jinxed

Well I guess I jinxed us by telling everyone how good Victoria did yesterday. This morning she started crying as we walked in the door and they had to pry her out of my arms. I just wish I could drop her off at the door like we did last year, but at this school I have to go in, sign her in, and take her to her class. Maybe if we do hugs in the car first??!
No phone call so far, I guess she calmed down?

First Day Pics.

Pictures from the first day of Pre-K!

First Day!!

Victoria had her first day of Pre-K today!! This whole situation has been quite stressful for us due to registrations, wait lists etc. But on Monday we found out that she got in at our first choice location with has the GA Pre-K program! So she did really good when I dropped her off, no tears, just lots of hugs.

Her teachers said she had a few 'sad' moments where she wanted me to come get her, but overall had a very good day. She was in a great mood when I picked her up and is ready to go back tomorrow. She has breakfast and lunch at school and I was worried she wouldn't eat, but had biscuits, then chicken fingers & applesauce!

I took pictures at the house and in the car on the way, but she was doing so good, I didn't want to upset her with pictures at school. I did get one this afternoon of her by her hook and her Dora backpack.

I was great to get things done around the house and get to the gym again, but the day went awfully slow and 2:30 seemed like it would never get here!

Hope everyone else's first days for your kids have gone well!
Well I tried to load pics with this post, but Blogger isn't cooperating :( Will try again later!

Pictures

Some pictures from the birthday weekend.

Cake at the park, sliding at Chuck E. Cheese & her new Princess Bear at Build-a-Bear.

got thinking..

more about hubby and our anniversary.... He's the best because...

• he loves me even when I'm in an evil mood and look my worst.
• he's an awesome daddy.
• he supports me in all my hobbies and crazy ideas i might have.
• he's a wonderful, caring teacher.
• he's the best coach.
• as he says, 'i'm me!' :)

so happy (belated) anniversary hunny, i love you!

Busy, busy....

Wow, busy week!! Here's a pic I was able to find of our family from our June trip to New York....it will make sense in a minute.

My little girl is FOUR!!! I can't believe Victoria is 4 already! Her b-day was Sunday the 23rd. After church we took her to Chuck E. Cheese for lunch, Gramma and her Uncle met us there. We then went to see the movie Cars, so cute!!! Her special gift from us came next, we took her to Build-a-Bear. We realized that she has helped both me and daddy make bears for us but she doesn't have one for herself. So she picked out a pink bear and named her 'Princess' :)

Then on Monday we had her 'Princess Pizza Party in the Park'! We had a great time, the kids ran and played on the playground and wore themselves out. Everything was princess related of course. And of course i took tons of pictures BUT for some reason I can't get to them from the laptop today so when hubby gives up the desktop i'll get some pictures up! (ok, found one of the family)

On wednesday we celebrated our 9th anniversary! We spent the morning at my mom's neighborhood pool, then dropped Victoria there for a few days. Hubby and I went to see Pirates of the Carribean finally, loved it!!! Then Friday night we went out to a new restaurant near the house, dh had steak and i have a crab & salmon cake entree....yummy, yummy but crummy service!

And the wait for Pre-K continues. The school where she is registered has a very bad reputation and the folks I've talked to on the phone have no clue. So we are waiting to hear from where she is 3rd on the wait list.... really hoping to get in there. Then there is the private school where she went last year, it is only half-day and costs $$ but apparently the inlaws have taken it upon themselves to get involved and register & pay for her to go there, Ugh! If that is the case it will completely mess up my work situation and we were really wanting her to go all day. Anyway, she should be starting around the 15th, we'll just see where!

Some pics....

Just a few pictures from the bike ride yesterday- my dad and I in my new jacket, and the group as we're about to get on the road after a quick pit stop.

Great ride.....dodged the rain!

Got home from my ride a little bit ago. It was a good ride but it started with the 'leader' being almost an hour late, we were about to leave without him, apparently he thought it was tomorrow.
Now here's the funny part.... we were planning on riding the long way to eat at Jim & Nick's BBQ in the same plaza as a local Scrapping store, lol!!
So we headed out north to Adairsville, Summerville, Rome then headed towards Rockmart to the direction of Hiram. This is where the storms were.... so before we got to Rockmart we decided to turn away from the lightning and black clouds and went back to eat and hang out at Chili's in Rome. From there we split a bit and all headed our ways home, my dad came back to the house for a bit. So we never made it to the bbq and store. It rained while we were eating but we never actually got rained on :) Legs got wet on the ride home, but overall a great ride and i met a lady who rides and she's in Dallas.

