't need to seek out therapy because of this incident.

Dear Bitch Misunderstood woman from the Stuff-mart Parking lot:

I noticed on Monday that your parking lot driving skills really need some improvement.  I have taken it upon myself to make some minor suggestions.

• Blocking the entire lane through the parking lot while waiting for someone to leave is NOT acceptable.  I should be able to manuver around you if I want to.
• Your ability to sucessfully T-bone someone else in, is not my problem.  I do not need to back up so that you can let them out.  You need to PULL FORWARD!
• Getting out of your car to scream at me while my children are with me because I won't back up on to a major through way shows your extreme inmaturity and helps me to understand the legal defination of temporary insanity.  If given a juror trial, I would have  been acquited from any bodily harm I could have inflicted upon you.
• Should you have pulled forward, as was required, you would have gotten a better parking spot.  I know this because it is the spot we got--one away from the handicapped spot and near the front door.

In conclusion, I must reiterate that should I see you or your car again, I will have no choice but to immediately park you in and refuse to pull through the parking lot as to give you a taste of your own medicine.

Sincerely,

Pissed off woman in a minivan

As I've explained to my three numerous regular readers, I'm not much of a housekeeper.  In fact, I had to pause to figure out if that was one word or two words. Quite frankly it should be a four-letter word.

This week I decided that I'm tired of being overrun by CLUTTER!  I'm tired of always having to look for things because they have migrated, moved or relocated.  I'm tired of tripping over toys that no one plays with.  My kids perfer cardboard boxes and couch cushions.  Seriously.

So this week I'm doing something about it.  Today I started in my bedroom.  Poor hubby's guitar books and music stuff had no home and the dog was taking a serious likin' to them.  I managed to move some of my stuff off of our shared bookshelf and put all of his on there.

Just getting all that off the floor made the room look bigger and cleaner.  Then I reoganized my smaller bookshelf and cleaned off my dresser.

I even scrubbed the carpets with my rockin' Bissell steam cleaner.  Can you believe that?  The room looks so nice right now I just don't want to see it get messed up again.  It took me most of the day, but I did have to pause to make lunch, play three games of trouble and one of Disney Princess Wishes.  On a side note, if you ever have the opportunity to NOT buy that game, make sure you walk away.  It has WAY to many pieces for a 4+ game.  And yes, my son loves it even more than his sisters.

Speaking of youngest here he is with the dog on the bed when I had all of the shit stuff piled on top of it.  Can you find them?

I didn't really do too well with my To Do List this weekend.  How did you do?

• Finish two Disney autograph books for my friend, Jean;   I'm happy to say that I did get these done.  Jean's kids and quite a few others are going to Disney in two weeks with their grandmother.  Mom-mom is one brave woman taking 9 kids to Disney.  These are the last two I needed to make.

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  Maybe go on a family hike, depending on the weather;   We took the dog to a dog park near our house and it was fun to watch him run like a deer, but only my oldest was allowed to go into the actual park.  Apparently, you have to be at least 9 years old.  The signage posted there said that it was a $600 fine if children under 9 were allowed access and since we didn't have $1200 on us, we thought it was best if I said outside the fence with the younger two.

• Find a new Sunday School class that isn't studying David.   I didn't manage to accomplish this.  Much to my annoyance I sat through another hour of poor David.  I left thinking I must have been the only one in the room who would have joined Absalom's army.
  
• Finish my Disney scrapbook and start oldest's birthday invites.  I actually finished one more Disney page done, but I still have two or maybe three more to complete.  I'm hoping to get those accomplished sometime this week, but we shall see.  As for the invites, I didn't get them completed, but I did get them started. 

I'll close this with one more picture.  We are planning a big superbowl party this weekend and in honor of that I decided that Copper needed his own shirt. 

Can you believe it is Friday already?  I can't.  My kids did not have school on Monday and they didn't have school today and just to make sure that I'll be completely mental they don't have school on Monday.  UGH.

Today we went bowling with some friends.  Do you remember when you could bowl with four friends and bring along maybe five kids.  Today I bowled with four friends and we had 10 kids with us.  I mean WOW that is a headache in the making.

If that wasn't bad enough 8 of the kids and three of the grown ups tried to do lunch together and then I had to take my oldest daughter to the dentist to get a cavity filled.  She has three.  My dentist only wants to fix one of them because they are all in baby teeth but the kicker is the one baby tooth doesn't have a grown up tooth underneath so she will need to keep it.

