Sunday, November 27, 2005

You're My Home

I scrapped tonight! Ian was listening to a Billy Joel CD the other day and this song was playing, I don't think I had heard it before, but the lyrics spoke to me and so this page was born. The journaling on the tag says " Ian, without a doubt as long as I am with you I am Home" The lyrics to the song are here .

For those of you that scrap: the paper is Basic Grey- Lollipop Shoppe (Blueberry) , the ribbon is from Doodlebug Designs, I got the sequins from AO, and I inked and made the little house myself. I also inked the tag (finally got to try it Abby, how'd I do?). I printed the lyrics on vellum (I usually do, I just love vellum).

Oh and Ian in case you didn't know...I just love you, too!

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Sometimes I think my mom is trying to....


put me in the LOONEY BIN. I mean really, she makes me nutso.We've got 4 days off of work for turkey day. And my mom and godmother watch Aidan during the week while we work, well my godmother watches them both, Mom's still not (and probably never will be again) up to watching Aidan by herself. Anyway, she's called everyday to see how Aidan is...as if he just doesn't get the care that he deserves when he's with us....grrrrrrr. She was talking to him on the phone today, and Aidan never holds the phone to his ear the right way so between that and her talking too loud I could hear everything she was saying...She asked him twice if he was OK...why wouldn't he be OK????, that's all I want to know. She makes a huge deal out of not seeing him for a few days. I've given up pointing out how blessed she is to see him as much as she does, I mean with the hours that we work she sees him more then I do. I used to point out to her that she's lucky she sees him this much, I tell her think of Ian's family all the way in NJ. We only get to visit 2 times a year with them right now, and she has the nerve (at least the way I see it) to complain that she's not going to see him for 2 or 3 days. When I drop him off on Mondays after having a whole weekend off she and my godmother behave like it's been 10 years since they're seen him, I mean they fall on him like a pack of wolves, hugging and kissing and "OOOOO we missed you sooooo much" OY!!!!! It's crazy. I guess I'm just over-reacting. But between the "are you OK baby" and "we sure do miss him" when it's only been 48 hours....grrrrr. Hopefully we can move soon and in the mean time hopefully I can start staying home with him instead of having to take him over there every day. I hope..... Oh boy, I sound ungrateful when I'm really not, it's been great that they can watch him, I mean otherwise we wouldn't have been able to do it, there is no daycare open on 2nd shift so I mean we need them, BUT jeez ..lighten up.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Update on my mom

As many of you know the saturday after thanksgiving last year my mom went into the hospital due to problems with her carotid artieries. We had a rather hellish 10 months after that until she finally started to improve. I just wanted to let everyone know that she is doing much better then she had been a few months ago. I just took her to the doctor yesterday and they're going to start Remicaid infusions as soon as she can get an appointment. She is freaking out about it because it involves needles, but her relatively new found R.A. is no longer responding well to the Rx meds. We're also concerned that one of the meds is raising her bloodpressure which is really bad with that still blocked artery. We're going to keep our fingers crossed in hope that this works better then what's she's on.

Oreo Cream Pie Recipe

Miss Abby this is per your request! Enjoy!





1 Oreo Pie Crust
1 8 oz package of Cool Whip (store brand is just as good)
2 packages of Jello Chocolate pudding mix (any kind of chocolate just make sure they're the smaller package, each box should be 4 serving size)
2 cups of cold Milk
Oreos (6-10 cookies)

In a mixing bowl, combine pudding and milk, stir until smooth (I use a whisk), should be kinda thick (custard-like). layer about half of this in the pie crust. Then add half of the cool whip to the remaining pudding. layer this into the pie crust (I usually end up with just enough extra pudding mixture left to snack on when I'm done :^) ) . Then take a zip lock bag and put 6 or 7 cookies in there....beat them up, nice small pieces, then added to the remaining cool whip. stir that up and top the pie with it. take the remaining cookies, chop in halves or quarters and garnish the top. Put in fridge to cool for 4 hours before serving

Viola, good enough to eat!!! LOL, Ian just loves this pie!

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

I really like to bake, but....

