random stories and lots of pics.....

So sorry for not updating this blog for a while now. Just got a lot of things on my plate. Thankfully I'm not too busy with work that I actually get sometime on here to post what's been happening in our family lately.

There's so many things that've happened since the last entry so I apologize now for the randomness of this post.

1. Last week was a totally crazy week at work for me. Having to function with just about 5 hours of sleep didn't make me a happy camper. You're lucky to not be in my household. LOL. But thankfully things have slown down a little so I have some much needed quiet time.

2. My hours was way too crazy that it left me and Mitch no or little time to really spend time together so on the only day that I wasn't working (friday) we decided to go on a date. How sweet! We ate at Wood Ranch Grill. Sharing a big plate of BBQ beef rib and a rib eye steak. Yummy! The clam chowder was delicious too!!! The best part of it all, since it was divided into two, we didn't stuff ourselves too much. A great way to eat out!

After the dinner, we watched the movie "I am legend" of Will Smith. My opinion on the movie, good but scary. Way too scary to be a Will Smith movie. Too many zombie looking people. Haunted me for a while, it was even in my dreams the past couple of days. I thought the ending was a little disappointing and the dog died!!! Just not fair.

3. The following morning we had our breakfast with Santa at church. I didn't have any major role in the activity (which is good in a way) so I was able to enjoy the party. Of course I can't leave my camera at home so I towed it with me and all of a sudden it came handy cause I was asked to take pics of all the kids while they sat on Santa's lap. Here's Marcus and Santa. Maddie refused to sit on him. She did however tell him she wanted a doll. Cute!

4. So because of my crazy schedule we didn't get to do some of our annual christmas family traditions like visiting the temple to see all the lights or make our gingerbread house. We did manage to bake gingerbread men and then decorate them. Mind you the baking took place one day and then the decorating after about three days. Please cut me some slack, it was really hard to pull myself together to do it all at once. LOL.Here's some of the pics of that. I'm just looking at this first pic and I'm going aaaahhhh!!! didn't realize Maddie was holding a plastic knife while I'm taking this pic. What an awful mother am I!

Here's what our finish gingerbread men look like:

Maddie's Version. All she wanted to do was cover her cookie with all the decorations. Didn't even care if the guy had a face or not. LOL.

Marcus Version. Better than our 2 year old but the funny thing with him is that the decorations didn't last on his cookie for more than 2 minutes cause he would put them in his mouth. Funny kid.

Amanda's Version. She did a great job eventhough the icings were tough to work with.

Mama's Version. I did one too just for fun. Dig that red licorice hair? I was trying to be creative with what we have on hand. LOL.

5. Our Christmas was good. Didn't have too much money to splurge but the kids did get some great gifts from "Santa". Here Marcus lovin his transformer toy

And with Maddie, she didn't seem to thrilled with her gift which is this kitchen set. I didn't get any nice pics of her but she is NOW enjoying it. I think the box just didn't excite her as much as the stuff inside. Makes sense!

6. I got my gift early this year, my dslr camera, so I really wasn't expecting anything but I did get some happy mail before 25th which I treated as early christmas presents too. Woohooo! I got a scrapbook tool which I won on ebay, a book I got from my credit card rewards program, a magazine and stamps I bought at a steal of a deal and the january kit for Addicted Scrappers.com . Sooooo happy today. Speaking of the scrapbook kit, I already finished my projects/layouts for it and will post them here and at their website on the first of January so watch out for it. The kit is totally yummy! Chock full of KI memories Pop culture line.

7. And finally just a recent photo of me. The color is awful but I like it. Mitch took this while we were at Wood Ranch Grill having our dinner. I think he did an awesome job making me look pretty. *wink*. Gem, see my earrings? got that at Charlotte. Cool huh!

So that's it for now. I have a few calendar projects I wanna share but will do that probably tomorrow so watch out for that too. Oh and if you check this blog for crafty ideas, I need your opinions on what you want me to start posting in 2008. I'm not doing my monthly kit so I'll have some free time (I hope so) to venture into something else. Any comments will be greatly appreciated. Did you guys like the weekly project posting? Do you want that to continue on a weekly, monthly or bi monthly basis? Would you like tutorials too? Let me know okay.

Thanks for reading my long post. You guys have a fun and safe new year.

Grace