Tagged!!!

Here are the rules:

1. You have to post these rules before you give the facts.
2. Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
3. When you are tagged you need to write your own blog-post containing your own middle name game facts. ***Or state if you have already been tagged before!***
4. At the end of your blog-post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Here is mine:
A=addictive personality. Whatever I am into at that moment, I do it overboard. I mean all the time and sometimes get burned out. This could apply to cross-stitching, email, myspace, going to the gym.....Thank God I never got into drugs or gambling!!
N=nostalgic. The older I get, the more I reflect on younger days. Just recently, me and a few of my friends from high school and college had the best time sending pics to one another and making myspace slideshows of the good old times. It's great to look back and remember. Funny how invincible and impulsive I used to be.
N=nutty. Only my closest friends, some family members, and husband have seen the silly/nerdy side of me. I certainly don't show it at school. I am downright weird, goofy, and retarded sometimes; oh well, it entertains me. I may be the only one laughing, but that's OK by me. I laugh at myself daily.
E=educated. I have a BS in Biology with an emphasis in Chemistry, 2 teacher certifications in grades 7-12 Biology and 5-9 general science, and I received my Master's in Biology Education. I would take more classes, but the payoff takes so very long on the salary schedule. The fact is that I love to learn new things and actually enjoy the study process when I am interested in the subject matter. This was a tough one because I don't want to come across as a braggart. I am proud of myself and glad it is over. Now, I just disseminate knowledge! LOL

I simply cannot follow the rules of tagging with ANNE. So, if you will comply, I would love to read the answers for Hollie, Jenny, Tricia, and Melody. Sonja, will you do it too, and just post in the comment section? Thanks girls, and thanks Allison for including me! Sorry it took me so VERY long to follow through!

Speaking of being nostalgic... I compared a pic my sister gave me to a scrapbook page I had done a while back. This is of my oldest nephew, Koen, and how much he has grown. In the pic from this summer, he is sitting in a car seat next to the same vibrating seat from the layout. I love how he is laid back, with his hands behind his head....just hangin' at the garage sale, and trying out his old stuff. He looks deep in thought about something, but still relaxed and carefree! Silly guy! I miss him.

It's gonna be a LONG week!

This will be my first full week back to school. All I can say is, I wish I had enough stylish shoes that also had arch support. Cute flip-flops and sandals are killing me!
Sunday was a good day. The church sermon was great. I completed one quick scrapbook page. I made it to the gym. I even cleaned house and walked the dogs!

Monday, although tiring to my body, was a good day as well. School went smoothly. I had the first meeting for the Scrapbook Club and almost 50 kids showed up! Every seat was full (34) and there were about 15 kids standing. Four boys even came on in; however, ~4 glanced in my room and did an about-face. Too many girls, I guess! lol Many have to go home and ask their parents, so I doubt that many remain in the coming weeks. I even had a couple say that they didn't want to be in the club if it was that big! WoW! Ten kids signed up for my inchworm page layout.

Tobin and I went to Red Robin. I wish their bottomless fries were seasoned. My salmon was wonderful though! We both had water and still spent $26 there. RIDICULOUS for a burger joint!!! Oh, I also kicked out a very simple Tobin and Holly page. Hope everyone has a great week!

The challenge within the joke

I thought this joke was kind of funny, but the reality of what has happened is far from humorous. My friend, Hollie, sent this to me and we both think Michael Vick should really pay for what he has done to animals. I personally would like to see him placed in the ring with the dogs and let them have their way with him. The whole thing makes me sick. Truly repulsive. I hope the NFL nevers allows his kind back in the game!
Moving on to a lighter note....let's see how many people can figure out who his serving on his jury panel! How many doggie names can you remember?????

I just finished a birthday page for lil' Griffey. I had a layout similar to this saved on my computer and I have NO idea where I got it or who I got it from! Griffin was one year old this past March 11. Mel, I will do more pages from that day, but this one was to show off his cake-smearing abilities!

A couple weekend pages~

Since two of my blogger buddies are out of town, and Tobin is at work, I decided to get caught up on some scrapbooking today. The first layout is of Koen running through the field behind mom's house this spring. He had such a fun time chasing me and chasing butterflies! I love this picture because he was smiling at me at that moment, as I acted like he was about to catch up to me. The second layout is of Hunter and his new treehouse built last month. Don had lots of help from Tobin and even Hunter! He was right in the middle of everything and wanted to be one of the big guys. He even took off his shirt since Uncle Tobin did. hahaha I'll have to do a layout soon of the finished project!


I plan to scrap tomorrow also, but we are going to my mom's for dinner tonight. I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

School wears me out!!

