Recover after the 4th

Wow! I was SO tired after staying up late on the 4th. I had a really great time with Jia and her family as always. It was really nice to have my oldest tag along as well. Now that she has moved out I don't see her much or even talk to her much for that matter. So, it is always nice to see her and catch up.

We left out of here early in the morning to head to Grayson, Georgia. I got the kids some breakfast for the trip. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get there. When we first arrived Jia and her brother had gone to the store. I got T-Bones crate inside and got him all situated. We really didn't do a lot, but hang out and talk. We always have a lot to talk about. The kids watched a couple of movies on and off. We had a great lunch of hot dogs, baked beans, mac and cheese and all the fixins' for the hot dogs. They even made sloppy joe sauce for the hot dogs.. Coney Dogs they called it. It wasn't bad.

Jia, her boyfriend Rob and I went to the store at one point. I'm still trying to figure him out. I'm really not that crazy about him. It's just the little things that he does. They have been dating for quite some times.. it has to be four or five years now. He has never been married.. the ultimate bachelor. So, we go to the grocery store to pick up a few things. We need ice, water and playing cards. Rob picks up a magazine and some beer. We get to the line to leave and he puts his beer out and his magazine. Then he adds one of those things that goes in between two peoples shopping items. He puts it between the water, ice and whatever else Jia got. I'm watching this and thinking to myself.. "No he didn't!". So he checks out and then Jia goes.. her total bill is about $13.00. I can't figure out why he wouldn't just pay for those items. He has no kids.. a really good job.. In other words.. its not about money for him. And he will be eating the ice and drinking the water with everyone else in the house. I don't know.. I was just a bit shocked by it. There were no playing cards there so we went down the street to the drug store. Jia asks him to run in to the store and grab some playing cards. He tells her no! So, I tell her that I'll run it.. I run it and grab the cards and back out. Again.. SHOCKED! that he wouldn't do this simple thing for her. I've only met the man once before.. and he didn't make a good impression then either LOL! Maybe I'm just too critical, because I feel like she deserves so much better. She is my best friend!  Oh.. and then he got upset with her about something and wouldn't even be with the family when we went out to see fireworks.

Yes... we are a pair aren't we LOL!!!

So that was it.. after the fireworks.. which we really didn't see, the kids and I grabbed T-Bone and started home. Oh... if I had only known what was coming!

Look at my lovely handsome boy.. Okay.. kind of scary right there LOL Yep.. he's a special one! So, we head home and we are about 15 minutes down the road when all of a sudden Michael spews! Not once... not twice... but FOUR times! Now, how is it that you don't feel that coming? How is it that you don't say.. MOM!!! I need you to pull over.. I don't feel so well! Nope! He is absolutely covered.. Bailey has some on her.. T-Bone has some on him. What a nightmare!! It is 11:30 pm on the 4th of July and we are still a good 45 minutes from home. I stop at the next gas station we find and I buy a gallon of water, a small water for him to rinse out his mouth and drink, some handy wipes and paper towels and Febreeze! Thank goodness I made him bring a change of clothing thinking I would be able to get him to go swimming. I piled everyone in the van again and I went across the street to a vacant parking lot.. still in a lit area and cars not that far away. He washes off with the handy wipes and the gallon of water and paper towels. I'm trying to scrub the van seat and floor as well as I can. Taylor and I coat the seats with febreeze.. which didn't really help very much. Bailey and T-bone were both rinsed off with the gallon of water and Michael was sent to the back of the van to get out of the soaked clothes. We were probably out there for a good 30 to 45 minutes trying to get cleaned up. We climbed back in the van and started home. The febreeze did not work. I ended up having to drive home with the windows down the entire way. I'm just glad it had cooled down some. So that was our night.. Michael really threw a kink in it on the way home LOL Oh well.. Life happens and a mother's job is never done.

We got to bed late and I ended up talking to Kevin for a bit in the morning and then laying back down. Before we knew it we looked at the clock and it was already 3:45 pm. The day really flew by.

I worked on a card yesterday, trying to finish it up. The day before I had spent all my time coloring the image. Well.. I colored four images and it took quite a while LOL I used all scraps for this card.

