H is for

Honey Hot Wings- from Native New Yorker. They are really the best. I do not like ranch so I can't eat hot or suicide or whatever, plus I am a HUGE whimp.
Hobbling- I am hobbling around today, I have pain in my knee.
hobbies- scrapbooking, gardening, homemaking
homesteading wannabe- I am working toward being more self sufficient and good to the earth. We have chickens and ducks, I compost and recycle. My goals are to have more animals, plant a veggie garden and fruit trees. I also cook from scratch most often.
helpful- I try to be as helpful to other people as much as possible.
honest- I work really hard at being honest w/ myself. I am honest w/ others easily.
houseplants- I used to have quite a collection, and now I am getting a few started again. I enjoy them.

G is for

Gross- teenage boys are gross.
goofy- teenage boys are goofy.
Glass- I like cobalt blue glass.
gravy and biscuts- my ds's favorite breakfast that I make.
grass- even though I live in the desert I love to see green grass.
grenadine- I like to make shirley temples!
george forman- I love my george forman grill.
garden- I love to garden. My garden is mostly flowers, and herbs. I can not physically do everything I want to do, so sometimes gardening frustrates me.
goals- I am a goal oriented person, and a list maker.

a few holiday questions

Hot Chocolate or Egg Nog? I like both, but I would choose hot chocolate usually.
Does Santa wrap the presents or just set them under the tree? He used to wrap but now he doesn't anymore.
Colored or white lights on the tree/house? Blue
Do you hang mistletoe?-sometimes
When do you decorate? the friday after thanksgiving
What is your favorite holiday dish? the ham,lol
Do you open gifts on Christmas Eve? yes, the jammies and then everyone can choose one.
What kind of cookies do you set out for Santa on Christmas Eve? We used to set out sugar cookies.
Snow! Love it or hate it? hate
Can you ice skate? no way
What is your favorite Christmas Carol? The Little Drummer Boy
Are they fake or real? Er, I mean...What type of tree? Fake

F

is for-
four- the number of people in my immediate family.
family- I have a dh, and two ds's.
freezer- I got a new deep freezer this year and love how much money I can save at the store, and how much easier feeding those two teenage boys has been.
fresh herbs- I love to grow mint, sage, basil and parsley.
fantasies- I love to daydream about winning the lottery and what I would like to do outside on my property.
fragrance- my favorite is warm vanilla sugar from bath and body works
freecycle- a wonderful "thing". I have both given and recieved items on my local freecycle group.
friends- I love my friends, my irl and my online friends. I just recently started making friends. I hooked up w/ my exdh when I was 15. I allowed him to become the center of my universe. After my divorce, I was really busy raising my two ds's. I really like that I have taken the time/effort to make friends.
fried chicken- one of my most requested dinners. Pretty good if I do say so myself

E

E-
Eeyore- " Thanks for noticing me"

Enter- most used space on my keyboard,lol.

Easy- life is not easy

Eating-I love pizza, onion rings, hot dogs and dark chocolate.

Earrings- have to be at least 14 K gold or I get a horrible rash

Eyes- blue w/ little yellow specks in them

Emu- I want one, dh says no way. I had the chance to get a flock of 5 for free but dh would have nothing to do w/ it.

Escape- in the computer or in my scraproom

Excercise- with the exception of gardening and housekeeping, I do not excercise. My motto is " No pain, no pain"

Excessive- I drink an excessive amount of chocolate diet cokes from Sonic.

Excellent- Josh says I am an excellent mom, scrapbooker, and cook.

D is for

Dork- I am a dork. I cry at movies, commercials, any sort of sappy stuff.
Dina- my sister, three years younger, also a teacher.
Dianna- my best online friend. She is just super, always there for me.
Denim- my favorite fabric. Practical, goes w/ everything.
Direct TV- I don't watch a lot of TV but I am sure glad I have it.
Dining room- my whole dining room is filled w/ old stuff I love. The table was my parents first table, and one of the chairs is marred by my booster seat. I can not imagine eating anywhere else. My china cabinet is actually my bedroom furnature as a girl, the dresser/hutches.
Ducks- my favorite farm animal. I just love our 5 ducks and this spring I will probably get a few more.
Dogs- my favorite "inside" animal. Chows are my favorite breed. I love them for their loyalty, and because they are less "dog-like" than other dogs.
Dude- Joel's bassett hound

