The Best of 2009

The Nester is hosting a Linky Party about your favorite posts of the year. Here are mine:

Withdrawals

Beautiful

I Saw the Sign...

Ragamuffin Garland
This one is especially for you Nester "birds" out there.

What a Bargain! Can You Throw in the Sign as Part of theDeal?

I've had a lot of fun blogging this year and reading all your blogs. Happy Blogging in 2010!

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Last Tuesday in 2009

One of the best gifts this year has been getting to know all of you from Tuesdays Unwrapped.

Thank you for sharing!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Whooosh!

I wanted to name this post: Just Yell "HELP!" Out the Window for Disaster Relief. But I knew I would feel guilty if someone who seriously needed disaster relief was misdirected by a Google search.

I'm calling this holiday mess - Hurricane Noel. And I'd say from the looks of it that she was close to a Category 4.

And it got even worse than these two pictures reveal because these were taken before our last gift collection. Don't worry, FEMA came in and helped clean up on Saturday.

Hello, just call this mama FEMA. It's nice to meet you. Oh! Brian helped, by-the-way; he did the kitchen.

And I have already begun taking down and storing the Christmas decorations. I don't usually do this until after January 1st but I was in a "putting things away" kind of mood (starting with the wrapping paper that was all over the dining room floor) and ended up taking down all the things off the mantle and I think I will take the tree and outside lights down tomorrow.


And in completely unrelated news:...

This was the turkey I cooked for Christmas Eve. Isn't she beautiful?

All my favorite bloggers (with the exception of Bye Bye, Pie!) have been taking a sort of Christmas holiday and I'm missing everyone. Hope you'll all be back in the groove real soon and if I don't see you before...

Happy New Year!

"You'll shoot your eye out"

Lady Bug and Baby Bug have been so fun this year and I've already warned them all (Cuddle Bug most of all) that this will not be the Season of Complaining. They have given their lists and I have checked them twice but they will not be getting everything on their lists. They will be quite spoiled, though, don't you worry.

June Bug asked repeatedly for Spike the Dinosaur this year. We told him several times, "It is much too expensive and we're worried that Baby Bug will be afraid of it." The thing stands 3 feet tall and makes noises and walks around and does who knows what else. I told him that he really needed to think of some things that he wanted more and to make sure those things were on his list. But when the big day came to tell Santa what he wanted he whispered in Santa's ear, "I want Spike the Dinosaur." Spike the Dinosaur had become our Red Ryder BB Gun! There was just no way I was NOT going to get it for him after that. So, I can hardly wait for his expression when he finds it under the tree tomorrow morning! And my wallet was so thankful to have gotten the crazy thing for $50 less than the original price! There are lots of surprises in store for them this year and so I will have to have my camera surgically removed from my hand this weekend.

I should really go get dressed and get the sleigh van packed. Cooking is all done and the children are clean and napping. The scents of Christmas dinner are wrapped around my head like a gauze - turkey and ham Mmmm. I can hardly wait to post pictures from tonight.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

My! My!

What a busy, busy three days! I fretted. I searched. To no avail. I rushed. I tried to relax. I let some things go. I had some 'splainin' to do. I had an apology to give. I finally did a little Christmas shopping. No, I'm not done. And, yes, Christmas is a mere 5 days away. I laughed. I enjoyed the company of friends. I enjoyed a visit from my dad. I cooked. I cleaned. I threw things in the closet. I ate a lot of goodies. Mmmm...English toffee....Thanks, Rick. I took a Korean address to my 87 year old aunt - because she can't hear the phone ring and certainly wouldn't be able to hear me spelling out every. single. word. She wasn't home. I checked in on my grandparents. XOXOXOXO! I put together 15 Christmas goody bags for our Kindergarteners. I forgot things. I lost things. I scolded. I hugged. I kissed. I went to sleep.

Good night, all.



ZZZzzzzzzz....

Long time no see.

Wow! Has it been5 days since I posted? I can explain.

The laptop cd-rom does not work at all so I haven't been able to download the new Nikon software onto it so I can't put my pictures there. I have been going to Brian's office to do anything with pictures and, as you can imagine, this is not in any way convenient. We have several computers that we are not using at the office but they have been sitting here at home useless because we have a nearly incompetent guy that works on our computers. (I wish he would get David Dean to do all of our computer-related stuff. Hi David! Thanks for helping Brian over the phone the other day.) None of them were working.... at all. So, after enough hen-pecking, complaining, belly-aching from me, Brian finally got the guy to "fix" one of them and that is what I am working on at the moment. Except that this reeeeally cheap keyboard is clacking and crashing with each stroke and the space bar doesn't work well and I had to take 10 minutes to change the screen resolution and it locks up every 20 minutes...

You get the idea.

Anyhow, I am hoping I can get back to some semblance of regularity on this here blog again.

I will post again tomorrow, hopefully. But right now I need to go help June Bug with homework, wrap 5 Christmas presents for the kids' teachers, decide what to make for dinner, go get a birthday present for a friend of Cuddle Bug's and then I need to collapse.

See ya later.

"Little" Brother

He'll hate me for saying it but, even though he's 8 inches taller than me, he's still my little brother. And he's 33 years old today! He's the one in that picture there wearing those fab green shorts. And that other little brother is probably the one that scratched out my face in the picture. But I'm not holding a grudge or anything.

Anyhow, that guy in the green shorts now resides in South Korea and is a teacher. !!! Who knew?! I miss him lots and can't wait to see him in a couple months. He's coming here - I only wish it was me going to see him. He's quite an accomplished traveller by-the-way. A couple of summers abroad in Spain and Chile and far-off Maine (or was it in New Hampshire?), time spent in Ireland and London and to states and cities I haven't seen yet.

