My Dad

I forgot to give you an update on my Dad! :) As some of you maybe know.. he is an Alaska Guide, and his main goal through all this illness has been to be able to get out to his camp! And, thank you God, he is out at camp this week. Not sure if he will actually do any hiking or boat riding, but he is at camp! :) While he was doing a bunch of stuff to get ready to go, his constant ringing in his ear increased to a really loud buzzing noise! I'm hoping it stops for him soon! :)

Here's a picture of him from when we were up there at Christmas. See how droopy his left side is?

And here he is reading to one of my many nieces! She wouldn't sit by him at first, she told her dad (my big brother) that she thought PopPop was contagious! lol


My mom just sent this picture last night. He seems awfully pale to me! But he has been indoors for six months, I guess! :) I'll be anxious to see how he handles camp life! That's my mom and dad on the far right of the picture, with some of their friends.


There ya have it! Two posts in less than an hour! See get me talking, and see what happens! I've packed for the two boys, now to pack for me! I hate to pack shorts..my legs haven't seen the sun for a long time! YIKES!

Can I Just Have One Day at Home?

Really, it's not too much to ask, is it?! I am a stay-at-home mom, after all! :)

We are going to be gone again this weekend. We're going back to Fort Caswell, the camp at the beach. It's gonna be HOT this weekend, in the mid 80's! This is our third weekend there in about five weekends, and we had one weekend of rain and 50's, last weekend was high 60's, and this weekend will be our reward! LOL The kids have gotten in the ocean each weekend, but this weekend maybe they won't freeze to death! :)

I get a ME weekend next weekend! :) I can NOT wait! Then a week from this Sunday, DH and I will be driving to Orlando, FL so we can leave on a cruise Mon-Fri! Can you believe somebody GAVE us the cruise? Well, we had to pay the taxes...but when we got our itinerary and bill.. we saved over $2,000! So that was a real blessing! :)

Then we just have a certain kid's birthday to celebrate! 12 years old on May 9th! One year away from teenagers! Yikes! Then, believe it or not, I think we have few weekends home..until we hit the road in early June for all our summer camps!

I've been awfully quiet on here lately! I like reading everybody else's blogs! I'm just not sure I want to keep up with my own blog! You see, really I'm sort of a private person! And when I'm just typing away, I tend to say way too much! ha! So, now I'm not so sure about this whole blog thing! Plus half the time I don't have anything interesting to say! LOL

I have been stitching on my Flower Power. Believe it or not, I've stitched two full pages. Well, I haven't done the little bugs over one stitching yet, or the backstitching, so technically, I haven't really finished anything, have I? I'm wondering if I'm going to regret saving the backstitching and over one until the end? I just haven't felt like doing those stitches, so I'm not going to yet! Stitching is supposed to be fun, right?!

I've got to pack for myself and the two boys. Pick up one boy from school, DH will get the other boy. Then we'll hit the road around 1pm. Is that way too much info for anybody?! :) I'm hoping to get done quickly, so I can get a few stitches in before I leave!

What a Day!

Boy, it's been an exhausting day! I'm not gonna give anymore details on the big world wide web, but boy is parenting hard! :)

I haven't had a minute of quiet, relaxed stitching time... I've got to get that ASAP!

Flower Power Update

Last time I updated..


Just taken this morning. I did have that huge daisy to the right all finished! But I made the stem two stitches too short, and that would have thrown off a whole bunch of stuff! And since this is only about a 1/4 of the project... I frogged the whole thing!! :)
Off to the beach again! We're doing our 2nd of 3 weekend youth retreats. Last retreat it POURED rain all of Saturday. This weekend it's supposed to be in the 70's! That'll be much nicer!

DH is on the way home to get us in a few hours. I've got to pack for three of us, and maybe DH depending on how late he is getting home! :)

Happy weekend.