C is for-

Children- mine, other people's, I love children. I love to look at this world throug their eyes.
Chickens-I have 10. We do not butcher them( guess I am a city girl still,lol) but I love the chickens, and the eggs. Nothing tastes like farm fresh eggs.
Coffee- I do not like black coffee, but I like sweet coffee drinks.
Computer- I was so resistant to start using it and was practically forced to in my last job, but now I can not imagine life w/o it.
Chat- I love going to chat, and my friends from chat. Again, I would be really sad to give that up.
Clue- I love playing Clue w/ my kids.
Crock Pot-my favorite kitchen appliance. I am using it today!
Cougars- my kids' school mascot! Go Cougars!!!
Chris- my DH
Checkerboard- my favorite pattern

the letter B

B is for-
Boys- I have the blessing of being mom to the two best boys in the world.
As a preschool teacher, the naughty, ornery boy was my favorite to teach.I loved the challenge, I loved their curiosity.
Blessings- I have so many. My family, my friends, my home, my car, we eat good food every day. We have access to good medical care, I have a hobby I love, and so does each member of my family.
bath and body works- warm vanilla sugar
bread machine- love to make rolls, and warm pretzels.
baby animals- aren't they cute??
baskets- I love baskets!
butter- real butter, no margerine here!!
bassett hounds- joels favorite dog

I also wanted to blog a bit about my dh. This is the one year anniversary of his heart surgery.
After an average weekend morning of yardwork, chores ect, my dh came in and ate lunch. Shortly after that, we came home from picking up a fish tank for my youngest ds. My dh was helping carry it in and he said he needed to rest. I thought he was messing around w/ me because he was not really in favor of this fish tank. He sat down, and drank some water, and told me he was really having trouble. I went and sat next to him, and he was very clammy and agitated. We called an ambulance, and they rushed him to our local hospital.
There, they were monitoring him because his symptoms were indicitive of either a heart attack or a diabetic shock. Every test was normal though, and my dh was still in extreme pain, and said he could not see. They decided to do a CAT scan to see if there was any damage to the aorta.Bingo.
He had an ascending aortic dissection ( a tear in the upper aorta). You have three walls to the vessel, and two were split. If the third splits, he dies immediately. This is the condition that killed John Ritter, and I firmly believe that his death brought awareness to this condition, that was formerly not even thought about in emergency rooms since it is fairly rare.
He was airlifted to University Medical Center, which is one of two heart hospitals in our state. The hospital is about an hr from our local hospital. My mom and dad met me, for my dad to take the boys, and for my mom to come with me.
My dh "refused" to go into surgery until I could tell him that is what he should do. His wonderful, wonderful icu nurse hooked up a phone so he could talk to me. He does not remember the flight or my phone call, but he agreed to go into surgery w/o me being there.I got there about an hour after they started the surgery.
We waited anxiously during the 6 hr surgery. His nurse came out occasionally to let us know how it was going.
His doctor, who we later learned was the top heart surgeon in this state, came out later to tell us " Your husband almost died but he is fine now" LOL- that was all he had to say.
A few hours later they let us see him, and then they said that they would be keeping him sedated the rest of the day and night. My mom and I went home so I could get my meds and to make further arrangements.
His recovery took a long time, much longer than we had expected. He almost died twice more, and was in a medically induced coma for 2 weeks. He got a nasty bacterial infection and it was just yukky all around. He had the best care imaginable,and everyone at the hospital, from the cafeteria employees, the houskeeping staff, to the doctors were all helpful and extrememly kind.
He came home on New Years day, and he still does not remember most of the first two weeks at home( due to pain meds). He was off work for 3 more months, and then went back PT, and eventually back to full time. We have had a very tough time financially this year ( nothing like being out of work and having extensive medical bills to do that to a one income family,lol), but I still feel like his care was a bargin, and that we are so blessed to all still be here this year.

a little idea I saw on another blog

Every day she chooses a letter and does this:
A is for:
Arthritis- life changing. Good ways and bad. I think I will do a longer entry about that one day.
Animals- I love animals, all kinds.
Apples- Granny Smith and MacIntosh are my favorites.
Acetaminophen- my best friend,lol.
A&E- love cold case files
Albertsons- one of my favorite grocery stores

my guys

Ok, I have never put a photo in my blog before, so this is really an experiment,lol. This photo is of my sons, looking out at Sunset Point. Sunset Point is a really beautiful place between Phoenix and Flagstaff, AZ. Kinda hokey, for us natives, but I guess I had never pulled off the highway to let my ds's see this before. I think I will stop again in the spring, when everything will be so much greener.
Today is the first time in 3 months that I have had the house to myself for the day, I am looking forward to that! I plan to do some decluttering, and some resting, and some scrapping. 

