{lu's nu do!}

here's a pic of lex's (sometimes i call her Lu, don't ask me why) new hairdo. School starts tomorrow and the insanity of the week will end tomorrow! Thanks goodness!! We've got school supplies, open houses, and a few clothes for school. Today, she decided she wanted something totally different, no more blonde @ all!! She looks so different. She is so grown up looking. Tomorrow is the first day of school.....let the games begin!!

{toothpicks required}

Holy Cow, I am pooped! I need toothpicks to prop my eyelids open! Mark has been working for weeks non-stop for 14 hour days, its the best shore duty EVAH!! I heart the Navy! Did you note the sarcasm in there?? I have not seen him, i think i saw him last night on the couch, but then again it could have been a delusion. I'm starting to miss that man of mine. The kids have had "stuff" going on for back to school which starts in 2 crazy days!! I've waited until the last minute to get school stuff/clothes/schedule changes and Lex has had all kinds of crazy cheer crap this week and 2 open houses....my full time schedule and i am just exhausted. i'm not sleeping and then i get to work and that's what i want to do, catch up on the zzz's. when is Saturday? Until then, no kicks & giggles if you see me with toothpicks propping up the ole' droopy lids.......

{day 2}

i know i have said it before, but this time i really really mean it!! i am not going to loose this battle, i am a warrior princess and the battle of the muffin top is ON!! I started back on Weight Watcher's yesterday and my first meeting will be on Saturday.....my goal is 20 lbs... Luckily, i ran into my new neighbor, who i absolutely love. We have a lot in common, she's not a scrapbooker, but she is an incredible photographer and we just seem like we've got a lot in common (poor thing....) And my neighbor is going to do Weight Watchers with me, so hopefully that will be more of a motivation. I have started walking in the evenings what equals to be about 2 miles and i can feel it in in buttocks, which is great because i could definitely loose a little bit of that junk in the trunk!! Tighten those glutes!! I really didn't realize how much "junk in the trunk" i was getting until i tried on a cute pair of white crop pants in Virginia and WOW!! that said it all, it said "put these pants back on the rack girl and look for something in the black or denim department!" So far, I am not starving, I am doing okay on my "points", I have to keep telling myself that hunger pains are NOT death pains.....

{my movie reviews}

it has been the craziest week....my kids and their friends have kept me going non-stop. not that we have been going anywhere, we did manage to check out a few movies. First of all, we did see The Dark Knight in IMAX and it was totally awesome....i took Lex and 2 of her friends with me and Action for what I thought was about a 45 minute drive just south of the border and it turned into quite a bit farther than that, but it was a lot of fun when we fianlly got there, the movie was definitely the best by far. Secondly, Action and I checked out "meet dave", the girls wanted to see "Mama Mia", but i had promised my Mom that i would see it with her and i have seen the broadway production and it was a little racey and so i thought i had to find something more "approriate" for my 11 year old boy and "meet Dave" ended up being really, really funn!! It sure beat that monkey/chimp movie he wanted to see. That was a good save! thanks Karen for the review, you saved me a snooze in the theatre!

Next week, stay tuned because it should be a ball of snoozerville's here in hobunk...i am working full time again while both of my kids are at home by themselves until school starts on Friday!! And then we start all over again....i'm not sure i'm ready for school...i don't feel like we've had a summer yet...do you know that i haven't even been to the pool yet?? i am such a white chick! (insert rolling eyes)

{no poop fests allowed}

It may seem crude, but true....Its a day of "spare the square" @ my house today! Both Mark and i are at work all day with 3 kids at our house with one roll of TP which Mark discovered last night. i went grocery shopping at the world's most infuriating Wal Mart yesterday and spent a mega ton of dinero, but forgot the TP, what gives? So, i have been here and a little stressed about them over-using and there being a big "poop fest" and not enough squares to go around. i am a bit anxious to get out of here and swing by yet again another trip to the infuriating Wal Mart for a bulk sized package of Charmin for my darlings little derriere's.....uuggh!