ISO An Australian Magazine

See this cute little thingie-bobbie? I really like it! The pattern is in the current Inspirations Magazine from Australia. Rumor has it, it's available at B&N, but ours doesn't have it. I think I need it for my "smalls" basket! :)

I took the picture from this blog! She does some cool finishing, doesn't she?!

I promised myself, I'd go to bed at 12:00 tonight! I did stop stitching around 12:15, but ended up chatting with an old friend from elementary school on Facebook! *Since this friend reads my blog, I need to clarify! My friend isn't OLD.. our friendship is old!* If I don't call it quits now, it'll be 2:00am again! As it is, it's 1:11... so technically I'm still in bed early since it isn't 2:00am yet!

I just LOVE the peaceful quiet at my house, that only occurs after about 10:00pm! Anybody else?!

Living in Alaska vs. Living in North Carolina

Here are the main differences this time of year! :)

At my sister's house:
At my house:
At my mom's house: (Granted those are drifts, but that wall all the left is a six foot tall wall!

At my house:
Granted I sort of cheated! :) The snow pictures were from last week, in Kodiak. However, Easter weekend they got four inches of snow on Saturday and woke up to six MORE inches on Sunday! Remember at Christmas, we had NO snow? My brother called my mom on Easter and told her next year my family needs to visit over spring break, if we want to see snow!

The boys just had to dye Easter eggs this weekend! Here's Andrew with his eggs. (Despite being in the 6th grade, he sees no reason to comb his hair... whatever! Soon enough he'll care very much!)

Here's Luke with his eggs. Though you can't tell from his picture, he cares VERY much about his hair and he's only in the 3rd grade!
We managed to get a picture taken at church yesterday! Since when does Andrew cover my face in a picture?! I didn't even think about it, cause he's not ever been that tall before! YIKES!
Last, but not least! When I was growing up, my mom always made us these roll-out sugar cookies, that her mom had used with her, when she was little. So I've always made them with my boys, using the same old recipe! We used to do it every season, but haven't done it in too long! When they decided they had to dye eggs, they decided they needed the cookies too! So here they are in their glory! (the cookies, not the boys)

The carrot design on the cookies, was Andrew's great idea! They turned out so cute!

Did I already say, last but not least?! Well, one more thing! We almost always end up playing football on nice days! Well, the guys do! The ladies sit and watch and take pictures! :)

Poor Andrew takes after his momma, when it comes to sporting ability! He gets very frustrated, and never lasts too long! :)
And one pretty flower picture to leave you with! :)

Believe it or not, I am stitching a little bit! I'll show a Flower Power update in the next few days!

My Grandpa turns 90!

My grandpa turned 90 last Friday, and we were fortunate enough to get to spend the day with him! :)

I love this picture, because my Grandpa thinks he is in charge! But as you can tell from this picture, my Grandma often whispers in his ear how he needs to behave! haha
The boys colored his entire card for him, and as you can tell..he was quite pleased!
Most of my family was able to be there! :) My mom is in the green. That's my little sister and big brother! Obviously, I got my height from my Dad's side of the family! :)
Everybody was checking out some funny videos on youtube.com! Pretty advanced for the 90 yr. old peeking over the shoulders! :) That's my skinny DH in the chair with the computer...he's lost 105 pounds!
We were at my grandparents for almost a week. We had a great time, but a nursery home can get a little quiet and boring for two hyper boys! Here's Luke waving to my Grandma in the window! Can you see her?
Before the boys drove us completely nuts, we took them to a hands-on science center in Lancaster, PA. It's made for kids 3rd-8th grades...so hit my kids ages perfectly! They loved it! Obviously, Grandma loved it too! She never was one to sit on the sidelines! (She is 90 1/2)

I told my mom and my grandma when they said the center was interactive..they meant with the kids! :)
Not much stitching around these here parts! But we are busy making family memories! We made sugar cookies today. It's a recipe that my Grandma made with my mom, my mom with us four kids, and now me and my two kids. I'll post some pictures tomorrow! :)