The joy of winter.

Pictures will have to posted later!

I love winter. I absolutely love this time of year when they heavy wet snow comes down. The trees are all white and hanging there covered in snow. It is always so pretty for the first couple hours after a snow fall. We are getting dumped on with snow today and it is in the pretty stage. I am sitting here looking out the window of my office at work seeing the trees covered in snow. The ground is still so white and pure. We are suppose to get about 4 inches. Hopefully it will still be nice enough after I get off work to go out and take some pictures. Only one more day of work this year!! I am so looking forward to another long weekend.

Resolutions

Okay we all make them. I am bad about making them and breaking them right away. This year I decided I would do a layout about my resolutions and hang it up in my house so I see it every day and have to think about them. This way maybe I won't be so apt to break them right away. I journaled about my resolutions and things I want to accomplish this year. I will see how far I get. My main goal is to get healthier than I am by watching what I eat and exercising. I tried to set realistic goals.

Okay on a totally different topic, I am getting so excited about the new year. I signed up for 2 different classes this year to help me with my scrapbooking. One is a photography class that will help me expand my knowledge and challenge me to take better pictures. I am taking a digital photography class at betterphoto.com. I can't wait till it starts on the 4th of January. On January 1st my year long scrapbooking class with Donna Downey from Big Picture Scrap booking will start. I am so excited about this class and can't wait. I set my goal to scrap at least one layout every week. I should be able to meet that goal with school and everything else going on in my life.

Back to work tomorrow. My three day weekend went way to fast.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Yea it is here. Christmas morning. I love the holidays, the excitement, the sense of togetherness. Well we have that all year long, but it seems more intense during the holidays.

Christmas is such a great time of year. Things are good. We are about to embark on a new year. I have to start giving some thought to what that new year will bring.

I finally broke out my wishblade yesterday and used it. I bought the thing clear back in September, but was so busy with school that I didn't even have time to try it out. I finally got it out yesterday, hooked it up and used it to cut out some letters for new layouts I am working on. Merry Christmas all.

2 days and counting

Only 2 more days till Christmas. I love the holidays. I love looking at my tree and enjoying the warm glow it casts over the room. I could sit for hours and just watch the lights twinkle. I think this intense joy of the holidays comes from the fact that I never had Christmas till I was 19 years old. I grew up in a house where Christmas was not celebrated and the holidays were just another day.

I love sharing the joy of the holidays with my kids, but I don't like the commercialism of it all. I am not a shopper so I don't enjoy that part. I love the meaning and the feeling in the air of the holidays. I love the reflection time it brings about. I scrapped a page last night about my first Christmas in 1987. It was alot of firsts, because not only was it my first xmas, but also Amanda's first Christmas and the first Christmas we spent with my husband Sam. What a great holiday. It is a time to be with family and friends. Merry Christmas all.

Waiting for January....

I can't wait till the new year. I am so excited because yesterday, I signed up for my first photography class online. I love taking pictures and have decided that I want to take my photo experiences to the next level. I want to expand on my knowledge behind the camera. I just got my new Minolta Maxxum 7D and I love it. I am going to be listing my Minolta Dimage 7hi on ebay this week and hopefully I will get enough I will have a great start on a new lense for my camera.

It is amazing to think that Thanksgiving will be here next week and than on to Christmas. I am looking forward to the holidays this year. I will be done with my classes in just a couple weeks!!!!! Happy day to all.
Mary

Holiday Season

I have the christmas spitit already. I hope it lasts through the holidays. Last year I just couldn't find my holiday spirit. It took me forever to get things out to decorate the house. When the kids were little I use to get so excited for the holidays because their spirit would just be so exciting. The anticipation of the holidays!! This year it isn't even Thanksgiving yet and I want to get the tree out and set it up. Not sure why I have the holiday spirit so early, maybe it is because winter started early here in Montana. I am not sure, but since the stores are all festive and decorated for the holidays I am ready to decorate. I have to hold myself back till after Thanksgiving. I am trying to get all my christmas cards made. There is something about making your own cards and putting all the love you have for people into the cards. We already took our holiday pictures and will be sending out cards early this year!!