{crushin' on little LuLu}

okay, so my son is 11!! he has probably had crushes here and there, but none that he would ever discuss with me or has ever lead anyone that i know of to be aware of. But this child came back from his vacation with his Mimi & Papa and he has talked & talked & showed & showed this little prized posession trading card of this can-can dancer from Ghost Town named LuLu. He got her autograph, you would have thought that he was holding in his hand a autographed picture of Madonna. He says its his girlfriend. I know that I mentioned in a previous post that he wanted the picture of him & ALL of the can-can girls blown up to poster sized for his room. If you really look @ the picture, HE has the cheesiest grin on his face, its hillarious! This is a child that I can hardly get to smile these days in front of the camera, yet ear to ear that smile goes while surrounded by those long legged ladies. It totally cracks me up. My little man finally has a crush and amazinly enough its on a 20something can can girl from the wild wild west.......yee haw!

{full moons & the crazies are out}

its been a weird little week in my world. i have been working all week in beautiful Fernandina and loving it, but every day something not quite right has happened which has given me the heebie jeebies and has left me wondering if we've had a full moon here lately?? i guess that i could research it or in the very least take a looksie out my window, but that would require more effort than i am willing to give at this point. So, i am going to assume by my experiences this week that there was indeed a full moon...

we have had computers go bizzerk, alarm systems with their very own agendas, some of our customers with certain oddball situations and last but not least we've had 2 crazies in here this week. One just a little charismatic that was in the bank and was actually fun to talk to and the other yesterday, completely certifiably off his rocker whack job one who flew over the cuckoo's nest nutcase! He was dressed in 2 women's flowery shirts, a shirt on his head (like Jesus), saying that he had his own "town" should go with him to "his town", he basically talked a lot of jibberish and as he finally left he said not to drink the water, he had the water of the Nile and it was the only safe water to drink. In all honesty, he scared me. about 15 minutes later, he was in the middle of the street yelling. We called the police and they said that they had already received a call and we're on their way, they approached him with a good bit of distance and I am assuming that they told him to leave, I locked the door of the bank and as he walked by, if looks could kill. So, its just been that kind of week....the crazies are out and i am blogging about it! Oh, just as I have been on this, my fellow teller-in-crime checked the whole moon thing, tonight is a full moon, so today should be pretty interesting!!! I'm not supersticious, but its a good thing its not the 13th......happy Friday!!

{the accidental cheer chick}

oh lordy! my child!! i love that child of mine, but she is the most accidental prone child as of late that i have seen. i would like to say that she gets it honest, but honestly i think that she is just in her own little la la land and doesn't pay so much attention, either that or she has an unnatural attraction to gravity. last week, while visiting one of her BFF's in Charleston, SC she got in a big cupcake fight at her friend's sweet sixteen and she was the only one that ended up biting the pavement, so to speak, and ended up with some pretty major "boo boo's" on her arms and legs. She began cheer camp on Monday and she was sore, but being the go getter cheer chick, she managed. On Wednesday, they left to go out of town to finish up 4 more days of cheer camp with other high schools and she called last night to tell me that as she was getting off the bus, she fell out of the bus, and busted open her other knee and other arm and elbow. She said that she was so embarrassed and now she has matching band-aids and "boo boo's". What to do with that child of mine....?

{tea towels & school houses}

i have been married for, um let's see.....18 years, yeah, i think that's it. Its been so long I am starting to loose track and I have to start counting on my fingers how long its been. But none the less, Mark still cracks me up with the different ways that we talk and the way we were raised. I am a Florida girl, he's a Kentucky boy. I was raised in a girlie house in the fact that it was 3 girls verses my Dad, who was always very respectful of us girls in the fact that he never cursed or burped or "tooted" in front of us and its not something that we discussed or became a topic of any conversation. Mark, on the other hand, was raised in a more formal house of beautiful antiques, china dishes, but with a brother and most of his life a single Mom. So, these topics seemed to be more of a "laughing matter" and a fact of life in his home, and i mean no disrespect in that, it just is what it is... But my language form is very laid back and not very articulate, some may call it southern (without an accent) and some may say informal, but again, it is what it is. I guess what sparked this little observation is that yesterday Mark said two things that had me teasing him, he was asking me about Lex going to the "school house", who calls it a school house? If we were in Little House in the Prarie times or lived in Amish country, I'd say yeah! School house it is, but this school is a monster. This school had nearly a thousand kids graduate last year. Later in the evening, he referred to a dish towel, yes a dish towel as a "tea towel"....there was no tea involved and a tea towel is something that Grannie embroidered with little pink flowers, am i right? We use dish towels for dirty dishes and dirty counter tops. Who says that? I just find it funny that even after being married for so long that he can say little quirky things that get me giggling and remind me that he is that Kentucky boy that I married and we are so different in more ways than one. i love my quirky talkin' Kentucky boy!!

