Day 5 ~ WII Shoulder

After five days of playing the WII, I think I have "WII Shoulder" :-) Yes, I've played Rock Band, Lego Rock Band, and some Carnival Game.  It was in the Carnival Game, that I think caused the problems!  There is this one game where you have to swing your arm around and around in a large circle really fast to try and win!  My shoulder hurts.  My schoulder hurts real bad.  Not nearly as bad as the Great Shopping Incident of 2006 where I ended up tearing my rotator cuff, but still sore!  I'll take a trip to visit Dr. Metcalf tomorrow and hopefully will be feeling much better!

Today is almost my last full day with the Bostron's.  Kami & Jeremy get home tomorrow evening.  It's crazy how fast the week has gone by!  I've had a lot of fun with Logan, Brett, Haylee & Tyler, but have to admit am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed!  Plus this trip-job is one 'step' closer to the cruise!!  I have one more trip-job for the Munro's right before we leave....but it's getting close!  My handy-dandy ticker says we have .....

Carribbean, HERE I COME!!!

Day 4 - “The Spy Next Door”

This afternoon I took the kids to see The Spy Next Door at Bella Botega.  Kami mentioned the movie to me when we met last week, but I had never heard of it before or knew anything about the film or the cast!  It turned out to be a really cute movie!!

The movie starred Jackie Chan, with George Lopez and *gasp* “Hannah Montana’s Dad” (Billy Ray Cyrus).  When Billy Ray Cyrus first came on the screen all the kids in the theater really did *GASP* and start wispering, “oh my gosh it’s Hannah Montana’s dad!!”  That possibly was the highlight for all the kids :-D

Plot Summery below and above photo for The Spy Next Door is from IMDB.com.

Former CIA spy Bob Ho takes on his toughest assignment to date: looking after his girlfriend's three kids, who haven't exactly warmed to their mom's beau. And when one of the youngsters accidentally downloads a top-secret formula, Bob's longtime nemesis, a Russian terrorist, pays a visit to the family.

This is a fun movie, very slapstick (I mean c’mon it’s Jackie Chan), but fun non-the-less!  It’s not Oscar quality, but a great family movie (assuming you’re not my mom who hates this type of movie :-D).

Sunday tomorrow, that means church in the afternoon, and then I’m onto my last night!!

 

Day 3 ~ Oy Vey, What A Day

Today started out not to bad, it was a no school day for the kids, so we all ‘slept in’.  We watched some Price is Right and then got ready for the day.  Jaime & the girls came back over to play with Tyler & Haylee.  It all started out so innocent enough….

Brett, Haylee, Tyler & Madison went to play outside since it was a beautiful day outside.  All things were going well, kids were playing happily until I hear a strange noise and screaming followed by Haylee running to the door with her finger bleeding.  Apparently she smashed it in the gate, and cut it up really bad.  Jaime and I got her finger cleaned up and realized it was pretty swollen and Haylee was in a lot of pain.  So I decided to take her into the doctor to make sure it wasn’t broken.  Luckily it wasn’t, just pretty cut-up and swollen.  They cleaned the wound and then re-bandaged it.  I’m suppose to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t get infected. 

After getting home, Madison, Haylee, Emmalee and I all played in the hot tub.  Emma LOVED the water, and I kept sitting her on this seat and she’d immediately belly flop into the water!  Apparently she felt she could and would swim!!  Haylee and Maddie had fun splashing around and dumping water on each other! 

About 4:30, I got ready to go pick Brett & Tyler up from the Lamb’s house, got in the van and it wouldn’t start.  Completely dead!!  Jaime drives me to my house so I can borrow a car to at least pick up the boys.  Nobody’s home…no cars in the driveway.  No big deal, Jaime says I can use her car and she’ll swap cars on her way home.  She asks me to help her carry her things into the house.  Sure no big deal. 

Except that the front door is locked so I, go through the garage…LOCKED!  We are locked out of my house, I have like 15 minutes before I have to pick up Brett & Tyler, no car, no keys, nothing!  Luckily Grandma had a spare set and let us in.  Right as I’m walking to get in Jaime’s car, Dad shows up.  So I was able to just take his car to pick up the boys and go home.  Of course, I couldn’t find the Lamb’s house, had to circle the neighborhood a couple times, until I realize it’s the house that had a car parked in front of it blocking the house numbers.  Pick up the boys and head home.

Get home, call AAA and they say someone will be there in an hour.  Hang up call the pizza place, they say delivery in 35 minutes.  Perfect!  Like pizza place said they were here on time, except they forgot the pop.  So the lady promises to go pick up and bring it back.  Shut the door and throw the pizza down just as the doorbell rings again this time AAA to jump start the car.

