JustaBlog

Happy Birthday to Clay

Yesterday was Clay's birthday :) The big 3-2 lol. We had a really great time. With his birthday so close to Christmas we decided we weren't going to do presents for him this year. The children and I painted big posters and made cards. Of course the copious amounts of glitter glue didn't dry on the cards before Dad got home and he got it all over his nice shirt LOL but he loved them. Today on the way to work told me he is going to bring the posters to work and put them up on the wall in his area in the shop. Cute :) I made a huge dinner and pie. We made chicken fried steak (we use ground up Ritz crackers instead of flour though YUMMY), made fried sliced potatoes and sweet corn. Man it was fantastic :) Might need to eat some of that steak here in a while. Clay wanted a Blackberry pie so we had that instead of cake this year. Warm pie and ice cream. Is there anything better?  Nothing better than just a good night together as a family laughing and playing and just being. Leaving you with a few pictures. Yunno I REALLY need to take some photography classes. A year almost I have had this camera and I still don't know how to use it. If I do anything off auto they look horrible. So bear with some of these out of focus weird color pics. *cry*

Oops sorry the type is SO big!! EEk. I didn't view it full size before posting it. Oops.

After such a fun night Clay was going to miss us too mucha and invited us to go drive to his work and eat lunch with him. Gotta get the children ready in a little while for that. Later gators.

UGH

So my mom brought home a bad head cold with her yesterday or the day before. So officially we have moved straight from a stomach flu to a head cold. I might just go crazy. I haven't had a good night's sleep, or hardly any sleep for that matter, in 10 days now. I am still sick to my stomach all the time and now have a horrible sore throat and headache. It's almost Christmas. There's too much to do. And we're ALL sick. Just a little moment to cry about it all. Moment over.

A little business

Hey guys. Long time no blog eh? Well it turns out I have been dealing with a whoel family with some horrible stomach bug. So my days, and even worse, my NIGHTS have been spent dealing with cleaning up throw up. Lovely. So just taking two minutes to blog some business stuff then I'm off back to crawl under a blanket.

First, RUN over to Scrapartist. There is a huge 12 days of Christmas sale. Everyday something different is on sale and if you spend a certain amount on that day you get a free gift from one of the designers. The free gift for today is from....... Yep, ME. ALL brushes are 35$ off today! If you spend $10 today you get this from me:

ALSO I got a fabulous email telling me that this week my Painted ACrylic Alpha was going to be featured on  Dishin' the Digi- Coast 2 Coast show on DiScTalkRadio!!

The show will run from 12/12 to 12/18. HOW EXCITING! So run over and check that out. I can't wait to hear it! Find it here!!

Okay I need some food and rest. TTYL everyone.

A quick little ramble

 

I'm not feeling too hot so I am thinking this will be pretty quick. But since I tend to ramble chances are it will grow. Well first been dealing with some stomach bug around here. So far have two littles throwing up. My mom was the first to get it and it was only a 24 hour bug. Adric was only ill last night and was fine, a little tired but fine today. Cassie is the only one that is continuing to stay sick all day today. Though I would think that Daddy giving her a small bag of Cheetos when Mom was in the back room was not the best decision on her poor sicky tummy. Ha! Only a Daddy I would think :) But I think that sneaking banned children Cheetos is part of a Daddy's charm eh? Gotta love it. When I was little I had this saying that would drive my mom crazy. I would say " Daddies are for fun, Mommies are for business". What a funny little kid I was. Hopefully Cassie will awake nice and healthy. We have been blessed so far for only those two to get it. Though I have been feeling really ill all day. *crossing my fingers that I don't have the throwie uppies* Though it was the first time last night that Adric really said his tummy felt sick and was old enough for that to really mean something. I kind of blew him off since he used to say that when he was hungry or had to use the restroom. But I need to just accept the fact that he is almost 3 and getting to be a big boy. *cry*

Adric really is getting big. So amazing how they aren't talking then one day they start telling stories before you know it. HE was in with my mom telling all about how there was this big dinosaur chasing them and they ran but they caught them and ate them up. And of course since they were sick :) He said that my mom and him made the dinosaur's belly sick and he threw them up and they ran away and were safe. Funny little people.