My daughter will be 10 in Februrary and she screamed like she was being tortured by a Dementor at Azkaban.  After 45 minutes, the dentist finally gave up.  He couldn't get her calm enough to give her the shot of novy.  I mean, seriously, she is almost 10. 

I will admit something to you that may make you hate me.  I am not a "stroke your hair and whisper sweet things in your ear" kind of person.  I respect the fact that you may be scared of something, but I have little tolerance for your inability to "buck it up" and "get over it". 

The dentist suggested that perhaps I may need to look into a pediatric dentist, but of course there are no local ones that accept our insurance and to fill a cavity the local joint wants $300 bucks, which is ridiculous when I can get if filled for a co-pay at my own dentist.

So guess what...daddy's going to take off when the appointment rolls around again and he is going to deal with the circus because I personally think she should "get over it".  I have a lot of faith that Daddy can accomplish just that.

As for my list of what I'd like to accomplish this weekend it includes the following:

• Finish two Disney autograph books for my friend, Jean;
• Maybe go on a family hike, depending on the weather;
• If the weather doesn't cooperate for the hike, take the kids to a movie
• Find a new Sunday School class that isn't studying David; quite frankly I'm not sure why God picked David to do anything.  He (David, not God) rubs me the wrong way.
• Finish my Disney scrapbook
• Work on invitations to oldest's 10th birthday party...Perhaps they should have a tooth on them and say "I'm achin' to see you on my birthday."

What do you have planned?

Can you believe that it's Thursday already. What have you learned since last week?  My week flew by so I really had to sit and think about this for awhile.   I think I came up with a few worth mentioning.

•  I learned that finding snacks with fewer than 30 carbs is a lot harder than it should be.  If you, or anyone you know, can make a few suggestions I would be quite grateful.  Because of my nephew's diabetes he is restricted to snacks with fewer than 30 carbs, so I've really started paying attention to the carb count.  Try it this week.  I guarantee you'll be surprised.
• I learned that I'm anemic and need to take an iron supplement.
• I learned that I love my Garmin GPS!  It helped me out of a HUGE traffic backup by providing me some back woods detour!

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  I learned that all of my children like watching college basketball-go figure.
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  I learned that I'm even more addicted to LOST than I ever thought possible.  Can we trust Sun?  Is she harboring some sort of grudge against Kate?  Will she do something she regrets only to find out that Jin is still alive? 

I don't know about you all, but I'm so excited about the return of LOST tonight at 8 p.m. that I feel a little giddy.

Are they really going back to the island?  Why?  How will they find it now that Locke has moved it?  Is Sun going with her baby?

I'm sure that after tonight's episode I'll have more questions than answers.  If you are a LOST junkie than you need to bookmark this website.  He provides the funniest most indepth recaps ever!  I totally look forward to reading them almost as much as watching the actual episode.

What I'd like to know is are you as addicted as I am?  Or do you detest this show as much as my husband does?  He thinks the writers don't really have a plot and are just randomly writing whatever they want.

Wow!  My weekend was a blur--a fast whirlwind adventure that I'm so glad my kids and I decided to undertake.

We had safe travel to and from North Carolina.  We arrived at my  mother's (in Virginia) around 6:30 p.m. on Friday.  We had super and tried to get the kids to bed at a reasonable time, but you know how that goes when you are sleeping away from home.

At 7:30 a.m. we were on the road again!  I'm happy to say that we made it to my sister's by 1 p.m. and that included a nice sit down brunch at Denny's.

On Saturday evening we went to a very informative and impressively well planned JDRF event that included a meal and some speakers and lots and lots of kids activities.


Here she is smilin' like a girly girl getting ready to blow out her candles.  The party had a cooking theme and each child got to make their own apron and pizza and icing their own cupcake.  It was a lot of fun and the kids really seemed to enjoy it.

After the party, the Pittsburgh Steelers took on the Baltimore Ravens in arousing game of football.  Some of my British friends asked me what I was talking about in my previous post so here is my pathetic attempt at an explaination.  As I'm sure you know, our version of football and your version of football vary slightly.  This weekend there were only four teams left.  The winners of those two games move on to the SUPERBOWL...which is the biggest game of all!

In the area of Pennsylvania where I grew up, the only team worth cheering for was the Steelers.  I yell at the TV when they are playing like a crazied woman, often to my children's amusement.  Now I live closer to Baltimore and in this area there are quite a few Baltimore Ravens fans.  The torture of losing to them would have been....well let's not think about it because....