The mechanic/toe-truck guy, quickly gets the car to start and runs a full-diagnostic on the van.  Bad news…battery probably won’t last.  So he tells me to leave the van running for an hour get it to get the most out of the charge.  I was certain I would forget about the van and a) leave it running all night until I ran out of gas or b) the car would be stolen…that’s just the luck I have been having today.  But luckily I remembered to turn the car off. 

It’s now 7:22pm, it’s almost bedtime, we’re watching Mall Cop the kids claim it’s the funniest movie ever.  I have to admit I wanted to see it while it was in the theater, but surprisingly it’s NOT that funny…kinda stupid – LOL – Oh well, I guess that makes it funny :-)  Oh….the kids just informed me “those guys [have guns] are bad guys and are trying to take over the mall”….gotta love little kids :-)

Here are the two layouts I did yesterday:

So Pretty
Emmalee found this magic mirror at Kim’s house and LOVED looking at herself in the mirror!

 3 Mon
Emmalee’s 3-month photos!  Madison too!

Tomorrow’s another day :-)

 

Day 2 of Babysitting & some Scrappin'

Completed my second day of watching the Bostron Kids.  They had school today, so I was "free" from about 9am-3pm.  I ended up going to lunch with Jaime at Ixtapa and then we scrapbooked the afternoon away!  I completed 2 layouts (3 pages), so I was proud of myself!  I got them scanned in, but was having problems with the coloring and stitching, so I'll work on that tomorrow, maybe!

Madison had fun playing with Tyler & Haylee once they got home.  They played on the swingset, trampoline and then in the hottub for quite awhile!  Emmalee even got in the hottub for a bit, and she seemed to enjoy it (Jaime may claim differently lol).  They were really cute playing in the hottub.  Madison could touch all the way around, but occassionally would 'panic' and think she was drowning until Jaime I reminded her "STAND UP MADISON", oh yeah!  LOL!  She'd stand up and be just fine!  What a goober!

There's no school tomorrow, so we'll get to 'sleep-in', wonder what time that will be??  Oh well im sure it'll be better then 6:30 am when I was up this morning!  I think the plan either tomorrow or saturday is to go to see a movie.  Madison wants to come back and play again tomorrow, so we'll probably do that too.  Nothing overly exciting planned! 

Another Long Babysitting Job

This afternoon I started a 5 day babysitting job wih the Bostron kids while Kami & Jerry go on a cruise.  Today was pretty easy.  I arrived at about 3pm and waited for Logan (13) to get home and then Tyler (4) to be brought home.  Haylee (8) and Brett (11) came home about 4:00 from school. 

This afternoon the kids played outside for awhile and then we bonded over watching game shows....I think we're going to get along just fine!  We first watched two episdoes of Are You Smarter then a 5th Grader and now are watching Family Fued while I make dinner.  After dinner we're going to watch Daddy Daycare and that should take us to bedtime!

Tomorrow I am 'free' from 9am-3pm, where [I promise Amy] to watch Biggest Loser and get caught up on last nights episode.  Amy (and I quote her IM) "there is so much to talk about. lol" so I cannot wait to see it!

Bowling with the Munro’s

On Saturday night we went bowling after going out to dinner at a yummy Chinese Restaurant!  Julia & I weren’t exactly sure how it was going to go, but amazingly we all managed to finish an entire game…10 frames…and had fun!! 

I made a video montage of the event showing each of the kids taking a turn!  It was pretty funny to watch them!!   

 

 

Fun activity and the kids want to go back soon!! 

 

100,000 miles!!

Yep, that’s right my little car that I bought in high school with only 6,500 miles on it just hit 100,000 today when driving home from Camano!!  Yikes…guess that means it’s time to get a new car!!

Sorry the picture isn’t great, I took it while driving on the freeway (yes smart (& illegal) I know….but this is an important milestone I couldn’t miss!!). 

I started working on my montage from last night that I teased about, but wasn’t able to finish it.  I spent the evening booking tickets to go to TEXAS with Julia, Alec & the kids at the end of March…yep right after the cruise!!  I’m so excited!!  Anyway, so hopefully tomorrow I’ll get the montage finished!  Until then I’ll leave you wondering……

Scrapbooking Fiend

That would describe me the last 24-hours!  I accomplished 5 layouts for Julia during that time...with 4 kids undertoe!  Pretty impressive if you ask me!  I also did a variety of photos, ages and kids, so it made it even more fun and challenging!

Buddies
Aiden & Connor playing in the kitchen drawers.  I picked these picture because the boys are wearing their Mariners jersey's!

Based on a Tiare Smith Sketch

Happy 1st Birthday
Pretty self-explanatory...interesting fact, this is the FIRST birthday layout to ever be done for Julia's kids!  Also, when Julia purchased the birthday decorations it came with scrapbooking paper...old school ones....but I cut out the title and the airplanes to coordinate with the pictures!

