Want to know WAY too much about me?

I usually hate answering these, because I don't like to freely give information about myself! :) But I saw it on somebody's blog and thought it was a cool list of things! So if you have the patience...you'll learn WAY too much about me below! The things in bold are what I've done..

Have you ever

1. Started your own blog-yup, this one!
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band-does high school count?
4. Visited Hawaii-my mom took me for a high school graduation trip
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain-lots of times! I grew up in Alaska
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo-I played a flute solo, can I count that?
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea (from the beach)
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child-financially, but not physically
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty-we're going there this summer, maybe I'll try!
18. Grown your own vegetables-not very successfully
19.Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping-now that'd just be scary
27. Run a Marathon-Uh NO!
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run-not on your life! I can NOT connect a bat and a ball!
32. Been on a cruise-on my honeymoon and hoping to go again soon!
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors-sort of! I've seen the birthplace of my grandparents, they are 90 yrs old!
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language-sign language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied-more like being truly satisfied with whatever we have! There's never enough, is there?!
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt-on a road trip with my Grandparents when I was 12
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Been to Africa-It's on my bucketlist!
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing-I grew up in Alaska!
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling-not my favorite activity
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching-Alaska, remember! :)
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving-I'm gonna do this some day!
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check-uhm, just a few in high school!
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt-wish I could say yes!
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job-Almost! At my first job at Subway, my parents were even part owners!
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating-Alaska! :)
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone-even dropped one in a toilet!
99. Been stung by a bee-picking salmonberries in Alaska, I got stung right on the chest! I still remember how much it hurt!

How 'bout you?! :)

Andrew

Luke

Cool jumps into the leaves!

More cool jumps!


Fake Life!!!

Real Life!!

More Real Life!!!

Happy Fall Y'all!

I have some great pictures to show you guys! The boys were jumping in huge piles of leaves, we had a blast. We went up to my inlaws a day early, and helped them out with their leaves! My word, there were a TON of them!

I don't think I have ever jumped into a pile of leaves! I grew up in Alaska, and basically after about October, we were dealing with snow piles, not leaf piles! Besides, in the area I'm from, there are mostly Spruce Pine Trees, and all they have are sharp needles!

I think that's one of the things I love the most about living in the south! The colors this fall have been absolutely gorgeous! There is still a tree at a house behind ours, that is PURE yellow! I just love to see it!

At home (in Alaska) you just skip right over the warm days of fall and shoot straight into snow and ice and BRR! :) We'll get to experience that in a few weeks when we go up for Christmas for two weeks. DH and I are already worried, we've been really cold the past few days, and Alaska will be at least 30 degrees cooler! :) We'll survive!

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I hope you have a relaxing, wonderful day tomorrow with family and friends! My life is blessed beyond measure, I hope yours is too!

Pigeon Forge, TN

My friend Linda picked me up bright and early at 6am on Thursday morning. We started out our six hour drive, and about twelve hours later ended up at the hotel! What, you say? Why did it take so long? Well, we made a 10 minute potty and eat stop at McDonald's. (Are we the only grown women who like McDonalds?) and then we spent the rest of the six hours shopping at two LNS shops (cross-stitch stores, for my none stitcher readers) and the 45 minutes travel in between.

We arrived at the hotel around 6:30pm, checked in, went potty ate a quick supper snack and headed to our 3rd LNS! We got back to the hotel around 9pm.

The real retreat didn't start until Friday, but over 1/2 of us were there on Thursday! In fact we ran into three of our friends at the first LNS we went too, almost two hours from Pigeon Forge! I guess great minds think alike?!!

After Thurdsay, we didn't leave the hotel until Sunday around 9am, and drove 6 hrs home! We sat and stitched for HOURS! Stayed up late, ate when we wanted, talked about EVERYTHING and had a blast!

I finished a project, started and finished a gift for my sister, and got started on a 3rd project. I'll have pictures soon!