Daylight Savings time!!

Tonight we set the clock back an hour. I am not really looking forward to it. Don't get me wrong I love the extra hour of sleep the first night but boy I sure need it in the weeks ahead when my body clock gets all messed up. I dread the thought of going to work in the dark dusk of morning and coming home in the dark dusk of evening. It just gets so depressing to always be working in the only daylight. I long for the days of summer when I can go out and plan for hours after work. Happy Halloween! looking forward to the kids in their costumes coming by. I miss the days when my kids loved getting dressed up and taking them out.

Nascar

I just love watching Nascar races. I am not sure what it is but I am so hooked. I plan my whole weekend around being home to watch the races. I can't wait till I actually get to go spend a weekend at a real race track watching a Nascar race. I can imagine what the noise and smells are like just after spending nights watching my nephew race during the summer. Oh there is nothing better than the smell of a race track. Go Junior, he will be back!!!!

It's hunting season!

Well the hub left for his week long elk hunting trip. He always has a great time hanginng out with his friends, and I have fun just hanging out at home doing whatever I want. I miss him, but it is a great time for me to make meals that he doesn't like and I love so it is a whole week of "me" time. I get to sprawl out on the bed and just spend my evenings doing whatever I want. Mostly relaxing, doing school work and even getting in some scrapbooking time. I feel so guilty spending my evenings working on school work every night after work, because I only get a couple hours in the evening to spend time with him and the kids. I can't wait till I am done with school and my life will get back to enjoying evenings of just doing whatever.

Feeling overwhelmed

Well today is my down day for sure, not that I am down at all, I am just feeling like a beat rat. I knew going to school full-time and working full-time would be a big time commitment and worked it out with my family so that I could do this. Right now I am just feeling majorly overwhelmed with school. The two classes that I am taking this semester seem to be the hardest so far in my adventure towards a masters degree. It isn't that either class is difficult it is that they are both so very time consuming and put together they are taking so much of my time because they require so much reading and studying. I keep trying to take it one day at a time but it is getting overwhelming. This weekend I have a research project to do by Monday, I have to take a quiz, and do a case study. Than I have to start preparing for my presentation that I have to give as an in-service presentation on Juvinile Rhumitoid Arthritis.

Work seems to be at a point where I have outgrown my position. I don't feel like I accomplish anything beneficial to my position any more. I am looking for a change in the coming months. It is just hard to give up all the benifits I have earned here. It will be hard going back to a job that only offers a couple weeks vacation and just having to start all over at a new job. The sucky thing is I could see so much more beneficial aspects of my current job.

Oh I will survive, I know I will, I just might have a few more grey hairs by the time it is over.

Stampin Up Catalog Online

Stampin Up! has announced they are putting their catlog online for customers to look at and than they can email their demonstrators with orders. I am so excited about this because I get a lot of orders from long distance customers. The catalog viewable by all customers is such a great thing. It will be on the site on November 1st. Yippeee!!

Thaine Austin

Well my nephew and his wife had their baby. It is a beautiful boy, Thaine Austin White. He is such a cutie. I finally went out to meet him today. Wanted to give them some time to get use to having him home before we went and bombarded them with gifts and googiling over the baby. Isn't he just the cutiest little guy. I love spoiling babies but thank god I don't have any.

First Winter Blizzard

This is Marlin as my kids named him. They built him this morning when they were playing outside in the snow. The power went out last night and stayed out till about noon today. The snow was really wet and heavy and came down. We ended up with about 8 inches of heavy wet snow. The town is amazing with the number of trees down every where. It looks like someone just walked around town dropping tree branches all over the place. There was no school today and even the grocery store and banks closed because of no power. This is the first time I remember them actually closing our schools because of no snow. Usually they just don't run the buses but today they shut the whole school down. I worked from home today if you really want to call it that, seriously without power how much work do you actually get done.

Late night wonderings...