Somehow my dad is the one who had a camera along with some of the other guys and I didn;t even think to bring mine, that's got to be a first!!

Tomorrow is Victoria's 4th b-day!!! We taking her to Chuck E Cheese for lunch, build-a-bear then to see Cars. Monday is her party at the park.

I'll end with a 2 peas challenge, someone who is special to you....
With her birthday tomorrow, I've got to say my daughter, Victoria! She is such a sweet girl and just so smart. If I'm in a bad mood all i need is a smile or a hug from her and my bad mood is gone! She keeps me going all day!

Weekend plans

A pretty relaxed weekend.... this morning we spent at a friend's pool, always fun! Lazy afternoon, hubby and Victoria went over to her cousins for the afternoon while I got some cleaning and work done.

Tomorrow we didn't have anything planned, but I talked to my dad a bit ago and he is going on a motorcyle ride that starts in my town at 2:00. SO, I think i'm going to join him for the ride to north georgia...... just hoping that the weather cooperates! I haven't been on a ride in a while so i got the bike out this afternoon and went for my normal loop around. Had a great ride, just awfully warm out.

Then Sunday is Victoria's 4th birthday! So we are taking her to Chuck E. Cheese after church for lunch, then to Build a Bear and then to see the movie Cars. We realized that she has helped build bears for her daddy and for me, but she doesn't have one of her own! I'm curious to see what animal she picks out.

Catching up!

So, it has been almost 2 weeks since i blogged... busy 2 weeks! Attended and worked the Scrapbook Expo in Atlanta. I stayed within my budget (i think) and worked at the Scrapbooks & Stickers booth, great ladies and lots of good stuff! I also met up with all the Georgia Peaches from scrapbook.com for dinner and an evening crop as well as shopping and classes. 2 of my 3 classes were great, the third from SEI was just awful, absolutely unenthusiastic teacher and not very useful pages in my opinion. I love attending Expo because I always see friends that I only get to see a few times a year!! I live across ATL from where Expo is held so I love this chance to get over in that area.

In other areas, Victoria finished 2 weeks of swimming lessons this morning and did a great job!! In the beginning she was hesitant about just getting in the pool which surprised us since she is such a fish in the water! By this morning, she was jumping in off the edge and going under water. We are so proud!

While I still haven't heard from the temp agency about the possible interview I have started working with a scrapping company, Brindy's Giftables.
They make great titles, embellishments and more and i get to play with some new tools :)

We're also planning Victoria's 4th birthday party on Monday. It is so hard to believe she is about to be 4 already! My dad tried to age her even more and tell my uncle she was turning 5, what was he thinking, she needs to stop growing, lol!!

I will finish tonight's blog with a challenge from 2peas...
List 5 things that put you in a good mood..

1. Chocolate
2. Good music
3. Snuggling with daughter and/or hubby
4. Hanging out with friends
5. Completing craft projects
6. Going for a motorcyle ride

I had to add number 6 :)

I will try to get some pictures off my camera and post them soon!

What did you do before we had the Internet?

A blog prompt from a friend...

before the internet, there was such a time, lol :)

hmm...

• made long distance phone calls
• spent time with pen and paper
• writing friends
• making lists
• paying bills
• waited for friends to write back
  
• played board games
• spending more time with family
• had less friends - I've met some great friends online!!!

I'm sure there's more things, how about you?

Possible Employment

For the last 7 years I have been a teacher at a local technical college. It has worked out great because I was able to change to night classes when our daughter was born, so I'm home iwth her during the day and then hubby is home at night while I go teach. Unfortunatley I never know if I will defintaly have a class for the upcoming quarters due to registration, class number, and schedules. I have only had a class ONE out of the last THREE quarters, the current quarter started after the 4th and I do not have a class.

So I got a phone call today from a temp agency and I may have an interview later this week! It would be an administrative position at a real estate agency, working on PowerPoint, Photoshop etc making brochures and such. I'm not looking forward to the possiblity of going back to work full-time but since Victoria starts Pre-K in the fall it should work out good and it would be consistent work! It's awful not knowing every 3 months if you have a job or not!