THINGS I LEARNED AT THE RETREAT:
1.You can survive on cheese and crackers for three days!!!
2.You can also survive on less than four hours of sleep a night!
3. You can NOT solve the world's problems, but they seem much less when shared with friends!
4.No matter how much you buy at LNS's you always find something else you HAVE to stitch when you see what everybody else is working on!
5.Doing a cross-stitch gift exchange with other stitchers can be very dangerous!
6.Stitchers make the best of friends!

Thanks everybody! I also found out this weekend, that lots of them read my blog! Yikes, I'm gonna have to start behaving if people in my "real" life read this!!

I need to get back to real life! I'm cleaning, unpacking and catching up on laundry today! DH told me he's taking tomorrow off, so we're going to go do some Christmas shopping while the boys are in school.

GIRLS WEEKEND!

Yahoo! Girls Weekend! We go stitching in Pigeon Forge, TN every year about this time! Though we are later this year, and we are all going to freeze to death! Linda will pick me up around 6am, we'll drive about 6 hrs and maybe stop for lunch...but definitely stop for LNS's! :) ha

We take our food with us, and once we check in to the hotel, that's about it for us! We'll stitch until who knows when, probably 1am at least... Everybody brings stuff to giveaway, we usually have two full tables FULL! That's the best part! We'll do a gift exchange and an ornament exchange. And stitch, stitch, stitch!

It's just the best! I have all my food and stitching packed! lol I still have to pack my clothes, but hey...nobody cares about that! We spend 1/2 the time in our jammies stitching anyway!:)

1. Madrid, Madrid, Spain
2. Augsburg, Bayern, Germany
3. Collégien, Ile-de-France, France
4. Linda-a-Velha, Lisboa, Portugal
5. 
   

Elton, Nottingham, United Kingdom
Kapellen, Antwerpen, Belgium
Lancaster, Blackpool, United Kingdom

Puteaux, Ile-de-France, France

Seriously?! Somebody from there reads my blog? I'd love to get to know you.. if I don't already! :)

Fall Picture

One of my most favorite fall pictures ever! If you look closely you can see Luke's hand, and if you look really closely, you can see a blue eyeball!:)

Happy Fall! (though we had SNOW flakes in NC today! Talk about WIERD! We rarely get snow, and NEVER this early!)

Two more days and I'm off to stitch for the LONG weekend! YEAH!

Two small finishes

These are two of the JBW patterns, stitched over one. So far I have five of these stitched. They turn out so cute! Don't they? I have the lark one also finished, but the picture ended up too fuzzy.

And I did finish my pinkeep! :) I need to retake that picture too!

It's a Small World

I can tell from my blog stats, that people from all over the world read my blog! Wierd, isn't it? But I would love to know who you are, and especially if you have a blog! I'd love to get to know you too! Will you leave me a comment? Come on, pretty please?! At least tell me your name!!

What a Week!!

Good gracious!:) This is my first morning home since last Sunday! That's rough for a homegirl like me! :)

Sunday, my inlaws were here, and my FIL got word that his dad was not doing well. Instead of waiting and heading that way on Monday morning, DH and I rushed around getting our stuff together and then we took my FIL home to check on his dad. No big deal for us, my FIL is legally blind, so he doesn't drive at all. We had a conference in their town Mon-Wed, so we were heading that way anyway. We just had to rush around!

FIL's dad is 85, and I think old age is just catching up with him! He's lived a long life, I just wish they could find a way to control the pain for him!

Monday-Wednesday, DH and I stood in front of his booth and talked to youth pastors and Baptist church people from across our state. It was a lot of fun, but being on your feet for so long, can sure tire you out! Monday we had to set up all the booths, seven in total for his office. (he only had one booth for his stuff.) People started coming around 2pm on Monday and we stayed until 9:30pm. Tuesday we had to be there at 7:30am and we finally left the booth at 10:00pm! Yikes! Wednesday we were there 7:30-9:30 and then had to tear the whole thing down!

We got home around 1pm on Wednesday. My dear MIL stayed with our boys Sun-Wed. She cleaned my house and picked up three trashbags full of leaves from the back yard! I told her I was going to leave again!