{& so it begins....}

last weekwas so laid back with the kids gone....the house never got messy, i didn't have any running around to do, no demands on me ,i could have walked around naked (not that I did, but I totally could have) and besides my normal 2 work days, it was easy sneazy. Then on Saturday, Action was back and on Sunday, I drove to Savannah to pick up Lex and we are back to an even crazier routine than usual. Lex came back with some pretty major 'boo boo's", she fell in the middle of the street, apparently there was some cupcake fight involved, trust me we don't really want or need to know the details. But she fell and skinned several parts of her body. So, she is sore, but cheerleading camp starts today, hard core cheerleading camp. Action is at home by himself as I write this and I think to myself.....please let him have brushed his teeth and not totally trashed the joint and watched so much Cartoon Network that his brain has turned to noodle mush. Mark and myself are working full time this week and I will actually be working out of town. So this week will be insane with everything and Lex's schedule. So, it begins.........

{Action's Back, now there's gonna be trouble!}

my Action is back in town, he has been gone on a week long vacation with his Mimi & Papa in North Carolina hanging with Can-can girls, fighting on the wrong side of the "law", and whirlin' himself on coasters in GhostTown. He's been doing a little, train riding and tubing and taking nature walks with Papa.....Action has not been "home" in 4 weeks (yes, I said 4 weeks!!), he has pit stopped here for less than 24 hours twice in that timeframe and I have missed him so much and he has missed his neighborhood peeps AKA as kids in the hood . He can't wait to get out and hang with them and that just equals trouble with a capital "T", I say that in jest. i am just so glad to have him back at home, I know that the "kids in the hood" will be glad to have him back...

By the way, the picture of him & the Can Can girls, he is requesting that it be blown up to poster size and be put up in his room!!! He is a ladies man!!

{does my new banner rock or what?}

i have been a scrappin' machine (check out all the new layouts on my slide...) this "kid free" week. I feel like i've gotten my MoJO back and my pages are pretty darn good, they definitely look better in "real scrap life" and in about 5 minutes, I threw together my new blog banner....Betty Blogger is rockin' in the banner department, yeah??? I hope you like it because truthfully i hated my other one, but never wanted to mess with it...have a great weekend, we are going to be busy receiving and retrieving our kids...its gonna be a long one..

{hancock}

well, we finally got to our movie night. Mark and i went for a "night on the town". Woo-hoo, a little BBQ chicken, some Dollar Tree shoppin', and a movie. We are real party animals, yeah? Rock Stars we are, Nickelback's got not nothing on US!! Its the life! Anyway, all sarcasm aside, we did have a pretty good little date night. The whole Dollar Tree expereince with Mark, I truly could have skipped. It wasn't until tonight that I realized that I have never actually been to the Dollar Tree with Mark and I'm thinking that we should have kept it that way. He didn't want to be in there, he wanted to go, so what better way to torture me than to continually ask how much everything was. The funny thing is, he put more in the cart than I did. I went in looking for a chipboard book that Juliet had found in Virginia (they didn't have it), we walked out with grooming & back to school supplies by the truckload, but I lucked out with post it notes that say "the princess gets what the princess wants"....maybe that's what I should write all of my "honey do lists" on....

The movie of choice, "hancock". It was actually really good. Not thrilled with the language. Its one that Action won't be seeing anytime soon unfortunately. He had it on his list of summer must see's. But the language was a strong PG-13, which I don't know why they have to do that. It makes me crazy. Anyway, date night over and I am back to being "blogger betty" and he is watching "So you think you can dance" with that laughin heinia lady (she makes my skin crawl).