Based on a sketch by Mel (BlessedintheUS on Playground of Memories)

Pumpkins 2007

Aiden, Connor & MacKenzie's Halloween Photos.  This was ONE large photo/display, and I cut the photos apart to make it seperate!

Based on a sketch by Becky Fleck of Page Maps

Adorable Annika

Julia recently pulled out Annika's hospital discharge photos!  I thought it was to cute and wanted to scrapbook it!

Julia's Layouts

Julia also did some scrapbooking, she spent her time looking for the perfect sketches and ideas so she only finished one layout.  She started a two-page layout but hasn't finished it yet!  However, this past week she did do an adorable snow layout that I thought I'd share!  She's so talented!!

Pre-K

Aiden & Connor's school and class photo for 2009-'10 school year.  Yes, I blacked the faces out of the rest of the class and their teacher since I don't have premission to post them.

First Snow

The first snow of the 2009-'10 winter!  It wasn't nearly as much as we had last year, but still fun to play in!

We also did something REALLY fun tonight....but had trouble getting the pictures uploaded so you'll just have to wait until tomorrow to see what it was!!  I'll head back home in the morning in time for church at 1pm.  So I better get to bed because MacKenzie wakes up early and it's already 12:13am on January 24, 2010!

One Year of Mackenzie

I'm up visiting Camano this weekend, and did some scrapping tonight with Julia...well technically Julia looked online for ideas the whole time, while I scrapped!  Earlier in the day I helped her organize all her printed photos into a cool little box she got, and while going through the pictures came across lots of MacKenzie that were left over from her "First Year" photo frame.  Seemed like the perfect layout, I used those pictures to make a layout!

One Year of Mackenzie

The scanning wasn't to great, and I promise in person it's much straighter and all the letters are present :)

Happy Friday!!

Random Dream....let's make sense of it....

As most of you know, I am Queen of Random...well that goes for my dreams as well.  When I wake up in the morning I'd say 99% of the time can remember pretty vividly my dreams - and last nights was no exception!  Thought I'd share the randomness of my dreams, and yet they are all in one dream, no 'dream jumping here'!!

I put in purple the dream parts and then in green my reasoning for why I had dreampt about it!  Please remember that all of the green-ness I actually 'dealt' with yesterday.  I guess it goes to show that your dreams really can be intertwined with reality...or at least mine can!

• On a trip to Texas - Julia is talking about going to Texas for a vacation
• We drove to Texas in 2 cars, but we finally made it!  - Alec says it would be cheaper for us to drive then to fly to Texas!
• I am missing one shoe and am turning the car apart looking for it - I have one of my favorite Nine West black heals missing
• While searching for my shoe, a police officer shows up and starts looking around the cars in the driveway, he leaves and then comes back to hand me a ticket for $757 and then continues to put tickets on the other cars in the driveway.  - No clue....hope this isn't forshadowing....??!!
• I find out that the ticket is because when we parked the cars, the officer could tell that we illegally turned into the driveway!  -- Yes, I know I am a horrible parker at times, but at least not as bad as Kelly ;) !
• Head to the mall to find a gift for Brandi's birthday - Kim Hoerner and I want to go shopping together in Texas, but seriously for Brandi's birthday...hasn't she had enough??

I remember more random parts but don't have any 'reality' to put behind them, so I won't bore you anymore with my dreams!

One Month From Tonight….

We'll be 7-hours into our cruise, we disembark at 5pm EST!!  We will be on our way to Aruba, one of my favorite destinations...but before we get there we'll be At Sea for 2-days.

I thought it would be fun (okay for me - hehehee!) too look at all the amenities of our ship.  We will be sailing on the Coral Princess of the Princess Cruises Fleet, here are some fun facts about the ship....   

Coral Princess Facts

• Wrap around Promenade Deck
• Over 700 balcony staterooms (I get one!)
• Accommodates 1,970 passengers
• 92,000 gross tons
• 965 feet in length
• 13 Restaurants & eateries
• 1 large theater
• Outdoor Movie Theater
• 3 lounges
• Casino
• Library and Game Room
• Gym
• Spa
• Sporting Activities (shuffleboard, mini-golf, golf simulator, basketball + More)
• 4 Pools & 5 Hot tubs
• Internet Cafe & WiFi (yah baby)
• Wedding Chapel (lol)
• Duty free boutiques
• Photography Studio
• ALL food is FREE!
• 2 Weeks of Soda for $50
• PLENTY of SUNSHINE!!

Here are a few pictures of the ship and its amenities!