So, we'll see what happens!

More weekend stuff

This somewhat goes with the latest 2Peas prompt. My brother has a Playstation game called Guitar Hero, it uses a guitar as the controller and you have to play the notes. He just got a second guitar controller so we can battle against each other! The best part was when i beat him at a song on the EASY mode (he's up to the Hard mode)!!! woo hoo!! I got 100% and beat him in points, i was quite excited!!

I know that this game is one thing that my brother loves to do to unwind. For me, after the little one goes to bed I like to get on the computer. The tv also tends to get my attention on quite a few nights! Then I love to curl up in bed with a good book! On an ambitious night I might get to my scrapping table and work on a layout :)

Challenges

Some challenges from 2Peas....

Do you listen to music or watch movies while scrapping?

The room where i scrap is aso the office and video game room. So usually there's an X-box game in the background and a tv show. I get more work done if it's a sports game or one of dh's shows, otherwise i tend to watch tv and not get work done.
When i go cropping a store or friend's i love to listen to music. One place i used to go monthly always had 80's music going, tons of fun!

What scrapbooking supply do you find yourself using on almost every LO?

It's been ink!! I'm addicted to inking the edges of everything :) I even inked the 3-d circle stickers that i used recently to mute the colors so they matched the papers better. Another thing i've been using on most layouts is flowers, love the primas!!

Crop Night

Friday night crop night.... it was fun, got my sister-in-law to come and a good friend. The space however stunk!! It's a new LSS in town, small store and even smaller crop area if you can call it that. We had to climb over each other and our bags constantly and we had about a foot and a half of table space, ugh. So the company was great and I got 7 pages done but don't think i'll be back there for a crop. The store next door has gone out of business so i tried to talk the owner into taking over that space and expand but she doesn't seem to interested.

it's FRIDAY!!

Since hubby is a teacher and I am currently not working my days are constantly mixed up, but it's always great when Friday rolls around! Especially when it's a Friday night crop day!

We have a fairly new LSS in town, she's gotten off to a rocky start and I'm curious to see how the crop will go this evening. It is free and no dinner included which is not what I'm used to and I'm also not sure about the space, it seems very small.

I've got a bunch of Christmas pictures preplanned so I hope to be able to get a lot done tonight!! My sister-in-law and a good friend are also going to be there, lots of fun!

Summer Movie

Haven't had alot of time for the movies lately, was out of town for almost 2 weeks and with a daughter about to be 4 it's rare that I get to a movie that's not a cartoon. I still need to take her to see Cars!

But hubby and I did get out to see MI3 not too long ago. While I think Tom has turned into a complete jerk, he's still nice to look at for 2 hours :) It turned out to be a great date night!

Today's Events...

• slept in a little
• got rid of yesterday's headache!
• Special K for breakfast
• got Victoria's b-day invites in the mail - not handmade though
  
• went to unemployment office
• watched Victoria and her cousin play - to be that young again!
  
• pork chops for dinner
• watching Big Brother 7
• going to plan for a crop tomorrow night

My Pet Peeves

This is a prompt from the 2Peas board.

One of my biggest pet peeves is waitresses/restaurant service. It drives me insane when they are slow and provide bad service. You would also think they would be considerate of us having a 3 year old with us, we usually order her entree at the same time as we do drinkis, but some people just don't have a clue!! I only waitressed for a few months in my younger days, but I don't think it takes much more than common sense to be a good server.

Another pet peeve I have would be people not picking up after themselves. Honestly, how hard is it to put the dish in the sink instead of the counter, or put your clothes in the hamper instead of the floor!! Gary is a wonderful daddy and gives Victoria her baths, BUT he never cleans up afterwards. Her clothes are all over the floor and the tub is filled with soapy wet toys and washclothes. You would think that he would get tired of me gripping and complaining, but I guess not because it doesn't change!

I'm back

So, it's been a while since I blogged and thanks to the friend who got me started I'm going to try to keep up better!

Just got home from almost 2 weeks out of town. Mostly spent with family at a reunion/retreat weekend. Had a great time and got to see cousins that I haven't seen in almost 9 years and their children that we've never met! I wanted to wait till I had a picture of all of the family to post (almost 20 of us) but my dad has that picture and I don't know how long it will be before he gets it to me! So, here's a pic of the cousins, minus the spouses.

