Christmas 2008

The girls made out like bandits again this year at Christmas. They came over to our house later Christmas Day, after they had been with their mom's families and recieved presents all day long. The highlight of Abby's presents were the Littlest Pet Shop animals. She got a large box of them, and when she opened them we found out that she got them earlier that day from someone else in her family. O well, now she will a set to play with at our house. jeez, this is too much to keep straight :)

Sabrina got a sewing machine from her grandmother so from Santa at our house she got some remnants as well as some simple patterns so she will be able to learn to sew, as well as a gift card to JoAnn fabrics. I'll have to go help her spend it :)

Our family gift this year was 3 sleds and the Muppets second season set of DVD's. I got Sean the first set of Muppets last year and the girls loved it and watch it more than we do, so we thought it would be a great idea to get the next season.
Last year we tried to go sledding on innertubes and they popped and when we went to get sleds they were gone, none to be found anywhere. In January. gotta love retail. So this year Santa brought them. And it was 60 degrees on Christmas Day, and 65 on Friday and Saturday and 65 when we woke up this morning. And no, we don't live down south or in California, we live in the NORTH!!! I'm really hoping for snow sometime soon, so we can try out our new sleds. Maybe I shouldn't say that too loud, we'll end up buried like the poor people in New England.

Project Number 500 million-gazillion :)

My sister wanted handmade grocery bags for Christmas. Not sure why handmade, when you can get them at most stores for $0.99. I'm guessing mine will last lots longer, other than that I can't see why. But I thought I'd try one, just to see what would happen.

The bag on the right is the one from the grocery store that cost me a dollar. The one on the left is the one that I made out of denim and canvas. I thouht it turned out pretty well. After I took the picture I found some cardboard, put 2 layers together and then put denim over it and put it in the bottom so the bottom was sturdy and square. I was going to make 2, but once again, I misjudged how long it would take me to make them and didn't leave myself enough time. oops. So, maybe she will get the other one for her birthday.

Christmas cookies

I love making cookies and Christmas gives me a great excuse to make lots of them of many varieties! Today I finished 2 more batches to add to the 4 I did yesterday, all the while listening to Christmas music. The ever popular "party cookies" aka M&M cookies, and no bakes. 2 of my fave's that Sean doesn't like :) More for me. It cracks me up that I make certain ones only during the holidays. Like the orange cookies (which still don't taste as good as when Mom makes them), or the cherry nut nougats. I mean, those two are my most favorite and I really only make them once a year.

I think it might have something to do with the face that I have no one to help me eat them. Sean is a boring cookie person, he likes chocolate chip, and that is it. He is not a big cookie eater, and neither is Abby. Sabrina would help me, but I would probably eat them all before she got here. So, I don't make a lot of cookies during the year. sigh. So, for the last 2 days I have been living off cookie dough and loving it. yum, yum. It reminded me of when we were little and Mom would have the entire dining room table covered with newspaper and wax paper covered with cookies. And I would be sneaking in the kitchen to eat the dough out of the bowl. Yeah, like she didn't know that was what I was doing. The best cookies where the sugar cookies that we would frost. My favorite cut outs where the Charlie Brown ones, as well as the huge Snoopy dog house, although they never looked as good once you got the frosting on them. The cookies would be all over the table and we'd frost them using pastry bags, trying to follow the lines that were on the cookies. I might get around to some of those tomorrow. But they are soooo much work, I'll have to see how motivated I am when it comes to frosting. I might just have to do baked on sprinkles.

I think some memories might have been from the Mitch Miller CD I had in I (which Sean can't stand), or maybe it was Alvin and the Chipmunks. Both of which we would put on the record player (yes, the record player) and listen too over and over again while making cookies. Mom would actually limit the number of times Alvin was allowed to go on the turntable :) Ah, the memories.

Time to trim the tree

Since finals are now over we had time to decorate the tree so Sean put on the lights and the girls put on the decorations. While they did this tree, I put the lights on 2 of mine, didn't have time to decorate, but I'll get to that. And of course Abby was in the Christmas spirit :)I always love how when the girls decorate and most of the ornaments end up in one area.

While decorating the tree I remembered Christmas's from when I was little. I also was thinking about after reading my sister's blog and having a reminder of what we used to do. I remember one year we had a tree that was bigger around than it was tall. It was the ugliest tree, really it was, but we made it look beautiful, at least to a 5 year old it looked beautiful. We got it out of our back field and it was ours. If you remember last years post, I have at least 5 trees, all decorated, all with lights. I wonder all the time why I have a thing for Christmas trees. I think back to the few years when my dad wouldn't let us have a tree. We have no idea why, but he decided that we weren't going to have a tree and that was that and it went on for several years. Until we were older and got one of our own and he got mad. So maybe those years without a tree have caused me to hoard trees cause yet again this year I have 5 trees, 2 big ones, and 3 little ones.