craptacular

I am really getting frustrated w/ people lately. Well, not just people, but PEOPLE,lol. People who are responsible to me, or to my kids, and who are shirking their responsiblities. They have a lot of nerve, then, to tell me that I am either A) a crappy mom or B) such a good mom, that is why they can be so darn irresponsible.
I am ticked off at my DH too, because he has really gotten lazy and unmotivated. I don't have enough energy to pick up his slack.He really seems to feel that he should be able to go to work and then, do nothing else ever. I know we all need relaxing and down time, but I did not mean to marry the poster child of it,lol.
I was watching outlaws on CMT today, I guess I still have a thing for the bad boys,lol. I loved it!!
I got a wonderful surprise in my email today, so I am trying to cheer myself up w/ the GC that I recieved,lol.
I have scrapped a little every day for the last 3 days. I have finished 2 LO's and partly finished another. I feel good about that.
I am still plugging away at my mini album, too.

in and out, in and out

That is my life these days, letting the dogs in, letting them out. Over and over. I always teased my dad, for doing this w/ his dogs and now karma has come back to bite me, and HARD!
Today, Josh says he needs to get back to drinking enough water. I asked him, how do you know you have not been drinking enough, and he said
" My pee is too yellow" LOL. I guess he listens to me about something.

getting cold here!

We are having frost warnings now, after having shorts weather last week,lol. What a switch!
This saturday is our cities electric light parade, but we will be at the can't miss it for anything football banquet. I hope that kid knows I love him,lol.
I started a new mini simple scrapbooks type album I am kind of excited about. I found these adorable mini albums at the dollar store, and they hold 36 4x6 pgs. I bought 20 of them ( do you think that is excessive?) as a plan to use them for gifts next year and for some of the mini album ideas I have been planning on doing.
for the first one, I took 35 pics of "It's a good thing", ya know, things that I think are good things. This album is just mostly going to be photos, with thin strips to tell what the pic is of. I decided to do pages that would require journaling in my bom. Then I am going to journal at the end, on the last page.
anyway, I am off to hop in the shower and get into some sweats w/ a mug of joe.

and we're off

our family is headed to northern az this weekend.It is going to be really cold, but I am looking forward to it.
The guys are going to golf a little bit ( just the driving range) and I brought some chick flicks for my mom and I. I also brought all our adam sandler movies,lol.
I am taking my qvc card kit, so I can do something creative while my mom is sewing. The boys are really looking forward to it.
I submitted a BUNCH of baby pages for a MM call, hopefully one gets picked up, it has been a long dry spell,lol.

nothing new

going on around here,lol. Same ol same ol.
I have been glued to my TV here, watching some of the most awful news stories.
First there's the double murder at a Subway resturant. This resturant is a mile and a half from where I used to live, before moving here. This is now the most violent precinct in my state. It has more than double the murders than any other precinct and tons more burglaries etc.
Anyway, two 17 yr old boys, athletes, good students and hard workers were killed while they closed up this resturant. It started as an armed robbery, and ended with both of them dead. To make it even worse, the killers were three students from the same high school as the victims. They were 16, 15 and 15. How does this happen? Sixty dollars. Wow, just wow.
The news of two pedophiles broke today. One a psychiatrist, one a 17 yr old boy, whose mom ran an in home daycare. One of his victims was 8 months old.
Last night, two girls who were swimming in a canal drowned. They were 3 and 8 yrs old.
Carjackings, and even the newest thing, car surfing. Getting on top of the car while it is moving. That has killed two people here in the last 6 months.
It all gets to me, but the subway deal just really tugs at my heart. All teenagers. All of their lives ended. For nothing. How did we get here? What can we do? How can it end?
I don't share a popular opinon on this, but I do not believe in young people being charged or treated as adults. They aren't. Their is more than enough evidence that their brains are not fully developed. Our society does not treat them as adults in any other way, why? Because they are not adults.
Arizona is a perfect example of how this is not working, and how we punish adults is not working. I do not have all the answers, and it is something I do struggle with. Our state spends tons of money on jails, prisons, prosecutors. Less on education, less on social services. Where does that leave us? Dead last on every list. Lowest drop out rates? not AZ, we are 50th. Infant mortality rates? we are in the low 40's. We were recently ranked the "stupidest " state in the union. Great, just great.
I just think we need to really look at this, but I don't see that happening in my lifetime. We will continue to spend money after the fact on bandaids.

