WOOOHOOOO

i completed another LO. yes it was another challenge on the forum www.scrapbookingswede.com . This challenge was called the soundtrack of your life and you were supposed to pick your favorite song and use it in your LO. So i picked In Spite of Ourselves by John Prine. it is mine and my husbands song LOL. we just loved the words to it and we never had a song b4 and then we heard this one. anyway here is the LO.

there is hidden journaling behind the photo (pull on the little heart shaped die cut) which reads:

We found each other at a the young age of 19.
It was practically love at first sight.
We started off as roommates and ended
up together 2 months later.
In spite of everything that we have been through
our love has grown beyond what
we ever imagined and now we have
two beautiful children, our own house and
a wonderful marriage.
With each day our love grows and changes
and soon we will be celebrating 14 yrs
together.
In spite of ourselves.

Here are the song lyrics.

IN SPITE OF OURSELVES
by John Prine and Iris Dement

She don't like her eggs all runnyShe thinks crossin' her legs is funnyShe looks down her nose at moneyShe gets it on like the Easter BunnyShe's my baby I'm her honeyI'm never gonna let her go

He ain't got laid in a month of SundaysI caught him once and he was sniffin' my undiesHe ain't too sharp but he gets things doneDrinks his beer like it's oxygenHe's my babyAnd I'm his honeyNever gonna let him go

In spite of ourselvesWe'll end up a'sittin' on a rainbowAgainst all oddsHoney, we're the big door prizeWe're gonna spite our nosesRight off of our facesThere won't be nothin' but big old heartsDancin' in our eyes.

She thinks all my jokes are cornyConvict movies make her horny She likes ketchup on her scrambled eggsSwears like a sailor when shaves her legsShe takes a lickin'And keeps on tickin' I'm never gonna let her go.

He's got more balls than a big brass monkeyHe's a wacked out werido and a lovebug junkieSly as a fox and crazy as a loonPayday comes and he's howlin' at the moonHe's my baby I don't mean maybeNever gonna let him go

In spite of ourselvesWe'll end up a'sittin' on a rainbowAgainst all oddsHoney, we're the big door prizeWe're gonna spite our nosesRight off of our facesThere won't be nothin' but big old heartsDancin' in our eyes.There won't be nothin' but big old heartsDancin' in our eyes.

(spoken) In spite of ourselves

noting much to say

i don't really have much to say LOL. but i am trying to write in my blog more often. i'm debating on deleting my last post LOL. still not sure if i want to keep it on here and add to it as i write more or just keep it to myself. i really feel like once i get it done, that it may help ppl that may have been in the same situations etc. in the sense that just because you grow up with messed up parents and have a rough life doesn't mean that you have to be like them. it is completely up to you how you turn out and who you want to be. it is all choice. some choices are harder then others. i know that when i was growing up my mom would always use the excuse that the reason she is so messed is because of her parents. i used to hate it when she said shit like that because it isn't. she chose to be the way she was, she chose to do drugs and drink, she chose to be abusive like her mom was. it frustrates me to know end when ppl blame their crap on their parents. you are your own person and you alone make choices in your life of how you want your life to be. AM I MAKING ANY SENSE WHAT SO EVER LOL. i am just debating on whether or not i should have my life story on here LOL. so any input on that would be helpful by those of you reading it, just leave me a comment on what you think.

okay on to other things lol. my kids love to sleep on the hidabed on friday and saturday nights. i'm not sure why but they do. so one morning while they were still asleep i snapped some pics of them.

aren't they just tooo cute lol. dyllan is a blanket hog LOL. i just realized that he has all of the blankets.

here are some randome pics of the kids through out the years.

i started......

well i started writing my story of growing up LOL. so i thought i would share with you what i have writen so far. It is only up to age 7. I'm writing off and on and taking it slow. I am kinda embarrassed to put it on here LOL. Not really sure if i should. Shit i don't care who reads it LOL. I'm happy i grew up the way i did because it has taught me a lot and i wouldn't be who i am with out growing up the way that i did and dealing with all of the stuff that i did. i am a very strong person because of it.

MY LIFE....

Well shoot where do I begin. I was born in Victorville, California. My mom was in labor with me for 12 hours and I was born at 3:11am on the 25th of June. I was 6lbs 4oz’s and 19 ½ inches long. My mom and dad were not very happily married and had lots of problems or so I was told. They used to get into big fights. When I was 5months old I got really sick. My mom wanted to take me to the hospital but my dad was always gone and we only had one vehicle. Anyway I guess I stopped breathing and she called somebody to take me and her to the hospital. I had pneumonia and was kept in a crib tent for two weeks. I was put on oxygen for most of that time. The doctor yelled at my mom when she brought me in because she let it get that bad. The doctors told her I would probably have scarring on my lungs for the rest of my life because of it. Just so you know I don’t, I actually have very good lungs, I get asthma flare ups sometimes but nothing bad. I have only needed inhalers for it sometimes and its mostly exercise induced.