Well, our workdays are over and the students showed up today. I had totally forgotten how quickly one can get out of "teacher shape!" My voice, my feet, and my back were all wearing out by 5th hour!! I am thankful; however, that the week is a short one! My classes seem great so far. I have the same students, with the exception of move-ins and move-outs, as I did last year. I moved with my class to the 8th grade. This year will be a transition year, as I teach earth science as opposed to the life science in which I earned my degrees. Overall, I am happy to be back to school, even though I was depressed over the thought of losing my lazy, summer days. When I am in my classroom, I am in my element and I feel at home. It was neat to see the same smiling faces again too. That is not to say that I won't miss lying around, scrapbooking all day, and generally having NO schedule. But, I fell right back into the routine and hopefully my body does soon, too!

Luncheons

I love to eat out! Friday was the retirement lunch for my dad. He is finally finished with working for someone else. That is not to say he won't be busy in his retirement! Now, that would surprise me! In this pic, he had just read the card that a lot of the people he works with had signed. The lady that seemed to have organized it said many nice things to dad and he in turn talked about how he had enjoyed working for Wooten Co. I am to his right and my sister, Tricia, is to my right. Since he just got married, sold his place, moved to a different town, plus he retired, he will have a lot of adjustments going on!

Saturday was my last day to lounge around. I did a little bit of shopping the sales, but not too much. After church today, I met a good friend for lunch. We had lost touch for awhile; however, we seemed to pick right up where we left off.
We both love sushi and that is something we used to do when we were hanging out all the time, before I got married. So, we met at Sakura and ordered a couple rolls. We also shopped a little, but mainly came back to my house and had a great visit! I need to be better about keeping in touch with old friends. I have no excuse! So, Marie, I know you are busy with lil' Nicky,
but if you read this, thanks for a great afternoon! By the way, I have no idea why the sky looks sooo pink?????

Well, Tobin is shooting his bow and then he'll cook dinner. That is our deal for the time being. He thinks most of my meals are "all-in-one" dishes, and he likes his side dishes here lately. He agreed to cook all the time, if I would just clean up! I simply cannot turn down that kind of deal! Plus, he grills most of the time, so that is great by me! Especially with me going back to work! Speaking of that...I had better go check out my new text book. I went out to school and got it today and worked on a bulletin board. Everything changes tomorrow!

Last layouts of summer!

I'm sure I will do more soon, but these are officially the last ones (#33 & #34) I will complete before reporting to work Monday morning. This first page is for the Challenge blog on my favorite links list. I had wanted to scrapbook these pics because I think Griffin's expressions are soo cute. He sure makes some wild faces! Can you have an argument with a 12 month -old? Evidently!!! We were definitely NOT seeing eye-to-eye as I was trying to feed him. I had wanted to do the word search idea for a long time also. I'm not sure I would have thought the "argument" approach, but I like how it turned out, so that was a neat idea.




This next page has soooo much meaning. My Great Aunt Iney was a very important extended family member. She never had children, so my mom and aunt spent many summers with her, as well as my sister and I. She was in a nursing home and just barely got to meet Koen before she died. It is very sad that Mel's boys will never know her and what a wonderful person she was. He was only two months old in this pic, so Iney was his Great-Great Aunt. The pic is just so precious to me because it shows the hands of three generations. I was going to title it Loving Hands, but as my sister said, "The love is implied."

Well, time to take the dogs and go for a run. It has cooled off a little, so I am going to take advantage of it. Tobin went kayaking with his best friend for the evening. Tomorrow, I need to go get my textbook for this school year. I have simply got to figure out what the heck I am teaching this coming Thursday. I can't believe I have put it off this long and it is beginning to stress me out!

Two more pages~

Tobin had the day off and he helped me take most of my plants to my classroom. I couldn't have done it without him, and especially not without the truck! I keep about 30 plants in my classroom, so many of them spend the summer at the house, but they do well in the florescent lights at school, too. We transplanted a couple while out there. Tobin added about 5 gallons of water and about 8 new plants to my aquarium also. Now I need two new snails!

I used some of the scraps leftover from my "e" title page to do this layout on the left. I use that pic on Blogger and thought that someday, my family may enjoy seeing a pic of just me! I also finished a page of my step-dad's grand-daughter. They live in Florida and we don't see them too often, but I thought these pics were pretty adorable!

Well, I am still in scrapbooking mode. Summer is not over yet! LOL!! I am going back to school tomorrow,but that is to help a scrapbook-club student finish some of her layouts from last year. Once she gets started, I should really work on 8th grade curriculum. The workdays will fly by and I tend to do a lot of visiting!!

Water Main Break!

This was an interesting day. I had been hearing this dull roar under the house and kept thinking I had left water running or something. I decided to let the dogs out in front, while I watered the flowers and lo and behold, this is what I saw when I opened the door!!!!! (If you click on the pics, you get a better idea of how much water and how big these rocks were!)

