Why do I do this?

Today, I was supposed to have spent all day in the car. Unfortunately, a biggin storm blew in last night and in order for us to get home, we would have needed chains to get through the mountains. We ended up staying here another day and tomorrow, I get to spend the whole day in the car! CAN'T WAIT!!! So, with extra time on my hands, and nowhere to go (it is Sunday with snow everywhere afterall), I worked on a project... a project that involved sewing... lots of sewing... lots of steps... lots of pins, ironing, ribbon, etc... and this project took me ALL DAY!

The project itself did not need to be so time consuming, but I'm a bit of a freak and instead of making "some", I made 35. That's right, THIRTY-FIVE. It would have been more, but I cut a TON of them out wrong. I had gone to the store last night and bought a few different patterns of material. This project doesn't require lots of material, and I didn't want to waste any of it, so I just kept cutting them out! I can't believe I made that many... I don't even have this many friends! Actually, I do plan on keeping 5 of them for myself, considering I invested an entire 24 hour time period to making them! All I can figure is that when I get in "craft mode," I'm always mass producing things. Card exchange and stamp club require me to make 10 of every card I design/copy. I send out over 80 Christmas cards each year. Making little gifts for teachers requires at least 4. In the least, it's understandable that I would make a bunch, but I definitely went overboard!

So, why haven't I told you what I made? Because I made 35 of them and will need to be giving them to people. I honestly don't know how many people actually read this silly little blog (I'm sure not many), but I wouldn't want to spoil any potential surprises since I'll be using as many of them as possible as Christmas presents.

Ah well, at least they're done (well almost!). I could have spent the whole day reading or watching football like Paul did, so I don't consider it time wasted. I do feel satisfied that I spent the day doing something creative and I'm now quite comfortable with operating a sewing machine!

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

We're here in Colorado for Thanksgiving and I'm so glad! I realized yesterday that it has been FOUR years since I've been home for Thanksgiving dinner. I'm not going to disrespect the delicious turkey dinners I've had at the Croshaw's the last 3 years, but there's nothing like the food you grew up with. My dad pretty much makes the entire meal (with TONS of support, of course) and he's an excellent cook. The food I'm most looking forward to, even if it may only be a couple bites, is the yams, the stuffing, and the pumpkin pie. As Charlie would say, "mmmm, mummy!"

I went running yesterday morning with Paul and again this morning to help me feel better about the fact that I'll be going WAY over my point allotment today! I'm not going to worry about LOSING any weight at next weeks weigh-in, but I really don't want to have to RE-LOSE any weight that I've already lost. I'm up to 22 lbs now and want to keep it that way.

So, considering this is a Thanksgiving day post, it would be logical for me to list some of the things that I'm thankful for, but I probably do that too much on this blog anyway. I'll just say, I'm grateful to know in advance that 1 piece of pumpkin pie is 9 points. Knowledge is power!

I hope you all have a fantastic holiday with your families!

Pictures are here!

I love picture day at school! At my kid's charter school, each family is requested to donate at least 40 hours of volunteer hours and I make it a point to get some volunteering done on picture day! I lucked into this 3 "picture days" ago (Spring 07), and though it's a pain, it's worth it because, you see, those who volunteer get their pictures for FREE! This year, a package offered the option to get a CD with the digital files, so I got them and have been playing with the pictures and some free digital scrapbooking stuff I've downloaded. Take a look:

Here's Andy's cute picture. I love that he's smiling big enough to see his missing front teeth! I also love his bright eyes and how happy he looks. What a sweetie!I love Canon's picture too, but I wish I would have been standing nearby when they took it so we could have tried another one with a bigger smile. He's also missing his two front teeth! Ah well, I'm sure they'll still be missing next year, too. But I love this picture because it is just SO Canon. My funny, little, squinty-eyed, mischief-maker!Charlie's picture here just makes me burst with joy inside! He was NOT going to smile at this photographer, but she was doing her thing, trying to get him to laugh, trying to get me to laugh, etc., and this awesome little grin is what she captured! She asked if this is his normal smile and I said, "no, but I love it!" Ornery toddler pictures are the best!

So, here are my cute boys on display. I've been having lots of fun with the digi-scrapping and think I'll send these pages off to Walgreens today to be printed. I'm dying to see if they come out clear and sharp. I also wanted to say, since we got the package with the CD, we also got a TON of pictures (it was the biggest package of course). So if any one wants us to send you pictures of our little boys, just let me know (I'm assuming only family members may take me up on this!)... I can throw them in with your Christmas card!

I'm award winning!

So far, I haven't ventured much into the blogging world of tags and awards, but today my good friend Mindy, an awesome old roommate of mine from my Jr. year at USU, gave me this award! Probably because I tagged her once and she wasn't too happy about it!

Like any award or tag... there are rules involved. Here they are:

1 . Name 5 things you love,
2. Pass the award on to 5 blogs you love, and
3. Link back to the giver's blog and tell how fabulous they are.
It's not hard to find 5 things I love... heck I have a pretty extensive "happy list" full of things I love. The hard thing would be picking just 5. But instead of stewing over narrowing it down, I'm just going to hurry up and throw some things down here!