It has been a busy weekend. My nephew had a new baby early this morning Thaine Austin was born at 3:30 this morning. How exciting. I wish his grandma was around to see him. She passed away several years ago of cancer at the age of 52, she never got to see any of her grandchildren.

It is kind of a sad thing on such a happy day. Makes me value life and each opportunity I am given. I really should be studying for a test I have to take tomorrow in my research in psychotherapy class, but I can't seem to get my head into it tonight.
night all.

Hump Day thoughts

Yea it is hump day. Today I was presented with a great opportunity to get a Master's degree online through a great pilot program through the state. I am so excited about it because it wouldn't cost me anything and I would end up with a MA in Education in special needs. The problem is I am currently paying and enrolled in a great MA in Vocational Rehabilitation program. I love the Voc Rehab program and wouldn't give it up because my goal is to be a licensed counselor, however the thought of getting a double masters is really tempting. I am not sure I am up to twice as much school work as I do right now. I will have to really do some soul searching to see if this is for me. I wouldn't start till next summer because the fall deadline is only weeks away.

Its a good day here today, 66 degrees and just perfect. We are actually suppose to get below freezing tonight and be cold the rest of the week. Not looking forward to winter. Off to do some more school work.

oh my!!

Well I am into my third week of my second year of graduate school. This is so much harder than I could have ever thought. I am having a hard time keeping my head together and getting through this all, but I will keep on struggling.

I had a blast at my crop last week. Next weekend on September 30 through October 1st I am going to a weekend retreat crop. I can't wait, it will give me a much needed break from school and some time just for me.

Happy Tuesday all.

Crop night

I am so excited because I am going to my first crop tonight. I signed up for a chatterbox stitching class (I love stitching already but want some social) and they are having a crop afterwards. I can't wait. I am also signed up to go to a scrapbooking retreat in a couple weeks it will be so much fun. A weekend in the a-frame just scrapping and eating.

I really need to get a head on my school work these next couple weekends to take some time off for that weekend without having to worry to much about it.

Katrina

I have been watching the devistation with Katrina with such a heavy heart. I wish I could just wrap my arms around a family and bring them here to help them. It is so hard to watch, so gut wrenching to see the pain and destruction.

I get so upset when I hear people comment about how foolish they were not to leave. I would like to take those peope's cars, purses, wallets and their credit cards and tell them I will see them in the town about 300 miles away. I want to see how they get there. Don't they realize the majority of these people are living in such poverity already they don't have the means to evacuate the city. They don't have cars or credit cards so it isn't like they can hop a train or plane and just leave the city. Many are single parents or elderly and have no way to leave.

This whole thing has just saddened my life.

Dog days of Summer

School started yesterday for the kiddo's. While I was glad to see them go back because they were so bored, it signaled the end of summer. This summer seemed to go by way to fast. We didn't really take a long vacation, but more a lot of mini little vacations. With the price of gas this past summer we didn't get to far from home. $2.69 a gallon is the price grrrrr Good thing I living in walking distance of everything I do.

I start back to work on my masters degree in just over a week. I am kind of sad about starting into my 2nd year of the program. It is getting much more intensive and the stress is building with each class. I am nervous about the classes and trying to fit it all into my schedule with work and family. I am very lucky to have a wonderful supportive family that is making it easy for me to find time in the evening to get my school work all done.

The dog days of summer are upon us. Labor day will be here soon and than the leaves will turn and before you know it we will be buried in snow. brrrrrrrrrrr

Oh the joy of spring is in the air!

Well it is suppose to be, how can it be spring and be so cold out side? It is cold and snowy out today. Brrrrrrr I won't even get to smell the lilacs this year because they budded out and than froze. I am so going to miss that smell.

On a side note. Only 2 more weeks of school and I will be done for a couple weeks till summer session starts.

Baseball is going full force starting this week for Jerad and Megan is so involved in Tennis.

I am getting excited about Amanda's graduation on the 22nd. I have most of the stuff planned for the bbq we are having after wards. I just hope the weather is nice and most of the family can come.