The surprise moment

I love this picture that I managed to capture of the moment we surprised grandma on tuesday morning. I will not soon forget and I can't wait to scrapbook and journal this trip. :)

Surprises ROCK!!!

So I have been planning this for about 3 months now and only a few people knew about it and I have been anticipating the surprise for so long I couldn't wait!! Back in May I booked 2 plane tickets and made the decision to come down and visit mom for a week but I thought it would be fun not to tell her or Alex until the time came for it to actually happen. It's been hard to keep the secret and a lot of things came up along the way that might have spoiled it but it happened and I'm so excited to be here and having a good time!!

The way that I told Alex was to create a treasure hunt for him and he started it in his bedroom with the first note and clue. We continued throughout the house with all of the clues and notes that I had left around for him like a beach ball, a butterfly, Mickey Mouse ears, "I love grandma", subtle little 'Florida' and 'grandma' clues. When he finally found the last clue he had to go upstairs to find the green suitcase and in it was a boarding pass. Once he read it and realized what it was he said, "I'm going to grandma's?? Alone??" Then I told him that I was going too and he ran downstairs to tell dad, he was so excited that he ran back upstairs and packed in about 5 minutes!! :) We made our flight by the skin of our teeth this morning and managed to get here on time with no problems. Once we were here I parked around the corner and called mom on her cell and she knew that I was supposed to be at work today so I made believe like I was on a break and told her that I had a surprise for her that it was in the mailbox and she had to come outside. When she did Alex went running around the corner and the rest is history!!!

Happy 10th Birthday to Alex!!

Yesterday was a really fun filled day for Alex as we celebrated his 10th birthday together. He started out his morning with a home cooked breakfast of his favorite egg whites from dad, as always. From there we took off and made our first stop of the day, the batting cages and we watched Alex hit a few balls and have a good time.
Next on the list was lunch at Chuck E Cheese and boy is that pizza yummy!! Alex had 100 tokens to play and had a great time on all the games, of course he had to share some of his tokens with dad, as usual. I'm just content with watching and walking around taking pictures. At one point it was pretty funny though, Alex told me to stop taking pictures and he said, "Can't a kid have some privacy on a video game??" :)

Our next stop was Build A Bear in the mall. As luck would have it they were celebrating Bearamy's birthday this weekend and Alex had gotten a coupon in the mail for a free bear for his birthday...but after all the clothes and accessories...we still spent a bit of money but he had so much fun. His bear is a fishing bear and he bought pajamas and a sleeping bag for it, too.
And last but not least we went to Toys R Us and Alex picked out his gift which was a huge Lego set and he spent most of last night and this morning building it all and he finally finished it, pretty impressive stuff. The cake was buttercream which is his favorite ever since he went to a cupcake program at the library and got to taste it. Happy Birthday my little man, I love you.

A voice on the other end of the phone...

...can change my mood instantly! This morning I was feeling pretty lousy but got up and went about my morning routine as always and decided that I would head out to get Alex's school supplies and have that out of the way before the stores start running out of stuff. When I go into Walmart I normally have no cell service in there at all and yet here I was in the scrapbooking aisle just looking around when my cell phone rings and I look at the # and recognize the area code as being from a satellite phone and I knew instantly that it was Robert. I answered and I hear, "Hey ma...how's it going?" Ahhhhhhhhh, the smile on my face and yet I was frozen in fear because I didn't want to move in case I would get a dropped call!! So here I am stuck in the scrapbook aisle at Walmart talking to my son and my feet are planted in one spot because I don't want to lose the connection!! We only talked for about 2 minutes but it was so good to hear his voice and he told me that everyone is ok and he hopes to be able to call again this weekend. He sounded really tired because they have been doing a lot of walking and that is wearing on them, I assume. That's my boy...boots on the ground doing his job! What is really amazing to me is that Jim, Jesse AND Alex were all home and when I asked Jim if Robert had called the house he said no...so how did he know to call my cell first? It was as if someone told him that his mom needed to hear his voice today. Thank you, Lord, for that blessing.
Tonight I took a really cute class at Scrapbook Delight and I was having a wonderful evening and feeling less stress after hearing from Robert when Cara (the owner of the store) told us that she is going out of business. I am so sad to hear this, I have just recently started taking classes there and now she's closing her doors. It just broke my heart to hear her talk about her shattered dreams and it made me think about my mom and dad because they had a business of their own and they didn't make it either....it's so hard for small businesses to compete with the larger chain stores. I wish Cara a lot of luck in whatever she does in the next step of her life and I know I'll be seeing her at local crops in the future.