I really suck at the presentation part. Let's take tonight for example shall we? Yes, let's! I organized (single-handedly) a dinner to celebrate thanksgiving with the 20 people in our immediate area. Being as I work with mostly men, who as a general rule are not very, how should I put it? lets say kitchen capable, that's good kitchen capable. oh and most of these guys are just too lazy to cook, anyway, I digress, most are helping pay for the catering, (roast beef, italian suasage, and some sides), but the rest of us are bringing things in. Well tomorrow before work I'm going to make lasagna, and tonight, ahead of time (yay me) I made a double layer chocolate cake and 3 oreo cream pies (one of which is for home :^) ). Well the pies are simple, no bake, they always come out great, ya kinda can't mess that up, but the cake....well... I thought that I was doing really well, I put it in to bake, started on the pies, was done with one and starting on the second when the cake was done, so I take out the cake and let it cool, go back finish making other 2 pies.. cake is cool, great! slide them out of the pans, easy peasy. go to frost them and they are just falling apart...I say to myself "what the____ (fill in the blank) and just add more frosting... this cake looks terrible. All I have to say is those bozos at work better eat every bit of it! OY! Did I mention that I was doing all of this between 1:30 and 3:30 IN THE MORNING!!! I had to wait until Aidan was in bed otherwise it would never have gotten done. oh well, better luck next time. maybe the next one will come out right. I have the worse luck with frosting cakes, I don't know what it is that I'm doing wrong but they always taste fine, they just look like hell. :^)

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Ian has....

FINGERNAILS!!! ok ok I realize that if you don't really know my dh, then you won't realize the significance of this.; but Ian is a chronic nailbiter, I mean down to the nubs. And just last week ( and no I did not have to nag him about this) he decided on his own that he was going to really try to stop! And now it's been about a week and a half and holy cow he has nails. He says it feels weird, well I guess if I gnawed my fingers down to the nubs I'd feel pretty weird having them growing back in too. Great Job Ian, I'm proud of you!
XOXOXO

Work...


..you all pretty much know I hate my job. I mean don't get me wrong, the pay is decent, I'm good at what I do, and I do take pride in my work...having said that...I hate my job. Ever since Aidan was born I've hated it even more, it was very hard to come back after being off with the baby for 4 months when he was born. I definitly had seperation anxiety. Well, yesterday Aidan made it very hard for both Ian and I to leave for work. He basically had a meltdown. Tons of tears and lots of clinging and saying he didn't want us to go to work, that he wanted us to stay and play with him. Well let me tell you our hearts just broke, he was sooooooooo pitiful. We were a hair away from calling off, I mean he was just that upset. We finally managed to calm him down and got him dropped off at Nana's house. I was a wreck all day becuase of this. I mean he'll be three in a few weeks and he's very smart but I wouldn't think that he would understand going to work and making money. But he said I don't want you to go to work, we don't need any money. Good Lord. When we were trying to get him down for bed last night it was more of the same, I'm not sure what is triggering this, I suppose he could be sensing the tension we've got about work because of some changes that are going to be made, I'm not sure. I just hope this doesn't become a daily occurence, I don't think I could handle it. We sure do love our little guy but the hard part about being an adult is having to provide, no job no money, no money...no food no house no anything. sigh. We shall hope for the best. Maybe this will pass.

Inspired by Abby


I was inspired by a layout by Abby Key, my online scrapping buddy. She did a wonderful layout using the same peacock appliques that I had gotten from her Awesome Offerings. Her layout inspired me to finally use those peacocks to scrapbook some great pictures that we took of the peacock we saw at Turtle Back Zoo in Essex County NJ. (sorry that the picture isn't better, but I can't scan and stitch a 12x12 layout yet; if you click on it the picture will get bigger.) The journaling on the right of the page reads "I was four months pregnant when we took this trip to the zoo. It was extremely humid and both the animals and the humans (namely Me, Ian, Danny, and Mom) were so hot they didn’t really feel like moving around much. Our visit was short but on the way out we spotted this peacock as it strutted around. We kept hoping it would raise its feathers but it seemed more interested in trying to con people out of their food and making that hideous squawking sound that it makes. For such a beautiful bird it certainly didn’t sound pretty…" I'm very happy with the way this page came out (this is a first, lol). I made the frames my self, and printed all the text on vellum. I also made the background for the title by sort of doing a collage of the scraps from making the big frame. Anyway, thank you Abby! Your layouts always inspire me, and this time I actually got to make that inspiration a reality! thanks again!

