Pinewood Derby

Tonight was the big race! We LOVE the pinewood Derby! This years car we made in honor of the winter Olympics and designed a bobsled of sorts. The only problem was we couldn't find any helmet head dudes so we bought the cheap .97 corps army dudes and popped their little heads right off and stuck them in. For weights we glues in buckshot behind the guys. The words on the sides were done with making memories rub ons...so cute! I don't have an accurate number on how many boys raced because there were more cars than what the picture shows...Somewhere between 24 and 30 I think. Who knows? Cole's car was pretty darn fast and came in 4th place over all. I think that's great for how many boys competing. The boys all had a great time and I got lots of pictures. I'm feeling kind of sad about things since Cole is my baby and he only has one more year in cub scouts. I'm really going to miss the pinewood derby after all these years helping all my boys with their cars.

I'm a little bit country scraproom...

Some of you have seen my country barn inspired scraproom, but some haven't so I thought I'd share a couple of pictures. I would spend all my time in this room if I could. I already do spend more than I should, but since it's my only escape in a house full of 8.4 people I think it's okay. After looking at these I realized that I NEED to clean this room up. It's getting out of hand with clutter on all flat surfaces. The only real improvement in here is that I have a TV hanging above the outhouse cabinet that Mark got me for Christmas. I love having a TV in here.
Wish I had more time to chat, but I wrote a huge to-do list for myself last night of things that HAVE to get done in the next 2 days. There's never enough time in a day. Thanks for looking and talking to me. I appreciate it. :o)

Happy Birthday Chad!

Today my second born son turned 18 years old. How could this be true? Actually I haven't even seen this boy yet today. I guess 18 year old are too cool to celebrate with their family when a day at the lake on a boat with your friends is the other option. I did talk to him and wish him happy birthday. I hope he's had a good day. We've had a lot of trials, but at heart is is a really good boy. He is so handsome, athletic, smart and very witty. All the teachers and parents love him to pieces. I love talking to him. I love to watch him play sports. He is great at everything he does. I can't wait to see what he does with his life. We are grateful to have Chad in our family.

15 weeks

Brittany is now 15 weeks pregnant. 100 days to be exact. I can't believe just how developed this little baby is already. The information below is copied and pasted out of her pregnancy calendar. She is starting to show and her clothes are not fitting so well anymore. We're going to have to be getting some maternity clothes soon.
Size About 4 to 4 1/2 inches and about 1 3/4 ounces.
Development - If you could see your baby's face, you might be able to see her wince and grimace, because her facial muscles are developing and flexing. All of her tiny organs, nerves, and muscles are starting to function. The intestines have moved farther into the baby's body; her liver begins to secrete bile, which will later aid in the digestion of fats; and her pancreas begins to produce insulin, a hormone which turns sugar into energy.

Goofy Golfing

My sister in-law Chris drove over from Kansas with 3 of her kids, Morgan, Aaron and Ryan. (2 day drive each way) Brave woman! We let Cody and Cole stay home from school one day to play with their long distance cousins. We went to golfland and had a good time playing together. They had to retrieve their balls from many bushes and waterfalls. We had the older 4 could play one hole ahead of us and me, Chris and Ryan played together. I loved watching Ryan play. He was a trooper who never gave up. After every hole we'd ask him "How many did that take?" and we'd write down whatever number he said. For along time he kept saying 2 then the numbers became more random...7, 4, 11, 6, 10. It was a hoot! I love their comany so much. They've headed back for Kansas and I miss them all already!

Handprint on my Heart

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. Here's what I've been busy doing. I made a total of 72 of these cards. I was called by a lady from church on Friday and she asked me if I could come up with a card to give to each of the ladies at our enrichment night this Tuesday night. Our lesson is about the effect that we have on each others hearts through service and acts of kindness. She wanted them to be able to take home a card so that when someone does something that touches them, they can send this to that person as a thank you. My fingers are so cramped and my shoulders are killing me, but it's worth it because I'm really happy with how they turned out and I'm even happier that they are done.

Happy Birthday To ME! :o)

