Our family...

is growing by two little feet! I took a test this morning and we got a big fat positive. We are so excited. This is technically the first picture of the 4 of us. Hee Hee! I wasn't going to say anything until I was farther along, but I realized that I'm going to need all of your help. Over 2 years ago, I miscarried. I need you all to pray for us and the baby. That things will work out this time. That I'll carry the baby to term and have a healthy little bundle to add to our family. We are so excited about this and I don't want to lose that excitement again. So please, keep us in your prayers. It would mean the world to us.

Even More...

Mas Layouts...

Thanksgiving Layout

Just finished another layout. I'm a little behind if you hadn't noticed from the title. I just did the layout from our trip to Quantico for Thanksgiving. We had a fun time up there and I hope I was able to show that in the layout. I haven't decided how much I like it yet. I have to wait and see when I look back at it a few days from now. So, enough rambling, here it is.

I don't know if you noticed but I'm really starting ot get into that whole doodling thing. I do it enough regularly, might as well bring a little of it into my scrapbook pages.

ScrapJacked Challenge

So one of my sister's turned me onto this great blog called ScrapJacked. It's a great blog, you should all check it out. Anyway, their most recent challenge was a layout jacked from Amber Skolnick, this is it: And this here would be my take on the challenge. I had a lot of fun doodling on it and I like how it turned out. I might add a few little things to it, if I do I'll make sure I update the picture. (picture updated) The title says, he is so cute, especially when he's ERIC-TATED! Well, now that I finished it I should really get my laundry folded and get off to bed...seeing as it is now 140 in the morning. Loves to you all!

My Word for 2007

There was an article in AEzine which I found out about from my sister, through here. It talks about choosing one word to focus on for the year. Instead of making tons of resolutions that you end up not meeting and that makes you feel like a failure. Well, maybe not a total failure but it at least bums you out a little bit. This idea really struck a chord with me. I think I hit one of my 6 resolutions in 2006, and it didn't make me feel great. Some ladies that have read the link I shared made journals, scrapbook pages and much more to help them remember the word they chose and try and use it through out the year (you can look through the comments and find some links). I want to share a quote from Ali Edwards about the impact of a single word:
"A single Word can be a powerful thing. It can be the ripple in the pond that changes everything. It can be sharp and biting or rich and soft and slow...one little word can have big meaning in your life if you allow yourself to be open to the possibilities."
So, that being said, I've chosen the word COMMIT as my word for 2007. I've chosen the word for two main reasons. Not only do I falter in the things I've set out to be better at or about (being a happy housewife, watching my temper, paying on bills, reading my Bible) but also in my decision making. There are so many things that I am wish washy about (more kids, working) and I've let myself be wishy washy for far too long. I want to figure out these things with Mr.W and then stick to our decisions. I want to COMMIT to them. So, that is my word...I will make something to help me remember this word and hopefully stick to it through out the year. I will COMMIT to the word COMMIT. Hee Hee! What word would you choose for this upcoming year?

Aloha

HAWAII, HERE WE COME!!

We got our web orders today! The next stop on our life that is the Marine Corps will be Hawaii. We're so very excited about this. We have some very close friends that are there and we can't wait to see them again. Our check in date there is for no later than the 31st of July. That means we'll be checking out of Virginia around the 1st of July. It seems so far away but when you think about it, it's not that far at all. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. I'm not sure what all I'm supposed to do to get ready for a move over there. I really am looking forward to the time we'll be there, whether short or long. These last few years here have flown by, though while I was living them the seemed to go on and on and on. Life is funny that way. It'll be a rough transition, what with Mr.W being back in a deploying cycle. But I'm glad that it's happening there where we have friends we can lean on. Say a prayer for us as we get ready to go into all that comes with moving in the military. Oh, and so all the friends and family that read this, know that you'll always have a place to stay.

Jealous much!

I am so jealous of my husband and my daughter. When these two hit the sack, they conk out fairly quickly and usually sleep the whole night through. I'm happy for them and all, but....IT SUCKS FOR ME! I've been staying away from caffeine and any kind of chocolate candy. I've been trying to limit my soda and juice intake and drinking more water. But I still don't sleep through the night. I do sleep but at around 3 am I wake up to pee and I don't sleep well or at all after that. It's constant tossing and turning. I am at my wits end! If I didn't have the behavioral side effects of the caffeine (anger anger anger) I would drink it, since I'm not sleeping anyway.
Maybe I should start going to the YMCA again. I think I slept when I was going there every day or every other day, I don't remember. It's been so nice out that I've been taking long walks (seriously long, like 3 or 4 miles) but I guess it's not getting my heart rate up enough to tire me out. Mr.W asked me if I'd exercised at all yesterday when I made a comment about not sleeping. So maybe this has something to it. I guess I'll go back to my old routine, walks on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. The Y on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Sundays off (it is a day of rest, after all.) So, today I shall walk and this evening we'll be going to the family fun and fitness night at WonderKid's school. That should be interesting.
I just want to sleep!