{& the stupid shall be punished}

that's a favorite quote of Mark's and today I got what that actually meant....

being that i am kid free and Mark was working and its my day off, i decided that i would spend my day scrapping and catching up on my DVR'd "stories" (what is going on on All My Kids & GH??, I am so lost!!!!!!) Anyway, back to my stupid story, I am cropping away and I actually did one of my all time favorite pages (its Lorrie's 2006 Birthday page, I might add...its super cute!!) and decided a puncture wound to my knuckle was in order. How would scrapbooking cause such a wound you might ask??? You know those Stickles, I am lovin the Stickles on occassion when I decide my page needs a little extra bling. Well, this birthday page needed a little "something something", but the tube was clogged and what to shove into a little hole to unclog that would do the trick?? Why, a Cutterbee scissor or course!! Except for the fact that if you shove it hard enough it just might slip and dive into the hand holding the Stickles. The weird thing is that at first I thought, "wow, I'm not even going to bleed, its not that deep" and then after what seemed like a few minutes, not only did blood come gushing out but unbelievable pain filled my entire hand & up my arm. Did I just share too much? Anyway, enough with the blood and gore, after I got things under control and determined that I didn't need stitches (thank goodness because I wasn't prepared to go to the hospital....i hadn't straightened my hair today or put on any makeup...,but i did have on clean underwear) I realized how stupid of an idea it was to do what I did and I guess that's what I get and now my whole left knuckle hurts like a booger....

{fancy free}

Markie Poo and I are fancy free and lovin our kid free week....well, so far just the first day of it. Our little Lex Lou Who is in Charleston with her gal pal, Ashley for the week. Action took off with his Mimi and Papa for a week in the hills of North Carolina for a week of tubing and riding trains and whatever it is that you do in the hills (I'm kind of a city girl so I have no clue). I am just hoping that at this point he doesn't come home with ticks. Although, he went to his Grannie and Pops house and worked in the barn cleaning horse stalls for a week and the child came home with horse cream that he insists on rubbing on his arms and legs not once, but twice a day. When he starts to grow a main (hey, no comments from the peanut gallery on that one) and starts saying "nay", we are going to have some issues. Anyway, I hope that both the kids are having great summer adventures while Mark and I are chillin' here.

We actually headed out to Jacksonville Landing, which we had heard was a hotspot. Its on the St John's River and has shops, entertainment, and dining. We got there and while it could be really cool, most of the shops were gone and there weren't that many restaraunts and no entertainment (at least in the middle of a Sunday afternoon). But we were looking for something as cheap as possible to do, so much going and traveling, camp, cheerleading this summer is taking its toll on us and we thought just walking around on the water would be nice on a not too hot summer day, but then the skies opened up and it started to pour. We did have a great time just checking everything out though. Now we are home and just enjoying our time together.....(who am I kidding??? Mark is playing WII and I am blogging and peaing!! Do we need some romance or what??) Tomorrow, I go back to work and Mark is actually going out of town for work, maybe we can squeeze in a movie this week. Any suggestions? Anyone seen Hancock?? Whats the real deal on that one??

My previous life AKA Virginia Vaca pics...

{my previous life}

a whirlwind, exhausting, fun, liberating, depressing, glimpse back into my previous life is complete which consisted of a quick trip back to Virginia. Virginia is where we moved from a year ago and some of my very closest friends AKA my "peeps" are there for all of us. Lex basically moved in with several of her friends and we basically didn't see her the entire time while Action hung out with the Q Crew and got to spend some time with some of my peeps little one's who aren't so little anymore. I was "on the go" so much i could not hardly catch my breath and I loved every minute of it!!! I got to spend so much time with everyone and we had so much fun. It went by too quickly...i got to spend some time scrapping at my favorite LSS. Also celebrated the store's 9th birthday.

I decided to do a slide show with me and my peeps "escapades" from my visit. I hope you enjoy and choose not to judge. We always have such a great time when we get together and there is always the possibility that a little silliness will break out....sorry, its a given that a little silliness will break out and what a better way to document that than with my camera...poses,deciding we are all old and need grannie glasses, margaritas even for those "lightweights", disney parties for a 40 year old man who actually liked his disney princess pez dispenser gag gift, brunches that include "thong" talk and a variety of bagels and cream cheese, shopping, cropping, a Water Country moment that I would like to remove from my memory and Maggie Moo's 2 nights in a row!

thanks for the good times...my gangsta scrappin' peeps and that includes you tonton!

i have officially donated enough money to the oil companies, speculator's and the saudi's for the rest of the summer and will no longer be traveling again for quite some time. I am elated not to pull up to a pump and watch my child's college fund go into the tank, at least for quite some time....i am waiting to receive my certificate of appreciation in the mail any time now....does anyone read farsi, arabic, or greed??