Learn Cheerleading in Your Very Own Living Room

Or rather, in the neighbors' living room. I hung out this evening with my friend, Melissa, and got to witness the latest concept in kid's videos. I don't know if you can actually consider it just TV, since it's an interactive video that teaches you how to perform various cheerleading routines. It's quite annoying, but it somehow managed to capture the attention of two the neighborhood girls for a whole half hour. Of course, it was a little "too girlie" for Maya to participate, so she played the role of couch potato while her friends got their little girl grooves on.

Not Too Girlie, Mom!!

I'm slowing accepting the fact that my oldest daughter, Maya, is not going to be a Girlie Girl. (Nadia totally is. . . so hopefully I still have dresses and cute barrettes in my future), but Maya wants nothing to do with anything pink, Barbie, or even princess-oriented. Sniff... it wasn't too long ago that my baby was Jasmine. Oh well. . .

For Halloween this year, she wants to be a ninja. I'd found an adorable costume on Lillian Vernon, but it was too pink . . so after consulting with my dear friend, Google, I found the same costume in red -- and cheaper, too!! And don't tell her, but it's still kind of girlie . .. not as bad as it could have been.

In October, I'm sure we'll have another neighborhood Halloween Block party (which contrary to what everyone in my office thinks, is actually open to those outside the neighborhood) -- so be forewarned. An Evite may be forthcoming soon.

Be Careful What You Ask For

Cause it kind of backfired on me this afternoon. After hours and hours of listening to Hannah Montana, I finally had enough and declared that the TV will be OFF until I say so. I challenged Maya to find something else besides the television to occupy her time. I was hoping that would send the kids outside to play or maybe encourage them to pick up a book. (I obviously don't think like a seven year old.) Maya and her friend, Patrick, decided to get creative inside the house. I don't blame them really; it was 96 degrees outside. But now my foyer looks like this! It's like a reenactment of the movie Entrapment.

Spider

Yesterday, Maya and Nadia started hollaring for me to "come see, come see." I thought they'd drawn a really nice picture or something. But noooo, they'd discovered one of the largest spiders I've ever seen outside of a cage, and it was weaving a new web right in our front entry way. Perfect. That's what people like to see when they come to visit.

My first instinct was to grab the broom, but I refrained and instead picked up the camera. I figured there might be some crazy person at my job who would actually find this cool.

I'm not really sure how to move this spider without destroying its web (and its latest food find), but I need to figure something out pretty quick. I love animals and all (and I'm no Michael Vick), but sooner or later, she's gonna have to go. In the meantime, check out the pictures.

The Biggest Loser

I don't know why we fall for this every time. . . signing up for this little contest, vainly hoping to overtake Hans, who continues to win time and time again. But we did -- nine of us from work, and for 11 weeks, we watched our weight fluctuate up and down as we participated in weekly weigh-ins. All in all, we did quite well, a few of us coming quite close to giving him some real competition. But in the end (which we decided to call a week early) -- we are all way over it -- Hans reined supreme, losing 19.5 pounds and over 7% in body weight.

However, he was generous enough to treat us all to lunch at The Derby, where NO ONE ordered anything remotely healthy. Onion rings, burger melts, fish and chips and pitchers and pitchers of Bass. Mmmmm . . Thanks, Hans -- and congratulations! You are the Biggest Loser.

Whirly Ball

A bunch of us blew off a Wednesday night with our families and endured a God-awful commute up 400 to play Whirly Ball with our fellow teammates and some of our Vallero & Stanley customers. Despite the bruises I received from the crank they call a steering wheel, I had a lot of fun.

I learned that we actually broke a record, too. According to the referee, we are the first group in his experience to ever score 0/0. So that's something. Cause all in all, we really sucked. But to be fair, this game is NOT easy. But after a few beers, no one really cared that we were barely scoring. I think everyone had a pretty good time.

And SUPER thanks to Jeff for letting me take these pictures with his iPhone. :-D

My Scraptactular Weekend

I don't get to do it very often -- get away for the WHOLE weekend. But when I do, I take full advantage. This past Friday, I packed the car, went to work, and didn't go home until Sunday afternoon! Woo hoo!!