Since I wish all my children, family and friends happy birthday on here I thought I would do the same for me. Today I turned 38! Seems so young, but at the same time THIS is the age I'll be when my first grandchild is born. I'm getting more excited everyday about it. September seems so far away, but it will be here before we know it.
This picture is from when we were on Catalina Island. I sure love it there. It was so pretty! Notice the picture is a far away one because I've noticed the weight gain everywhere...especially in my face. Where is my jaw line? I am so going to work on this harder. I really need to boost my self esteem and feel better.
Today I woke up to flowers and presents from Mark. Actually first I woke up to Mark squeezing my behind like he does every morning then I came in my scraproom to find flowers and presents. He got me a ring and a necklace. They are beautiful and that was very thoughtful but we REALLY can't afford any extra stuff right now. He swears they didn't cost much. I hope he's right. I do love them. I pray there is money in the mail tomorow. My boys all wished me a happy birthday and I got 38 kisses from Cole. He was very sweet! I had a lazy morning and talked to friends and family on the phone who called to wish me happy birthday. Then I went to lunch at Olive Garden with 9 of my friends. We had a great time talking, laughing and of course eating. They sure are some real nice girls. Thank you Paula, Natalie, Laura, Jamie, Jenny, Joyce, Teresa, Jeanette, and Pam. I had a great time. I came home and did some stuff for the business then took a little nap. Tonight I went on a girls night out with all of my sisters, my mom and Brittany. We has dinner at Tia Rosa's...which we all love and then went to see the movie Failure to launch. It was a funny cute movie. My mother fell on a step in the theatre. She hurt her knee and jammed her fingers pretty bad. I hope she heals up quick. Brittany survived an evening with the "old" girls who talked about silly "old" girl stuff and I think she even enjoyed herself. Mark is out riding with his friends and we are going to celebrate tomorrow together. Actually several months ago when we got the new truck they said we would be getting a $500 gift card to Lowes and that came in a few days ago. I love free shopping. I think we are going to get a new freezer and hopefully if there is anything left, maybe a little something cute. I'm ending now while I still have a few minutes of my birthday left....you know what?! It doesn't matter! It is my birthday MONTH after all! :o) LOL!

Pretty pretty paper!

Mark made the mistake of giving me spending money on the cruise for souvenirs. Do you really think I'd spend it all on that stuff knowing that the new chatterbox paper was waiting for me to buy at my favorite store scrapbooks etc.?! Heck NO! I saved some $$ for this most precious paper that I love so much. It's my one true weakness and I'm so glad I got my hands on some. Actually I got it yesterday while still feeling crummy. I looked like an idiot sitting on the floor while making my paper selections from the lower half of the paper racks. I was pretty dizzy but needed this paper. The sacrifice was worth it. I'm in a happy place!

Bye-Bye sweet trees

I woke up yesterday morning to the sound of chain saws and tree munching trucks. My neighbors directly across the street were tearing down both of their trees! I was looking through some pictures so you could see what they looked like before. This was all I could find. The big pine tree on the right side of the picture of the boys riding bikes and the one straight on. I snuck a couple pictures of them grinding out the huge stump and the now naked front yard. I'm so sad. I love trees! They already had one of the least attractive houses on the street and now that's all you see...ugly house! Plus it actually seems hotter outside with them gone. They better have a spectacular landscape plan in mind. Updates will follow.

Cruise details...LONG!!