Been really having a hard food and exercise week this week. I haven't been sleeping and it has made me SO draggy that I put off exercising. Argh. Then I have been eating poorly. All this work to watch it slip away would be a nightmare. So I am going to do my food plan for tomorrow now and print myself a menu for tomorrow and what I can preprep to make me actually eat it when it's time.
Friday -
Breakfast - Smoothie with kefir, bee pollen, flax seed oil, bone ami, agave, banana and protein powder oh and half an orange
Snack - apple with peanut butter or a mango if I am feeling ill. Mangoes make my belly always better :) And I CRAVE them all day long.
Lunch - Salad with garbanzo beans, ground sunflower seeds, and homemade lemon dressing.
Snack - String cheese maybe I dunno. Right now I am SO far from being hungry that it's hard to think of something that I would want during that time. Maybe nothing.

Dinner - Chicken breast and baked acorn squash.

Oy I'm tired. I don't know what is causing this lack of sleep. Some of the days this week I have slept less than 2 hours. I mean it's getting ridiculous. I still have to have the alarm go off at 5:45 to take Clay to work. No rest for the weary. So I need to get this sleep thing under control or I will fall apart :) SO the kitchen sink has been plugged since last Saturday. My mom wants the house totally spotless before she will allow the plumber to come. I have been so tired and SO sick to my stomach that here it is Friday and the sink is still plugged. I am so frustrated. Who cares what the plumber thinks? And it's not like it's a mig super mess or anything. I just am so tired and with three kids it's hard to make the place spotless. Well maybe tomorrow will be the day I get it super clean and get the sink fixed. Filling dishpans of hot water in the bathtub to do dishes is getting REALLY old. Can my life BE more like a sitcom? Oy. Though at least I lived without electricity and running water for years so it's not that huge of a deal. Just hard on the back I guess :) At least I will start going to the chiropractor next week.

Just a little pic of Clay like I love. This one is so HIM. Just captured the essence of what makes him stunning to me.

So.. here's a post that I posted for prayers on a few boards :)
Not everyone might know but Clay, I and the three children live with my mother in CA. Right now it is REALLY trying and in many ways is sabotaging my relationship with my mother as well as causing behavioral problems with the children, stress between Clay and I etc. etc. Just hard. We have our house in TN that we are starting to save to move back to but that will take a year at the least.

SO late last night Clay was poking around and saw a job opportunity in Nashville (about an hour from our house) that is EXACTLY the job he has been working years towards getting, he is PERFECT for this job. It would pay at least THREE times what he normally makes AND they would pay for RELOCATION!! So he sent an email and resume on a whim.

FIRST THING this morning (actually at 6:45 AM since he was on TN time) the man called and left a message about talking about job opportunities. I mean it was only 8:45 his time. Just long enough to get a cup of coffee and check his email and he was calling Clay.

My mom spent the last 6 months redoing our house in TN so that we would be able to rent it for enough to cover the mortgage. She has spent a lot but it is gorgeous (screened porches and everything!! Wow! We have never had ANYTHING like that) And we are about a month from being ready to go through the trouble of flying there and working on getting it rented. To THINK of getting a job that pays more than we could imagine, getting travel expenses paid for, AND being able to move out of mom's house and back into our newly renovated cabin in the woods truly is like some sort of DREAM.

SO if it is the Lord's will please pray that he will facilitate it. Please.

OKay off to beddy bye.

Miss Me?

I don't know why it's so hard sometimes for me to get into a regular blog schedule. I really want to. I think sometimes it's because it starts to feel like I use it just for business. I would really love for it to be more about me and my family, etc. I don't know why that's a struggle. Part of it is WHEN to blog. I don't want the first thing I do in my day to be sit and blog. I don't want the last thing I do before bed to be blog. There are more important things in my life. I am too busy to do it in the morning. I like cuddling extra long watching tv with the children in bed in the morning. Then it's off to breakfast. I don't want to spend a long time while they're awake (like NOW) blogging. I want to spend my evening times with my hubby and with the Lord reading. So when is the time to do it? When do all you regular bloggers blog? During quiet time? Sometimes it takes me so long I would spend most of the littles' quiet time doing it. So as with EVERYTHING else in my life, finding the right time to slot things in is key. I am working on starting a new MOTH schedule so I suppose I will fit it in somewhere. Okay normal blogging will commence now.