We had a great fourth celebrating Freeom, Family, Friends and Food! We went to a cook-out at my brother-in-law's house and then headed to the park with their family and my dad and brother to watch the fireworks. We lucked out with the weather, had rain earlier in the day but cleared in plenty of time for the fireworks!

Scrapbook.com Challenge

I've never done the challenges or swaps on Scrapbook.com, but I've gotten into a few this month. One is the FLYlady challenge! The following is an introduction to me for this challenge.

My name is Nicole, I live nw of Atlanta, GA in a rather small town where everyone knows my family. My dh and my inlaws are all teachers so everyone know us somehow!

I live with my dh, our daughter who will be 4 in July and our three legged kids, Ashes, the cat and Rocky and Sammie, the dogs. Dh is a middle school teacher and is looking forwad to summer break! He coaches basketball and track.. track season just ended Saturday, YEAH!

My daughter, Victoria keeps up very busy and loves Dora! It seems that we're always running around. I am home with her during the day and teach night classes in the Graphic Design dept. at a local Technical College.

Of course I love scrapbooking, I also love to read, garden, throw pottery and have fun with friends and family.

Ready to scrap and FLY!

The Little Things

These pictures are a sampling of the flowers in our yard and seedlings that Victoria is so excited to see growing like crazy!

I've been busy ripping up tons of weeds and trying to clean up some of our flowerbeds. Victoria has had fun being my helper and her favorite is getting potting soil from the bag and spreading it around the flowers for me! The best part has been how easily the weeds are coming up, root and all after the rains we've had.... I know that seems silly, but I love it! And seeing Victoria's face as I show her worms and other critters has been just great! She's so curious.... not enough to touch or hold the worms though :)

After Victoria had a spell of Strep throat and I twisted my ankle this week, we've had a great few days of digging and planting (in between all the storms of course).

Easter!!

Let's see ... 4 egg hunts through the week, various meals and visits with family, road trips and more! Sunday was still crazy, but a much more relaxing crazy. Church in the morning and then a delicious lunch at my mom's house where the Easter bunny was very good to Victoria and baby Scarlet!

A beautiful day, great friends and a gorgeous wedding...

I had debated so long about going to a good friend's wedding since it fell on the same weekend as family visiting from New York. So after speaking to the bride and the family I decided indeed to attend the wedding in Chattanooga. It was such a beautiful ceremony and I'm so happy for my friend Chris and her husband Shane!

Family visit

After a horrible airline delay in New York my uncle, aunt, her sister and her baby girl arrived in Atlanta at 4:00 am! They were all meeting in atl to have dinner at my mom's on Sunday. We are lucky to see my uncle and aunt twice a year and this was the first time we all met the sister and baby. Anyway, my dh, dd and myself met them at their hotel friday night and went to dinner. Victoria had a great time playing with the baby and surprisingly playing with Uncle Bill. We all had such a fun visit. We went to my mom's saturday evening for some more family time and then again sunday for lunch.

Beautiful Day!!

What a gorgeous day today! There are supposed to be storms moving in, but looking out right now you would never know it.

I've got the house to myself and I just got back from a great motorcycle ride (except for getting behind a concrete truck)! Tomorrow is the Road Trip with the Peaches... life is good :)

First Car

A fun blog prompt from a friend...

My first car was a maroon '84 Toyota Corolla. I bought it used from a family at church and it was my ride for about 2 years. It got me to school, work my senior year and out with friends. The engine block cracked one day and it was bye, bye Corolla.

Spring Break!!

Well, my Spring Break is somewhat over all ready :(
I had to fly home from Myrtle Beach this afternoon to go back to work tonight. Dh and dd are still there for the rest of the week. I already miss them, but it will be really nice to have the house to myself for almost 4 days!
Saturday I'm going on a Road Trip to a agreat scrapping store in Alabama with a bunch of scrapping Peaches!!

