Spoke too soon

I'm no longer grateful...I'm off work today, sick parent and sick child. At least I managed to finish a page while both kids slept.


This was based off an Ad Challenge that Maribel started at TSR.


A sketch designed by Kim at TSR.


A complete lift from someone on-line I found while browsing but forgot to write down the name to give credit.

Whoohoo!

I rec'd an email from the Canon repair store in Cali yesterday that was wonderful news! They are able to fix my broken lens and it's gonna be FREE of no charge! Yeah!!! Totally made my day. Actually two other good things topped it off, I received a $10 gift certificate to Pizza Hut just for participating in a group discussion at work and I weigh 2 lbs less than I thought I did when I had to take my wellness exam for work, simple pleasures huh? Now if I could get my kids to sleep earlier at night, that would be wonderful!

I ordered Kenzie's birthday decorations and party favors from Oriental Trading and was quite surprised at how much stuff came in the box! I usually just buy it at party city or Target the last few years but spent half the amount for twice as much ordering it on-line. She is getting so excited for her party but we're going to postpone it until Easter Sunday when Aunt Kim and Uncle Ryan can come home to celebrate.

Our Butler

I'm thankful for

Good health and the kids not being sick lately. Everyone at work and their dogs have been sick for the last few weeks and surprisingly, our family is bug free. That's just amazing considering the weeks and weeks of downtime we did have in the past few months.

Last night Micah gave another hollering in the car ride home. Do all kids go thru phases of hating to sit in their car seats or is it just mine? He will literally cry the entire 15 minute ride home, tears streaming down his face and body flung to the side as far as his seatbelt will allow.

His favortie things these days:
- playing with playdoh
- still loves the vacuum cleaner
- dum dums
- watching wiggles (where's jeff) and cailou
- love the wiggles DVD song "hot potato"
- running outdoors & throwing pebbles
- bubble baths & showers
- he loves to play with Kenzie, calls sister, sister all the time
- favorite color is actually pink
- they were fighting for the backyardigan's Tasha doll the other day
- loves his milk

Makenzie's favorites:
- playing hide & seek (count to 3 she tells me)
- loves eating her veggies
- loves to wear her sweaters with hoodies and front pockets
- thinks she's a big girl & wants to sit shotgun
- still needs her blankie
- talking more & more Laos
- loves sushi seaweed wraps

A Fun COLD Day!

I've never been sledding before, ever. This was my first experience. It was very cold today but the wind chill wasn't bad so we took the kids outside in our slopey backyard. The darn thing is a pain to mow in the summer but it works perfect for a little anthole of a hill to slide down. The kids had a blast! Yes that is a swimming pool floatie... we improvised.

And good news, my camera flash all of a sudden started to work when I tried to take these pictures! Let's see if it continues. :)

No scrapbooking for me again, I filed taxes and did more accounting work in the little spare time I had.

Not my week

This just has NOT been my week.

1.) I'm in a prima essentials flower swap & my order did not arrive until the date they were due to the hostess so I was frantic about that all week

2.) My 50mm 1.8 camera lens broke. I think Kenzie may have stepped on it in the car the other day so I had to send it in, it's still under warranty but I have no high hopes of them fixing it for me & it was my favorite lens to use.

3.) Then I find out my camera flash is not working. I get the Error 5 which means something obstructed the built-in flash's automatic pop-up operation. I called Canon's support & they couldn't help me either. Good thing I purchased the 5 year warranty but I am so scared to ship my camera off to have it fixed. What am I going to do with no backup camera? I still have my old point & shoot but haven't used that in 4 years.

4.) I haven't slept good in days. Micah thinks it's funny to wake up at 1am and not go back to bed until 4am for the last two nights.

5.) After considering where to cut costs, we have to let the cleaning lady go. We hired her only a few months ago and it's been such a blessing for me. Working FT and taking care of two kids on my own on the weekends, I could never fit in time to clean the tubs and floors but now I'll really have to make time. (Maybe I could do it from 12 to 1am in the morning)

Well, that's it. Let's pray for a better week.

Poor

Lam always makes the comment that we're dirt poor jokingly but after reconciling the checkbook, this may be the first time I'll have to agree, our balance is at an all time low. So many big bills have hit all at the same time: the mortgage, home r/e taxes, insurance and I paid the majority of our car loan a couple months back so that's what really contributed to the change in addition to the huge CC bill from Christmas. The good side is it's all paid off & tomorrow is payday but I've got to really start budgeting our expenses so we can build up our savings again. So depressing...

Guess I'm going to have to stop taking on-line classes for a while and maybe even skip my kits. I had some other thoughts i wanted to blog about but this is such a hard realization to take in.