Creepy...

Sometimes Mr.Wonder and I think alike so much that it weirds me out. Not in a bad way. I think it's hilarious. Like the other night we watched Talledega Nights, both of us were laughing the whole way through. It's totally our type of humor and now we're quoting it to each other non-stop. Some of you may know that we've been waiting to get a dog for a while. Hopefully where ever we go next this will be a possibility. We were planning on just one, but the other night after watching the movie...Mr.W said that we'll have to get two dogs. I don't know if you guys have seen the previews, but try to recall the names of Ricky Bobby's sons. Yes, we're going to get two dogs and name them Walker and Texas Ranger. First I was like, "Yeah right! Two dogs." But the more I think about it. I LOVE IT! It's totally us and everytime I talk about them I'll think of that movie and smile. Then I'll think of how great it is to share a sense of humor with your husband.
I really am so lucky to be married to such a great guy. He's always telling me how lucky he is and how his friends tell him how lucky he is and how I treat him so well...but truth be told, I'm the lucky one. Even though we have our differences, God blessed me with him. To have a man love me so much, in spite of all my faults (and trust me, there are many to get past)....honestly, it leaves me without words. Which as many of you know, when I'm all jacked up on the Dew (like I am right now,) is hard to do.

How do I forget so easily??

This is a post with two meanings. First, the mundane everyday side. How do I forget so easily how EVIL caffeine is? How do I forget how crabby and nasty I get to my sweet little girl when I'm getting that toxin out of my veins? I can vividly recall my last night after the ball, the one that made me swear never to drink again. Why is it so much harder with caffeine? I feel so much better with out it. I really need to remember my crabby behavior to WonderKid last night. And the moment this morning when I realized that my actions are showing my little girl the wrong picture of being a Mommy, expecially a Mommy that loves God. In fact, I was showing her the wrong picture of God last night. Please Lord, help me to remember that realization and the sickness it brought to my stomach.
Which brings me to the second meaning of my title. How do I so easily forget how good it feels when I read my Bible and pray? In a time when I'm usually depressed (when Mr.W is out of town) I feel peace. I feel happy. How good it feels when I tell God that I no longer want to try and have control over my life. That I want Him to take care of it all. I don't want to worry about it anymore. He can take care of where we're heading next, whether he have another child or not, when we'll get our bills paid off. Not that I expect to sit back and do nothing. But there are just somethings it doesn't do to worry over. And I've been spending too much time on them. I don't want to hold on to the things of the past. My hurts, disappointments, feelings of failure. How can that help me in any way? I don't want to focus too much on the future. Where I spend so much time planning out what will happen with us, to have none of it come to pass just as I wanted it too...and then be disappointed all over again. No thank you! I want to focus on the now. My time with my friends and family. The joy I get watching my daughter grow up and learn. The love I feel when I see my husband playing with my daughter, building a bond..and memories. A bond that will help us stay strong as a family when he's deployed for long stretches.
I just want to feel lighter. Not hang on to all the pressure I was letting in my life. Pressure over nothing. And I feel that today. I feel lighter and it feels good.

You Are Sunrise

You enjoy living a slow, fulfilling life. You enjoy living every moment, no matter how ordinary. You are a person of reflection and meditation. You start and end every day by looking inward. Caring and giving, you enjoy making people happy. You're often cooking for friends or buying them gifts. All in all, you know how to love life for what it is - not for how it should be.

What Time Of Day Are You?

New Layout

I know I know, so sue me! Here's the layout I did for WonderKid's school picture. Isn't she just too cute.
So, the yellow box has the stats (school name, teacher, grade, place.) The little red box has her age. And then....(those who have seen Dude, where's my car? will appreciate that) in the yellow border around her picture I wrote her various favorites (friend, after school playmate, books to read, part of the school day, thing to learn at school). I really like it it. It's simple, but the patterned paper give it a little umph.