Apparently my dad was an alcoholic and a drug addict, although it wouldn’t surprise me if my mom was at that point too or at least getting to that point. One kinda fuzzy memory that I have when I was three was of my brother and I jumping on my parents bed. Well my brother fell and broke my dad’s glasses. My dad was very angry and I remember him storming in and spanking my brother and my mom coming in with a toy lawn mower and hitting him over the head with it. She screamed at my brother and I to go outside. We were so scared going out that front door into the big bad world, at least that is what I remember feeling at the time. I don’t remember what happened after that but my mom told me shortly after that she packed my brother and I up and we moved to Chico, California. My mom got together with my uncle Henry (yes that’s right, my dad’s brother) shortly after we moved to Chico. I really don’t remember all that much when they first got together because I was only 3 years old or so. Around the age of four is when I really remember things.

My mom and new dad (no they were not married, but he was the only dad figure in my life) would drink a lot and get into a lot of huge blow up fights. One night in particular I remember I was in bed asleep and woke up to loud noises, sounded like things being thrown. I crept out of bed and snuck down the hallway to find my mom holding the coffee table blocking my dad from throwing the television at her. I was so scared I didn’t know what to do. They didn’t even notice me standing there. They were screaming and yelling at each other, I have no idea what they were fighting about but it scared me to death. I ended up sneaking back down the hallway and crawled into bed with my little brother and tried to got to sleep. I don’t remember the next morning or what the house looked like. Probably a good thing. There were many nights like that. There were a lot of things that I didn’t know about my parents until I got older but I will talk about that at a later time.

While we lived in lalita court there were many things that happened that had a great impact on my life. One of the things that happened was when I was about 6 or 7 years old and I was outside playing with my ball. My neighbor who was about 8 or 9 came over and he asked if he could play with me. I of course said yes. So we started playing bounce back and we were having fun or at least I was. The next thing I knew he was coming straight towards me and started hitting me and pulling my hair and pushing me. I had no idea what was going on. I was so scared and was crying my eyes out and screaming from him beating me up. My mom came running out of the house screaming at him to stop. His mom came out and started screaming at my mom. They ended up getting into a fight and someone came out and stopped them but I am not sure who. That part is just one big blur. I don’t know why that kid wanted to beat me up. I mean I was only 6 or 7 years old for crying out loud but it sure made a big impact on my life. I think right then I started not trusting people and their intentions.
I never knew this because I was too young to remember, but when my brother and I were about 3 and 4 years old we went to a foster home so my mom could recover from an infection in her arm that was caused by her using drugs. I don’t really know how long we were there. I vaguely remember the foster home. From what I remember it was a farm house I believe, or something like that. I remember that there were other kids there. I remember wondering why we were here and not at home with our mom. I also remember just trying to have fun and trying not to wonder. When my brother and I were about 5 and 6 or maybe it was 4 and 5, not really sure about the age. My mom slapped my brother across the face for spilling cheerios. She called cps on herself and we went to a foster home again for a few weeks. I guess she needed a break. I remember this foster home fairly well. I know that the oldest girl played the flute and they had an albino rat. They did their best to make my brother and I comfortable while we were there. At night I felt very scared and alone but during the day we had fun. That is about all I remember.

When my brother was four years old he needed his tonsils taken out. I was so jealous of all the attention he was getting. I don’t know why, I guess maybe its normal for that age, I was only 5 years old. Maybe another reason is my mom had this friend Mary, and for whatever reason she didn’t like me. I don’t know why I guess she liked boys better. But she wasn’t very nice to me, always said things to make me feel bad. One time I remember walking to the store with her and she picked on me about me being pigeon toed. I think that I was about 6 years old at the time. It made me feel so self conscious. When I was two years old I had to wear leg braces with special shoes to help straighten my legs out because of my pigeon toes, or something like that. Anyway I don’t know how long I had to wear them, I don’t remember them at all. But her saying that to me was not very nice and it hurt my feelings so bad. As it was I didn’t think very positively about myself and she didn’t help. She was always so nice to my brother so of course I was jealous.