Party Preparations

I'm trying to decide where to have Kenzie's 3rd b-day party. I think we're going to get her a big trampoline for the backyard. During the summer, there's not too many things for them to do outside unless we take them to the park or swimming pool. It's only 2 1/2 weeks away, I made some calls to pump-it-up and we're considering having it there. I'd rather have it at home but don't want to cook for 50 and feel bad about asking mom & my aunt to cook like they did for her 1st and 2nd birthday parties.

Micah is forming words into sentences now. Kenzie was holding a box of bagel bites on the way to grandmas yesterday and he pointed to it saying "I want to eat" and this morning I was putting my pantyhose getting ready for work and he repeated "Hose". He's also loving to take showers recently. Too much. Everynight he'll try to pull his own shirt off and drag either Lam or I into the bathroom.

I'm going to take Kenzie to the Wichita Dance Academy tomorrow night for a trial run of their ballet and tap classes to see if she likes it. Some fun activities the kids have planned - Arianna has a birthday party this Sunday at the bowling alley and we're taking the kids to see Sesame Street Live in a couple weeks. It'll be good to get out of the house on weekends. Hope the weather cooperates and start warming up but today it's forecasted freezing rain.

I heard from my sister yesterday after her 1st doctor's appt, I'm going to be an auntie around Sept 24th. I'm so happy for them, I remember how excited I was with my first pregnancy...I have 2 full scrapbooking albums to show it and this was before the birth!

Taxes, taxes...

and more taxes! I spent 6 hours filing income taxes yesterday and I'm not even halfway thru the family's yet. I did finish everyone's that had already given me their info but still waiting on the rest of them.



I only had time to srapbook one layout on Friday night. I haven't even touched my new Scarlet Lime kit yet, I so need to sign up for another crop.

Kenzie & I dyed easter eggs yesterday, she wanted to color eggs after seeing the photos from last easter in her scrapbook. Micah is being a pill lately! I'm having the hardest time getting him into the carseat & he'll cry the whole ride home.

Two more

"The booster" layout is a free cosmo cricket kit I rec'd from the Scrap-room for being January's Diva. What a great prize!

Happy Valentines!

Micah was up at 5am this morning so I finally had time to upload my layouts. The first 3 layouts were from February's TSR kits, a scraplift from "Viki Boutin and Brenda Carpenter (love their work). And the last two are sketches from NYCScraps, Scrap your everyday Life class #9 and #10.

My dear husband just sent me an email at work wishing me a happy valentines and attached the confirmation # for my gift....I'm getting my camera flash, whoohoo! He just ordered it last night according to the date on the receipt but can't fault the man, at least he's making an effort and I've been wanting one for the longest time. We went to the mall last night and got the kids some candy and clothes. Kenzie, a purple addidas outfit and Micah a green jacket.

Ssshhh... shooting in process

It's nice to have an office with four walls and a door you can close, I'm the only one with an office, the others in my dept are in open cubicles. If they only knew what I'm doing on my lunch break behind my closed door. I set up my camera on a stack of books, set the timer and am taking a dozen shots to get one decent one for the layout about me & my work I have in mind for Debbie's Scrap yourself class. :) The sample class handout is available, class starts March 7th! Check it out here

Sayings

Just trying to jot down the things my kids have been saying lately, I need to keep a pen and paper handy because there's more than this but I forget already!

Micah @ 16.5 mos- Night night, pepi (pepsi), candy, Daddy (finally), boot boot (vacuum), bubble, light, molk (milk), juice

Kenzie- "I don't love brother, I want to throw him in the trashcan"; "Momma, why brother not talking to me?" ; "my nose no work momma, I can't breath", "Yucky tucky"

Scrappin - I finally got time to work on a layout last night sometime after 11pm. I finished my sketch #10 for scrap your everyday life at NYCscraps and then started digging into my FancyPants kit from the scrap-room. Hopefully my picture order from scrapbookpictures.com comes in the mail tonight so I can add them. Gosh I miss being able to print my photos from home, when Lam messed up the computer with his downloads, the print function on my PSE 5.0 is not letting me select quality print photos. Wish I was a computer guru to figure it out.

Got milk?

I didn't and it sure made one heck of a frustrating day for me. Yesterday I took the kids to mass with my parents. They were up since 7am and mass was 11am-12:15 so Micah was sooo ready for his nap. He was asking for milk while we were in church and I didn't have any. I just gave him some before we left the house and it was the last of the carton. Ong went out to the car and got him the juice and water but...nope. Only milk would do and he was crying so loud I had to leave in the middle of service. I drove hime to QT and realized that in my rush to get the kids ready this morning I left my purse at home so I called Lam to meet me at the gas station (he was at the carlot). We bought a small bottle of milk but he wouldn't take it out of his sippy cup either so there goes another crying spout. Lam bought him a tootsie roll sucker & that finally made him stop crying for a little so the only solution was for me to drive all the way back home to get the bottle then back to church for the new years celebration after mass. When he woke up from his short nap he was all happy again and dancing to the music. Kenzie was scared of the dragons but after I explained to her they were people dragons and it was just a costume she was okay...but still scared.