The girl is from Tiddly Inks Digitals - Wryn the Patriot. I think she is so great! I used Copics B21, B24, B29, C2, C5, C7 and C10, E00 and one other brown .. I can't remember which one. Also R20, R22, R24, and R27. I used a fine Painters white opaque paint marker for the dots... err Stars on the flag. I also used "happy" from a hero arts stamp set - Essential Messages, "of" from a paper smooches stamp set - Word Salad and the "4" was from a Stampin' Up set of numbers that I have. The "TH" and the "JULY" were all hand written and colored. I used some glitter glue for the sparkles in her hair and the actual sparkle.. I used red, blue and white. Still working on my Copic coloring... Black I find is not that easy to work with.. well.. its really the different shades of gray, but still not that easy.

I'm going to enter this in the following challenges:

• OCL Challenge #123 ~ Let Freedom Ring @ Our Craft Lounge
• Freshly Made Sketches #42 ~ A Sketch by Jennifer T @ {Freshly Made} Sketches
• Mail-Able ~ Easy to Mail Card @ 365 Cards
• GL43 ~ Red White and Blue @ Gingerloft Challenge
• Inspired by: Independence Day @ Creative Inspirations
• 4th of July using Bling ~ Gems, Rhinestones, Glitter Oh My! @ Made Especially For You
• Challenge #48 ~ Color Challenge Red White and Blue @ Card Makin Mama 
• Challenge #47 Color Combo Red, White and Blue @ Pattie's Creations Design Challenge
• Stars and Stripes ~ Use both stars and stripes @ Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps
• Challenge #98 @ 2 Sisters Challenge Blog
• Challenge #30 ~ Patriotic/Military/Fireworks @ Crafting For All Seasons
• Day 119: Mail-able @ 365 Cards

I have one more red white and blue card to go.. so I'll use that to enter in the rest of the may Red White and Blue challenges this month! :)  Hope you all have a great day!

Happy 4th of July America

Happy 4th of July America! I hope you have a wonderful holiday today. I'm going to be headed out soon to see my best friend Jia. This is probably the last time I'll see her for some time. I'm always excited to see her.. I miss her so much since she left for Ohio. And this visit.. I will NOT leave my camera at home! I can't believe I left it last time.

Yesterday was a big day... Michael had an orthodontist appointment in the morning. We were told that in six weeks he will be getting his braces off! Kevin is happy about that.. although he would have preferred them off yesterday. Michael is excited to get them off to. And let me just say... it has been a nightmare with him having braces. He doesn't brush his teeth well enough or often enough. I will be so happy to see those braces gone!

When we were on our way to the Orthodontist appointment yesterday we drove through the little town of Kennesaw. It was 9 am and people had come by with their chairs and blankets, put them where they wanted to sit last night for the firework show and left. I couldn't believe it.... and I couldn't believe how many there were. Now I know why we could never find a good spot. They were all taken at 9 am that morning!!

When we got home I noticed a bird flying in to a tree nearby. So I grabbed my camera so I could take pictures of these adorable robin babies. Aren't they adorable? They look about ready to leave the nest!

What else did we do yesterday? I went into work and picked up some things to bring home. I worked from home yesterday, because there was a contractor coming in to make some repairs to our apartment. The apartment building has settled a lot and the walls are just caving in. I didn't want him to be here with the kids alone so I decided to pick up some things and work from home. I ran a few errands between work and home and then we spent the rest of the day at home. They did the repairs and that took the majority of the day.. although.. they really didn't get started until after lunch. When we got home there was plastic on the floor, but nothing had been done. Then the contractor came in and told me they were going to lunch LOL! They came back about an hour and a half/two hours later and began working. Hey.. I'm not complaining! The work got done and it looks so much better. That's why you contract.. you make your own hours.

Last night we went to church for a concert.. It was the Georgia Symphony. The Mount Paran North chorus joined in at the end. It was a really great show. And.. there were fireworks after the show. So we enjoyed our firework show last night on the 3rd. Apparently there were several places doing fireworks on the 3rd. That was it.. Now my oldest is here and we are getting ready to head out to Grayson, Georgia to have a nice day with Jia and her family. I hope you enjoy your day.. here are a couple of good photos from last night.