1. Though I've loved my roommates from the past, I especially LOVE my current roommates!

2. I LOVE Jesus Christ and His Gospel. I'm very blessed to have even a small understanding of Him.

3. Of all my hobbies, I LOVE stamping and paper crafting the most. I just love pretty papers and ribbons and all the fun accessories that go with it!

4. Showtunes Saturday Night - Whenever Paul and I drive somewhere on Saturday nights, we always tune in to the showtunes program. I LOVE musical theater and lots of different kinds of music. I also love having a hubby that enjoys it too!

5. Reading good books. I hated reading as a kid and never thought I would LOVE reading the way I love it now! I spent tons of time reading over the summer, and now that our schedule is super busy with school and work, it's taken a back seat and I'm missing it bigtime!

Five blogs I love (and again, hard to narrow it down, but a girls gotta do....) belong to 1. Emily - my bestest buddy right now. She and I began running together this last spring and I love spending lots of time with her. Her positive outlook on life, her impecable taste, and her loving heart lift me up. So, even though I see her often, I also love reading her blog.

2. Rachelle - I met her at the Stampin' Up! convention this summer. We spent two days together doing something we both love, and it's like we've been friends for years! I love reading her blog because she is someone who goes ALL OUT in life. You should check out the descriptions of the birthday parties she throws for her 6 BOYS! Amazing! Plus, she's an awesome chick with lots of great thoughts!

3. Rachel - my neighbor and friend. Rachel is very funny with a dry sense of humor that I love. She lives about 100 yards from me (if that) but I see her only weekly at church these days. You know how it works, she's busy, I'm busy... but I love it when she updates her blog because I usually laugh out loud when she does. Her toddler says some very profound things sometimes!

4. Denise - a friend of mine from back home, way back in the day! I usually giggle even thinking about Denise because she is just a funny gal! If you know Denise, you love her! I love reading about her mommy adventures and thinking of how fun she must be as a wife and mom! Hers is another blog I laugh out loud at just about every time she posts.

5. Alisha - my cute and tall little sister. I'm using this award to get her to actually post something on her blog. She must think she doesn't have much to blog about, so I'm helping her out, right!? I think she should post something about her new house because even if I'll get to see it soon, I hate surprises!

And now I get to tell you why I think Mindy is so awesome. Mindy was a very loving roommate of mine. We had a great group of roommies that year at Bridgerland and she's the one I've stayed in touch with the most. It helps that she was also roommates with my above mentioned lil sister after her mission to the Ukraine. I love that Mindy loves to read (she was an english major) and I check out her goodreads list for suggestions. She has great taste! She also has a cutie pie little girl and is expecting her second daughter... lucky! Overall, she's a super great gal and I love her guts!

Learning something new today!

I was hanging out with my friend, Emily, today and was showing her ways to play with the photo editing software, Photoscape. We got busy playing with it and managed to put together a digitally scrapbooked page of her daughter! So, I came home and decided to do the same page with one of my own pictures (unfortunately, I didn't have the plethora of amazing portrait options that Emily had!), but this is what I put together for myself!

It's kind of hard to read the title... I may have to find some different lettering. This was so fun, though! So I did another one for Charlie's birthday (the one I neglected to blog about... oops!).

Aren't these fun?! Okay, the second page is a little boring, but I just needed to add more photos to the layout! For a long time, I poo-pooed digital scrapbooking. Seriously, someone who has spent the amount of money I've spent on stamps and paper and all the stuff necessary to put together actual scrapbook pages doesn't need to venture into another craft arena. But there is lots of free stuff out there and for now, I can just dabble a bit and use these files for my blog.

Fun book to read

I got a chance to just sit back and read this weekend and it was a GREAT book! I've been needing something that I could just fly through because, for some reason, Gone With the Wind took me over 2 months to read!! Don't get me wrong, I loved GWTW, but dang... it took me forever. So, I picked up "Peter and the Starcatchers" at my school library on Friday, started reading it while Paul was watching all his sports games and I finished it on Sunday afternoon. What a clever book... and yes, that is Dave Barry's name at the top. It's basically the story of how a boy named Peter came to meet a certain pirate and how they end up on an island! It was fun how they explained the power behind his flying, why there are mermaids on the island and the reason why he'll never grow up. I highly recommend this book... so much so that I borrowed the second book today and hope to have it read by Friday when I get back to that school! If you so choose to take my advice, Enjoy!

Two goals met!