After work, I got my nails done and then headed straight to Scrappin Retreats in Flowery Branch, where my friend, Karen Collins hosted a group of die-hards for the weekend. We scrapped until around 2:00 am each night, consumed numerous bottles of wine, and enjoyed our lazy mornings sleeping in. Although some of the girls there managed to get over 30 pages done, I only completed eight. I'm slow. But oh well. . .it's not a race. If you're so inclined, feel free to check them out. Two of them are actually for The Official VistaScrap Book (one that's dedicated to pictures from work).

• First Love
• KISSING
• Sweetie Pie
• Young Chefs' Academy
• Picture Perfect
• Car Wash
• Blogging Buddies (shown below)
• Kim's Christmas Cube (I actually hate this page, so I'm gonna re-do it later.)

I had to do it.

Create a scrapbook page dedicated to our blogs. But I'm a dork . . it's what I do. If you're ever bored and want to check out some interesting reading, you can access links to all my Blogging Buddies right on my main page.

It's All Fun and Games. . .

. . . playing airplane and horse with your big sister. Until someone gets kicked in the eye. I'm not exaggerating when I say something like this happens daily!

Necessity is the mother of invention.

I feel that my girls are too young to get their ears pierced, so I haven't opted to do it. I'm sure at some point, they'll get it done.

But Nadia isn't having that . . she's found a way to be styling, with or without my help. And I thought stickers were just used for paper.

No Coke for You!

We've seen it time and time again in the office . . the infamous empty paper towel holder. But now I'm seeing incidents like this in my own refrigerator. I've got not one, but two emtpy fridge packs, just hanging out . . taking up space and giving off the false impression that there's actually something in there. C'mon people . . (and by that, I mean the rest of my family). . . if you take the last can, how about tossing that empty box?

But yay! At least I've got some Diet Coke with Lime left. :)

A typical Saturday afternoon

And this doesn't include the two playing upstairs.

She'll Never Know . . .

. . . how it breaks my heart to see good scrapbooking cardstock go to waste. Maya received a bunch of supplies for her birthday in June, and I was hoping that we'd be able to crop together soon. . mother and daughter. How fun!

But no . . . instead, she's chosen to cut up that good cardstock and decorate her door with a colorful mosaic. And being the good big sister that she is, she went ahead and decorated Nadia's door, too. I guess it's not truly a waste if it's going to creative use, but darn if those papers wouldn't have made a pretty layout.
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Had My Gutters Blown

I always figured it was kind of a scam. I mean, we hang Christmas lights. How hard could it be to clean out the gutters while you're up there? But after 4 years in this house, it's never been done. The gutters were sagging from the weight, you could see where nails had been pushed through from the debris, and in some areas, the gutters were physically detached from the house. Pretty pitiful.

And when I saw these two men chained to each other, leaf blowers strapped to their backs, their silhouettes against the sky as they walked on the highest part of our roof, I realized some things are just worth paying for.

Pool Party

If you missed Christine and Nathan's pool party, I hate it for you. It was awesome. I was one of the few parents there without kids in tow (for once), and although I feel a little guilty about ditching Nadia and Maya, it was kind of nice to have some time to hang out on my own without having a baby in my lap. Almost everyone swam this time . .the water was perfect, and the food rocked. The sangria wasn't too bad either. :)

Most people started heading out around 7:30, so I finally dragged myself away and headed back to Kennesaw suburbia and took more pictures at our neighborhood back-to-school block party.

Pajama Crop

There's really no good way I can post pictures of my Friday night and not lose cool points. The fact that it was a Pajama Crop almost made it cool, but the coordinator of our group, the Cobb County Croppers, asked us to keep it clean and make sure our jammies were PG-13. So whatever .. .I did get two pages done, though.

myspace

In case you didn't get the memo, this post should clear things up quite nicely. I'm a scrapbooking dork. I know that I've lost it because not only have I scrapbooked pictures of my kids, like normal people -- I've scrapbooked pictures of my scrapbooking space.

Fine!!! Here's my blog.

After hearing for the fifteenth time (well, third time, but who's counting), "Where's your blog? How come you don't have a blog? Get a freakin' blog!!", it happened. I caved. Hope you're happy.

To those of you who may actually read this, I can't promise that it will be funny, enlightening, or even interesting to anyone except myself. I'm not even going to promise that I'll remember to update it. I can, however, almost assuredly predict that I'll spend a significant amount of time rambling on about the woes of being a golf widow, the demands of motherhood and how uncool my Friday nights have become since I took up scrapbooking.

But hey, you asked for it, so deal. Who knows . . this might be therapeutic.