Scrap Sunday

I had a really good day yesterday hanging out with Jianna and her brother, his partner, her mother and her kids. She was dropping her youngest off to stay with her brother for a month. She will be back for the Fourth of July to pick her up. We are going to spend the day at Stone Mountain. We just hung out and talked, we took the kids to the pool for a bit. It's always so good to see her. I was exhausted by the time I got home though. Her brother lives about an hour away.

I love her brother and his partner too. They are all good people. It has always felt like family being there. They are always so welcoming and open. In the next couple of months they are planning to move to Key West. That will be a nice visit LOL I have never been there either. That was my day yesterday.

I came home and talked to Kevin a bit, but got so tired I went to bed. I must have slept weird too, because I woke up with my back hurting and really stiff. This morning I'm spending my time with Kevin. I will get the kids up in a couple of hours so they can get ready for church. Off for 9 am service and then I will spend the rest of my day scrapping I hope. The apartment is clean, there is only a couple of loads of laundry that the kids and I will finish. I have to go across the street and grab a new Zig pen as mine is almost out of ink and that will be my day. I'm going to try to focus on getting a couple of pages done for this album.

I did one quick layout this morning with random photos. Kevin had shot random photos just around here. So I stuck them on a layout and I'll add it that album. I used bazzill paper, Daisy D's patterned paper, my zig pen and that's it. The layout was a challenge I had seen some where, but when I went looking for it again I couldn't find it anywhere. So, I have no idea where it came from and I couldn't recall all of it.

Best Friends

My lunch with Taylor yesterday went well. I told her exactly how I felt about her leaving. I really needed to get that off my chest. I asked her about her job, we spoke about her car and what she needed to do to take care of it. I told her she needed to appreciate what my mother and sister did for her by repairing that car. It was over $850 to repair it. I spoke with her about school and when she was going. She is not rooming with her friend, so I'm pretty happy about that. Her friend and her boyfriend are both going to the same school as her. The funny thing about that is that neither of them had initially planned to go there. Her friend pretty much had it planned that she was going to the University of Georgia and her boyfriend had planned on going out of state. Some how that all changed. We spoke about what she was going to do for the holidays. I was hoping she would come home for the holidays and she said she would. So all in all it was pretty good. One thing really bothered me though. She is living with her girlfriend, her girlfriends mother and stepfather. Apparently, the mother and girlfriend have been gone all week to Florida. She is living in that house with the stepfather! She has always been one to put herself into weird situations like that. I kept my mouth shut though. I couldn't get into a fight with her about that and she knows how I feel about things like that. I brought her back home to see her siblings. Everyone was happy to see her. Then she left for work in her car. I hope she will do what is right by my mother and sister. She really needs to show them some appreciation.

Today I get to go visit with Jianna! Jia is my very best friend. We have been friends since my oldest was in elementary school. Several years ago she went through a terrible divorce and moved out of state to Ohio. I miss her terribly! She came in town yesterday and is staying with her brother in Madison. I will be waking the kids up at 6 am. That will give them an hour to get themselves dressed, teeth brushed, hair brushed, etc. Then we can head out. She is really awesome :) I can't wait to see her.

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I did scrap a page yesterday! It is just a page of Kevin and the kids when he was here at home. I see so many pages with just empty space and I really tried. There was a lot of empty space. I couldn't do it! I had it scanned and everything, but I just kept staring at it and ended up adding to it. I don't know what it is, but I can't do empty space LOL Another thing I can't do is crowded embellishing. Where there is so much embellishment that it almost loses the photo. Or you really have to look to find the photo. It's just not my style I guess. So here you go.. still working on that 8 1/2 x 11 album. I will be glad when I'm finished. 

All of the paper is from Club Scrap. This is an old kit that I received before I stopped scrapping for so long. I absolutely love the quality of their papers. I used paint and twine.

When I finish with this album I'm going to finish the small album I was making my sister about her bout with breast cancer.