Thursday (yesterday) I went as a chaperone for the 6th grade field trip to Mid Evil Times. It was a lot of fun. We were on a big tour bus, and it was FULL of noisy 6th graders! And in total there were 5 tour buses! Poor MidEvil Times! HA! I hope they knew what to expect! Have you ever been? It's a dinner theatre, with knights and real horses. They do tournament games, and the audience is divided into six sections to cheer for "their" knight. Let's just say 6th graders took that job VERY seriously! We had to be at school at 6:15am, and didn't get home until 6pm. It was a 4 hour drive each way, and a 3 hour show. You got to eat your full dinner with no utensils! The kids loved that!

Our Yellow Knight!

Andrew and I at our table.

Remember my matchbox exchange? Tada! Here it is! And when I took everything out to take pictures, I realized the redish thread was the exact one I needed to work on a project I started last night! Thanks Marion!! The one I mailed for Marion is on it's way as soon as I get to the PO! :) I might have to do one of these again! They are so cute!

I absolutely love the needlebook! It was Marion's first one! AND she designed the inside and back by herself! I love the little felt black cat!

Front:

Inside:

And she stitched a fob, using a pattern that has been on my "To stitch" list for a long time! Plus three dyed threads, and little buttons and some other cute stuff!

Remember my casket? Here is the needlebook and fob. I messed up on the fob, it's supposed to have a little tassel hanging off the bottom, I'm debating taking it apart and adding one...can't make up my mind! I liked how it looked, until I saw the sample! :) I have the pinkeep stitched, it's on my list of things to get it finished today! We'll see!

Front of Needlebook and Fob:


Back of Needlebook and Fob. Aren't the daisy's cute?

The inside: I still need to iron the thing, obviously!

Thursday, my bestest friend is picking me up EARLY! We'll drive about 6-7hrs to Pigeon Forge for our yearly stitching retreat! We'll stay Fri/Sat and drive home Sunday. Can't wait to go, we always have a blast! And it's fun looking forward to it each year!

Goals for today:
Get Marion's box in the mail.
Do the finishing on the pinkeep for my casket.
Add the trim to an ornament exchange with my DIVA group!
Finish writing in Luke's (DS) Journal.
Clean the bathrooms!!!!

Where did all my time go?

So last night, I picked out all the lining fabric to do my finishes this afternoon. After a five hour meeting yesterday, I figured I deserved some free time today!

I wake up, Luke reminds me I PROMISED I'd bring him McDonald's and eat with him. That's fine, except he doesn't start until 9:00 and eats at 11:00! Then I remember I have to do the reading tutoring today at school. Then on the way to school, Andrew calls and tells me he forgot his lunch and he eats at 11:00 too.

So now instead of dropping Luke off and having a nice calm day!

8:45 Drop off Luke
8:45-9:30 Reading Tutoring with five students at Luke's school
Rush home, do a load of laundry, check on a lockin that Andrew really wants to attend tonight (but I don't know anything about it), complain on my blog, :)
10:30 Take Andrew his lunch
10:45 Drive through at McD's
11:00-11:30 Lunch with Luke

Rush home, finish laundry,straighten up before my inlaws get here, squeeze in a trip to the grocery store, maybe.

2:30 Pick up Andrew

Hopefully convince Luke to ride the bus home, or else I have to go get in line at school at 3:15!

So much for my day to finish stuff! :) Oh well, I love being a mom! right?

Real Life!!!

Don't you just hate when real life gets in the way of your stitching life?!!

We have just had a really busy schedule the past few weeks...The boys had a great time trick-or-treating.

Luke is Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars, and Andrew just sort of made something up from his toga costume!


We went to a football game in Winston-Salem, NC at Wake Forest University. They played Duke.

This is DH, Luke and me! :) Notice DH couldn't quite stop watching the game for the picture!


My awesome inlaws, with my oldest Andrew.

The fall colors around here are just about the best I've seen in a long time! I keep driving by places saying, "Gee I wish I had my camera!"

One more fall picture! And it hardly does the colors justice!! Wake Forest still has one end of the football field a grassy hill, behind the one endzone. The trees were so pretty!