tomorrows plans

Well, today was the end......... of the 05 football season. We had a great season.
Today during the boys' practice I went to the grocery store and bought all of the boys' favorite microwave ( aka crap) food.We went to the cheapie movie rental place and rented 4 movies. Then, we came home, cleaned the house and went on "vacation" no one is doing anything the rest of the weekend!!! I am soooooooooo excited.The boys and I are going to stay home, eat junk and watch movies. I am also going to scrap.
Dh is excited too, he is going to play golf for his birthday, with his friend Frank. He is going to be taking off w/ the car, so I planned a neat day w/ the boys so we would forget we were stuck w/o a car,lmbo.
I found the greatest mini album at the dollar tree, bought one, to see if I would really like it. Well, I love them, I am going to go back and buy some more. My first project is going to be a "its a good thing" album, w/ pics and journaling about things that I really like. ( of course my chocolate diet coke from sonic will make the first page,lmbo.I am going to pick some up for some more mini albums I have been wanting to do and some extras for gift ideas for next year.

tired

but doing ok.
I called the good ol mental health provider today, I think I need to talk to someone about some stressors that I have in my life. I have gone a couple of times in my life, once when I had a miscarriage and once right before I got divorced from my kids dad. It was very helpful and I am sure it will be again.
I love Sonic commercials almost as much as I love Sonic.The new one about the extra long cheese coneys and tots. "Go ahead and get the drink then" lmbo.
I took pictures of sonic today, I am going to do a scrapbook page about it. I know that sounds wierd, but it is something I love so it is going into my BOM.
Joel is really giving me a hard time about his license. I just do not think he is quite ready. Closer, yes but not ready.
Well, before I put us both to sleep............. night.

just a day

Chris really stepped up today, it was great. I needed to finish some things for a swap( had to go to the LSS, an hour away, and work there) Joel needed to go to the mall (with him, need/want to go to the mall is about the same thing,lmbo) Chris dropped me off at the LSS and took the boys to the mall. They had a really good time, and came back and picked me up. It was really nice for me not to have to handle all of that by myself.
We are going to have a great dinner, steaks on the george forman and baked potatoes. Easy, quick but oh so good dinner. It is starting to get cooler( like 85,lol) at night now so we can eat soup. I have been hankering soup for a few weeks, and am going to make a lot of crock pot soups this fall/winter.

on a mission

I have been on a mission for the past few months to declutter. To get rid of stuff.
I have spent the last 22 years collecting stuff. Stuff for my dream house. Stuff for my home. Stuff for my kids. Stuff for teaching and stuff for crafts.
I am a bargin hunter, so I got a great deal on all this stuff. My kids have become bargin hunters too, so they have been collecting too,lol.
This week, I filled our trash can completely full, two days before they are coming to pick up trash. I have been to goodwill twice. I was able to control myself while in the thrift store too,lol. ( Lets not bring home MORE clutter,lmbo.)
Now that I am pretty much set, I feel like this is "it", I am not moving again, stuff that I have been collecting either has a place or it doesn't. That has been helpful in getting rid of stuff. I have( so far) not been sad about anything I have thrown or given away. No regrets.
I am trying to donate everything that could possibly have a use, or recycle it, and only throw away absolute junk.I am not a big fan of throwing away stuff, adding to the landfill problem.
That is why, normally, we have just one bag of trash a week. Our paper/cardboard is either recycled, used as weed barrier or composted. Our food scraps are either composted or fed to our animals. Pretty much the only trash we have is plastic stuff. I feel good about that!
I have a loooooong way to go.
I am the only one on board here, still after 2 or 3 months. My dh will not get rid of one thing. Shirts that he has not worn in the entire 8 years that I have known him. Shirts that are too small and are missing more buttons than are there.
My kids will get rid of clothes that do not fit them anymore, but that is about it. Joel refuses to get rid of any toy that he has ever touched.
It's ok, one day at a time,lol.
Josh's x-box broke yesterday. That really stinks.
I shopped for some more landscape plants today, spent 20 bucks and got quite a few things. Josh and I are going to get them planted tomorrow.
Gonna sign off for now.

it is fixed!

My computer is fixed woo hoo!
Tonight is a football game, we are predicted to win-woo hoo!My parents are coming, that is always fun.
Today we got a lot of errands done, hopefully tomorrow will be an easy day. I want to scrap!
I have some housework to get done- see ya.