Even though my parents were very dis-functional I always tried to look on the bright side and stay positive. Summers were always a lot of fun because my birthday was in the summer. My brother, neighborhood kids and I had lots of fun playing out side. We would jump off of roofs (probably not a good idea), play hide and go seek, jump rope, tag and of course swim. I loved my birthdays up until my seventh birthday. The whole day wasn’t too bad. I got a swimming pool for my birthday but before I really had a chance to enjoy it my brother poked a whole in it with his tonka dump truck. We didn’t even have it for a whole day. My parents were drinking along with everyone else and I knew that a fight could break out at any moment. So I was a little on edge. Well we had cake in the evening and my wish was for nothing bad to happen. Well after I blew out my candles they wanted to spank me ( you know the whole one swat for each year). I didn’t want them too because I was scared that they would spank too hard since they were drunk. Well they did it anyway and spanked so hard that I started crying. Everyone there took turns. I was so mad at them, especially my mom for letting them do this to me on my birthday, seeing that I was crying, seeing that I didn’t want it done, seeing that they were hurting me. I felt so betrayed by her. I think that was when I started not trusting my mom to protect me. During that summer my uncle Ron and I believe my grandma Karol (not sure about that) came to visit and my mom, brother and I packed up everything and moved to Careywood (I think that is how you spell it LOL) Idaho.

exhausted

ohh my god i am tired LOL. i feel beat down. i could just fall asleep right now as i am typing this. hard to keep my eyes open. i vacuumed and mopped the floors anyway and during this process my daughter (love her to death) was swaying her scarf around and the vacuum sucked it up. mind you i have to vacuum with the hose because my belt is broke and in my exhaustedness i didn't notice the scarf until it was too late. so then i started crying because i just wanted to finish what i was doing and not have to try and unplug the stupid hose, i guess you could say it overwhelmed me or something. i mean who starts crying over something like that LOL. anyway i got the damned thing unplugged and put her scarf in the dirty clothes. poor girl, she felt sooo bad. i didn't get upset at her or anything, i think just her seeing me upset and frustrated is what upset her, so she ran to her room crying and then came out and said she was sorry and that she didn't notice the vacuum hose right there. i just told her that it was okay and went and finished what i started. i think i am going to go to bed extremely early tonight and see if that helps. Not that i haven't been going to bed early LOL, i mean i am usually asleep by 9 or 9:30 at the latest. okay enough blabbering about that LOL.

so i completed another challenge on this forum that i am on. i tell you what, joining that forum was the best thing for me to do. There are a lot of talented ladies on that forum which gives me inspiration. I want sue heather to post their LO's so they can get praise just like i do. It makes you feel so goooood. I haven't had my scrapbooking mojo lately but deciding to join the forum and do the challenges has made me find my scrapbooking mojo again, and that is a very good thing.

so the other challenge besides the "SHE" challenge was to use paint swatches in your LO. so i decided that i was going to attempt this. Here is the result. I am happy with how it turned out. It is a little blurry because i just took a pic of it with my digi camera instead of scanning it because i don't have a scanner and am too lazy (tired) to go up to my mother in law's house and use hers. plus i don't exactly remember how to do it LOL.



The next challenge i am going to attempt is "the soundtrack of your life" challenge. Basically you pick a song that you like or is your favorite and do a lay out based on the song title. I am going to use "Inspite of ourselves" by john prine and see what i come up with. So stay tuned.........my goal is to have it done by next sunday and posted by monday.

well i guess that is all i have to say for now LOL.

A scrapbook page all about me

Okay so i am a member of two different scrapbook forums. On one of these forums they do these challenges every month. So i decided to do the challenge that is all about me. it was supposed to have the word she in the title and you are supposed to do one page a month to add to your all about me album. So this challenge was difficult for me to do. first of all i didn't have any photos of just me. so i called my mother in law up and i went up there so she could take some pics of me. well the pics i like of myself are always ones where i am holding a baby. i don't like looking at the camera and i love the looks on peoples faces when they are holding and looking at a baby. they always have this happy, peaceful, content look on them. So my mother in law, sue, put a baby doll in my arms and told me to pretend it was one of my kids and thats what i did. the pics came out great, but there was one that i really liked. So i want to share this page with you because i am very proud of how it turned out and that i actually did it even though it was a challenge.