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

My Little Scrapping Buddy



I have the sweetest little guy (most of the time he is) in the world! He just loves to come and watch mama scrapbook, and it's even better when he gets to help. He just wants so much to be doing what everyone else is doing. When I go shopping for supplies at the craft stores it is virtually impossible for me to escape the store without getting him a couple of small sheets of stickers, because he tells me " I want to scrap with you mommy" . Me being the weakling that I am, I can't say no...well I could I guess, but I don't want to. He's as happy as a clam when given a sheet of white printer paper and some stickers, he just goes to town. Here is a picture from when I finished the layout I did last night. He was getting so tired but he wanted to watch me finish up, and he likes to help me press the pictures down on the page. When I went to take pictures of the layout like I always do he wanted to help hold it up, and there he was being just as cute as he could be so of course I had to take a picture. I just love that sweet face! He's such a lovable little guy, I hope he stays that way. He's inquistive (sometimes aka nosy!), independant, and often times a quirky little man. It seems we're always laughing with this guy around. I'll never forget when he was about 18 months old and he was looking out the dining room window where there was a streetsweeper truck going by, and he turns to look at me with his eyes really big (I guess you could say with his eyes all full of wonder) and he says "Mama, Mama there's a brush outside with a truck on top and it goes like this (he holds his hands over his head and spins in a circle). It was just to funny, I was able to get him to do this a couple more times by asking him to show me again how the brush with the truck on top goes. He was and is just too darn cute sometimes.

Monday, November 14, 2005

I got to scrap tonight....


...and here is the page that resulted from this hard won scrap time. This is a page of my dh on the day that he left to start school at NJIT. I know that this is a little hard to see here(it's better if you click on it), but the top left is ian getting settled into his dorm room and the tag to the right of that says"Settling in at NJIT..now first things first...lets get the new computer out of the box! We'll worry about sheets later! Just call me 'the Computer Kid' " The picture in the upper left is Ian and Danny (good grief hard to believe he's a teenage now). Hey Ian ! I wonder if you could still hoist Dan up like that, lol. The picture on the bottom left is Ian of course and there's a title across the top of that on vellum that say "Ian James McBride" . The picture to the right of that is Ian and Kevin, and the tag above that reads "Ian and Kevin the day that Ian left for NJIT. You can tell they were putting on 'Brave Faces' Because they'll miss each other." And the last things on the page are the circles on the bottom right, top to bottom they read "Big Brother", "College Student", and "New Man".
I think that the reason I choose to scrap these tonight and not something else is because my dh was sitting behind me at his own computer doing his homework (which I know can sometimes seem never ending), which got me to thinking that all of desciptions on this page are still true, he's still a college student, no longer NJIT but something bigger and better and something that he ENJOYS! He's still a big brother, a wonderful one in my humble opinion. And last but not least he's always going to continue to make himself into a new man with each chapter of his life. I'm so proud of you Ian! Even with all the crazy stuff going on you're a rock. Work is crazy, I"m crazy :^) , Aidan's crazy (it was inevitable, look who he comes from lol) and you're going to school full time. I would never have guessed I'd marry a juggler, and that's what you must be to juggle all of this and still be the kind, loving, steady man I married (holy cow almost 4 years ago) and the best father in the world to our son. I just wanted to make sure that you realize that I appreciate all that you are and all that you do! I love you Ian! Keep up the great work, if the speed that the last 3 years flew by at is any indication then the next 2 until graduation should be over in no time. XOXOXOXO

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Like Father Like Son

When did my little boy become this little man? In just a few short weeks my little guy is going to be 3, yes you read that correctly...3!!! How is this possible, where did the little squirming bundle wrapped up in a blanket that I brought home from the hospital go? I can't help but think that the years should go slower when children are small, give the parents a chance to try to keep up, to learn more about these little people. Everyday Aidan does something new it seems, sometimes these new things make me want to cry, and sometimes they make it so that you can't help but hold your sides and laugh so hard that you do cry! This child is certainly a little ham. As we were trying to get him to bed last night Aidan suddenly says "welcome to this old house, I'm Aidan and I'm here to fix your wall..where do you need me to fix your wall??" Ian and I just about died laughing, apparantly Aidan must have been watching This Old House at his nana's house because he sounded just like a tv show host. This little boy is just a riot. We finally started to ease him in the direction of bed and suddenly he has to go potty again, so we go potty again (he does next to nothing mind you, but we go.) He and Daddy wash their hands, my little man runs out and says "I want water"....and the game begins, this child will say or do just about anything not to have to go to bed. He's a dirty stay up like his daddy!

Take a look at this picture and tell me who he looks like.... that's right you guessed it, his Daddy. This little man has in my opinion a natural gift, he took to the computer like a duck to water. He has a little mouse that looks like a lady bug, it's just the right size for his little hand. And he picked out his puppy dog mouse pad all by himself. He even plays his games by himself, with his focus being on the game alone...just like his daddy. There are times when, just like daddy, you almost have to drag him away. They both sometimes become deaf and blind to everything but the game. albeit different games, for Ian it's war craft, and for Aidan it's either his lego game or sesame street. Oh, but i sure do love my boys! Video games and all!

I have a blog....

Well I'm starting this as a way to keep friends and family updated on what is happening in our world. This first post is just to get the ball rolling, and state that I'm here...I have a blog...this should be entertaining.
Will write something more profound soon.
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