Bike Show

Guess I'm posting backwards... but had a good weekend.
Friday night went to a Motorcycle show with my brother and dad. I finally got a new jacket for riding!! All the new bikes were just gorgeous, there were even a few custom ones that had pink and purple flames! This picture is from last fall, I'll try to get a picture in my new jacket soon and post it.
I even found another girl in our neighborhood who rides!! She has a beautiful Harley. It's hard to find other girls that ride!

Rainy Day!

Haven't written in a while... guess life has gotten in the way :)

Today was just cloudy and cold this morning, but it's been raining since about 4:00. Now it pouring and storming. Thankfully it's not bothering our 3 year old much, seem like she settled down pretty quickly.

Got this from a friend via 2Peas blog challenge...

1. The biggest enemy to creativity is procrastination.

If only I would get all my ideas into action, so many more projects and creativity would be accomplished!

2. The only thing I know for sure about the creative process is it is always changing!

This is so apparent in my scrapbook pages and other projects. Looking back on pages created years ago, and even months ago....there are changes in styles, supplies and techniques!

I hope to add more pictures to previous posts if I ever get dh off our regular computer. He has is set-up so I'm on the laptop while he does stuff and plays games on the pc. So when I get back on the pc I have a number of pics to download and add. Next I'll need to order pics for scrapping.. almost out!

I hate my PVR!!!

It has decided to die on us and dh was trying to fix it in the middle of Lost last night and proceeded to lose most of the episode!! :( He says we can dowload episodes from abc. com ??? I sure hope so otherwise I'm not going to be a happy wife.
We're getting a new one Saturday, but what do I do with the 30+ hours of shows that are on the old one?????? DD is going to have fit when she can't watch her favorite Max & Ruby and Dora episodes! hopefully we can get the important shows to vhs before the new one comes?!

ok, pvr vent over now.

Great Park Weather!!

We enjoyed some great weather this week!! Got to meet up with a scrapping friend and her dd at the park. The girls had fun running around and playing on the slides. Victoria and I then went over to the pond to see the ducks.... unfortunatly the geese have invaded, but it's all the same to a 3 year old, lol.

This happens to be the same park that dh and I visited last week on my due date of my miscarriage. Dh took the day off and we picked up some pink and blue balloons and released them in the park - in the rain. Not sure what else to say, but it was such a special afternoon for us.

This post is for Jan :)

I haven't kept up with this blogging like I wanted to but here it goes again...
Had a great time at a crop with the Peaches on Saturday!! Only got about 6 pages done, but had TONS of fun!

This week has been full of the BookFair! Dh hosts it for a fundraiser for his Basketball team so dd and I have been helping out every day for a while.

I've been working out consistently for a while now and have lost a few pounds!! My jeans are looser too, so I think some inches are gone!! :)

Ok, next post will be more organized and one topic ( i hope)
:)

Rollercoaster
I have some time before I have to pick up dd from school. Too tired last night to add much.
I had a great weekend scrapping with friends, that's a picture of our cropping crew of 'Meatballs' :)

I also got to talk to and catch up with a great friend from high school! We haven't talked in months and it's such a small world! He is in New York and we found out that he has been ordering products from a company that a scrapping friend owns in GA... he's been ordering from them for over 5 years! So i got to tell him that I am sitting next to the owner of the company, he was amazed!

The Rollercoaster comes from the pictures I was scrapping. In the pictures I am almost 10 weeks pregnant. Then I had a miscarriage at 10 weeks. How do I scrap these when at the time we were all so happy and had no clue our lives were about to turn into a nightmare. My dd is even wearing a 'big sister' t-shirt in many of the photos. Those are harder to look at than the pictures of me being pregnant. I'm glad that I was surrounded by friends while scrappimg these pictures, most of them didn't know specifics, but I'm glad I wasn't alone, don't know if I would have been able to get through them. Unfortunatly I still have dd's 3rd birthday to scrap and that was about a week and a half before my miscarriage. My due date was Feb 22 and it didn't help matters that I was working on these pictures on Jan 22nd, I should be 8 months pregnant.

The gym kicked my butt this morning, but it felt good!

Ok, that's long enough for now!
nicole

Lazy Day...
Well this is my first blog! After a great weekend of scrapping with friends old and new, my daughter and I both have colds. So after school we just hung out at home and rested. I'm signed up for another crop Friday night and hope I'll be feelign better. I haven't seen one friend in a few months and would hate to have to cancel.
That's all for now.
nicole