Lake Tahoe

We spent the last two days at Lake Tahoe (Monday & Tuesday) and we are now back in Napa taking it easy for the day. Our plans today include the Jelly Belly Factory (yay!), a local scrapbooking store, and exploring Napa Valley a little more. Tomorrow and Friday we are headed to San Francisco. It's supposed to be in the 100's here today and tomorrow.

Lake Tahoe was beautiful. We didn't get to go parasailing (boo) but that's ok. We did go up in the Gondola to Heavenly Ski Resort though... some wonderful views and the weather was gorgeous. I can't imagine living in a place where you don't have to worry about rain at all. (The last time it rained here was in April.)

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe

Gondola ride to the top of Heavenly Mountain

View from Heavenly Mountain
Us at the lookout!

Zephyr Cove Beach (Jason and I went swimming and it wasn't even that cold!)

Napa Valley Wineries

Hello all! Today we are heading to Lake Tahoe! Yay! I can't wait, it's going to be so beautiful.

Yesterday we toured some wineries with Cheri and Bill in Napa. We tasted at three different wineries and had a great time. The places are all so beautiful. We took a tour at one called Kuleto Estate which was absolutely beautiful. It sits on the top of a hill overlooking the Valley. The wines were great too! After touring we came back to the house and had dinner and continued drinking wine. (Jason in particular had his fair share of wine.) Soon after dinner Bill brought out tequila (he had been offering tequila all weekend and this time Erin and Jason couldn't turn it down.) Later in the night Bill told me he thinks he "lost Jason on the second shot of tequila." Haha, you should have heard all the giggling coming out of him! Needless to say, he has a headache this morning but he's doing well. :-) Pictures below!

This is the view from our bedroom at Cheri's house. We spend a lot of time in those chairs admiring the view.

Kuleto Estates

View from Kutelo Estate

Jason and Erin being cute
Erin laughing with the tour guide.

This chair is so cool! You can swing out over the bank and spin and twist around in it. Erin was brave and kept twisting it up and spinning really fast in it AFTER she had drank wine all day...


Jason and Erin and the weirdest popsicle advertising ever... Notice that the shot glasses are empty... Haha. :-)

CALIFORNIA!

Erin, Jason and I arrived safely in Sacremento this afternoon! After a long 5.5 hour flight to LA, two breakfasts, and another hour flight to Sacremento, we met my Uncle at the airport and drove to Napa. It was about 2:00pm local time (5:00 my body's time!) and when you live in Napa, anytime is good for drinking. We were promptly given Mimosas and snacks and we sat drinking, talking, and relaxing in Cheri and Bill's back yard. Beautiful weather, slight breeze with blue skies. We went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant called Sticky Rice and had a wonderful time (more drinking... I have discovered a new love of Lemon Drops... yum!) After a quick trip to the grocery store (to pick up Ben & Jerry's and more drinks) we came home to crash on the couch. This is where you will find me at this exact moment... :-) Pictures from Napa to come soon! (They are not here yet because I am too lazy to go upstairs and get my card reader from my luggage and besides, this couch is just way to comfortable to get up right now! Give me a break, I have been up since 3:30am MA time and right now it's 1:25am MA time and I am not sleeping yet!) Till tomorrow! :-)

Okay, now I'm bragging...

This felt good:

Photos and Cool Stuff

This will likely me my last post before we are on our way to California! I really wish I had an iPhone so I could post on the road, but alas, you can't have everything. (Honestly though, I'm pretty close. Hee hee.)

So here are some photos from this weekend that I finally uploaded because I ordered a new card reader! Love love love my new card reader. It's white and black and cute and it reads my cards! Perfect!

Saturday night we had Kristen and Dane over for dinner. (I made Jess' homemade Mac and Cheese and it was SO good! Thanks Jess!) We had fondue for dessert and it was SO yummy! AC Moore now has milk chocolate fondue chocolate and it's SO MUCH BETTER than the dark chocolate they had before.