I was pretty excited for several events this week. As I mentioned on my Halloween post, I was getting really close to meeting my first weight loss goal of losing 10% of my starting weight. This Thursday at weigh-in, despite the candy cheating here and there, I finally met that goal! Yea for me! They gave me a key chain and had everyone clap for me, which isn't a big deal compared to the reward of actually losing the weight, but still nice of them!
I was actually very relieved to reach it because 8 years ago when I went on the Weight Watchers plan to lose some of my "first year of marriage"/"love makes you fat" poundage, I got within one pound of my 10% goal before I got pregnant with Andy. I had to resign from WW at that point having never reached my goal. The ironic thing is, now that I've lost this weight, I'm at the weight I was when I started WW 8 years ago... ooh, that's kind of depressing.
So I've set a new goal that I'm hoping to reach by Christmas. Currently, all my pants are looking pretty baggy, but I don't want to buy just the next size down... I want to skip it all together. So, my goal is to be that next size by Christmas and my birthday so I can go on a little shopping spree and get some clothes that actually fit. Here's a squinty picture of Charlie and I. I know it's lame, but I had Paul take a picture of me to sort of "document" where I was at when reaching my first weight loss goal.
The second fun event from this week occurred last night. Several weeks ago after setting up a Facebook account and reconnecting with some old friends from high school, I got a real itch to perform something again. A big part of my identity in high school (to myself anyway) was my singing. I did a lot of performing in college, but since then, it's been limited to mostly group songs or duets for church stuff and family talent shows. Well, last Monday, my mother-in-law called to ask if I'd sing a duet with Tara for a "night on broadway" event they were having with their ward at the lodge last night. She also asked if I would be willing to do another number, which I happily agreed to. Being the theater-loving geek that I am, the hardest part was picking something! So, last night, I got to sing "Someone Else's Story" from Chess, and the small Glinda part to "Defying Gravity" from Wicked. Though it was still small scale, and it was for a church function, in the same set up as our family talent shows, I had a lot of fun doing it. It's nice to still be able to enjoy the musical part of me.

If, you read this post previously, I need to retract something. The bullet I thought I dodged ended up finding me. It turns out that I WILL be helping the new charter high school in Springville, Merit Academy, with some of their speech and language testing needs this month. After this month is over and the December 1st headcount is past, I'll be taking a "try-it-out and see" approach to determine if I have enough room in my schedule to handle another caseload. So far, there is not a very big caseload at Merit, so I'm hoping the caseload can be managed in half a day a week. But lately, caseloads seem to have a funny way of growing on me! So, we'll see! My favorite thing about working with this school is that it is local, just 5 minutes from my home. I'm hoping this will be a positive experience for all involved! Plus, having a little extra money coming in right before Christmas will be nice, especially since we're buying my brother-in-law's car this month!

So, it's been a great and crazy week so far.

Song in my head

So, after seeing the results of today's election I have a song in my head. It goes something like this.

"I'd a writ you a letter, but I couldn't spell, "ppbbbbttththhht" and that's all I gotta say... that's all I gotta say."

That's how I feel about this election. I felt this way even before it started. I felt like all I had to choose from was the "evil of two lessers" at the polling location today... and that's a crappy way to feel.

Some Halloween highlights!

We had a very fun Halloween weekend last week. It started off with our 3rd annual Croshaw Halloween Bash on Thursday night! My sister-in-law, Amy, is an extremely talented party thrower, with a small obsession for Halloween decor! She's pretty amazing at her energy and zeal for the occasion, especially considering the fact that she had a baby one week before the party! Thankfully, we did a lot of the planning weeks before hand, and thankfully, Melanie (another awesome sister-in-law) was willing to do all the baking! I'm afraid I didn't pitch in as much as they did, but I did wrap every one of those li'l smokies in a blanket by myself (Tara said I could take ALL the credit!), and as usual, I picked up the dishwashing duty at the end! I have some pictures of the event, but I need Melanie to email them to me first! I was so glad all the friends we invited were able to come! I'll post pictures of them when I get them.

The next day was Halloween, of course! The boys had parties at school and then we had our trunk-or-treat with the ward that night. This is my little group of boys in costume.

Canon is Bumblebee from Transformers. Charlie is an elephant (the same way Andy and Canon were elephants before they began to care!). Andy is Batman. Want to hear a story about these costumes? Now, I told the boys I would buy them a video game if they would just choose to wear one of the 6 costumes we have sitting in their closet for Halloween this year. But, once we were at Target, of course they didn't care about a video game and INSISTED that they HAD to get new costumes! A week after buying them, Canon changed his mind and said he'd rather have the video game. Too bad! Andy woke up on Halloween and told me he wanted to wear his Ninja Turtle costume to school, since he was Batman the day before. Too bad! Canon decided he wanted to wear his Black Spiderman costume trick-or-treating. Too bad! Putting my foot down, I was a mean mom and told them that they had made their choice to be Bumblebee and Batman, so stop whining about it!!! My kids have a tough life.

Since Halloween, I've been having a ROUGH time with all this CANDY in the house! Last year, I told the boys to just EAT IT and get it over with. It was a rough couple of days, but we got through it! Paul wanted to avoid that insane, hyper, boys-bouncing-off-the-walls situation this year, so here we are almost a week later and I'm still battling the temptation. Most of the chocolate is gone at this point (hmmm, wonder where it snuck off to??!!), so it's getting a little easier, but I'm dreading weigh in this week. And I am SOOOO close to hitting my first goal! Dang diet!