Aunt Kim and Uncle Ryan mailed their tax returns for me to file and gave us some t-shirts from their trip to New York. The kids got some huge pencils and Kenzie got her Tasha that she's been wanting since Christmas. We hung up the Ikea tubular mesh organizer and stuck each of the backyardigans into their own little sleeping spot.

New Layouts

I've only scrapped like one day out of this whole week and I'm just now getting the chance to upload. The second layout is from my class at NYCScraps - scrap your everyday life except I"m using it to catch up on my gazillion and one christmas photos. The last layout was a pagemaps sketch.

Tet

Tet = Chinese New Years...which is today!

I am horrible at speaking Vietnamese even though I was born there and am getting worse and worse at it since I never speak it to anyone besides my parents and sometimes aunts and uncles. I'm like a one year foreign language student. I understand & speak just enough basics to get by. Since today is New Years we are supposed to call all the relatives and wish them well. I lost my cheat sheet, the one my mom wrote for me a couple years ago so thank goodness for GOOGLE and the world wide web! At least I know how to read vietnamese. Here is the greeting I used and hopefully it'll still be saved here for when I need to refer to it next year!

"Năm mới con chúc thanh cong, suc khoe, binh anh, nhat la hanh phuc trong nam moi va suot doi"

ban ;friend
gia dinh [pronounced "yah dinh"or "za dinh"]; family
va; and
thanh cong; success
suc khoe[ pronounced "su quair"]; health
binh anh; peace
nhat la; esspecially
hanh phuc; happyness
trong; within
nam moi; new year[ litterally -"year new"]
va suot doi; and throughout [their] lifes..

AKA: My store

Kenzie is 4 weeks shy of turning 3 years old and she is really good at recognizing streets and places. She knows the way to gymnastics. She knows the way to Grandpa's car lot. She knows the way to our church. And this morning she said the funniest thing. We drove by scrapfunattic and she says "That's yours Mommy" LOL! Now it's known as "my" store. I did just take her there last night to buy all the diva prizes I'm giving away for the challenges at the scrap-room.

I'm sick mommy

This was the verse I heard a dozen times from like 1am til 4am. Here's a recap of my night:

8:30pm - Just got home, showered & I crashed in Micah's room with both kids
1:30am - Micah wakes up wanting milk, which wakes Kenzie up telling me she's sick and wants medicine (husband is still snoring away)
2:00am - Both kids still awake, Micah wants to go downstairs & play so we do
2:30am - Kenzie gets a stomach ache so we sit in the bathroom together for awhile
3:00am - Bring them back to bed & turn on the DVD player for them
3:30am - I fell asleep but apparently Micah was still up, he woke me up when the DVD was done telling me to "play, play" again.
4:00am - Kenzie wakes up crying that she's hot and sick (she is burning up) I bring her to our bed and she sleeps with Lam
6:30am - alarm rings and it's time to get ready for work

I'm really rethinking my long term goals of having a 3rd child someday.

Superbowl Weekend

So I didn't watch any of the superbowl. Not even the commercials. We went over to Lam's friend's house for the party but while he was downstairs with the guys watching the game, I was upstairs with the wives watching the kids.

Saturday I went over to mom's to deliver some orchids in celebration of chinese new year's this week. Every year I seem to do something wrong. Last year I made the mistake of buying a purple mum, purple is bad luck I find out...flowers need to be white or red or yellow. I also gave the candy trays, and they said no one eats those anymore. So this year I got some white orchids from Dillons but most of them had one or two buds that were wilted. I have two kids in tow with me at all times, I didn't have time to search Wichita for some better looking plants but my parents made the effort in telling me next time go to Thai Binh or even Lowes for some better ones. Oh well.

Had my annual women's wellness appt this morning then had lunch at the Old Mill Tasty Shop with some g/f's to plan Amy's bridal shower coming up in June. Her rock is huge! And the wedding invitation list is 650, holy cow, this will be one big shindig!

Cards

I'm not a card maker. Nope...I don't know why, it should be just as easy as doing a layout but I have the hardest time with it. I've rec'd a lot of handmade cards from my scrap friends and really enjoy getting them so I think I'm going to make the effort to make more this year. I was asked to join a card swap and February was our first month. We send out homemade cards to 6-7 different people each month and get that many in return from different people. This month's theme was Love, marriage, or anniversary. Here's my card which will go postal tomorrow! The girls in the swap have set up a blog site where we can see all of our creations here at Card chicks