Jason and I went geocaching and penny-searching on Sunday afternoon in Boston. This is a photo of the sailboats in the harbor. I'm so jealous. I want to have a sailboat!

As promised in a previous post, this is the guy who was hanging upside down in a straight jacket from a 12 foot tripod. Faneuil Hall is a good place to see people doing things like this! The things you see in the city...

So, on to some scrapbooking goodness. Today digitalfreebies.com has a new freebie out and it's OH SO WONDERFUL! It is a set of date/season/other circles that are all dated "2008." Here is a sample of what they are offering:
You can go download the freebie here! (Did I mention it was FREE?) I did something with one of the accents really quick below with a photo of Jason that I love. I can see this being a page (or a series of pages) in a mini book with little tabs poking up. Hmmm... I honestly created this in Word and just added a text box with white text using my handwriting font. (Love my font!)



Oh, and Erin totally rocked the fajitas last night. I love our red little stand to put all the "fixin's" in... I ate too much (we had more fondue for dessert! Ahh!) but I really really (REALLY!) enjoyed the meal... If Erin ever asks you what you want for dinner you should request she make you fajitas so you can experience the goodness. :-)

The next time I post I will be on the West Coast! Watch for postcards people! MWAH!

9 things

My mind is distracted and I don't have anything "scrapbooking" to blog about (except that you should all check out dafont.com for free fonts that are AWESOME!) So, to remedy that, I am going to list some things that come to my mind randomly in the next 5 minutes. You can basically stop reading now... :-)

1. I am really excited to go to Lake Tahoe on Monday. I feel like I am not comprehending how beautiful it is really going to be. The Lake has 72 miles of road surrounding it... I can't comprehend that either. 72? That's insane.

2. My sister is making us fajitas tonight for dinner! Isn't she awesome? Don't you wish she was YOUR sister? Yeah, you do, I knew it.

3. Today was weigh-in for Weight Watchers and I have lost a total of 7.4 pounds! I am officially half way to my goal! (Jason doesn't know this yet, but I am going to buy a Bind-It-All when I reach my goal! Hee hee!)

4. I have quite the obsession with collecting squished pennies... I read online yesterday that ketchup or hot sauce is the best way to clean them so I'm going to try that tonight. I'll let you know how it goes.

5. My birthday is the Monday after next, which is Labor Day. Everyone gets my birthday off from work! Wee! We're going to a Red Sox game that night too, making this the second birthday I have spent at Fenway Park. (First was my 21st.)

6. I am going to be 23. That's insane to me, and probably more insane to my parents. Where does the time go?

7. I am so awful. I'm already thinking of my next trip that I am going on next year. I don't even know when/where we are going, but I am looking forward to it. Jason and I are going to DC at some point, probably in the fall and we are going someplace relaxing in the spring with Real and Denise. I wish I could travel so much more.

8. I really miss my kitties. A lot. They are such a big part of "home" for me and the apartment is so empty without them. I just don't wake up the same with a kitty kneading my hair and purring in my ear.

9. I love Flickr. All you have to do is search for anything you want to see and you are met with amazing photographs of some of the most amazing places. See what my search for "Lake Tahoe" brought up here and here. I am going to do a search before I leave to get some inspiration of shots to take while I am here as well!

I don't want to brag... but...

I am looking into hotels for Lake Tahoe for next week... we decided to go toward the beginning of the week, but really we don't care too much (as long as Erin gets her sweartshirt, haha!) So, because rates are similar during the week, I checked the weather report for the area, figuring that if it was going to rain one day, we just would base our stay on that. Check out what the forecast says:

Yeah, I'm pretty excited! I don't think we have had a forecast that looks like this in the northeast all summer! The weather report didn't help my hotel decision, but as you can imagine, I'm not going to complain. 8^)

Is it Friday yet?