Tonight is Astronomy night at school for Luke. It's for all seven 3rd grade classes! The Raleigh Astronomy Club is coming and setting up a bunch of stuff to look at stars in the field behind the school. Plus there will be 4 or 5 other stations for the kids to go experience. He is excited! My 6th grader is NOT! Too bad we live in a day and age where he can't stay home by himself! DH is out of town for the evening, and I just can't quite leave Andrew at home. We had a really close friend, whose child was a 7th grader, who stayed at home by herself and was involved in a terrible accident. So of course that just made it all the more risky for us to decide to leave Andrew at home alone!

I get an unexpected break this Monday-Wednesday. My DH has to do a convention for NC Baptists, and I was just going to go up and help out on Tuesday. But my DEAR MIL decided to come stay here with the boys, so I can go help DH at the convention. It will give me a chance to be with grown-ups, help Mike (DH) out, and not deal with children! Isn't she great?

Then Thursday, I will get a full dose of children when I go on a day long field trip with Andrew and a bus full of middle schoolers! That'll be interesting to say the least!

And finally in TWO short weeks, I'll get to go to our yearly stitching retreat in Pigeon Forge! My stitchin' momma will pick me up EARLY on Thursday, she'll drive about 7 hrs or so, and I'll stitch the whole way. We'll come home as late as possible on Sunday!

I have been stitching some! I'm working on the LK Double Flips for my sister for Christmas. I'm still in the SAL with Becky for the Nativity. (though we both skipped this Monday) I don't think I'm cut out for SAL's!! :) I'm to unorganized! I've got two Fair and Square patterns to start and finish. I have the finishing to do on my matchbox exchange: which will happen tonight or tomorrow!!! And I finally got the gray fabric for all the smalls to put inside my casket! They are all stitched, except one piece needs about six or seven more words all stitched over ONE!

Before the PF trip in two weeks:

I want to get all the finishing work done on the casket.
Mail my matchbox to Marion.
Do the finishing for 3 JBW designs stitched over one.
Do the finishing on the CEC frog freebie.. I need the fly button from JABC!! :)

That's all I can think of at the moment, at least that's all my priorities anyway!


Such a long post! See what happens when I don't post for a few days? My mouth starts to run!

Has anybody noticed how much I use exclamation points? I often have to go back and delete them, because they end up at the end of every sentence!! :) See...

Crazy Monday's!

Why does life always get crazy on Mondays? I agreed about a month ago to do a SAL with Becky on Mondays..and every Monday since has been crazy! :)

The kids are out of school today, and Luke has invited a friend over to spend the night. I should get some stitching time tonight, Luke will be busy with his friend! Andrew is staying a few days with his grandparents! The kids have today and tomorrow off of school! Lucky them, a four day weekend!

We went to my inlaws over the weekend. We took the boys trick-or-treating at their downtown party. It was a lot of fun and no worries about cars and trick-or-treaters! We finished early and we all (even Daddy and Papaw) went to see a movie. Saturday we all went to the Wake Forest vs. Duke football game. We are all NCState fans, but went for "Baptist Church Day". There were about 2,000 there with the Baptist Church Day. We heard a speaker (who DH had to introduce) and then a picnic lunch and then the ballgame. I'm not a huge football fan, but it was an exciting game! DH, Luke and I drove home Saturday night and Andrew stayed with his grandparents. (He is in hog heaven, trust me!)

Sunday, we tried a new church...we've been in town for a year now, and we are attending a small church..but we aren't quite "right" with it! :) So we tried a new church Sunday and thankfully we really liked it. As you know, DH was a pastor for six years, and a youth minister before that! We have learned, since started this new job, that finding a church for an ex-pastor's family isn't the easiest thing to do! I really hope this one works out for us. We'll try it a few more times before we make up our minds!

Today I need to clean desperately! How does a house get so filthy when you aren't even hardly home over the weekend?! Yikes!

I've been working like mad on an exchange! Marion has already sent me mine (which I LOVE) and I'm the grand loser and still haven't finished hers! It's not for lack of working on it, trust me! I can't make up my mind for number one! And then what I picture in my head, didn't quite look right on fabric... so she is patiently waiting! I have a few things stitched.. just need to do the finishing and then they go in the mail! Finally, right Marion?! :)

Have a great Monday everybody!