I'm a cleaning maniac today

Today I spent almost all of it cleaning. I did some awesome fun altered art last night for my good friend Caitlin, and it really made me feel good. I love having an awesome creative night. I wake up feeling so good. I will have to post pictures later.

I vacuumed all my furniture, inside and out today. I know this is something that I do often, but I really did it hard core today. I cleaned the carpet in the hallway. That was a process. I fell today and hurt my knee. Some of the water from the carpet machine made my hardwood floors slippery. Ouch. It is more like a burn, than anything, but it is right on my knee cap.
I cleaned both bathrooms. I literally got on my hands and knees and scrubbed with my favorite Clorox wipes. I wipes down every spot on my vanity (which is a piece of furniture with the bowl on top...very ornate) and every inch of my toilets. My bathrooms needed a really good scrubbin.
I also dried my curtains to get the pet dander and hair off, did some laundry and went grocery shopping today. I was very busy.
The Nolanator was pretty good today. He didn't have his listening ears on most of the day, but there wasn't any attitude. I would much have it that way, than the attitude. I miss that kid everyday when I'm not with him. Even on a bad day, when you wake up, it just doesn't seem that bad.
Tomorrow I am going to see my bro and their new little family. They want me to take some candids of them and we will probably have some dinner together. James and I are going to interview a new daycare lady tomorrow at 11:00. We really want something more educational for Nolan. I'm not exactly sure that this is what I am looking for. It is an in-home daycare, but she takes her job very seriously. There is a curriculum and is run more like a Center, than just letting the kids loose to do whatever.
It's a little of 12 AM now. Stayed up late last night with Cait and got up fairly early for not having a child to wake me. Since I'm sure he will be up at the butt crack of dawn, I better go get comfy in my bed.
Everyone enjoy their Sunday.

Pics of Jackson

These are low resolution pictures of Jackson. Isn't he gorgeous????

Jackson William is here!

So, just a quick post here. I want to say CONGRATULATIONS to my bro. They had a beautiful baby boy today at 6:30pm. I don't know the stats or anything yet, but I am happy that he is healthy. I hope to have more info tomorrow. Jessica was not having an easy labor with some serious complications on her part. Please keep her health in mind in the next coming days.

Have a great night!

4th of July weekend

We had a wonderful long weekend. It was great because James and I both had Friday off. For people who worked in retail, it is so awesome not to have to work holidays.
After work on Thursday, I took Nolan to go buy a few fireworks. I bought snaps, snakes and sparklers. James doesn't care much for 4th of July and I'm not really keen on lighting fireworks. Since he is 3, this is the best he is going to get from me.
I talked James into letting Nolan stay up past his bedtime. We are such routine junkies, that it was hard for him to say yes. We had one little mishap. Nolan was out wearing socks and he stepped on his snake. I am surprised that it wasn't completely out because it had been at least five minutes since we had set it on fire. He got a little blister on his foot. Poor guy. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the day:



On Saturday and Sunday, we just hung out at the house. We did take Nolan to Toys R Us to see what he was interested. We are trying to see what he likes for his birthday. He is really into Batman, Speed Racer and Transformers. Oh yeah, on Saturday I took him to see Speed Racer. He was soooo excited. About an hour into it, he curled up on my lap and fell asleep. I couldn't believe he fell asleep during the movie. That just never happens. I carried him out and put him in his car seat. Right after I got him in, I dropped my stupid purse and it woke him up. Dangit.
I slept most of today away. I have been battling a horrible sinus infection for about 2 weeks now. I just finished 10 days worth of antibiotics and it didn't help. I have had a headache behind my eye that just won't go away. I am going to have to head back to the doctor this week. My whole family has been horribly sick this last year. Most of it has been allergies, but it has hit our house very hard. I am ready for it to go away.
Hope everyone has a great work week. I did scrap a little this weekend and will post those later this week. I am ready just to go to bed.