Ways to torture your dog

I found these great antlers at Target. The dog is so big that I had to get him a headband for a person because they don't make antlers for dogs his sizw. As you can tell, he Loves the attire :) but he won't take them off, he just leaves them on. He is resigned to his fate, and hoping none of the neighbor dogs see him in this getup! Now, if I could just get the cat to hold still.

Abby put them on Sean, he loved them as well. Can't you tell :)
And then there is Abby, need I say more :)

Reasons why I haven't updated the blog in a while....

A # 1 reason right here, these would be my books, yeah, the big pile on the top right. That would be my pile. ugh.

This would be reason #2, although, households chores really fall by the wayside. The laundry basket has so many cloths in it because I don't do them often enough. And then there are my projects, and boy I have TOO many of them! Heather O gave me this great idea to make a quilt out of my old jeans, so I have gotten them cut into squares. That is about as far as I've gotten so far.

Then there are the Christmas projects that I have decided to do, this is just a couple, both of which are done or almost done. The stocking is going on the front door, I'm going to put something in it, but am not sure what.

The in-laws are in town and bought some McIntosh apples, the kind that I love, and only show up in the fall. So I made a case of applesauce. YUM. The way we've been eating it, it won't last for long. And that covers some of the what I have been doing. Oh, yeah, I work at Target, too. I think that about covers it now. I can't wait until the semester is over and I can have some time to relax. HA. whatever that means.

You know you're tired when....

you are sitting at the kitchen counter and griping to your husband that the bags under your eyes are big enough to carry a months worth of luggage and your loving step-daughter chimes in " yes, I see them right there," and proceeds to point them out. Time for a nap :)

Happy Halloween

It's that time of year again. Time to kill the pumpkins and carve them up. The best thing is listening to the girls talk about their pumpkins screaming because they are getting poked or cut, or getting their brains scraped out. It always reminds me of "The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," when Lucy is carving the pumpkin and Linus acts as though he is the one getting his insides removed. Funny girls. Hard at work poking dots in the outside so that they can cut along the lines.

Sabrina hates the yuckiness inside the pumpkin, so she insists on wearing gloves. She eventually takes them off, not sure what the initial gross out factor is, but she gets over it. Abby doesn't mind the grossness, and digs in with gusto. And never fails to get the stuff all over her cloths. The finished products. Looking nothing like the originals. Sometimes I think their adlibs are better :)

Abby's Surprise Birthday Party

Yesterday was Abby's birthday, so we decided to throw her a surprise party. We invited the girls from her sunday school class over to surprise her. Luckily one weeks notice wasn't too short and everyone was able to come. Sabrina and I went last night and picked up all the decorations and the cake for the party. I had about 45 minutes to decorate while Sean had Abby out of the house, picking up pumpkins to carve.
We had the girls paint small pumpkins when they first got there, and then they got to make their own little pizza with dough I made.
Abby was SO surprised when she came up the stairs. She had no idea we were having a party for her. I wish I would have got that picture, but I was the lookout for the girls and had to tell them when Abby was coming up the stairs. The best part was when she asked us if her friend Sammy could come over and we had to tell her no, that is was last minute and not possible. Meanwhile we knew that Sammy was going to be there in about 2 hours. It was so hard to keep a striaght face:)
Abby's new favorite thing is "Camp Rock" so she was really excited about this t-shirt one of her friends gave her.

My crazy life

Man, I hadn't realized it's been this long since I've posted anything on here. You'd think I was busy or something :) Let me just tell ya, engineering is a hard major. No wonder I almost flunked outta school my first semester in college. And yes, I actually did almost flunk out. I started out in civil engineering. I guess I should have stopped partying long enough to study and stuck with it, then I wouldn't be back in school when I'm 35!!!! Good grief. So, just so everyone knows, the house looks like a bomb went off, most days. Can't help it. If I'm home I'm doing homework, and not much else. Who'd a thought I'd be doing so much MATH!! All I do is MATH, I'm so incredibly sick of math. The worst part about this semester is that I have sucky professors. I mean really sucky professors. One is young, once he gets the hang of things, I think he will be good. We kinda lucked out getting him, he grades REALLY easy :) I talked to another guy in one of my grad classes and he got his undergrad degree at YSU and said there used to be a lot of good prof's there, then they retired. And now they can't find anyone else cause, who wants to move to Youngstown. Uh, yeah, he has a point. And what is with the lack of women in this field. In all my classes there are only, on average, 4 girls/women, in my classes. that is including me. I say girls cause they are at least 15 years younger than I am, adult they may be, but they are still young:) So that about covers my life right now. I have no time for anything other than school. Oh, yeah, and the 18 hours I'm still working a week at Target. ha. Running has even gone by the wayside. Although, part of that is due to a really crappy cold that turned into a lovely case of bronchitis. I love the Burgh, have I mentioned that before. I actually was able to get the Halloween decorations up, I'll have to post some pics, when I get time to take them :) Oh, yeah, this is going to be fun.