So, I secured the dogs and grabbed the camera, of course, and wandered out into the yard. I walked down my side of the street toward the source of the water, but once I found it, I had to cross the street to get to it. The current literally made me steady myself, because it was really moving and it was over my flip flops completely!!
The water was originating from a yard down the street and it had literally pushed the yard up and was spurting rocks and gravel out into the street. The man that joined me, alerted me not to stand in that particular yard because it was forming a big cavern under their yard and hollowing out a cave and the yard would collapse at any time. Now, I don't know if he already had me pegged as gullible and was having a little bit of fun with me ( I'd like to think not, since he wasn't smiling and backed away himself), but I did as the man said. I knew it wouldn't happen quite that quickly, but didn't seem too far fetched.
He also said that if I wanted to get a shower today, I better rush to it, as they would likely shut the water off soon, in order to fix this, and it could be off all day. He was right about that part. I raced home, showered, and they shut the water off within 15 minutes of me getting ready for the day. It was off for about 6-7 hours. The CU men told us that 8 water mains broke around town due to the intense heat we've been experiencing. The heat causes more people to use the water supply; therefore, CU had to up the water pressure. That caused some of the pipes to adjust underground, and since the ground is so dry, some rubbed against a rock or something that caused it to rupture. Plus, the simple increase in pressure might have been too much for some of the pipes. Then, they had to purge the fire hydrants in order to get the air pockets out of the lines. All of this wasted water was frustrating to me!! I was wishing I could get much of it up into my dried up yard! We still have silty water and it has a slight odor. Anyone else experiencing any of the above?

Time for title pages...

I don't know if all scrapbookers do this, but the group I first learned with did, and it stuck with me! I usually do it at the end of an album, not sure why. I had two albums completed and decided that since we only have ONE WEEK left (insert eye roll and head shake side to side), I decided to buckle down and get those two title pages done today!

The first one took the longest. Those crazy angles reminded me of geometry and about gave me a headache. I made the mistake of putting the paper upside-down, and of course, the angle came out exactly backwards! The "e" is for Elliott. Tobin said to use a capital, but it wouldn't fit. Oh well. I really like the thingy in the middle that I made using cardstock and DMC floss. It took me a bit to figure out how the wrap the floss so that it looked like the spirograph toy I played with when I was little!

This one went much more quickly, but Tobin didn't catch that it is representing all four seasons of pictures in that album. I had hoped it was obvious. I should have used a snowflake in the winter square, but I was honestly using up old stickers that I have been keeping around for some reason. Some of those stickers have moved houses with me 3 times and have been around for 10 years! I'm thinking of placing the year, vertically, along the left side of the window frame thing. The problem is that there are several years represented, so I haven't decided how to handle that quite yet...maybe smaller white rub-ons.

Well, our weekend went very well overall. We enjoyed the Springfield Cardinals game on Friday night, even though they lost and the heat was just about unbearable!! The fireworks were outstanding and my favorite part, for sure! Saturday was a fun day! I spent the morning scrapbooking and then I went shopping with Sonja. That evening, we had dinner at the Elliott's where Brenda made a yummy spread of food and Hunter celebrated his 5th birthday! Tobin grilled out for us tonight to complete a very nice weekend!

Nothing goes to waste!

How many pages can I make with seven pieces of 12x12 coordinating cardstock?

Well, we will never know because I got tired of the color scheme before I answered my own question. I made the following four pages, then decided to save the rest for my sister! So, Melody, you are inheriting enough to do at least two pages, if not more. You'll need the background 12x12 pages (blue, brown, or white) but this should be enough for the rest. I have all the embellishments that go with the scheme and then some. I hardly made a dent in the pack of embellies that came with this. There are still silk flowers, L/M/S brads, ribbon, and buttons. These were all fast pages, but they are done, so I am thankful for that. Three of them were 45 minutes pages. Mel, I will save all this stuff for when you get here next month! EEEEEEE! I can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is what is STILL left!!!! Ridiculous amount of paper!
I punched four circles in case you want them, Mel.

Challenge Blog post #2

I have wanted to do this before school started again. It is actually my "old-school style" as far as design goes. I started scrapbooking with creative memories and this layout definitely has that feel to me. I used some more modern elements, such as felt, stitching, fluid ink, and pop-up dots, but it still has my old style written all over it. I actually did a layout very similar to this one back in '98, but I used all cardstock and hexagons for each inch-worm segment. This layout covers the highlights of my summer (which is about to draw to an end) and as the final inch-worm segment says, "Enjoying my summer every "inch" of the way!"

Trying to get a picture of my layout in this heat was possibly the biggest "challenge" of all. Every time I would go outside, the pictures would curl. UGH....after 4 times of the back 'n' forth from the heat to the computer, I decided to just take it on the kitchen floor. So, the lighting isn't superb, but it will have to do. SOOOO, now I have two spreads that were inspired by Laura's Tostito ad on the Consider Yourself Challenged blog. Both were layouts that would have been finished before I returned to work, but there is no telling how they would have looked!

