My mind is spinning from all this blog stuff! I think I'm beginning to understand - but now I sure do wish I'd learned HTML when I was going to...

Our new little girl (Beatrix the kitten) is doing SO well. While she and Rocky are not best of buds yet, she has eaten and is exploring the first floor a little. She didn't cry one bit last night. I set up a "cave" for her (i.e. a box with a soft towel) on the couch and she likes to nap in there. I keep putting her in the bathroom - where I also have her food and water right now - and she's doing fine finding her way in and out. That's good. And she is warming up to me as well. She's at my feet right now. She actually comes to me and she was purring with me a minute ago. So all is well.

Now, I've GOT to get to my banking! This computer stuff is majorly eating up my time!

Hey! Notice anything, um, NEW??? I'm taking a class from SIStv called "Bling Our Your Blog (2.0)". I've been so wanting a 3-column blog and to learn how to truly make it my OWN. Sooo. Here I am. I've had a bit of a time with adjustments and stuff, but I'm good with it. And the class continues all week, so I imagine it's just going to get better!

In other news - wow - so much is going on! First of all, Richard's little son, Sebastian Thomas, was born to Cathy yesterday:

I just love that big smile on Kellie's face. I know this grandson brings the life of Richard right back to her, to us. And that is a huge blessing.

We're getting a new addition to the family as well - TODAY! Check out this cutie-pie:

Oh my goodness - is that not the cutest little kitten? She will be all ours before the day is out. I think we might name her Beatrice. My friend Tina's granddaughter named her "burnt toast". :) Martha loves the name toast, but I'd like something a little more feminine. We'll see. :)

Speaking of cuteness, how about this gooey sweetness:

Awwww. We were going out for the day on Monday - Martha's birthday - and all the little flowers were out in the cemetary at the end of our driveway. And I mentioned how I had the cutest picture of Matthew and Dustin when they were little laying in those flowers. So, of course, we had to stop and re-create the sweetness...

Here's the original photo:

That's Matthew on the right, Dustin on the left. This was taken in 1985, so 24 years ago. Matthew was 7, Dustin was 5. Sooooooo cute! Hahahaha!

Okay, one more adorable thing to throw at you. And that's my latest layout from the SIStv Drama Queen collection. Chris took the photo of Eva:

We had a fun "hawaiian" themed party for Martha's birthday Sunday night. The weather MORE than cooperated, because it was actually HOT! But that's okay! It made for one of the most lovely summer evenings - in APRIL. Amazing. We had a great time. And I just have to show you one more photo of the beautiful birthday girl:

Pretty, pretty girl. We love her... :)

Well, I think my posterior is permanently attached to my desk chair. And I have more to do! Besides, I think that's all the new stuff a person could handle right now!

Wait! It's Wednesday already? Good grief, this month is gonna fly by, too, isn't it?

First, I want to post a couple of projects. I got the new SIStv collection, Drama Queen, the night before we left for Madison, but do you think that stopped me from staying up into the wee hours working on a layout? Of course not! And here's the one I made of my little Eva:

I had already set aside this photo to scrap with some other papers, but when I got the collection, I thought it went perfectly with what I had in mind. Now I need to get some play time in with the rest of the collection!

Right before I went to Madison, I also whipped up this mini for my mom using our 2008 year in review photos:

I pulled out an older BasicGrey mini book and papers for that one. I think it went perfectly with all my photos. You can see the whole thing in my SIStv portfolio here.

So, I think we had a really great visit with my mom in Madison. It went super fast! (That seems to be theme of this post!) I took Mom to an appointment with her surgeon - Chris and I went, along with Gail. What a wonderful man. He was so patient and kind and understanding of Mom's situation. He reiterated what he had told Mom back in September when I was there. Mom just has a really hard time coming to grips with it all. No more walking. Her mode of transport will always be a wheelchair - or a power chair. And she will require 24/7 care for the rest of her life. Unfortunately, that's very expensive, so there needs to be some investigation into how to do that the most economical way. Unfortunately, Mom can't get to that because she's still refusing to believe what the dr. has told her. It's a never-ending cycle of why's and how's and I wont's and it's preventing her from doing what she really REALLY needs to do.

I even made a layout about it today! The new word up at One Little Word is "no". Here's the page I made:

If you click on the image, you can get closer to read the journaling. I wanted to make it kind of old-fashioned looking. I love that quote on there, too. Perfect for Mom. I'll send it to her in a card...

In other news, Dustin and Emily and Eva haved moved to a new rental. Actually, it's an older home in Muncy - very "historical" looking inside and out. I'm surprised at how filled up they have it! We were over there painting in the kitchen tonight, which needs to be completed before they can put away their kitchen stuff... Oy.

Tomorrow I'm looking forward to having "tea" (real tea, all you FGirls...) with my friend, Tina. After I finish my banking. It's supposed to be in the 60's and then Friday in the 70's. We were planning on kayaking, but I know I'm going to need some time in my scrap room. But, I am looking forward to some time with Tina - and meeting all her little kittens. (Watch out, Chris!). And I'm SO looking forward to flinging my windows open on Friday and airing out my house! I'll be busy scrapping, but that doesn't mean I can't let the air in! Can't wait!

Dang! I feel good. I ate a bunch of stuff I really didn't want to in Madison - proving to myself that I am still very weak and that I simply can't have "junk" in the house. So I decided to fast yesterday. And it went really well. If I gained any weight while I was away, it's gone now! And Martha's right, my scale and the Wii scale do NOT agree! Martha says her scale is the same as the Wii scale and I'm hoping it's right. That means I've lost more than I thought I had! Whew!

Anyway, then on the way home from the airport, we met up with Martha (and Matthew) for dinner and Martha announced that she's giving up sugar until her birthday in a couple weeks. So I figured, what the HECK! So will I! And it's been going great and I'm tellin' ya - I feel excellent. And I wasn't hardly even eating much sugar before. Just the occasional dessert while out (usually splitting it with Chris) and I had some when we had a big dinner here. But, other than that, I don't have ANYthing sweet in the kitchen. (I say that, because Chris does have his personal stash in his office, but I don't touch that...) But now, I'm using agave juice and 1/2 and 1/2 in my coffee instead of creamer and sugar. And I'm staying away from stuff that has white sugar in it. Like cereal, peanutbutter, etc. I've already got a nice stash of sugar-free, "natural" and organic stuff, so it wasn't hard at all. Anyway, my point was, dang! I feel good!

Over and out.

Ummm, did I ever mention that there's a WINNER for each of the "One Little Word" challenges? Wellllll, check this out! :)

(Credits for this layout can be found here.)

That's my latest digi for One Little Word - "Ready". I really like that these challenges are causing me to think and to go deeper in my scrapping. That's what I was looking for. So, thanks, ladies, for bringing it each week!

That's what I'm looking for in my weekly ATC cards as well and, no offense meant at all to the ladies that put out the prompts on ScrapGal for Challenge '09, but I just haven't been as inspired as I was last year when I was working off of Emily Falconbridge's ATC prompts from 2007. So, I say if ain't broke, don't fix it. Emily is doing prompts again this year - she's making tags, but they can be used for whatever you want. Obviously, for me, I will continue with ATC's. Her prompts are called 52Q and are on her blog, here. I'm going to try to start today!

Maybe. Because I have a lot to do today and it's already almost noon. I generally give myself the a.m. to do my devo's and then spend time online. But I also need to do the church banking this a.m. (which I ususally do on Thursdays) because we're heading to Madison on Wednesday. I have laundry in the washer that I need to pull out and I need to finish the mini I'm making for my Mom.

Okay - so I'm OFF!
Happy Easter week!