It's Snowing in Texas......again

I don't mean to seem ungrateful, but I am really sick of this weather. One day it is absolutely beautiful (this past Saturday) and then two days later it is snowing. This is Texas, east Texas at that and it never snows here. Well, this is the 3rd time since December 4 and frankly I am sick of it!! I WANT SPRING TIME AND I WANT IT QUICK! I don't know how people live in places that snows or is cold 90% of the time. I could not handle that. I am ready for days where I can get outside and work in the yard and plant some flowers in my flower bed and mow the yard. Yes, you read me correctly, I am ready to be able to MOW!! Everything around here is dead and the yard looks nasty because the grass is brown. Lord, I want green grass....please.

How has everyone been?? We have been really busy...here is a sample of our schedule:

Monday - Kristyn basketball practice
Tuesday - Ryleigh softball practice
Wednesday - church
Thursday - Ryleigh softball practice, Kristyn basketball practice
Friday - Ryleigh basketball practice
Saturday - basketball games, Ryleigh softball practice
Sunday - church, Ryleigh softball practice

Busy, busy, busy!! Ryleigh plays on two different softball teams, one is a league team and one is a select team that plays tournaments twice a month on the weekends. The league team will only be for a couple of months and luckily her coach is her coach for both teams so I don't have to worry about overlapping practices/games. Kristyn decided not to play softball this year so she is about to start doing gymnastics when basketball is over, which is in a couple of weeks. Needless to say I am thankful when something gets cancelled, like tonight...NO PLACE TO BE!! Thank God because I don't think I could handle sitting out in the cold. I am not one of those parents that sits in the warm vehicle while their child is out in the cold practicing. I figured if she can do it, I can too. Thankfully there has not been many of the cold practices but there has been alot of the scorching hot ones. I think last year was the absolute worst! It was so hot we were having to keep a cooler with ice & water mixed with Seabreeze (facial cleaner) in order to wipe the girls down with towels to keep them cooled down. Kristyn played catcher so she had all the gear on and I worried constantly about her.

Anyway, life is good and I wouldn't change a thing. My kids will only be little once and I know that once they are grown and gone, I will miss the days of running around constantly and never having a free day. I thank God everyday for the wonderful life that I have. I am truely blessed!!
Hope everyone has a wonderful evening.

Kids, the weekend & Dr Seuss

As you know, I have two girls whom I love more than anything!! Well, they are completely different in looks and personalities. Kristyn is the oldest and she is alot like me in the fact that she tends to not get upset or worked up over alot. She takes life as it comes and just deals with it. She was born with strawberry blond hair (when it finally decided to start coming in) and is tall with long legs. Ryleigh is the youngest and she is a "take charge" kind of person. She is VERY opinionated and will let you know exactly how she feels and what she thinks of any given situation. Be prepared when you ask her opinion!! She looks like me and acts like her dad. :) She is on the short side (like me) and has my dark hair. Anyway....as I am sitting here at the table typing this post, Kristyn is laying in my bed sick. She vomitted until 3:00 this morning...gotta love the stomach virus that has attacked her school! Ryleigh is taking a break from "teaching her students" and is making a pitcher of tea. Life here on the prairie has not been the greatest for the last couple of days. The weather is awful! It is cold, nasty and wet outside and I have a sick kid inside who desperately wants me to let her go to the Valentine's dance at school...Sorry! You can't go to school, you sure can't go to the dance. Not that I had intended on letting her go to school today anyway, but you get the point.

I have a very busy weekend this weekend. Tomorrow the girls have basketball games and we have to be at the school at 7:30 AM!!! uuuggghhh! After that I need to go clean my truck and get some groceries. The hubby has to be at the ball field for the softball/baseball drafts and then I have an Advocare mixer to go to tomorrow evening. Sunday we have church and Ryleigh has softball practice....I have to think of something to do on Monday because the girls are out of school...bad weather day....

This past Monday we had a PTO meeting at Ryleigh's school and since I am the secretary of the PTO, I have to go...anyway...this month we celebrated Dr Seuss' birthday with some of the teachers reading a book (5 in all) and the kids did an activity related to each book....here are some pics of Ryleigh at the activities...Kristyn wasn't interested...afterall, she is in Jr High now.. :)

Listening to "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish"

Eating "green eggs and ham" after listening to the book.


Signing the birthday card for Dr Seuss that will be hung in the school on Dr Seuss' birthday. They listened to "Happy Birthday to You". That is Ry's friend Meghan beside her.

Making her feather headband after hearing "Gertrude McFuzz"

Kristyn and Joseph seem really interested in the book. I think they just came for the snacks!

Well, gotta sign off for now...need to take Ry to basketball practice! Have a great evening!

I LOVE ADVOCARE!!!!!

Do you need more energy?? Want to lose some weight?? Let me introduce you to a great product....ADVOCARE!!

Growing up, I never had a weight problem but once I had kids and then hit 30, my metabolism changed and I put on weight. I could never seem to get the weight off and did not like the way that I looked or felt. I had no energy and did not like the way that my clothes fit. A friend of mine who is a distributor for the Advocare products sent me a sample of the Spark energy drink and I was hooked!! I felt a difference in about 20 min. I did not have the jittery feeling that you get with alot of energy drinks and I did not have the tired effect after the drink wore off (after about 5 hrs). The day after trying the Spark, I set up a meeting with my friend and spent 3 hours talking to her about Advocare. Later that week, I signed up to become a distributor and am well on my way to getting the weight off!!! I started the 24 Day Challenge on 1/24/10. This started with the 10 day cleanse and then went into the weight loss portion of the challenge on 2/3/10. Since 2/3/10, I have lost 4 lbs. I have stopped drinking Dr Pepper and drink water all day. This is a major accomplishment in itself because I never drank anything except Dr Pepper. Since I started with Advocare, my husband has started taking the products along with a guy he works with, and a couple of my friends.