The journaling reads :

she is stubborn and questions everything

she has a story to tell

she wonders if she is a good mom

she is very impatient

she does the best that she can

she loves her children with everything that she is

she doubts herself

she is actually a sensitive person even though that part of her is hidden well

she tells people what she thinks but doesn't share what she is feeling

she is almost always on time

and hates being late

i got a job

so anway life has been a little rough lately. i have been super stressed out about money because my hubby hasn't seen a commission check since january. i had been thinking that i should go and get a job because i felt helpless not working and helping my wubby out. i couldn't get one a little while ago because i had surgery and knew i couldn't work for a while. so i waited hoping he would get a commission check and i wouldnt' have to worry about it. he is due a commission check but they don't pay him until every last drop has been collected. its really quite frustrating. so once i felt recovered enough from my surgery i decided to start looking for a job. i was so desperate i even called dad to see if i could do in home supportive services for him. anyway he didn't qualify so i kept looking. my main concern was child care. its just soooo damned expensive and i didn't want to have to pay for it. so i found this job for library assistant at one of the grade schools here. i applied and took the typing test. i am still waiting to hear back from them LOL. so while i was stressing out i was watching these beautiful pair of eagles nesting in real time. they kept me sane LOL. i was so stressed out and depressed because of money, stupid money, that i would sit at my desk and just cry. I HATE MONEY, HATE IT, HATE IT, HATE IT.

anyway these eagles were just awesome to watch and i took pics of them LOL. yes pics of them on my computer screen. so here are some of the pics that i took.

anyway the pics above were so cute to watch. the mom was laying on the eggs and the dad flew in but she wouldn't move so he actually nudged her out of the way so that he could take over. it was so cute to watch.

this is when the whole world thought that the remaining egg was hatching. you can see the piece of shell that is popped up on the end. but sadly the baby never made it completely out of the shell. i cried when the little guy didn't make it. but i wouldn't have traded watching these magnificent birds for anything. here are a few more shots of them nesting.

I also learned some pretty cool facts about eagles LOL. For instance, did you know that their nests can be between 5ft and 9ft across and weigh as much as 4000 pounds or more. they also use the same nest every year, adding to it each year.

okay so back to my job searching. one day (thursday the 4th of may) i was feeling really down and hopeless because nothing i was doing was working out. so i gave up for the day and was watching my eagles and letting frustrations go when i got a call from a lady needing work. i couldn't believe it LOL just when i thought things were the worst they could get i got the perfect job. i now care for the 87yr old lady who is just a hoot to be around, and i can bring my kids. its only 3.5 hrs a day too. okay so its not the best paying job but it works for me LOL. so now i have been working for her since the fourth and am quite tired. i'm just having to get used to it LOL. especially since it hasn't been all that long since my surgery. i don't feel so stressed out now because i feel like i'm doing something instead of just sitting on my ass not coming up with solutions to my problems. i guess you could say i'm a doer LOL.

Easter

okay so it has been a looooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggg time since i have posted on here. but what can i say, i just didn't feel like it LOL. so i am going to share how our easter went and then i will do a new post to update ya on how things are going.

so anyway our easter was great. we didn't have a whole lot of money so i didn't get the plastic eggs that i usually get and fill with candy, but luckily my sister got plenty so that was good. we decorated the eggs the day before easter and the kids had a lot of fun. i even decorated a few myself LOL.
dangit i just went to upload the pics and realized that i didn't take any with my digi camera. i only took some with my film camera. ohh well, when i get my film developed i will edit this post and add them in later.

so anyway on easter morning the kids woke up early and i didn't have time to get the easter baskets out, so i had them take a bath and while they were in the bath i snuck them onto the coffee table while i was getting ready. so when the kids got out of the bath they totally believed that i couldn't have done it because i was busy LOL. so they were very surprised and had a lot of fun opening everything.

anyway after they opened their easter baskets and played for a while we all got ready and headed up to my sister's house. It was rainy so we didn't have the bbq like planned but we still had some darn good food. heather's friend jennifer was there with her son nikki. it was nice to finally meet her. So when we got there neils was putting together this fruit thing. It was a funny site LOL because he was getting frustrated and tired from doing everything since heather had a stomach bug and couldn't help. here are some pics of the nummy stuff that we had.

okay so i don't have pics of the carrot cake or the smoked sausage or the chicken, or the deviled eggs that sue brought but i think that you get the point.

we distracted the kids while neils, jason and i believe dad hid the eggs. i love watching kids hunt for easter eggs. of course dyllan dominated the egg hunting and i had to tell him to back off because other wise there wouldn't be any left for the youngsters LOL. ashley and ethan helped each other a lot and we got some really cute pics. so here they are.

isn't that just too darn cute of them kissing. talk about the perfect photo opportunity LOL.

cutie kaiden finding his egg and of course wanting to eat it LOL.

dyllan helping ethan find eggs. if you notice dyllan's basket is already full LOL.

that was about the time i told him that he needed to slow down.

Jennifer and Nikki, he is such a cutie. he didn't want anything to do with finding eggs though. it was quite funny. he was happier being inside.

It was a fantastic easter. we all had a lot of fun with the exception of heather because she had that stomach thing going on LOL. poor girl. she did good though.