Fantabulous Friday

Fridays are always looked forward to at my house. We have a busy weekend ahead of us, so we usually spend Friday together. Nolan has been begging, yes at 3 years old, begging us to go to Chuck E Cheese. Well, I thought tonight would be perfect and we decided to surprise him. It was a huge surprise to us because they completely remodeled. It is actually pretty nice. Here are a couple of completely unedited pictures taken with my not so wonderful 3mp (I know right) kodak camera.







Tomorrow James and a guy we work with are going to finish putting Nolan's swing set together. With all the rain, it has been 4 weeks of trying to put that thing together. I am going to take Nolan and his two kids (8 and 11) to the Derby Rock River Rapids. That way we stay out of their hair and they can get to work. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

It's been a long week

This was the final week that Katrina and Elayna were living with us. It has been very close, if not over 6 months of us living together. She has found her own place and is in the process of moving out. With that said, we went and got Nolan a new bed and rearranged his room.
We started putting his bed together on Saturday, but ran out of time. We had made plans to go see James' Dad and Mom (step-mom) in McPherson this weekend. We stayed the night up there and had a wonderful time. Nolan was so happy to see his Grandma and Grandpa. He has been looking forward to this all week.
We came back today and James finished putting his bed together. We moved his bookshelf and put James' dresser in his room. James and I share a dress, so it made better sense to let him have it. It also freed up space in our bedroom. We can now put our king sized bed in the middle of the room. That means no more crawling a crossed it to make it and crawling over someone to get into bed. We haven't had a chance to fix our bedroom, but I'm sure that will be done one day after work this week.
Here are a few pictures taken with my crappy Kodak from this weekend. It was so fun and very exhausting at the same time.
Oh I forgot, on Friday, a good friend of mine, Caitlin, and I went to go see the Chippendale's. Don't you judge me. lol It was a wonderful time. It is the first time I have ever gone and Cait got tickets for my birthday. Let's just say, I don't have the ability to let my inhibitions go in front of people like others do. I never have seen myself as conservative or anything like that, but I just cannot rub on some guys stuff in front of other people. Not only that, buy it isn't my husband. I am a look but not touch kinda girl. lol Onto the pictures!

Nolan's new Batman pajamas. It even has a cape!

Helping us put the bed together. He thought is was his stage and was really ticked when James had to put the slates inside. He told Daddy that he ruined his stage. too funny!

I don't even need to put a caption. This picture explains itself!

Walking on Grandma Kathy's treadmill.

The ride home. Gotta love gummy worms!

I'm going to paint his bookshelf or get him a new one. He does have drawers under his bed and his headboard is a bookshelf. It is kind of hard to tell in this picture. We will paint his room and decorate it, but it was very important for us to get him a bed as soon as they moved it. He really needs his own space since he has been sharing it for so long. He is such a trooper.

The closet.

Katt Willaims and some new layouts

So, Thursday me and my bff went to go see Katt Williams. Well, there was a tornado that we didn't know about......and we were wondering why it got started so late. They never told us at the Colliseum. Anywho, a little complaining about that.
Okay, here is the thing that Katrina and I didn't know about this type of comedy show. There was a host for the evening, 2 rappers, two comedians, the host did a skit and then finally Katt came on. Who knew we wouldn't have gotten out of there until 11. I wasn't a big fan of the prior acts, but Katt Williams totally delivered. After such a stressful and emotion week, it was a much needed relief just to laugh and feel good again. Here are a couple of pictures from the show.



This weekend James came down with a nasty virus. Very similar to the flu and and just felt really icky. Instead of doing our normal Friday thing with swimming, I took Nolan to get James' father's day present (a new Cephlon hard anodized fry pan....hey it is what he wanted) at Target, went to see Horton Hears A Who and stayed at my mom's house. I really didn't want the sick to spread, so we played it safe and slept over there.
Nolan and I had a great time at the movie. He got to "play" a few video games before the movie, did fantastic watching the movie and got to ride the pony after the movie. He even ordered his large root beer all by himself and payed the man. It was to cute.




This weekend I took Renee's class out at Scrapfunattic. It was pretty awesome. I got all my layouts done and even left one there. Whoops! I have worked on the following layouts over the last month and have just got around to posting them. Hope everyone has a fantastic week and enjoy the rain!