Twilight

Okay, I hope I don't offend anyone, because I know almost all of my friends and some of my family are fanatics about this book, and thus the movie. I haven't read them, and I haven't seen the movie. What I have seen are movie posters and previews. My question is Why on earth did they pick those two to play the parts of Bella and Edward? I'm sure there are hundreds or thousands of beautiful/hot actors in Hollywood they could have picked. When I'm watching a love story, I really want the love interests to be attractive. I don't think either of them look good in this movie. I have neighbors that are better looking. My main complaint about it is poor Edward. He is the one who is so heart breakingingly beautiful that he sparkles, right? Then why did they make him look like night of the walking zombies? YUK! They could have paid their make up department a bit more so they could get someone who can do a good job making that vampire look sexy! What a shame.

Pre Thanksgiving

For the past 3 years we have met together with some good friends from our neighborhood and had a 'pre-thanksgiving' dinner. We have tried out new recipes and enjoyed delicious food. We have played fun(ny) games and it seems that our group gets really excited about getting together for this. We got together last saturday and tried out some new recipes (sorry guys, mine weren't that great) and enjoyed some old favorites (thanks tamara). We have taken turns learning how to cook a turkey and I think just had a great time visiting! We had a wonderful, even spiritual evening together. Jeff had a great idea for everone to share some things that have happened to each of us during the past year, sort of a looking back on the year, and that usually helps you look into your future. It seems as if God has been leading all of us, in different ways, to draw closer to Him. It always makes me feel so special and so loved to know He is aware of me, but also realize how insignificant things of this life are. Like Moses, I realize I am no more than the dust, and yet He knows me by name! Thank you, to all of my friends, who have taught me more about faith and love. Most of the lessons best learned are taught by example, not a lecture.

Things have been very busy for us, probably because we aren't used to having to do anything! Nothing exciting is hgappening, but there is so much to do and not enough time to do it! (Especially when you sleep til 8) Lachlan has finally started sleeping through the night, so I really have no good excuse, but I have been getting to bed past midnight the last 3 or 4 nights and I'm tired! Rowan has been sick with some weird stomach bug thing. My neighbor said her little girl (1 week older than Rowan) has had a similar thing. Little Peanut says "tummy hurts, mommy" all day, will hardly eat anything, and has thrown up 2x and had many yukky diapers. Does anyone know what this is? It has been going on since Halloween. Poor little girl.

I am finally getting around to making my dining room curtains. I bought the fabric about 2 years ago, I guess. Then we moved and I never made them. Now we are back and I am excited to make and put up the roman shades. I actually special ordered this fabric from Joann's ( I had a 50% off coupon) I've never done that before. It was VERY exciting!@ The fabric looks really retro, but modern. I LOVE it! I even have enough to redo the shade on the glass back door. I can probably make some seat cushions or pillows too. I will post pictures too. Maybe do a tutorial, would anyone like that? :)

Contest

Abram & I came across an interesting contest. You write an essay, submit a $100 entry fee and you get a chance to win a home! Pretty interesting idea. People are getting desperate in these times. I myself have come up with a few 'schemes' in case our house doesn't sell quickly, but I wasn't that creative!
Anyone going to try their luck? Abram is encouraging me to send one in. He says he'll be glad to move to NM if he won a house for $100.00. What do you think?

especially cool

My friend sent me this link for a free photo book. It really was begging to be posted here because it has the same title as my blog.
http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/20081029_tows_messyhouse/7
Pretty cool, eh?
I actually made my book last night and it was very quick and easy, but mostly because I already have an account with snapfish and my pics were already uploaded and ready to go.
The book is totally custom, 20 pages, hard bound 8 1/2 x 11. It is a $30 book - for free! You pay $6.99 s/h.
Thank you, Oprah!
Now go scrapbooking.

Get your Guns

So with the new president-elect, there is a good chance something similar to the Brady Bill (or worse) will be put into effect next year. It is pretty unbelievable to me that people in this country think it is a good idea to take away your 2nd amendment rights. I guess it really just shows that they are uneducated about it. If you do any research you will discover that the more citizens that carry guns, the less crime there is. Any time you limit the civilians from carrying weapons, the crime rate sky-rockets. Anyway, Abram has owned guns since before I met him, but I think mostly for hunting. However during the years we've been married he has acquired a few hand guns and a concealed weapons permit. The more I research it, the more I feel like I should follow suit. Yesterday Abram took me to the shooting range and he taught me how to load and shoot some of our guns. I had never shot any before and even though Abram bought a pistol for me, I had no idea how to use it.
I was very scared at first to use the guns, but he started me on a very smooth .22 rifle and moved me up to bigger guns that had more and more kick until I was pretty comfortable shooting a 9 mm in a quickshot fashion. I even had pretty good groupings on my target for a 1st time shooter. I feel much more comfortable now and could probably protect myself and kids if I had to, heaven forbid.
You ladies might think this is crazy but for awhile now I have wanted to start some kind of a gun awareness/self protection class for women. If I do, you'll all be invited. :)