Another to do list...yikes.  It seemed to work out for me last weekend so I'm going to try again.

• Safe travel to and from North Carolina.  I'm driving to my sisters this weekend with all three kids.  Thankfully my mom is coming too.  We are going to Virginia tonight to pick her up.  Pray for some peace and quiet in the vehicle.
• Put laundry away.   I'm actually cheating a little.  I finally got that laundry off of my dresser!  I just did it today so that sort of counts doesn't it?
• Watch the Steelers tromp all over Baltimore.  Seeing as I only live a short distance from Baltimore, I may have to move if the Balti-morons win.  One thing is for sure, I'm not watching a super bowl featuring the Ravens.

This weekend's update is sure to feature photos.  Have a great one!

1. 
   
   This week I learned that spell check is not very reliable.  Duel vs Dual.  I find that when embarrased it's best to just come right out and admit it.  **stands up, clears throat**  My name is Kisatrtle and I'm an idot.  I submitted an article for work about a school district offering DUAL enrollment opportunities, except in my version it said DUEL!  Everyone in the newsroom had a big laugh at my expense.  However, I'll have you know I'm not convinced that had it gone to press as written that many of our readers would have caught it.  LOL 





2. I learned that my daughter pretends not to listen to me, but that she actually hears me quite well.  As I said in an earlier post my oldest has had her first experience with "mean girls".  If you are a women, you know what I'm talking about.  This week she spoke to her school counselor about what has been happening and when the counselor called me she applauded me for the techniques I gave oldest for dealing with these little bitches troubled girls.
3. I learned that my nephew is adjusting well to his new diabetic lifestyle.  He is maintaining his blood surgar levels with only a few shots a day.  Sometimes only one.
4. I learned that my husband absolutely loves having a dog.  I watched him play with Copper on the floor just like I watch my son play with him this morning; and
5. I learned that my son is simply not good with memorization.  He is five and doesn't say the alphabet and can't count higher than 11.  When he says the pray at supper time it goes something like this:

If you want to see some of the other pages click here, or  here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here,or here, or here, or here, or here, and here.

Wow, that's a lot of linkage, baby. Let me know what you think.

Following along with the rules of the award, I'm handing it out to five other deserving bloggers. If you aren't already regular visitors you should be! Drum roll, please. And the winners are:

Inkhearts. Shannon has a great blog and the best part is she doesn't even know how great it is. Vist her and leave a comment. When she returns the favor, you will be surprised by how uplifted you feel. Love you, girl!

Ferris and Simone. These two crazy cats will have you cracking up and their pets are pretty funny too. If you like cats, you'll love this blog.

Life with a Little One. Jenners makes me smile often and best of all she teaches me things without even trying. I'm not sure I would have undertaken such a huge blog makeover without her inspiration.

Between the Lines. An honest parenting blog about the ups and downs of raising twin girls and how it feels to go back to work after being a home.

Last but certainly not least,

The Daily Scrapper. She never fails to amaze me with how much scrapbooking one person can get done. Do you know she has already scrapped her Christmas pictures! I'm so jealous.

Thanks for stopping by.

Many Two of you have been waiting anxiously for this update and I didn't want to keep you waiting any longer.  I'm thoughtful like that.

My weekend had its ups and downs.

Some of the ups included:

• The Steelers whomping the Chargers
• My hubby enjoying the dog park as much as Copper, and
• Time to craft. 

Some of the downs included:

• The dog peeing on my scrapbook bag (I mean does he want to continue to live here or not),
• The kids overflowing a disgusting upstairs toilet and
• vomit on the living room floor (the dog again).

As for my to-do list here the update:

• The snowman.  As usual the weather report for the area was all hype and no action.  After being promised six inches of snow.  This is what we got.
• Create a few scrapbook pages.  I was able to make a few more pages for my Disney Book and I will post them later this week.  I only need to make three more and then my book is complete!  Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to make a card.
• Put the laundry away that is piled up on my dresser. Yeah...it's still there.
• Vacuum the entire upstairs of my house. I'm happy to say that I did get this accomplished even if I don't have the pictures to prove it.
• Update the Blog.  This one is pretty obvious.  I'm happy with the way it turned out.  Let me know if it is user friendly or not.