Clay got a new job! Yay! Can't tell you what a load off my back that is. Maybe now I can relax with my designing and enjoy it a tad more. He likes the job and the shop is really small which he really likes. He has worked in a lot of HUGE shops and prefers it small. And he gets to go do some installations which is fun for him so that's good. And YAY we get health insurance again. Will mention why that is so great in a minute. Though because he needs to get some drivers license stuff dealt with I have to drive him every morning. The alarm goes off at 5:45. For me, that is EEEEEEEEARLY. Early early. And it's kind of a bummer because it is messing up the routine I had gotten into to go to the gym at 6:45. Another thing to find a new place for in my routine. I am thinking that I might start going at 9 at night again. My cousin who was going to be a professional baseball player is writing me up an exercise routine so that will rock. LIke a correspondence personal trainer. Love it. I can't afford an IRL trainer so this is great.

The health insurance. We have been without it for so long. We don't qualify for medicaid and simply COULD NOT afford both cobra and private insurance. It is SO expensive. I mean with Clay not working we were SO tight sosososo tight. Yet for some reason the poverty line in CA for medicaid is SO low we didn't qualify. It's crazy. In TN we would have EASILY qualified. I mean we are a family of 5! And my measly designing puts us above the medicaid line in TN. AND in CA you CANNOT own anything worth over $5000 and qualify. So we own a home. We don't qualify, Nevermind that we still own um.. lots on our house. Whatever. The first appt we had the woman said you could be living in your $7000 car with 6 children and NOT qualify for food stamps. Um... what is wrong with THAT picture? But we have all sorts of things we need health insurance for. Remember my root canal? Well I got it but couldn't afford the crown. So my half drilled tooth has sat here for months. Saturday, it broke. Doesn't hurt (I mean I had the root canal lol) but it's broken. Adric at almost three still has his lazy eye he needs surgery for. Then there's dentists, etc. that the children need. It's amazing in this country how EASY it is to be part of the working poor. Clay and I watched the 30 days (that show with the guy who made Supersize Me) where they lived on minimum wage a few nights ago and it was really interesting. At the time he made the movie Congress hadn't passed an increase in the minimum wage since 1997 and yet had increased THEIR congressional salary by $27,000. Love that eh? But not one to ramble on about politics or anything. I don't necessarily agree with all the minimum wage proposals so it would be a long ramble so I'll stop. BUT it will be great to be able to just go make doctor's appointments and dentist appts at will. Don't ever take having health insurance for granted. It is a huge luxury and blessings. SOOOOOO many people in this country do NOT have health insurance. Imagine living your whole life without it.

Working on some new stuff :) Got some element packs I am working on, a rocking alpha, a new line of kits and a collection I am brainstorming. Eek. But you know me, hard to get anything done when I say I am so.. hopefully I can get things together enough for a Friday release this week. I hope so anyways. My new scanner is giving me trouble so I will have to wait for Clay to help me fix it before I can work on some of them. And once again like tends to happen a number of times a year I got through a designer mid life crisis or more of an identity crisis. Asking questions about whether my grunge is too hard to work with, etc. etc. Things like that. That's when you always get one collection that is a bit less grungy and that lasts through that one collection and I go back to my normal thing. Then CD tells me she likes the grungier way better and it's over. But here I am again second guessing myself like always. Now how to get out of that rut and just enjoy what I do as MINE who knows.

I have scrapped some. Got about 4 pages I haven't showed. I REALLY want to get into putting 5 pages a day into my DST gallery and start building that. AND I still haven't showed anyone my MMM layouts :) But I'll show one today for ya. It is VERY different for me. CD had her first online crop at Creating Keepsakes and she wrangled me into doing one of the challenges. I NEVER do challenges. I want to. I think I scrap better when I do. I have been wanting to do the Digi Dares but keep putting it off. Part of me is wanting to do paper more than digi sometimes. I have HAD to design and work for SO long that when I go to scrap soemtimes it feels like I just want to get away from the computer. Hopefully now with Clay bringing in a paycheck it will be less stress for me and I can enjoy digiscrapping more again. CD's challenges ROCKED. The one I did was to scrap an emotion so I chose CRAZY.

Paint Strokes by Meredith Fenwick, Brown paper by Rebecca DiGrazio, Font is 2peas GG, photo border by Corina Nielson, Felt starts by Amy Martin, buttons, staples, odds and ends by me Kim Christensen.

Thanks CD for making me actually scrap!

So much to do today. The sink has been clogged ALL weekend and we can't get it unclogged so we need to call the plumber. Argh. So I need to mop and clean the house before the plumber comes BLECH. But the kitchen sink has been out of commission all weekend. LOVE that eh? Had to do dishes in a plastic dishpan in the kitchen getting water from the bathtub. Argh again. So lots to do today so I should get running. Later Gators.