What a week we had! We got home from the cruise yesterday afternoon and I've had my sea legs ever since. I feel pretty icky. Can someone please stop the room from spinning?..and why does it do that? I took a long nap but it didn't help. Here is a run down of our trip.
Monday- We get the boys off to school and theres no time for no the chiropractor. We go and pick up Rodney and Cam and head to the airport. Mark's brother Rodney is very loud and very friendly. Just during our there'sn line we had met lots of new people. We got to California and had an adventurous cab ride to the ship. As soon as we got on board we headed straight for (you guessed it) the buffet where we met up with Mark's cousin Brandon and his wife Jennifer. They drove over from Kanosh, Utah. After we ate we explored the ship and took tons of pictures. Actually Mark had the camera the whole time so who knows what we have in there. I know he took a bunch of a battleship, cranes, tug boats, etc. Pretty much anything that was in the harbor docked around us. Just before we left California it started raining. It was so cold but we stayed out of deck because we were so excited to be there. After it got dark we went inside to watch the welcome aboard show, then headed to dinner in the formal dining room. The food was amazing and the service is spectacular! All of the employees are from all over the world. They all speak english and are extremely nice to everyone. They all work everyday for 6 months then have 2 months off. They work SOOO hard! I just can't imagine! After dinner we went up to the Jade room for Karaoke night then went to bed. We were in he very front of the ship in room 7000. Our bed was turned down with mints on the pillows, the next days agenda, and towels folded into the shape of an elephant...really cute!
Tuesday-We got up to find we were docking in San Diego and got ready for the day. I've decided that the showers are so tiny for our protection. With the movement of the ship, you need those walls to hold onto. Perhaps its just easier to lather up the walls and spin around to get clean. Mark went out on deck while I got ready. He came back with joy in his heart to find that we were docked right next to the USS Midway Air Craft Carrier. He was so excited when he found out you can tour it. I made him control his excitement so that we could go eat breakfast in the Windjammer Cafe'. We ate all the day time meals out on deck 12. After breakfast we headed out in a taxi to pacific beach. We walked through cute stores and some of us rode some rides. We enjoyed the beauty of the ocean and the beach. We headed back to the ship where I went in the state room for a little rest and cleaned up a bit. Mark and Brandon walked over (with camera in hand) to tour the USS Midway. They had a great time and took lots of pictures. Rodney and Cam played bingo and won the $500 jackpot. When they got back we all dressed up for formal night. We had pictures taken, then went to dinner. We had the second seating every night in Vincent's dining room at 8:00. After we rolled out of there we headed to the "Love and Marriage" game show that is really just the newlywed game. You have to "audition" to get on through applause from the audience. Of course Rodney and Cam made it on. One of the questions was "where is the strangest place you've ever made whoopie?" One girls said in the back seat of a durango and the other lady said her parents house. Cam said "you've heard of the mile high club? well there's a boat club" The cruise director was like what? You did it in a bathroom on board? She said "no...right here on stage last night" The crowd goes wild! When the men come back in, the crowd is laughing before he even gets to answer. Rodney answered "well either the Jade room or the elevator" The crowd is dying at this point. We all laughed so hard that our stomach hurt. All they questions were so funny. They taped the whole show and played it continuously on channel 14 in all the state rooms for the rest of the trip. Rodney and Cam were famous! The got a free copy of the show too. Mo, the cruise director said they were going to play it for months because it was the best show they had. After that we watched a real good comedy show by Mike Wilson. We headed to bed and tonight's towel animal was a bunny.
Wednesday- We woke up in Catalina Island. We had breakfast, got on a smaller boat that holds 300 people that takes you to the island. We rented a 6 passenger golf cart and took an adventurous ride with Rodney as the driver and tour guide of the island. After that we ate lunch and visited a bunch of really cute shops and took more pictures. It sure is beautiful there. By the end of this day I was pretty sun burnt. We went back to the ship and Mark took a small nap as I wondered around the ship watching dolphins by the ship and then watched the ice carvings...none of which did I have my camera with me. Dangit! At 7:00 we went to see a comedy magic act by Chad Chesmark. He was very funny. Then at 8:00 back to dinner. After dinner they have a game called quest that you have to be drunk to enjoy. Since we don't drink, it wasn't so great to watch people acting like idiots and taking their clothes off. Today was our anniversary and Rodney, Cam, Brandon and Jennifer had them decorate our room and gave us an anniversary cake. They also sang to us during dinner. It was so nice! By the end of the day we were beyond tired and headed to bed to find a cute towel puppy.
Thursday- Ensenada Mexico! After breakfast we took a shuttle into town. As soon as we stepped of we were bombarded by street vendors. Everywhere we went it was the same way. We ate lunch at Mangos. It was delicious, but again we were hit by vendors at least 2 dozen times during our meal. The parents who don't have their kids go to school so they can push their crap on tourists makes me sick. We decided that we do NOT care for Mexico. We did buy a few souvenirs from there and called it a day. At 7:00 we watched the farewell variety show and went to dinner. We got pictures of our head waiter, assistant waiter, and assistant waiter. They were all so nice to us that we didn't want to forget them. After dinner we went to another show called the battle of the sexes that is set up like family feud. Of course the women won that one. :o) By the time we got back to our room the ocean was so rough. I laid in bed moaning and wondering just how I'd make it through the night. Being in the front and up on deck 7 we had so much movement. It was impossible to get around without stumbling. For safety reasons they blocked off the from decks of the ship to people. Tonight we had a towel monkey.
Friday-I was so happy once we got back to California. We got off the ship and it was a breeze getting through customs. We got to the airport in good time and managed to bump up our flight from 1:00 to 11:00. As soon as we got up to a cruising altitude and we got our drinks the captain asked for the drinks to be collected and for everyone to buckle up. Arizona was getting very high winds and we were in for a bumpy ride. He wasn't kidding. We were so sick. In fact Mark sat there with a puke bag in his hand for fear he was going to lose it. Once we landed the flight attendant said whew! were here! get out! LOL!
We got home to find that Chad took out one of Mark's motorcycles on the first night we were gone and wrecked it. He moved out on Tuesday night for fear he wouldn't be forgiven. The boys say he has lots of road rash and a little hole in his head that he can fit the tip of his pinky in. We have no idea where he is, but I am worried about him. Mark really handled it better than I thought. If it was his Vulcan, I think it would have been real bad. Kyle said he saw him at school all week. Cole was sick and missed 3 days of school, the upstairs toilet broke and flooded Mark's corner office. Brittany actually had to poor water out of his computer. I'm a bit concerned about all our business info in there. The boys took care of the flood and moved out all of the office stuff into the family room floor. Mark is right now setting up his office in the corner of our bedroom. It's ALWAYS an adventure at the George house! Gotta go help Mark with the new bedroom office. I will upload the others soon. I DO NOT feel guilty for anything I ate while on vacation because that ship is HUGE and we walked miles and miles everyday on ship and on our land excursions. Not to mention all the stairs we climbed because it was faster than waiting for one of the 19 elevators. Every bit of food was worked off! :o)