Jenners at Life with a Little One mentioned this great photography blog called Lisa's chaos. Every Monday she hosts Macro Monday.

She challenges her readers to share photos of things that have been photographed close-up.

Until Jenners mentioned Lisa's blog, I hadn't ever visited. Wow, Wow, and WOWIE are the only words I can form. Someday I hope to take pictures like Lisa's.

If you haven't visited, be sure to stop by. You won't regret it. If you decided to participate in Macro Monday, link me your photo. I'd love to see it.

This is my first attempt at playing along.  This is a lucky shot of a random flower picture I took in my yard this summer.

Stop back tomorrow and find out how I did on my to do list.  If you are a regular visitor, I'd love to hear your honest feedback on the blog makeover.

I thought, perhaps, that if I made myself a "to do" list of what I'd like to accomplish this weekend that perhaps I may get more things done. What are your weekend plans? What do you hope to accomplish?

• I'd like to make a snowman. We are supposed to get six inches of snow by tomorrow evening and if we do I'd really like to help the kids make a BIG snowman.
• Create a few scrapbook pages and perhaps a couple cards. I have some stamps in my collection that I haven't used yet.
• Put the laundry away that is piled up on my dresser. Yep, my dresser. I know...that is appalling.
• Vacuum the entire upstairs of my house; of course, in order to do this I'm going to need the kids to clean up the crap all other the floor of their rooms. Maybe I should take before and after photos.
• Last but not least, work on updating the blog background and header. It's been on my "to do" list for quite a while and I was really hoping to have it done for the first of the year.

Pop back on Monday to see how I did with the list.

The first full week of 2009 has nearly come and gone. What have you learned this week? Here are a few things I learned.

1. Now that my oldest daughter is almost 10, I only have to remind her to brush her teeth, comb her hair, and put deodorant on five times each morning. This is a significant improvement. **smile**

2. My dog likes to eat crayons. Do you think he has a wax deficiency?

3. Remembering a dentist appointment is much more complicated than it sounds.

4. Trying to learn "new" math, gives me a headache. What was wrong with "old" math? Why does my 4th grader need graph paper to learn simple division? Is Everyday Math really the best math.

5. Both my daughters think I'm beautiful. **smile**

Leave me a comment and tell me at least one thing you learned this week....

Mama Kat's assignment this week will allow me to bore you all to death with my crafting obsession, which lately has turned into a craft supply collection. Lately, I've been creating very little with all the stuff I love to accumulate.



This is my new Cricut Expression! Santa brought it for me! It is a die cutting machine. Basically, you never need an alphabet sticker again. You just type it and out comes the word in whatever size you want. LOVE IT! It also makes a slew of different characters and designs.





These are the the cartridges that work in the above cricut. I've been accumulating them since 2006. I used to have the small machine until Santa delivered the mother load... LOL




I'm I the only one annoyed by the fact that one of the carts in this picture is upside down??? Yeah, probably. Two ton of laundry all over the place and I'm concerned about an upside down cartridge.




More of the random stuff I haven't used. But seriously, who can pass up Donald Duck on a bottle cap?? IMHO, everyone should have at least two.


If you have any colored pencils at all, you should have Prismacolor. They have deep shades that blend easily. Just talking about them makes me want to color something.



This is my rubber stamp cabinet. As you can see, it is over flowing with stamps I really need to use. They are beckoning me to stamp and color them with Prisma...LOL




The last obsession for this post is well worth mentioning, especially for all you actual scrapbookers. This album may look like any ol' 12x12 book. But it's not; it is held together by velcro and manufactured by a company call Scrap It Simple. It is totally awesome to not have to deal with any type of binding.


For the two of you who actually made it to the end of this post thanks. Deb, if you happen to be one of those two people...I want you to know that I was torn between writing this post or a post about my other obsession which, of course, is flossing. **smile**

I finally finished the Twilight series which I started in October. Don't chastise me to bad for being so slow. You must remember that I don't speed read (especially when the book holds little interest to me) and there were birthdays and holidays in that time frame that put reading on the back burner. Also, I read other things in between each book because I felt like I was overdosing on Bella and Edward just a little (okay...a lot)

After finishing the entire series I must say that I'm glad my 10 year didn't take much interest in them. While the first one is more "innocent" than the rest of them I still found the relationship between Edward and Bella disturbing to say the least.

Here are some of the things I liked and disliked about the books.

