I almost forgot...

To share these scrapbook pages. These are from earlier this week.

What Can Brown Do For You?

I've been stalking my UPs man for days now. He was bringing me many goodies in preperation for my Iowa trip. Today he brought my new Alien Bee lighting and backdrop stand and a SB-800 Nikon Flash. I'm a little overwhelmed with too much new at once - especially since I ordered them a week apart, I thought I'd have a little more time to play with the one before the other came. Oh well, still really exciting!!

Rob did Awesome on Sunday.

(in my humble opinion)

Give him a listen. :)

Just to Make You Laugh.

One of my students shared this video with me this morning. I thought it was pretty clever.

(by the way, I do like the original song, it's just that KSBJ plays things to death and then plays them a few more times after that to make sure you really never want to hear it again.)

Cletus take the reel

A little Scrapbooking

It was pretty much a total indulgence today, but I did burn picture dvd's while I played, so it wasn't a total loss. Took me all afternoon and evening. I guess that's what happens when you ignore your iPhoto files for an entire year like I have. ouch. Setting up a new resolution for myself to burn cd's on the last day of each month. It really won't get bad then!

Ya Gotta Love Rob

Only a youth pastor can randomly find something clever like this. enjoy.

Life Group Last Night

Was amazing. We had so many kids there, it was crazy. I'm so excited about where things are going in youth right now. God is so good.

Oh, and aren't these pictures of Faith and Sare adorable? The one where Sare is so engaged, she's talking to Faith and then Faith wanted to get in the picture.

Have I mentioned that I love my camera???

New Shirt

I've been meaning to post this picture since Wednesday. This is the fun shirt that I found in Kerrville of all places. I love it. Unfortunately, after I got it home, I realized it wasn't very well made. Oh well, at least I bought it on clearance at 50% off! I'll enjoy it while it lasts!

6:30am on Saturday

So could someone please, please, please tell me why my daughter feels the need to be up at the crack of dawn on Saturday, but most school days I have to drag her out of bed? As I fell asleep at 1am last night my comforting thought was "Tomorrow's Saturday, I don't have to be anywhere until after noon, I can sleep in a bit." The truth is that my thought of sleeping in is like 7:30 or something, just because I wake up most days at 6:30.

Oh well.

So I thought I might post something interesting. I came across this survey on one of my friends MySpace's. It was for eight years, but I thought I'd tweak it to ten because in less then a month Rob and I celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. Pretty fun!

Ten Years Ago

1) How old were you? 18

2) Where did you go to school? No, but I was apprenticing with a jeweler and it was awesome.

3) Where did you work? Matthew Powell Creations. Now known as Perspective Jewelry Design in Omaha, NE.

4) Where did you live? Missouri Valley, IA

5) Where did you hang out? in my apartment. with my parents. mostly spent time planning our wedding.

6) Did you wear contacts? yes, but not all the time. not so good for bench work.

7) Who were your best friends? Rob. Lori.

8) How many tattoos did you have? not a one.

9) How many piercings did you have? one in each ear.

10) Did you drive a car? Yep, I had just purchased a 1982 Ford LTD for the grand price of $1500. :)

11) Had you been to a real party? Not the kind of party they are inferring here. In my experience, anything that tried to be that kind of party turned out to be pretty lame.

12) Had you had your heart broken? I thought I had. But looking back it wasn't a big deal.


13) Were you Single/Taken/Married/Divorce? engaged, about to be married.

14) Any Kids? Nope


Five Years Ago:

1) How old were you? 23

2) Where did you go to school? hard knocks. And Rob was at CBC.

3) Where did you work? I was a stay at home mom.

4) Where did you live? Ozark, MO.

5)Where did you hang out? youth group. with rob and eli.

6) Did you wear glasses? nope. We were pretty poor there for a spell.

7) Who were your best friend(s)? Rob. Lori. Kim.

8) How many tattoos did you have? Yeah, that answer's not going to change.

9) How many piercings did you have? One in each ear. That answer's not going to change either.

10) What car did you drive? 1981 LTD. different one. wasn't ours. ironic, isn't it?

11) Had your heart broken? I think anyone who is married for any amount of time or has children has experienced that at some point in their relationship. But the kicker is it heals back stronger than before.

12) Were you Single/Taken/Married/Divorced? happily married.

13) Any Kids? Eli was with us. We were working on Sare. ;)


Today:

1) How old are you? ugh. 28. about to turn 29.

2) Where do you work? Trinity Tabernacle. Anna Thoreson Photography. Expotv.com

3) Where do you live? the beautiful city of Baytown!

4) Do you wear glasses? Only at night or if I'm grubbing it.