I have been thinking a lot about my travel journal that I will be keeping when we go to California on Saturday. This album that Ali Edward's made is my inspiration. I have also been playing with a new 2" circle punch I got and WordART. Here are some fun things I have come up with:

I also had a nice thought for my "title" page for the album. This will be completed after I return home, but I improvised so I could show you what I was thinking... I'm starting to love Wordle.

My sister is SO excited about this trip. She kept telling me on the phone last night "I am SO excited... I am SO excited." We have plans to go to Lake Tahoe, and for some reason she is SET on getting a Lake Tahoe sweatshirt. No idea why, but I think she may cry if she doesn't get one, that's how much she's excited about it.

I am really really obsessed with the first book in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I am only half way through the book, but I already can't stop thinking about it and can't wait to get home tonight so I can continue reading. It's a facinating story. The author's perspective is intriguing and the characters are lovable. I'm so excited that there are 4 books in this series! (And also that my sister owns the other three! Haha!)

I think I am going to try to make a mini travel album of New York City. I have some many little things I picked up there that would be great for a scrapbook... including but not limited to salt and vinegar flavored crickets! (Yes, they are real and NO I didn't taste them!)

I want to apologize for my lack of photos. My new memory card, although it is smart enough to store 1,200 pictures, isn't smart enough to communicate with my computer. Therefore, I have to use Jason's computer to get photos off my card. I have some great ones from this weekend (including a guy hanging from a pole in the middle of the street with a straight jacket on...) but I haven't gotten them off my camera yet. I'll post them soon, because that's something I know you are all dying to see!

Photo Gifts #1

Jason had a good idea this past weekend and I thought that it would be fun to get it started today. He thought that I should post fun scrapbooking/photo projects that can be used as gifts! I am constantly giving "photo" related gifts to my family and friends and I thought that you may be interested to know what kinds of gifts are easy to make and will mean a lot to the person you are giving it to. (Those family and friends who visit my blog often, just think of how many photobooks/calendars/prints/frames/etc. I have made over the years! Hee hee, more on those later!)

I recently made this poster for my sister:

It's REALLY easy to make and doesn't take much time at all. I used shutterfly.com (one of my favorite photo-related sites!) The poster is 16"x20" and is basically just 9 photos from Red Sox games that I have gone to with my sister. To make the poster you upload your photos to Shutterfly, choose the style of collage you want to make (mine is this grid style, some have backgrounds and titles for you to customize as well), drag and drop the photos in the spaces on the collage and click "order." SO easy!

If you are not a registered user of Shutterfly you can register right now and get a free 11"x14" poster just like this one (with your own photos, of course!) AND 50 free 4x6 prints! (You have to pay shipping, which still makes this a pretty sweet deal.) Seriously, go login to Shutterfly and start uploading photos! You could have all your holiday shopping done by this weekend!!! Haha, ok, they may not be THAT good, but go check it out anyway. ;-)

So Excited!

Ok, ok, I admit I'm a little more excited about this than the normal person would be, but really, this IS totally cool!

Erin emailed me today and told me that she heard from a co-worker that the Jelly Belly Factory is not far from Napa, CA (which is where I will be in exactly 8 days, not that I am counting!) So, I Googled it... It's a half hour drive from Napa, located in Fairfield, CA. And, get this, they are open 7 days a week, the tours are FREE, there is a gift shop (woo!) and...

...

Are you ready?

...


Wait for it...

...

Just a little longer...

...

Ok, so I am building this up a bunch and you (meaning anyone reading this who is not ME) probably won't care...

...

But I am really excited about this!

...

I mean, really, REALLY excited!

...

Really...

...

Ok, enough of that... here goes ...

...

THERE ARE PENNIES AT THE JELLY BELLY FACTORY!

AND A JELLY BELLY COLLECTOR'S BOOK!

I'll stop here so you can catch your breath from all this excitement! Really, go get a glass of water and take a few deep breaths. Maybe take a walk about your desk; I know this is big news. I'll be waiting here when you get back.

Ok, are you better now? Good. I mean, honestly now, how cool is that? No, really... HOW COOL? It's pretty great in case you hadn't figured that out.