An evening with Sister Beck

Even in this neck of the woods we occasionally get someone from the Relief Society General Presidency. Once every 5 years or something, but they do come. Last night we had a great evening with Sister Beck. She said she wanted it to be our meeting, so she opened it up for questions. Most of the questions could be answered in the same way, prayer, faith and knowing "the plan". She was great. The best quote of the night was this (it might be a little paraphrased, I couldn't write fast enough) "We were not sent here for "the dream," what we were promised was "an experience," to help us grow and develop into the people we need to become to have eternal life." I think that about covers it.

We live Where?

Last night I went to bed early, had to get up early to go to work. You know, that 4am thing:) But! I was woken up by the terrible wind that was blowing outside. It was after 10:30 before I finally got to bed. And this is what I woke up to this morning. This would be our front yard, it was 10 times worse in the back yard, but I forgot to take a picture. This is the neighbor's crab apple tree, or it was anyway. Part of it got blown down, not sure what they are going to do with the rest of it.

And this is another neighbors yard. They actually had 2 trees come down. There were several trees down, just in the 3 miles from the house to work. And power was out everywhere. The school kids got lucky, they had a 2 hour delay, if their school wasn't cancelled. And all this destruction... it came from Hurricane Ike. Yes, we live in the midwest and get hammered by 70mph gusts of wind from a HURRICANE!! jeez, just when you thought you were safe. I guess we can be considered blessed, the last time the remnants of a hurricane went through we just about drowned, this time, no rain. So we were a little bit lucky.

The Wilds, part II

The carnivore enclosure had Cheetahs and African wild dogs. Both of which are endangered. There was a worker there that was talking about what they get fed and how they feed them and interact with them. She said that they will actually go into the Cheetah area in pairs, but will never go into the wild dog area. The dogs are more likely to attack and tear you apart. Nice to know, eh. The dogs are being killed by people, who moving into their habitat, and the dogs are eating the people's goats, (well, duh) while the Cheetahs are being killed by poachers, for their fur, mostly. This is some type of Oryx, which is in the Antelope family. They have about 5 types of antelope here. There is one that is used as a surrogate for other antelope, which helps increase the other populations quicker.
For those of you that saw the carp pictures from Pymatuming lake, here are some catfish. They have the same mentality, since there is fish food and people feed them constantly.
This is the white Rhino. Our tour guide says they aren't white at all, but the Dutch word for wide mouth sounded like white, hence the name.
They have an area that is called the perimeter area where they have animals native to North America only. They have Bison and a few others that they have put in there, and then they have the ever popular white tail deer, who knows where it's safe. They have even had a bobcat move into the park.
This was an awesome trip. We really had a great time, and it was worth the 2&1/2 hour drive. We are thinking we might go again in May so we can see the babies after they are born. At least one of the guides said that was when they have babies to look at. They also have a butterfly area, although we didn't go see it. We went on the air conditioned busses and got dropped off at different areas, then got back on a different bus whenever they were available. For a little more money, you could get on a "safari" bus, with no sides and a canvas over top. No air conditioning, but the bus waited for your group until everyone was done looking at whatever was in the area. Maybe next time we'll have to expand our trip, now that we know all the little details.

Who'd a thunk?!

In the middle of the lovely state of Ohio, there is this really cool place called The Wilds. This is a picture of just some of the land that they have. From the 1940's to 1970's it was all strip mined for coal. After they were done they started reclamation and then donated to The Wilds. It took 10 years after the donation before the park opened in 1996. They have all kinds of rare and endangered animals from all over the world here. They are part of an captive breeding program to increase populations of certain species and release them into the wild. They have tour busses that go around the park and drive right up by the animals.
Here are the Asian Rhino's, ain't the little one cute:)
Giraffes, if you couldn't tell. There are actually 3 kinds here, the reticulated, the Rothschild, and the Messi (Messiah, with out the -ah sound). Amazing. They told us the differences, it has to do with their spot pattern, but I can't remember which is which, although I think these are the reticulated. They told us that they will go up to the fence and not move until they get treats. When they stand in front of the gate, none of the tour busses can get through, so someone has to come out and lure them away from the gate. Smart animals!
This sign was in the carnivore enclosure. Sean and I got a big kick out of it, mainly cause it made it seem like they were more worried about the animals :) The fences are actually pretty high and seem hard to climb. I say seem, cause next thing you know, some knuckle head will try to climb them.