One Light Burning

The journaling pretty much says it all. This is a book I started to keep my thoughts while Robert is deployed.

The brownies are awesome!!

Wow, I'm so happy that these brownies in a jar turned out great!! I opened one this morning and it slid right out of the jar and I cut it up into slices and had a little piece and was it delicious and moist!!!
Alex had a little piece and then took an entire slice and shoved the whole thing in his mouth!! I'm thrilled....and I can't wait to pack up the other 2 and send them off in a package today. Wish I could see Robert's face when he opened that box.More about this tomorrow but I'm really thrilled that.............................................
In September I'm going to be attending the Scrapbook Expo!!

On sundays I get ready to mail out a package....

....and today I decided to make some brownies in a jar!! Thank you to everyone on my 3/3 Yahoo Group for all the tips and ideas on how to make these...I just had to run out and buy canning jars and give this a try to send to Robert. There are recipes on the internet but you can use regular cake mix too and I decided to try brownies, tomorrow Alex and I will test one of them to see how it turned out before I pack the box to ship out to Iraq.

Some new pictures of my scrap space

So I've had a few requests to see my scrap space and since the last time I took pictures some things have changed in here so I guess it was time to update with new pictures. First of all this is my desk where I email my friends, blog and post on the messages boards. I watch TV in here too, when I watch...which is usually only when American Idol and Dancing With the Stars are on...I don't really watch much tv at all.

The entrance to my room is to the right of my desk and just across the hall is Alex's bedroom so when he's going to sleep he can talk to me across the hall and it makes him feel safe if I'm in here. He usually will tell me, "Mom, go in your scrapbooking room please and stay there!" hahaha! :)

This is my cutting table where I have my paper trimmer, my Cricut, my Sizzix with 2 alphas (so far) and my Xyron PCS. I got the dust covers for those on Ebay, I love my Marines cover on my cricut! :) On my bulletin board I keep random stuff and pages that I like to look at. I have my first ever layout on there, it makes me laugh when I see how simple my first attempts were.


My other table where I sit and prepare and work on my layouts.You can see both of my tables from this angle. I love my lamp, it gives me a great amount of light for when I am scrapping and with my eyes, I need it!!!

The craziness that is my pegboard, I dump everything on there!!

My closet with all of my stickers and other supplies.

More storage, my punches, my scraps, my cardstock.

Here I keep pictures, albums and other things.

More layouts

Just thought I'd pop in and post a few more layouts from last weekend's crop. Here is a layout of me enjoying the animals and of course the strawberries at the festival....so delicious and with the chocolate you can't beat it!!
This is a 2 pager that I did from all the pics of Jesse and Alex that day. I bought this paper piecing kit and I really enjoyed putting it all together, especially the photo that I chose to put behind the barn door! HAHAHAHA!!!

A couple more for today

This is one I did of my favorite recipe to remember my pop. I like the way it turned out and it is going in my "Book of Me". This here is just a funny one I did from a photo I captured of Jesse and Alex at the farm in June. Jesse is so funny!!

New Music Tuesday!!

So today is new music tuesday and I picked up the new Constantine CD...finally!! That guy took forever to put out a record but I really like it and I've been enjoying it since I got it this afternoon. He was one of my favorites on American Idol and I went to the tour twice that year.

We had a Code Adam at work today and in the 4 years I've been working at the library that is the first time I was there when it happened but they found the little girl within 15 seconds of calling the code...thankfully!!

Here is another layout I did over the weekend at the crop.

Haven't blogged in a week!!

Wow, I can't believe I haven't blogged in a week!! It's been a busy and productive week especially in the scrapbooking dept. I took a 2 hour class at Scrapbook Delight and did a 2 pager for holiday photos! I love it, so cute. On saturday I went to a 16 hour crop in New Jersey and I packed 21 layouts in my box. By 8:00 I pretty much finished everything I had brought with me so I decided I might as well pack up and drive the 90 minutes home. I will remember to pack more stuff for the next time, that's for sure!! The food was great and I had a fantastic time scrapping with my friend Sandi, as always. We are going to a weekend crop next month and I can't wait for that!! 2 nights away from home with nothing to do but relax and scrapbook!! WHOO!! For now here is one of the layouts I completed on saturday, I'll post more during the week.