Also, there is some Jelly Belly "Art" on display and one is a headshot of Ronald Reagan.

Life doesn't get any better than this people.

Have a great weekend!

:-D

Found Grocery Lists

I found this site when looking through some of Ali Edward's Ezine Articles. It seems like something Jason and I would do just for fun. http://www.grocerylists.org/lists/100/

It actually reminds me of a project we want to start (kinda) selling cases of socks. I am always so FRUSTRATED that I can not find socks that match, ever. Wouldn't it be nice to buy an entire CASE of socks that are all the same? That way you can throw out all your old socks and get a whole set that all match and never have to look for matches again! I definitely want to try it. I could just buy these and stop complaining. I can see Jason now... "Sam, why is there a $240.00 charge on your Mastercard from EBay?" "Oh, that? I bought 240 pairs of white socks."

Oh yeah, and another thing... we are half-way through August. How did that happen?

Could it be?

I don't think it is. I think the real bigfoot is on the side of I-93 disguised as a bunch of trees. You be the judge...

(Also, don't they have better things to report about these days? Like, I don't know, all those games of Olympic proportion going on in China right now? No? Ok, whatever.)

Photos from a rainy weekend in Vermont

I know these are a little late, but here they are anyway, some great photos from this weekend in Vermont. (Jess, I want the pictures you were taking on Friday night too!)

This is our GPS. Her name is Regina (Reggi for short.) Jason turned our little car icon into an airplane and I thought it was HILARIOUS when we were "flying" toward an airport on our way home on Friday night! Simple things, I know...

Erin and Jason on the deck at my parent's house. It was actually sunny and pretty warm Saturday evening so we got to use the new furniture my Mom bought for the deck! (I have pictures of the furniture in April the day after she bought it and it is covered in snow! Haha!)

Erin and Jason wrestling... this is one of their favorite activities when they are in my Mom's living room. One of my Mom's favorite phrases to yell when they are doing this is "don't you dare get any blood on my carpet!" Haha...

Erin and Joey playing Wii Boxing. Joey seriously kicked butt at this. I couldn't play much because my arms were so sore from the night before... too much Wii Boxing just isn't good for you.

Somehow, Erin ended up with a little bit of whipped cream on her face and Jason ended up with a lot.

Jason, Erin, Joey and me. (This is actually a good picture of the four of us... I tried for another but Joey was sticking his tongue out! I like this one better... haha.)

Monarch butterfly in Real's garden. I think this is Echinacaea? Jason was joking that the butterfly isn't going to get a cold anytime soon. I love this picture and I love my camera for taking it! :-)

Denise and Brittany doing some Wii Boxing...

Look at how much fun they were having!!! I have a feeling Denise wants a Wii for Christmas. I'm not sure how I know that, but it may be the fact that she kept saying "I want one of these! Everyone pool together, this is what I want for Christmas!" Haha.

Real and Brittany boxing... Britt was really intense (and GOOD!)

That's all for now! Once I am feeling better I will be sure to scrapbook these photos and post them here. They all tell such a great story.

Bruno & Jason Singing Jingle Bells

So, here's the story:
We brought the kitties home with us to Vermont this past weekend so Real and Denise can baby sit them while we are in California. We have done this before, and every time we do, Bruno meows in the car for a while before settling down and going to sleep. He doesn't love the car, but he doesn't hate it either. Jason was singing with him for quite a while before I took the camera out and started taking video. So, without further ado, my cat and husband singing Jingle Bells (in August)... Enjoy! (Sorry about the laughing in the background, that was me.)

Pretty colors...

I feel like I haven't blogged in a long time... that probably has something to do with the fact that it's been a long time since I have blogged. Hmmm... funny how that works.

I had a really funny video of my husband and cat singing Jingle Bells (not kidding!) to share but for some reason my computer doesn't want to recognize my memory card today. As punishment I have been ignoring my computer the entire day... except that I still have work to do so I can't ignore it completely. So, I am NOT going to click on the little "update now" icon in the taskbar... I am IGNORING it! HA! See how it feels?

