Looking forward.

There are so many great things I'm looking forward to right now, I thought I'd share...

• My Everyday Beauty album kit arriving in the mail. It's designed by the fabulous Ali Edwards! I can't wait!
• Dinner Saturday night with my girlfriends. :)
• Cropping all day on National Scrapbook Day with some friends at my favorite store, The Scrapbook Junkie! Hmmm, guess I'd better start packing!
• Hannah's dance recital on May 19th. They're doing The Wizard of Oz and she's a munchkin - too cute!!!
• Memorial Day trip to Arkansas to see my sister-in-law April and her three kids. We haven't seen them in almost 4.5 years and I've never been to Arkansas before. Should be a good trip. Always enjoy exploring a new part of the country.
• June: Jennifer is moving back to Houston! WOO-HOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Hopefully we'll be with my grandparents over the 4th of July. Looking forward to experiencing the holiday in the old-fashioned small-town way. Thanks, Mom.
• And sometime this summer, I'm finally getting a digital camera!!! :)

Anyone see last night's episode of CSI? Very different from their usual episode format, but hilarious. Enjoyed it immensely.

Happy Easter.

An interesting day - not our typical Easter.

I left the house at 7:10 this morning to play a gig at Sunset United Methodist Church in Pasadena (1st service at 8:30am, yikes!) only to discover that there was no traffic... highly unusual for Houston, even at that hour... and so I was 25 minutes early. LOL Froze my butt off too, as we are in the middle of an unseasonable cold snap! Since I was playing both services, but didn't have time to go home in between, we had decided that Hannah and Chris would stay home this morning. Weird not to worship as a family on Easter morning. All the little girls at the church in their pretty Easter dresses made me miss my own little girl, and I was eager to get back home. But when I got there at 12:30, I discovered that Hannah had been sick twice this morning and had finally just fallen asleep on the couch. Poor baby. This afternoon she has been napping a lot, sick twice more, and a fever to boot. You can tell just looking at her that she feels yucky. So, no Easter egg hunt in the backyard for bright plastic eggs full of candy and coins; no dyeing the 2 dozen eggs in the fridge shades of soft pastels. Instead of an Easter basket, Hannah clings to a Rubbermaid bucket while I hold her hair. And the washing machine has gotten more of a workout today than my baby, who, at her best, puts the Energizer Bunny to shame.

I guess there's always next year. At least I got my lily.

Like Christmas in April.

I really think that mail is highly underrated. I was so excited to get a couple of packages today! I had placed orders at 2Peas and Addicted to Scrapbooking earlier this week, so I knew exactly what would (or should!) be in the boxes, and yet I was excited anyway when the mailman rang my doorbell. Part of it was surprise - I really wasn't expecting them to be delivered until Monday or possibly even Tuesday - but mostly it was just the sheer excitement of holding a box in my hands, and knowing there's goodies inside. :) Of course when you shop on the Internet, there always is the chance that the item you're buying doesn't look precisely as it does in a picture on the computer, so it really is a bit of a surprise sometimes to open the package and actually hold it in your hands. Today I had the wonderful surprise of finding out that a couple sheets of yummy Heidi Grace paper I ordered is actually double-sided; better yet, on one sheet I actually liked the back better than I liked the front (and I liked the front!)!! :)

So what did I get? I got two new awesome circle stamps from 7gypsies, some Heidi Grace paper (I love the cupcakes!!), a package of Heidi Swapp silhouette stickers, and purple KI Memories ribbon and rub-ons. My mom bought Basic Grey Wholly Cow boy rub-ons, Doodlebug boy Jellishments, a package of Junkitz Salsa Essentials paper, new Love Struck paper and transparencies from Marah Johnson/Creative Imaginations, and Flair sticker sheets for baby boys and baby girls (she's paying me to make scrapbooks of my brother's childhood and mine; I haven't done baby pages in a few years so it's been fun!).

Yep, I really do like getting mail. :)

Wednesday tidbits.

Can I just say, first of all, that I hate trying to come up with a title for each blog post? Sometimes it's not a big deal, if I have a story to tell, for instance, that usually offers a nice title. Other days - like today - I just have a few random things to say... What to do then? So "Wednesday tidbits" it is. LOL

I had some friends over yesterday (my turn to host the monthly book club meeting). It was great. :) Hannah was so funny; as soon as the ladies walked in the door, she was dragging them down the hall to see her "pink room." Though some advance notice would have been nice... If I'd known she was going to do that, I would have made the beds! LOL We didn't talk much about the book, but that's ok. Sometimes it seems like there just isn't much to say except, this is what I liked, this is what I didn't like. (Which I don't feel like getting into right now, so I'll save that for tomorrow's post.) What was so great was finding out that I'm not alone in my feelings... I really thought I was being pretty sh***y and petty for being so jealous whenever I found out that a couple of the other girls had gotten together, or chatted on the phone, between our meetings. Felt so left out. Of course this plays nicely to my inferiority complex and depression, and makes me wonder do I even have any friends? (Not that I ever bothered to pick up the phone myself!) I guess I can still hear my mother's voice nagging about my high school friends, "You always call them. They never call you. They never invite you to do anything, go anywhere. Obviously, they're not really your friends." *sigh* It's the kind of thing that sets you up for a lifetime of paranoia. So, given all this, I was naturally surprised (and immensely relieved) to find out that I'm not the only one in our group who has felt a twinge of envy at finding out that (to paraphrase) "a good time was had by a select few"...

In other news... it looks like Ali Edwards is going to start writing her newsletters again! Woo-hoo! :) I've definitely missed the Life Artist Challenges since she took a break to work on her book... which is coming out this fall. I have her first 2, LOVE them, and I can't wait for her next one! I totally subscribe to her Life Artist philosophy and am looking forward very much to seeing it all in print.

I got a new battery for the camcorder last week. So far, so good, even if it isn't brand name (which I am definitely leaving negative feedback for that - beware batteries.com listings on Amazon!!!) but we'll just have to see how it holds out in the long run. The last battery I bought for that thing (at Fry's) worked fine when we got it in May, but wouldn't hold a charge when we used it again in December that same year. Because of that, we only got about 3 minutes of Hannah's Christmas concert at Mother's Day Out this year. >:( Very frustrating. And of course it cut out just as her favorite song was beginning (a children's tune with lots of jumping and stomping, etc. LOL). It's not a song I'm familiar with, but sooooo cute, so I was really looking forward to getting that on video. The photographs didn't turn out well, either (I'm getting a monopod before the dance recital!!!) except for the couple I took up close before the program started. The only consolation I have is, at least it wasn't her first concert - that was last year. And for last year, I have good pictures and the full-length video. :)

By the way, the new Basics Catalog from I Remember When is out (it runs March 2007 to March 2008). I've got it in PDF form for anyone who's interested. If you live in Texas, your order can be drop-shipped to your front door, and if you live in Houston I'll bring it over personally. :) Still kind of doing the consultant thing, though more on a hobbyist basis right now. I'm still not convinced that the whole direct sales idea really works that well in a city with 3 million people; it seems to be better suited to small towns where there aren't any stores. At the moment I plan to stick with it though, until I lose interest or until I get my Wishblade, whichever comes first... LOL

Gotta go to bed pretty soon. I've been doing much better about getting to bed earlier. Tomorrow is special because I'm helping hide the Easter eggs for Hannah's class party. Should be fun. And of course I'll have the camera. :) I'm also doing better with drinking more water, and I've decided to break up with Ben & Jerry - watch for a super-cute layout about that coming soon! :) FYI, I'm leaving them for Skinny Cow... sugar-free and really pretty good! :)