The Optimistic Realist

A few of you wondered what was going on with the houses.
We are going to try to sell the big house. The market is miserable right now. There are a few homes with the same square footage and acreage right down the street from ours that are listed about 200K less than we owe on ours. The only things we have going for us is those are right next to the freeway and they are in a less favorable town. (I know that is a matter of opinion, but for some reason it affects the prices here just because they are in a different county) But for a smart person who didn't have to worry about the school district, you'd think they'd get the cheaper home. There are so many short sales going on that no one wants to pay a real price for a home. Who can blame them. I certainly wouldn't do it. So we are praying for a miracle and expecting the worst.
We had some wonderful help getting moved and are mostly all out of the big house. We started sleeping at our old house last Thursday night. I think my body had to acclimate to the warmth because I sweated like crazy the first two nights with the thermostat set at 70F. And having automatic hot water is like a miracle! I am astonished every time I turn the faucet to hot and it actually gets HOT! We really take our blessings for granted.
It could be easy to wish we had never bought the big house, or to say we could have avoided a lot of problems and hard-times if we hadn't. But I am so grateful for the wonderful friends I made in our big house and the incredible lessons I learned about service and love. If those were the reasons we needed to go through some of the uncomfortable times we went through, then I gladly accept. What more important lesson can we learn then to be more christ-like and charitable? So even if we end up having to give the house back to the bank and ruining our excellent credit scores (780) I feel at peace that we are doing our best and trying to live within our means. I know things will work out. I don't want people to feel sorry for us and I'm not blaming anyone else. Obviously we can't see the future, so we couldn't foresee this happening with the economy, but with all things there are inherent risk. We took a chance. I am grateful my husband is still healthy and able to provide for us. I know there are people in much worse situations than we are in and I am very thankful for our many blessings.
In the house we are back in I had put vinyl letters up in the dining room a few years ago that say " Count Your Blessings" and I always felt it was true enough to remind yourself of it daily. But I feel it resonates even more true to me now that I have been in this precarious situation.
We had not planned on moving back, but now find it a blessing that we have a home to move back to. We hope this will put us in a much more secure position.
I hope all of you are healthy, happy and prepared for whatever lies ahead. For if you are prepared you shall not fear. :)

Excitement at the Big House

Things have been really exciting around here. We are moving out of the big house and back into our subdivision house. Hooray for our 'old' friends, and we are grateful for the new friends we've made. I have been so thankful for all of the sunshine we've had because we ran out of propane about two months ago (thus no hot water and no heat) and the weekend it was freezing and it snowed, we were bitterly reminded of the miserable winter we spent here last year. But when the sun is shining and there isn't a lot of wind, the house warms up quite nicely. I am so grateful for the gorgeous weather we've been having!!
Abram finally sold the hummer and now we are enjoying being a one-car family. We've actually been selling lots of our stuff on craigslist. It is liberating to be free of stuff in lieu of cash :)
On Sunday I was trying out a peanut butter cup recipe and unbeknownst to me, Aisling gave Lachlan a spoonful of peanut butter. You know how babies rub their food all over their face, well Within a few minutes he had broken out in these hive-like things and his eye began to really swell. He was still breathing ok, but his eye was getting worse and worse. His eyeball itself was actually swellin up in this gelatinous goo-like stuff. We were going to run to the store and buy Benadryl ( you know, our ox was in the mire!) but Abram was so freaked out he ran him straight to our optometric physician (who just happenes to live across the street :)) and he luckily had on hand some awesome eye drops that saved the day. So Hooray for Lachlan being ok, but bummer for the allergic reaction. I LOVE peanut butter and it will be so hard to keep it away from him. I hope he outgrows it or something because I'm selfish enough to want to keep it around. Obviously not if it is life-threatening, but a little hives never hurt anyone, right? j/k
I have to admit is is all my fault for him having the allergy. Whenever I judge others for having something with their kids, I always get it in my own kids. I should learn by now just to have a heart full of non-judgmental thought and then I won't be humbled so often. :) Honestly, not a week before this I was murmuring at co-op about how we can't have peanut butter at the school because 1 child is allergic. Little did I know.... :)
I am determined to find a cure for him somehow. Anyone know a good voodoo doctor?
Oh and while we were at the neighbor's house observing lachlan's eye, the dogs got into the house, ate the whole pan of peanut butter cups, got into the chicken I was cooking and made an overall mess of the house and chewed a few shoes. We had left the house in such a hurry, we left the garbage open and the door didn't get shut tightly. Thankfully my bro and sister-in-law invited us for dinner. Abram said he hadn't enjoyed a steak like that in a really lomg time, and I loved the homemade mashed potatoes. Having them on thanksgiving just isn't enough. The pumpkin bars cake was so luscious and we always enjoy visiting them, we always over stay our welcome. :0

Hope you're all enjoying the economy and having fun this fall.