Be fruitful and multiply

While I'd like to be talking about myself, nope, it's just the tomatoes that are outta control. Can't wait until they all ripen. I'm hoping that they ripen in batches, so I have time to do something with them, otherwise they will be rotting, and I will be upset. As you can see, they have escaped their confines, and are growing all over the place. There is actually a green pepper plant in the middle of the mess that has a pepper on it. I have to rethink the arrangement for next year. These are a few of the fruits of my labors. The yellow one is supposed to be that way, but we've only had one so far. Can't wait to see the rest of them. I'm hoping we get enough Roma's that Sean can make some yummy sauce. He made some Italian "salsa" with these. Oh, yeah, it was yummy!! He doesn't know it's all gone and he needs to make some more:)

It's a little too early for this!

I know that September 1st is next week, but COME ON!! Yes, this would be my front yard where all these leaves are. I guess that is what I get for living in the Burgh! However, I do have to stick up for the trees :) It's been really dry the last month or two, so part of the reason the leaves are falling off is because there is no water. And now it has rained for 2 straight days. Love it, I tell ya, love IT!! I have to admit, though, I have been looking forward to fall, that crisp smell in the air, leaves crunching underfoot, and pumpkin carving time. However, I could have waited a few more weeks for that, at least 3! O well. I tried to take a picture of a tree in our neighborhood that is actually turning red already, but my camera stinks, the lighting was bad, and I figured is someone saw me over there, up close, taking a picture of their tree, they might think I'm a freak. We all know this, but I don't think I need to broadcast it to the people around here!

Classes have started

Ah, the joy of being in school. It's like I never left. Oh, wait, that's cause I haven't! Sean was griping about how easy it was for me to take classes, and as I was trying to calm his fears of taking ONE class, I realized, out of 15 years since high school, I have been in one class or another for EIGHT years! Okay, so that is more than HALF! Good grief, no wonder I am broke. And does that qualify as a professional student?! But, hopefully, this will be the last time and I will get the degree I want so I can do what I want. I can't wait to be done. So far, classes seem to be okay. One professor needs to go out and buy a personality somewhere, but I actually feel sorry for him, because I think it's mostly becuase he is very nervous and has no clue how to teach. oy. I actually picked up one more class, so I now have 15 credit hours, 4 undergrad classes and 1 graduate level. I found out from one of the professors that if I didn't have all the undergrad classes doen this semester there was no chance at all of getting a TA position for next semester. So, I'm taking all the undergrad classes at once to get them out of the way, on the off chance that there might be a TA position available in the spring. Pray that there is, I need it. For those that are wondering what a TA is, it's a teaching assistant and I would be teaching a class unrelated to the ones I would be taking. They'd probably be in the Environmental Science department or something. Who knows, I might even just be helping a proffesor grade papers. I could do that. The whole bummer part is that I have to drive an hour to and from class every day. I hate sitting in the car that long, and it's on a toll road most of the way. Which is good, and it's bad. I'll be done next December, I'll be done next December, I have to keep telling myself that, or I will go crazy!

The next Carrie Underwood

If you have a horse, a guitar and a hat, how far away could a country singing career be?! Abby put the hat on first, then went upstairs to get the horse and the guitar. The best part is that she sings all the time. A lot of the time she will be singing her own songs that she has made up. There is a video of her plunking on the guiter, but for some reason it won't load, once I can get it on, you'll see for yourself:)

The stress is....um, over?

Okay, so the stress of getting INTO school is over. It took over 4 days and hours on the phone to FINALLY get what I wanted from Youngstown state. Oy! I am now in 4 classes, only 1 of which is an actual graduate level class. I won't bore you with all the details, but let me tell ya, I have no idea how that university functions! Someone needs to work on their communication skills over there! So now I will start class in 2 weeks. All I have to do now is get an "Easy Pass" since my trip will be on a toll road, and get a parking permit for campus. What fun:) Not. i'm just glad I was able to get into all the classes I needed to. I'm on a schedule here and they are messing with it! So now I will be done next December, not July like I had hoped. It could have been done if there had been better communication from the professor, but that is water under the bridge at this point and I can't do anything about it now. So, on with the next challenge:)

Camping 2008 day 2

Of course no camping trip is complete without some fishin'! Sean and the girls went while I went over to the grocery store to pick up the things we forgot and some ice for the cooler. Abby wasn't catching much of anything and so she got bored and started playing with some sticks that were near the rocks. And of course, they were burnt and she got ashes all over her face:)
And when you go to Pymatuning Lake you have to go to the spillway and feed all the nasty carp.
My sister, brother-in-law and nephew were able to meet up with us while we were there. Bobby had never done this before and thought it was great! Here he is dropping bread from the hole in the bridge.
This is what the carp look like. Gross, ain't it?! Someone threw a large loaf in the water and they were all fighting for it.