He has two bachelor's degrees and is an avid reader and movie buff.

This is starting to sound like an on-line dating profile isn't it? Sorry, ladies, he's had a sweet steady gal for almost 6 years now. She's the reason he's in South Korea... grrrrr. (Just kidding, Erin!) (kind of)

Anyhow, I don't get to tease him in person so this post will have to do for the time being. I love you, Paul and

Happy Birthday!!!

Sweet Dreams

Lady Bug and Baby Bug had fallen asleep in the car last week and I sat with them in the car while they snoozed. They were asleep for over an hour! I love that if you look close enough there is a sticker on her shirt that says "Subluxation". Her chiropractor daddy will really appreciate that considering the posture she is in.

I haven't submitted anything to i heart faces in quite awhile. Mostly because I was so mad at my old camera and it seemed nothing was good enough. Notice I said "old camera"? For those of you visiting from Angie and Amy's site I've gotten a new camera and am loving the difference and have only just begun to explore it's possibilities. Now if only I could edit them! Crazy "computer guy". And I'm using that term very loosely. Hopefully, by next week I'll be able to load my pics onto a computer here at home where I will have photo editing software available. At the moment, I am having to take everything to Brian's office and loading them there but that's as far as I can get with them. It really stinks. Soon, though, soon.

And I'm sorry if this is the second time you've been here today; I don't usually post twice in one day. I might have to post a third time to link up to Chatting at the Sky for Tuesdays Unwrapped.

Just kidding.

Pioneer Woman in Atlanta

Have I mentioned before that I'm a big goober? Last night I turned into my worst nightmare...a drooling, incoherent groupie. I kicked myself all the way home (which was hard to do since I was driving). I may or may not have said something about Joey McIntyre. Yes, it was THAT bad! I think someone should write the book "The Idiot's Guide to Speaking to Semi-famous People Without Turning into Beavis or Butthead."

But I had a great time before all that happened!

On my way up to the 2nd floor of Border's I looked down and saw Kelli and Katie coming in for the signing too! So I didn't have to spend the whole night pretending that I was okay with being by myself! Hooray! Of course, I've never met a stranger and I'm certain I would have made a few new friends if already-established-friends had not shown up. We got our wristbands and then walked across the street to Target to eat; they have a Pizza Hut/Cafe Thing upstairs. Then we came back and Kelli and Katie watched I Love Lucy episodes from her iphone

and Kelli and I introduced Katie to Jen Yates (a.k.a. Cake Wrecks Fearless Leader). Katie and her husband make amazing cakes by-the-way. I'm certain none of their creations will be showing up on Cake Wrecks!

The four hours that we waited passed pretty quickly this way. I had been reading the posts from Dallas bloggers and was worried that I might not be getting home until the wee hours of the morning but I was determined that if I was going to the signing at all then I was DEFinitely coming home with my book signed. I am nothing if not stubborn. As it turns out, we left the premises a little after 10 p.m. and I was home before Brian fell asleep. He says the kids were awful at the office (I had to leave them with him for an hour at work) but that they were fine once they got home. Uh-oh. I hope this won't make it harder for me to get some more "Me-Time" the next time around.

There were lots of ladies and lots of mommies with their kids and a few brave men waiting to meet Ree. These girlies in front of us were such cuties!

Hooray! The end of the line! K and K were up first. They had brought these cute aprons to wear for their picture with P-Dub.

Isn't that adorable? It has the I Love Lucy scene from the chocolate factory on the pocket!

Then it was my turn. I must have left my brain on the shelf when I put away the books we had been looking at. Borders, if you find my brain will you please send me an e-mail and I'll be sure to pick it up some time this week.

Thanks, PW, for coming all the way out here to the ATL ...

and for not calling security to come and get me.

UPDATE: ... here.

What a difference a D makes.

Here are some early samples of what my new Nikon D60 can do. Look how crisp! Look at the balanced color! Look how it will focus off to the side and not just in the center! I'm so happy and this is only the beginning. I've only played with it in Automatic mode, No Flash, and in a few of the preset modes like Portrait. All of these images are SOOC (straight out of camera) with no editing done to them. I hope you can tell the difference in the quality of these pictures versus the ones I've taken in the past; I sure can. Oh, by-the-way, that is a bird's nest in one of the rose bushes. Poor little birdies; I kept walking by to take pictures of things in the backyard and they had to scatter every time I came by.

What a bargain! Can you throw in the sign as part of the deal?

Y'all er gonna luv this...
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Wayt fer it...
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Waaayyt fer it...
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BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHHAAHAHAAAA!!!!

Oh boy! (wiping away tears) That's classic. Happy Tuesday. Love y'all so much.

Thanksgiving '09

These days are over. For this year at least.

Because it is officially the Christmas season and Fall is nearly over.

These days are over too.

The days of letting the kids use my camera to take a gazillion pictures of whatever 8, 6, 4 and 2 year olds take pictures of.

The days of blurry, frustrating, useless pictures.

That one is so creepy.
Because Black Friday I found myself at Wolf Camera with cash in hand to buy this:
and there is no way I'm letting them play with this one.
I just can't post any of the beautiful photos I've taken since then because I can't download the coordinating software onto either computer so that I can transfer pictures from the camera to the blog. You'll just have to wait on pins and needles... which I'm certain you're not really doing.

But before Black Friday can arrive we have to have Thanksgiving first.

I hope yours was stress-free, drama-free, guilt-free, hope-full, heart-full, and joy-full.
Ours was most of those things. I'll let you guess which of the above descriptions I can't use for our Thanksgiving.
; )
I'll give you a hint: it starts with a 'd'. Right now I just don't feel at liberty to say why.
Maybe one day.