So we went home this weekend and were faced with many (MANY) exclamations about the weather in Vermont. The weather is always a hot topic in Vermont, especially in the winter, but this time it was the rain that was causing a ruckus (is that how you spell it? I want to get a dog and name is Ruckus.) My favorite weather quote of the weekend came from my Father-in-Law. (Real, I'm going to pick on you, but in a very loving way, like always... I think... anyway...) When he saw us on Friday night he asked us "Have you guys been getting the rain we have been getting the last few weeks?" Honest question, right? Well, I apologize for the dumb look aimed at you, Real, because I was honestly thinking how to answer this question. How am I to know what kind of rain Vermont is getting? I can not compare the rainfall in two places at once! I only have to assume that it's been a lot because everyone was talking about it. Also, my parent's yard is flooded and they live on a mountain, so I assume it's bad. I think that if it doesn't stop soon the barn may float away. Hehe, that's a funny picture, but really, that would suck.

Because of the rain, and the fact that is was VERY cold in the Kingdom this weekend, we mostly stayed inside for the weekend. This meant that we basically got to play Wii all weekend. Let me tell you, I was SO SORE on Sunday morning after playing roughing 4,327 boxing matches against various friends and family! Ok, it wasn't that many, but it felt like it was! It was so many that I couldn't box on Sunday and instead had to stand by and take pictures of my In-Laws boxing instead. (I wish wish wish my computer wasn't acting up and that I could show you how hilariously wonderful this was.)

On a crappy note, I am sick. I have a cold. Who gets a cold in August? WHO?!?! Stupid congested head. I could do with the congestion for a while but the terrible pain in my EARS is really getting to me. I stayed home on Monday and slept until 11:00 and then went to bed last night at 9:00 to try to make my body think it's getting enough rest. It sucked to spend a day sick at home without the kitties to keep me company. Call me a crazy cat lady if you must, but I was lonely!

For those of you who didn't know, my kitties are with their grandparent's in Vermont for a little while. We are going to California in a couple weeks and we didn't want to have to leave the kitties alone for a week. So, for a month, they are terrorizing Real and Denise and spreading cat hair all over the house. :-)

I bought the first book in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer today. I have talked to too many people who said that I have to read the books. I have been wanting a new batch of books to really catch my interest and I really hope this is it. I have also been giggling away to Dave Barry's Travel Guide lately, which is wonderful, especially when you are about to go on a trip. I read bits and pieces to my family over the weekend (hopefully they found it as funny as I did because I read it out loud a lot!)

Also, yesterday I got a comment from Lain Ehmann from Simple Scrapbooks Magazine! I am SO excited that she read my blog! Not only that, but she commented on her blog about my blog AND I won a magazine that I have been SEARCHING for (visted two different Borders and a B&N to look for it!) WEEE! Check out the post here (and the magazine I won here!)

Happy happy day! (Even with a cold!)

Stupid Charley

I have been (barely) tolerating the horrible nature of the "Charley Horse" for years now. This event, is most likely to happen to me when I am in the deepest of slumber, off in dream-land, thinking of walking on the beach, ice cream sandwiches, and scrapbooking all at once! Said event consists of my calf tightening up in what resembles a balloon filled with asphalt being suddenly inflated to near bursting inside my leg. Imagine waking up to that...