Tobin is geared up!

I worked in my classroom again today. Actually, I accomplished a lot, but still have no idea how I am going to go about what I am teaching this year! I hung new posters, cleaned off my desk, unpacked supplies, and worked on a bulletin board. I just need to sit down with the book and supplemental materials. My friend, Jane, helped me out with my home computer and ended up saving me a lot of money. Thank you, Jane!!!

Tobin definitely has the "fever" and the countdown is on for hunting season. He watches hunting videos every night, fiddles with his bow, reads hunting magazines, and talks hunting on the phone with his friend, Jason, and his brother. This was the seen last night.

Luckily there are no holes in the side of the house. That was last year! One arrow actually entered the garage... We plan to get siding next year, so.....no reason to get bent out of shape over it .
I had to add the pic of his target. That was
his idea since he wasn't overly thrilled that
I was on a photo shoot while he was
practicing. We had to keep the dogs in
the house. This sure is his time of year!

Challenge Blog post

I am psyched to get some GREAT deals at the "no-tax" sales today. Of course, my normal summer procrastination might affect what I come up with, but I am going nonetheless! This has been going on since Friday.

The following layout is one that was inspired by Laura Parks challenge on the Consider Yourself Challenged blog. I branched out, in a way, in that I didn't keep it linear and it is somewhat cyclical. So, Laura, let me know if I veered too far from your game plan! See, my mom had two daughters and her sister had two sons. We have all lived in the same area our whole lives. We don't have any extended family left, so my aunt, who is also my friend :), is my extended family and a part of the core family!! We are a very close, tightly knit family and get together often.

I do have another idea for a layout that I haven't begun quite yet. I will do it anyway, whether it counts for the challenge blog or not. Man! The days are dwindling until I have to go back to work and it is starting to stress me out just a bit. I have had plenty of time to do anything I may have wanted to, but did I??? LOL AHHH, oh well, that is what summer is for!

Big Smith at the Fair!!

I know this probably sounds crazy, but this was one of my highlights of the summer! I think I won the title for "best chair dancer" haha! I really like their music and I love a live concert! Of course, sitting around a campfire near the river, in comfortable camp chairs, would have been preferred to the Grandstand bleachers, but I was very happy to be there, nonetheless! They sang about 12 songs, so we didn't get home until about 11:00. They sang all of my favorites, too! If you're reading this, and like hillbilly bluegrass, and don't know who they are...http://www.bigsmithband.com/ You can download mp3 songs there as well.

Tobin worked all day and rushed home, just so we could have time to mill around and check out the exhibits and the MO Dept. of Conservation booth. Prior to Big Smith, M-Dock and then Skinny Improv performed. It was nice to get out and do something. I'm VERY proud of myself for not partaking in the root beer jug, cotton candy, funnel cakes, and many of the other fun, fair foods that I saw while there. It was hard, and I'm not known for my will power, but I have lost 4-7 lbs. depending on what time of day I weigh-in on, so that was my motivation!



If you look closely at the pic of the ride, the people are lying down on their bellies!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The harness straps and bars go across their back to keep them on the ride! I am not sure if I'd do this nowadays, but I would have when younger. Poor Tobin wouldn't even look at it for more than 2 seconds. I made him ride the Giant Swing at Silver Dollar City earlier this spring and he about threw up and absolutely hated every minute of it! I, on the other hand, loved it and loved the rush! Other than the dirt, people darting in front of you, the carneys, the long lines, and the price for rides, I love the fair atmosphere! LOL!!!

DMC Floss

Tobin had the day off yesterday, so we took a little road trip up to the Harry S. Truman State Park and checked out a cabin for sale on Lake Ozark. The state park was nothing to shout about, but the little cabin was a possibility. We'll have to wait and see about that. We had to get back in time for his band practice, so that allowed me to finish this spread and exercise before dark. I was able to jog the mile loop with the dogs and then ride my bike for the same loop before it was just too dark to see. Mel, you mentioned that you would like to start stitching on your pages. I have the sheer luck to have tons of DMC floss leftover from my fanatical cross-stitching days. I rarely even need to go buy floss for a layout since I have so many shades of so many colors. This is how I organized them back in the day. I was thinking...if you would like this for a birthday gift next month....let me know. Maybe we could just start with one plastic organizer and just go with the shades of the colors of the rainbow (ROYGBIV), plus black and white! Your thoughts?
SIDENOTE: If you blow up the pic of the DMC floss, you can see some of the lovely holes I have poked into the kitchen table this summer. Apparently my paper piercer goes all the way through my cork and makes the exact same design on the table. So, I have stars and swirls permanantly poked into the table. Tobin is NOT pleased!