5) Who is your bestfriend(s)? Rob. Lori. Kim.

6) Do you talk to your old friends? They are the same! :) But I've added a myriad of new friends over the years! I don't think you can love too many people!

9) What kind of car do you have? A 2007 Saturn Vue! Yay!

10) Has your heart been broken? Not recently

11) Single/taken/married/divorced? happily married.

12) Any Children? 2 beautiful little people.

Thank You

A very sweet, but remaining anonymous person knew that I dreamed of a magnolia tree in my yard and made it possible. I will think of her and send prayers her way every time I gaze out my window and see this tree. She is (and probably always has been) my hero.

I may also think about how I got it from Lowes myself, helped load it in the car, drove it home, dragged it through the backyard along with a 40lb bag of mulch and dug a hole and planted it in the 80 degree weather. I love being a strong and determined woman. It's in my blood I think.

This magnolia tree is going to bring me joy for years to come.

Monday's Pages

Lori and I stole a few moments of scrapbooking on Monday. It was so nice. I've been struggling with allergies/sinus infection all week, so it was fun. Today has been a lot of catchup. Rob and I are making hospital calls tomorrow and taking our car in for some warranty work. And friday I work, so that's always fun.
As you can see, I'm still working on my 9x9 calendar. And this other page is a complete lift from something Lori found on 2peas, but it's awesome and I had to try it.

Outtakes from yesterdays shoot.

My kids are hilarious. Gotta love em though. Oh, and here's also a pretty sad picture of Rob and I. It would be bad if I'd had a brain on Sunday morning and worn another color than black. But tell me that my jacket isn't cute. Go ahead. try to tell me. :)

There's a fun outtake from one of my life group couples, I just love his knees in this picture. He wasn't impressed, but I thought it showed character. I always like capturing people's style and personality in a photo.

Oh, and please note Sarah's ring. She's been wearing it for almost three weeks because apparently she's married to Daddy, not me. duly noted. I guess that's fine as long as I still get to sleep with him. ;)

My blog just got more exciting!

I found a way to add in some music for your listening pleasure. These are some of my favorite songs right now, so I hope you enjoy them! If you like something, just go ahead and scroll to the bottom and you can find out what's playing. cool beans, eh?

Oh, and I never did get back to scrapping today. oops. I spent the afternoon researching camera lights and backdrops instead. details.

Creative Constipation

It's been way too long since I've scrapbooked and today, while the piles of laundry surrounded me and Sare had conked out on the couch, I prioritized my need to create. I put on blinders to my dirty house and decided to play instead. It was awesome. I've been scrapping since 8:30 this morning! My pages are pretty simple, but I finally worked with a lot of the shots that Leah took back in January, so that was exciting!

Now I'm going to feed my family lunch and get back to reassembling my house. But this evening I might play again!

Expo is Fun Again!!

If you are a long time blog follower of mine, you may remember me ranting and raving about Expotv on a regular basis. Well, Expo went through a bit of a lull in my life, unfortunately. They had changed a lot of the way they approved things and the categories and my world just got full with other things. Now, I still continued to contribute through this dry time, but I wasn't super excited about it the way I had once been.
Well, times have changed baby and once again I'm delighted to be contributing scrapbooking and home product reviews to the world of Expo. If you haven't checked out this site, you really need to. It's easy to contribute to and very rewarding. You can earn up to $10 a video if it's well-lit, well-presented, thought out and thorough.

HOME.

Home is so good to come back to. We had a wonderful trip with wonderful people, but I'm still always thankful to pull into my own driveway, kwim?

Oh, and for the record, April is a beautiful time of year to drive across Texas. The bluebonnets are in bloom and it was breathtaking. This isn't an incredible picture, but you get the idea. :)

Totally Need to Be IN BED asleep.

but new music is keeping me up.

found this video on another blog I enjoy today and felt the need to share it.



enjoy. :)

Rob saved the day.

I need to add this to his previous list of awesomeness. Rob picks great paint colors. Now the lighting is a little off in these pictures, but it's really beautiful in real life. It picked up the grey in the tile and the grey in the counters and just looks really cool and pretty and fun. We also spent the day putting up the crown molding. I'm exhausted!

CFA Wrap-Up

Well, sadly I didn't yet hear how much we brought in last night, but we did have a great turn out and Danielle took tons of great photos. She brought a cd to church for me today, isn't that sweet? PR is going to pull together a video from her pictures for Sunday, but I thought I'd share a couple cute ones here.

PS, I don't know why I have a gut in that picture so badly. I'm not preggers, I promise. I guess I was just tired and slouching and need to lay off the dp.