That's not where it ends, however. Two or more days after I have to walk carefully because my leg is so sore. This experience has given me no choice but to detest anyone named Charley just by association. (You can hate Charley too because he's that guy who introduces himself to everyone as "Charley with a Y." I hate that guy.) Anyway, I looked up on the all-knowing Internet what I could possibly do about the terrible experience I have in the dead of night which leaves me wimpering. Not so all-knowing anymore, as it turns out. Apparently no one knows the cause of a Charley Horse, but one of them could be a "structural deficiency." A what? Yes, a structural deficiency, also commonly referred to as flat feet. I didn't know I had a STRUCTURAL DEFICIENCY! Thanks Bugden-side of the family for giving me this complex! (I'm pointing at you Dad!)
Not only am I shocked (SHOCKED!) that there is no medical explanation for this most terrible feeling, but if my flat feet are the reason for it, I can't even do anything about it! People also like to blame things like deficiencies (there's that word again!) of Potassium, Magnesium, and good 'ol water as the culprit. I don't get it though, because I know people who could do to get a lot more potassium and/or magnesium (um, probably everyone!) but they do not wake up in the middle of the night clutching their leg in agony wishing to get out of this one alive. If anyone can shed some light on this subject it would be grately appreciated, unless your name is Charley.

As a temporary solution I keep a metal spoon by my bed that my sister bought me at the dollar store. We jokingly refer to it as the "foot spoon." Denise told me that the cold of the spoon, if pressed into the sole of my foot would help the pain. It does help, however Jason doesn't love me hitting him on the shoulder in the middle of the night and screaming to "get me my foot spoon!" because I can't move... Also, I would like to prevent the pain in the first place, if at all possible.

I love to read...

I thought I would share some of my favorite books with you. (Mostly because I haven't been scrapbooking lately and I have nothing interesting to talk about... hee hee.)

Hands down my favorite book of all time. (This book took the place of Catcher in the Rye, so you should believe me that it's good!) The book is about the years between when Christ found out he was the Messiah, to his death. It covers the 17 (or so?) years that the Bible leaves out, and it's told from the point of view of his best friend, Biff. Now, I'm not the most religious person, and maybe the most religious person would find it offensive, but it's purely fiction. Also, Biff invented sarcasm, so we should all be grateful for him for that.

Jason and I are currently listening to this book in our car on the way to work (we can't just talk the hour each way because neither of us are THAT interesting!) The main character, Jacob, is a vet for a circus in the 1920's. He drops out of Cornell after his parents are killed in a car crash and joins the circus. Told from the point of view of Jacob both at 23 and at 90 (or 93, he can't remember.) It's a love story, but it's wonderful anyway, even if you don't like that "mushy" stuff.

A book that will make you laugh out loud more than once. It's amazing. The story is told from the point of view of a child who is autistic. This book will really help you to understand children (and adults) with behaviorial issues. The boy finds his neighbor's dog dead one night and is determined to use his reasoning skills to figure out who killed it.

The title says it all. Everything in this book should be taken very seriously, including (but not limited to) the threat of colliding with Water Buffalo while flying. (I don't know why this image says "Sound Edition." Just get the book, it doesn't have to be the sound edition... whatever that means.)

Also, on this day in 1820, the first potato was planted in Hawaii. :-)

PS - I just thought of something interesting to talk about! I have lost 5.4 pounds in two weeks on Weight Watchers! WEE!

Meow... *points to mouth*

I know, I know, I haven't been posting a lot lately. I'm a slacker... I will hop back on the blog train soon though, and get back to my "one per business day" quota I set for myself. I like to see the frequency rating on Google Reader go up for my blog!

A few things to share with you today...

This video was shown to me by our friends Kristen and Dane and it reminds me SO MUCH of Bruno that I just had to share. Turn your sound on for the full effect.


I also wanted to share with you some of my favorite blogs that I read. Now, you should know that I am currently subscribed (through Google Reader... you should all set this up if you use gmail!) to about 85 blogs... this means that I am basically a blog reading machine! So, I narrowed it down to a few that I really really like. (You can also sign up to get the posts emailed to you every day if you would like, just like on my blog!)