1. Bella is too dependent on Edward for her happiness. If I could teach my daughters anything about relationships, it would be find their own happiness. Have your own interests, keep your friends and always be yourself.

2. Edward's character is too controlling. He doesn't approve of Jacob and Bella's relationship. He seldom leaves her alone, even while she sleeps. His constant desire to "protect" Bella from Bella, is somewhat disturbing.

3. I have to say I did enjoy the way that Stephenie Meyer gave Bella her gift before she became immortal. Her "shield" or her strength was there all along it was just too bad Bella had to wait until the last 50 pages of the last book to realize it.

4. Don't even get me started on the mother/daughter relationship in this book. As a mother would you ever accept the word of basically strangers regarding your child's health? What amount of bullshit would allow for her mother to just drop out of the book after the wedding? Sorry Bella has some freak disease she contracted on her honeymoon...Sorry she can't talk to you anymore...sorry she was flown to Atlanta for testing by the CDC? WTF? Georgia is a doable drive from Florida. I found this part of the story beyond my realm of believability.

5. Even after Bella becomes immortal, and isn't controlled by her newborn urges, she doesn't make an effort to contact her mother. This woman raised her until just a few short years ago. Again, this storyline is not believable.

6. The sex in these books is not explicit, but obviously implied. Every euphemism for the actual act is utilized. I'm not kidding myself that most of Meyer's teen readers aren't thinking about this or even already acting upon it. However, what I found most disturbing about these references was what little restraint Bella showed. Edward was the one who wanted to wait, but not for the noble reason of abstinence, but because he was afraid his massive strength might kill her in the throws of passion. Spare me.


7. I rooted for Jacob throughout most of the books. I really wanted Bella to choose a different life path. When it became obvious that her course would not change, I was impressed with Meyer's ability to still provide a satisfactory ending. While I found the imprinting storyline to be a bit unbelievable, and the fact that the werewolves could imprint at such a young age disturbing, I was happy when Jacob's feelings for Bella changed into friendship.

In the long run, I'm glad that I finished the entire series. Would I read it again? No. Would I see the movie? Maybe on DVD

Introducing our newest family member...Copper. We adopted him from the SPCA. He was a stray and no one ever came to claim him. The kids are so excited, it is nearly contagious. They took him outside about 25 times today and I should mention, for all you West Coasters, it was 26 degrees here. My husband and the kids took him for a walk after dinner. I think he is quite tuckered out, but I'm anxious to see how he sleeps tonight.

Obviously, I'm not the only one who has trouble keeping their resolutions. There are probably books about why resolutions are really bad ideas. They are, however, fun to make even if the odds are stacked against you.



Exercise. Geez, I hate that word. I joined a gym a few months ago. My friends convinced me that it would be something fun we could all do together. Yeah, right. So far that hasn't happened all that much. So I'm going to resolve not to waste my money in 2009 and actually try to go to the gym 2-3 times a week. Don't laugh, I probably won't even make it that many times. As part of this, I'm actually going to try to eat a little better (she types while laughing).



Yell less. This is a tough one for me. I tend to nag and yell and I don't really like myself when I do this. I'm constantly telling my kids to brush their hair or their teeth or to clean up their room. I'm starting to get on my own nerves. I'm pretty sure they no longer hear me so enough already. Say it once.



Clutter. Repeat after me. We have too much STUFF. I feel like Stuff-Mart has exploded in my house and the stuff it left behind has actually come to life and started procreating. Where are all the missing socks? How much shit can I pile on top of my kitchen island before it is no longer considered an island. How many junk drawers should one family have? Why do we have toy boxes when toys never visit them? Is it possible to actually keep all the pieces to our board games? I need to get rid of some stuff!



Scrapbooking. Call it what you want...a hobby, a way to spend leisure time, an opportunity to get together with friends. Scrapbooking at it's core is an addition. I always need more stuff. See above. My goal is to make some actually pages this year using the stuff I already have.



Housekeeping. Imagine if you will random housekeeping checkups, sort of like sobriety check points. This would actually make a great reality TV show...but I digress. How many of us would pass right now if some English woman wearing white gloves came to the door and said, "Pardon me, but may I use the loo?" (Awesome name for said reality show if I do say so myself). Are your bathrooms spotless? Is all your laundry put away (is that possible)? I need to do a better job around this place.



That's my list. I'm sure to fail. If you comment at all during January be sure to ask me how clean my loo is! Happy New Year.