With Advocare not only do I feel better, but I am on my way to becoming debt free. Advocare has a Debtbuster program that is free to Advocare distributors and will help you become debt free also!! By becoming a distributor you get a 20% discount immediately and can work up to as much as a 40% discount. By becoming an Advisor you can earn income 5 different ways. You can also earn bonuses as well as free trips!! Let 2010 be the year that YOU start feeling better!!

Please PRAY!!!

Please pray for a dear family that is loosing their young daughter to a terrible disease, Battens Disease. Little Emma has been fighting this terrible disease for a few years now. Her parents have a blog, Especially Fond Of You, where they have been updating her status among other things. I just read a post from her dad that indicated that she now has pneaumonia and is not doing well. I know that this family has a great faith in God, but nobody wants to loose a child. I just pray that God puts a hedge of protection around this family as they go through such a difficult time. You can get to their blog by clicking on the link that is on the righthand side of my blog.

Also, please pray for my daughters 6th grade class. They lost one of their classmates day before yesterday to a terrible accident. The viewing is tomorrow and the funeral is Sunday.

Wonderful Weekend Recap

What a great weekend! Friday I had to sub at the Jr high andRyleigh had her first basketball practice. Saturday afternoon we went over to Heath and Lisa's house. Heath and Doodle grew up together and Heath's oldest son and our daughter, Kristyn are exactly 1 month apart. Heath's youngest son and our youngest daughter, Ryleigh are 6 months apart. The last time that I had seen Heath's boys was too long ago to remember and the kids had never met. Anyway, we went over there and ate dinner. We got home around 10:00 and I dropped Doodle off at home and then took Kristyn to an all night skate at the skating rink and then I came home and crawled into bed.

I had made another New Year's resolution that I was going to get back into church and I figured there is no time like the present! I had such a great day. Doodle was unable to make it to church because a guy was coming over to buy one of our boats (Thank you Jesus) but Ryleigh and I went (Kristyn was sleeping..recovering from her night out) and after church a little friend of hers came home with us and we went to the grocery store...fun times! The service was great. Our Pastor talked about how we are all given "gifts" and in order to use the gift that we are given we have to be in the will of God and walking the walk. If or when we get out of the will of God (which I must admit I have done lately) the gift is still there for us when we decide to get back into God's will and do what He wants us to do instead of what we feel we need to do. For me, it is so easy for me to say, "I am going to stay home this Sunday, I will go next Sunday", but I don't. When I am in church and I don't mean just going to Sundays, I mean actively involved in church, I can tell such a difference in my life. God has blessed me with a healthy family, the ability to be a stay at home mom, a husband who loves me faults and all and works so hard to provide for our faimly and too many other things to mention. I owe Him so much but I will NEVER be able to repay Him for all that He has done for little, old me....What can I say....I love HIM! Today was the start of me getting my life back into the perfect will of God.

Well, tomorrow I am getting back on my 2010 "clean up and clean out" campaign. I plan on tackleing the laundry room and the dressers and closets....I'll let ya know how that goes... :)

Let The Organizing Begin!!!!

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of my New Years resolutions was going to be to get this house organized....clean up and clean out is my new motto.

Well, in Sundays Houston Chronicle there it was......a brown paperbag with big, bold, black writing, "15% off EVERYTHING you can fit into this bag"....from Office Max!!! Woo Hoo....I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the office supply store!! I have always had a thing for office supplies...all the pens, paper, sticky notes, folders...you get the picture. Needless to say, I ventured out at 9:00 yesterday morning and headed to Office Max with my brown paper bag. I swear, I think I heard the Angels sing when I walked in!! I grabbed my buggy and off I went...this is what I came home with

Excuse the blue rubbermaid box, I put the Christmas tree in it and have not managed to get it into the top of the closet yet. Anyway. Back to Office Max and my organization quest. I ended up getting a filing cabinet (they even gave me 15% off of it even though it wouldn't fit in the bag..lol), a new calculator, label maker (which I absolutely love!), file folders, hanging files, pens, highlighters, a new organizer and refills to go in it, a cute pink leather expandable file with MATCHING file folders!! Then I headed down to Bed, Bath & Beyond. I had never been in that store before but I must say....LOVE IT!! I got 5 black canvas baskets there (they are hard to see in the pic, but they are on top of the file cabinet box). I got home around noon and immediately got started on the hutch that holds some of my scrapbooking supplies (see pic from previous post). Here is the new, organized hutch

As you can see, I put the label maker to use! Now all (or most) of my scrapbooking supplies are located in ONE, organized spot! I want to go back to BB&B to get 2 more of the black baskets to go on the botton shelf and I have another black/white photo box that I am going to transfer the pics from the white, pink, yellow one. Then not only will it be organized and labeled, it will also be color coordinated! Yea, I know it may be a little overboard, but it is driving me crazy that it does not match. That tote and basket on the bottom shelf look so out of place.

I also used the label maker to make folders for all of our important papers (taxes, life insurance policies, bills, bank stmts, titles, etc) and filed them in my new filing cabinet. So far I am on a roll with this organizing quest! I also managed to go through out medicine cabinet and clean it out and reorgainze it. All of the cold meds, pain meds, allergy meds are each in there own container and LABELED!! I did not take a picture of it prior to getting started, but trust me, it was a sight to behold! I looks sooooo much better now. Today I am going to work on cleaning out the kitchen cabinets and reorganizing them. Wish me luck.....Hope you have a great day and stay warm for those of you who are experiencing this ridiculously cold weather....it has not been this cold in our part of Texas in 15 years!!

Wordless Wednesday

Stay tuned....more to come on this tomorrow.....