My Secret Identities

Okay, I lied! This is the last one for today. I saw this on my sisters blog and I had to do it on mine. Too cute! (I have deleted some words for effect)
1.YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current street name) Dusty Woods
2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (favorite cookie, fav ice cream flavor) SnickerDoodle Roof
3. YOUR "FLY Guy/Girl" NAME: (first initial of first name, first 3 or 4 letters of your last name): K-Long
4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal) Pink Puggle
5. YOUR PORNO NAME: (most recent pet, grandma's (or moms)maiden name) Butch Murray
6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name, last 4 letters of mom's maiden name) Lon Ki Murr
7. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite drink put "The") The Green Juice
8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers/grandmothers) Doris Ila
9. STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne) Be Delicious
10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother & father's middle name) Lee Franklin

Thanksgiving

I think one of the best things about being in the military is the second family you make where ever you're living. I'm talking about our family of friends. Making friends can be tough. But no one can truly understand the tough life of being a military family more than another military family. Once you make those friends, it's easy to become very close to them. And it's great to have them to spend holidays with when you're not able to get home to your first family. This Thanksgiving we went up to Quanitco and spent the holiday with some great people. Mr.Wonder's friend from his first duty station (where we met) has been living up there for almost 6 months and we just recently learned about it. His wife found me on Myspace (it's not totally evil, as Mr.W seems to think.) They came down to see us on Columbus day and while they were here we decided to do Thanksgiving together. It was a ton of fun! The drive up there was tough, but the trip was well worth the traffic. Dinner was great and we had fun playing this dance off game. It was so funny. I'll now show you how dorky we can still be! WonderKid wanted to play this thing all night though she has no coordination on it (she's still a little too young for it). Mr.W and I could not stop laughing!
Tomorrow I'll post about our trip to the National Museum of the Marine Corps! I don't want to over load you all with posts. All 2 of you that still check this thing! ;)

It's been a while...

I know it's beena while since I've been on here. I guess I just haven't felt like I have much to talk about. Or the things that I would talk about will change in the span of a day so what's the point in posting them anyway. There were a few notable things that have occured over the last month. First was the Marine Corps Ball. We had a blast and the whole next day I layed in bed or threw up. I have sworn off alcohol since that day and have had no desire to touch the stuff. Heh heh! I wasn't much of a drinker anyway, but that night just sealed it.
Here's the "official" ball picture.
It was a good night!

School Picture

WonderKid's Kindergarten picture. I can't believe how big she's getting. Sometimes, it just doesn't seem fair that they have to grow up so fast. Other times I wish it would hurry up.

Costume Layout

So, I did the layout for WonderKid's Halloween costume. I wanted to make it kind of look like a comic book. I'm not sure if it does or not, but I like how it turned out. It's simple but different. I love the new pens I used that can write/color on picutres. They really helped emphasize the pieces of the costume. I think I should have used a darker blue, but I can live with the blue I chose. Let me know what you think....

Share time...

So there will probably be two posts today. I know, calm down everyone. I was going to do the second one yesterday but I had to recharge the battery in my camera so I couldn't upload the pics. I wanted to share some good things that happened. Well, to me they're great but I don't want to hype them up and you all think I'm crackers for thinking they're great. But to me they are.
First, last night I slept the whole night. 7 hours straight!! No hacking child waking me up, no potty breaks to interrupt my slumber. I was so surprised when I woke up, looked at the clock and say 5:35. I was blown away. I simply cannot recall the last time this happened. I'm not even exaggerating. Mr.Wonder was not home (ops week) and WonderKid stayed in her room all night. I feel so good today...a little lazy, but that's just mental not physical like usual. ;)
Second, the guilt is slowly sliding away. The guilt to which I'm referring is my guilt of the finicky eating habits of WK. All of you know the battles I've dealt with concerning her and food. WonderKid+New Foods= BATTLE!
I'm reading this great book called Momfidence!-An Oreo Never Killed Anybody and Other Secrets of Happier Parenting, it's by Paula Spencer. I read about said book on one of my favorite blogs Suburban Turmoil. I have to say thanks to Lindsay if she ever reads this. I LOVE THIS BOOK! This book is about relaxing and not worrying so much about how you're parenting. Not being guilt ridden if you're not measuring up to that unreachable goal of being the perfect parent. I just finished a chapter called You can lead a child to carrots, but you can't make them eat them. It seems Paula has the same problem with her oldest as I do with WK. And you know what? She doesn't feel guilty that her son wants only certain types of food all the time. She actually references a story about a 15 year old boy from England. Who is completely healthy and grew up on a diet of only jam sandwiches, milk, cereal, and chocolate cake. This may be stretched a little but I see where she's going anyway. I have been feeling endless guilt about this eating situation with WK. It's made me feel like and inadequate mother. But I've realized that I can keep trying with WK without the guilt. I can't make her try new foods. I can offer them. But I'm not going to lose sleep if she doesn't want it, if she wants her nuggets or her cereal or her certain kind of spaghetti sauce. I'm not going to let the opinions of other effect my opinion of myself as a mother. I have a sweet girl who loves me. And she seems to think I'm doing a pretty good job. So what everyone else thinks, doesn't really matter that much to me anymore. Yeah! One more hurdle has been cleared.
If you can you should really check out this book. It's great and humor filled. I'm going to get back to reading it right now.