Coral Princess


Layout of the Ship

Princess Theater

One of the pools and its outdoor theater

As of today, January 20, 2010

 

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*Redone because the bad formatting of the one before*

1 Comment posted to the original post….

Amy said...

You suck! lol I am so jealous. Sounds like a blast.

January 21, 2010 10:09 AM

Blog Re-Do

You've probably noticed the changes that my blog has undergone the last couple of weeks.  I've been trying to find a new look, but didn't have much luck.  Brandi helped me design the last one (that lasted about a week), and it was okay, but I wasn't 100% feeling it.  So when I visited my grandma this weekend and she said to me "When are you gonna change that awful background on your blog?"  I decided it might be time to change it!  Must do what Grandma says!

I was impressed with this layout, the background came came from Cutest Blog on the Block and the topper came from Shabby Blogs.  Neither site had a matching topper & background that spoke to me, so I was very excited that I found these two which I thought matched pretty darn close!  I used PAINT to do some color editing to make the colors match a little bit better, but overall I was happy.

I've had two people tell me that they don't like my picture in the topper....Alex even went as far as saying "you look fat in that picture" so I guess that means I should find a new photo :-) But am in no hurry to do so!  I kinda like my fat photo!!

1 Month, 1 Month!!

One month from today at this exact moment, our bus (yes private BUS, we have 11 people with their two-weeks of luggage do get to the airport) will have picked up my family from Grandma’s house and we’ll be in route to the airport heading to our Caribbean cruise!!  We’ve been waiting for this trip to get here since December 20, 2008, when Grandma surprised us all! 

I thought in honor of our 1 month countdown, I’d share some of the favorite professional photos from the two cruises I’ve been on! 

Cruise #1 ~ February 11-25, 2006

We went on this trip the month before Jaime gave birth to Madison, so *sniff sniff* they didn’t get to come along.  But…we had fun without them!  We left and returned from Fort Lauderdale and circled the Caribbean, we traveled approximately 4,194 miles!

#1: Fort Lauderdale ~ Princess Cays (we didn’t get to go due to weather) ~ Tortola ~ Antigua ~ Dominica ~ Martinique ~ Barbados ~ Grenada ~ Bonaire ~ Aruba ~ Grand Caymans ~ Fort Lauderdale

Our ship, the Sea Princess

Our family boarding the boat!

Brandi & I “swam” (aka stood on a platform) with dolphins!

 
Formal Night Dinner

 
The Benson Granddaughters

 
Benson Granddaughters and Grandma

Cruise #2 & 3 ~ February 16-March 1, 2008

This cruise for us was considered one cruise, but it technically was two!  We did two different loops of the Caribbean from Puerto Rico to Puerto Rico and then back to Puerto Rico!  We traveled approximately 3,414 miles!

#2: San Juan, Puerto Rico ~ St. Thomas ~  St. Kitts ~ Grenada ~ Bonaire ~ Aruba ~ San Juan, Puerto Rico

#3: San Juan, Puerto Rico ~ Barbados ~ St. Lucia ~ Antigua ~ Tortola ~ St. Thomas ~ San Juan, Puerto Rico

Our Ship, the Crown Princess

Boarding the ship!

 
The Benson Girls

  
The Benson Granddaughters

 
Benson Granddaughters with Grandma

 
My family 

For Christmas last year, Brandi & I made Grandma, my parents and her parents a DVD of pictures and video taken from this cruise!  Its a bit long, but if you get a chance you should watch it!  I did blog about it HERE!

I CANNOT wait until we go!  You can track my ‘waiting progress’ with my ticker on the left sidebar of my blog!!  1 month, 1 month!

Before…Meets…After

Last night before I went to bed, I decided that today I was going to tackle the ‘gift wrap/tablecloth/junk closet”.  It got to the point where you would just open it enough to grab what you needed out and then quickly slam the door!  I was determined to get it cleaned and organized…

My mom would be mortified if she knew I was posting these before pictures :-D

Before

Top of the closet

Middle of the closet
 

Bottom of the closet

See what I mean by being full and extremely unorganized??!  It was an absolute pigsty.  We could just barely find gift bags and tissue paper.  We’d hope and pray that by pulling something out of the closet it wouldn’t all come tumbling down!

…Meets…

There was FOUR large garbage bags full of garbage and/or things we donated!

After

Kind of funny, when I took the ‘after’ pictures it only took two shots to fit it all in, opposed to the three shots it took to do the ‘before’!

Top of the closet:

Bottom of the closet:

I have to say it feels mighty fine to have that closet cleaned out!  This evening we’re celebrating Brandi’s birthday, so it was a breeze to find a gift bag and tissue paper to go in it! 

There’s no more being scared and/or fearing for your life when you open the closet!  It’s all clean and organized now!  YAY ME!