Formal night on the cruise

We had our formal night on the second night at sea. They have photographers everywhere on the ship and everytime we got off the ship at port locations. We only bought the formal pictures because the are expensive. I figured we didn't need to buy any more than that since we did take 300-400 pictures ourselves. I haven't uploaded them yet because I've been so dizzy and feeling icky since we got home yesterday afternoon. We had some pretty rough waters...especially the last night. Even our flight home was extremely turbulent. Despite all the movement, we really had a wonderful time and I'll be sharing more details when I get my land legs back again. The group picture is Mark, Me, Cam, Rodney, Jennifer, and Brandon. These guys were so fun to vacation with!

Got Rain!!!

We've FINALLY got rain today! YIPPEE!!!! Our dry streak of 143 days with no rain is over. It is beautiful outside, but COLD! I'm sort of use to the warm weather and it's 40 degrees out there right now...big brrrr for me. :o) The northern part of the state is getting lots of much needed snow. That will be great for the ski resorts and helping with this seasons fires. I sure am going to enjoy this bit of moisture while it lasts.

Bon Voyage!

And we're off!!!...Final post before we leave for our 20th anniversary cruise. The bags are packed and I'm heading to bed. I have to be at the chiropractor at 8:00 for a final fix her up crunch, then picking up Rodney and Cam at 9:00 and heading to the airport. I cleared all my photo cards so I can take plenty of pictures. Can't wait to talk to everyone when we get home, but looking forward to some fun and relaxation. Pam, if you're reading this HAPPY 40th BIRTHDAY on Wednesday! Also a BIG HAPPY 39TH BIRTHDAY TO MY WONDERFUL SISTER JULIE! I LOVE YOU! :o)

This is a picture I took a little while back. I love the way it looks.

Happy Birthday Cody!

Happy 13th Birthday sweet Cody boy! I can't believe he is actually a TEENager now. He has gotten SOOO tall these past few months. I'd imagine it must hurt to grow so fast. His brothers tease him about his new armpit hair and we've discovered that deodorant is a MUST! Cody is very funny, confident, sweet, and with a bit of a temper that we choose no to provoke. When he was little he had the nick name "TAZ the spaz" because of it.
It's hard for me to believe that 13 years ago he joined our family. Out of all the boys I remember his birthdate the most. 3-3-93. He is a wonderful addition to the family and he is truly loved by everyone.

hanging in there!

I've been taking your advise and breathing through everything. So far things are going well. I got through the bean dinner last night and the 6th grade meeting. Today I cleaned my kitchen, living room, laundry room, mopped the floors, did some laundry, made 9 loaves of banana bread, and made 24 cards for the troops...all this with a screaming headache. I plan to go to the chiropractor in the morning (in hopes to get rid of this blasted thing), then run to the store for birthday treats for Cody's class, take him to lunch, get banking done for employee payroll, borrow luggage from my parents, do more laundry and start packing. I took care of Julie's present by buying her the "Is it art or is it scrapbooking" class and a day pass to the vender fair at convention in April. I won't stress about cleaning everything up here. What gets done, gets done and what doesn't who cares. I'm pretty sure it will be a mess when we get home anyways. I have family and friends who will be calling and doing surprise drop by check ins to keep them on their toes. Poor Brittany is getting a very quick initiation into the George family life. She's a tough girl. I think she'll make it. One of our employees will be staying here too, so it will be a full house with all our bases covered. We will have a family meeting on Sunday night to go over ground rules in hopes that it will all be fine on the homestead for the 5 days were gone. We are so looking forward to the cruise! :o)

I've lost my brains!

What the heck is wrong with me? I honestly thought I had 2 weeks in-between the wedding and the cruise. I couldn't be more wrong. We are leaving MONDAY! (insert screaming and crying here) I had scrapbooking group at my house yesterday and again tonight. Last night we had the bean dinner at the church, which actualy saved me time since I didn't have to cook. They had a talent show that was pretty funny. I was glad that we went. Today I will be cleaning like a mad woman getting ready for the crop. Mark goes riding tonight too. Cody's birthday is Friday, Mark is helping a friend move on Saturday, My sister Julie's birthday is Sunday...plus we have church, my house is TRASHED and I refuse to leave it like this. Somewhere in there I have to clean up this place and do laundry and pack to go. Plus I have the added stress of worrying about these 6 kids while were gone and also hoping our employee can handle running the business on his own for a week. I think I'm losing it. My stomach hurts! :o/ I CAN DO THIS! (yes, I'm talking to myself)