Secret Identitiy

IMPORTANT NEWS UPDATE: Wonder Woman's identity has been revealed. It is none other than my own WonderKid! Amazing, I know. Who'd have thought that I would be part of such an important revelation. Heh heh! I really can't wait for Halloween!

Last two...

Alrighty...here are the last two for a bit. I have a bit of a reprieve until Halloween and the Ball have passed. Then it's on to the holidays. We've been lucky enough to have been invited to our friends place for Thanksgiving up in Quantico, Va. We're really excited to head up there. It's going to be a really fun time. In the 2 page layout the upper corner is really dark, just to let you know it says bowling. It's a very simple layout, there were just so many pics, I didn't want to over do it.
I"ll try and get back to posting about the normal mundane stuff now.

New Scrappy Pages

I know I haven't been on here in a while. Just living life. WonderKid's getting a little under the weather. Hopefully it'll pass quickly. She has her school pictures tomorrow, she's so excited. I'll post those as soon as I get them. I can't believe how quickly the time passes once they start school. It really is weird! So, I did a couple of pages today and I thought I'd share. The Christmas one I did a while ago, just never got around to posting it. I like getting in these mini scrapping moods. I've done 4 layouts and a total of 5 pages. I might do one or two more layouts tonight, but I won't post them till tomorrow, if I end up doing them. Oh, and yes....I'm rambling. The Evening Primrose Oil is working great so far. I have only a little witchiness so far this cycle and NO nausea. I am so so so happy about that. Okay, enough rambling...here are the layouts. Any advice you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Not too sure...

Okay, I'm not so sure about this page. It started out really good, but then I didn't know what to do for the lettering...so I did it myself. And the little doodles under it...It's not terrible (at least I don't think it is, but what do I know?) but I don't think it's a favorite. Eh, on to the next...
ps..Pup, I have a feeling this is going to be one of those ones we were talking about, where I look at it a little while form now and go, "What was I thinking?"

Oh...and the title says There's nothing quite like a Mother's love

On a roll...

I know I know, but here's another one. Now that I've started, I just can't stop. You'll have to just bear with me until I catch up on my stuff. I don't have that much stuff left to do...for now. So there will be a break. This one turned out pretty cute.

Pouting

Pouting becomes her, no?
WonderKid in all her glory!

Favorite Page

So I did this page last night and this morning. It is one of my all time favorite pages. I actually took the picture of her sleeping last night specifically so I could do this page. WonderKid listens to a Christmas CD everynight for bed. It has a bunch of songs from all the classic clamation/puppet type Christmas movies. There is one song on there that I absolutely LOVE. It's called There's Always Tomorrow. I think it's from the one where Jack Frost falls in love. I always try and stay to listen to that song because I love it so much. I'll post the words below and you'll see why it's perfect for this type of picture. So those are the words down the side of the page. LOVE IT!

There's always tomorrow
For dreams to come true
Believe in your dreams
Come what may...

There's always tomorrow
There's so much to do
And so little time in a day

We all pretend
The rainbow has an end
And you'll be there again
Someday

There's always tomorrow
For dreams to come true
Tomorrow is not far away

Post Pup Pages

So, I've done a few pages since my sister, Pup, left. I'm afraid I get all my inspiration from her. I don't hate the pages I've done...but I'm not as in love with them as some others I've done. You be the judge...

Double Layouts

Here are the double paged layouts. There are quite a few, bear with me. I was a busy girl this week!

Single Layouts

Many of you know it's been a lllooonnnnggg time since I've scrapbooked. Almost a year (with a random page here or there)...so when my sister came for a visit, we basically scrapped the whole time with breaks to go to scrapbooking sotres! Ha Ha! We threw in a park and mall visit every once in a while. I had a wonderful time hanging out with her. It was like bringing a little piece of back home to my new home of the moment. So I wanted to share some of the layouts I've done over the past week. I'll do the single page layouts on this post and the double pages on another. I'm really pleased with how most of them turned out, the ones I'm not as crazy about...I left out. ;) Here we go....

I really love how in the last one, WonderKid is the only one in color...hope you like them.