Ali Edwards

Stacy Julian

Hero Arts

Heidi Swapp

Just a quick post about my progress with Weight Watchers. Last week I lost 2.6 pounds (woo!) and I weigh-in again tomorrow afternoon. I am also weighing myself on my scale at home, which isn't calibrated to the WW scale, but it gives me a good idea of whether I am going up or down. And, guess what? This morning that scale, who I previously was not on speaking terms with, said a number that I have never seen on that scale before! I would tell you what it was if I wasn't too shy. Haha. Either way, it's lower than it has been in a long time, so I have my fingers crossed that tomorrow I am lower than I was last week. (Keeping in mind that I did not eat healthy this weekend at all.)

Also, some things I am excited about: this book, this movie, this snack, this city, this product.

Warning! Lots of photos in this post!

On Friday, Jason and I high-tailed it out of the "big city" (all my relatives call it that, "so, how are things in the big city?" and on like that...) and drove South to Connecticut. My parents are originally from Somers, CT and I spent a lot of time there when I was little visiting my Grandparents and family friends. On Friday night and into Saturday the "girls" put together a scrapbook for my Grandmother and Grandfather for their surprise 50th Anniversary party which included pages about the children and grandchildren. We stayed up late on Friday and got up early on Saturday to work on the scrapbook and let me tell you, my Mom and Aunt Tina are crazy scrapbooking machines! They didn't find it difficult at all to finish an entire scrapbook in less than 24 hours. And, in addition to that, they needed to take a trip to AC Moore on Saturday to get more page protectors because they ended up making TOO MANY pages for the scrapbook! The boys even helped out with the creation of the pages (kinda, sorta, almost... haha. Really, they did help, but they were skeptical as well.) Also, check out the MESS we made in Tina's kitchen! You just can't scrapbook with 5 girls and not make a mess!

In the same town that my Aunt lives in is an airport where a family friend works. He's an instructor for tandem skydivers. Yes, he jumps out of planes... many times in one weekend, with people strapped to the front of him! It was SO COOL to get to watch him take people up... When we were there he recorded his 7,597th skydive, and over 3,000 of those were tandem jumps. Needless to say, Erin and I (and Jason too, although he will say he was dragged into it!) are now determined to go skydiving together! If anyone wants to join us, let us know. (Check out the website here and photos of Mike tandem jumping here. Really... how cool is that? I think that's him on the home page of the website too! And for those of you who don't usually click on the links in my blog, please do so today, just for today, then you can ignore my effort to expand the blogging experience and go back to ignoring my links! Seriously, click now!)

So, after watching a friend of ours jump out of a plane a few times we headed back to Tina's to finish preparing for the surprise 50th Anniversary party! I made this edible arrangement for the party (with Audrey's and Mom's help!) and I think it turned out pretty good! Either way, it was good to eat!

Some more photos from the party:

Should I be worried? Haha...

I swear I have more pictures of Erin and Jason than I do of me and Jason! They are cute though... :-)

My Grandmother was VERY surprised and VERY emotional the whole day! I'm so glad they were happy that we were all together!

The story: From left to right are my cousins Audrey and Christopher and my Grandmother. This is the "big" gift and, of course, Christopher wanted to help open it. He tore off the tiniest bit of wrapping paper and promptly yelled "It's a laptop!" At which time everyone busted out laughing! This is why Audrey has her hand over his mouth... he essentially "spilled the beans!"

We also got a chance to go to lunch at my Dad's parent's house... I took this photo of a butterfly on my Grandmother's "butterfly bushes" in her garden. There were about six of these and they were about as big as monarchs... so cool. I want some butterfly bushes now! I suppose I need a yard first... hmm...

And finally, here are the scrapbook pages I made for the scrapbook (in addition to the two I already posted a while back.) The last one, which is a two-page spread, was created by my sister. I had to take a picture of it because I loved the stripes and the amount of photos she was able to get on the pages! (I really want photos of all the pages, but I didn't have time to do that.)

This is my favorite out of the pages I completed this weekend... I'm not usually a fan on yellow, but I really like how this layout turned out. (I wasn't sure if Erin would mind if I posted baby pictures of her butt online, so I added the censored bar just to be sure. Hee hee.)

By Erin (how cute is that?):