Still in that draught

Well, it's been three months since I posted and I'm sure anyone who used to follow this blog no longer does. :) BUT I do have some stuff I want to say here in a while. I'm updating the family blog with stories and pictures (lots of pictures) and even some video of our time in Wyoming while BigDaddy was down in Alabama. A lot of stuff is going on in my head in regards to missions and Lost and Found Ministries and America and politics and Truth (as in, the absolute Truth...the Source of Truth) and all sorts of stuff.

Picture me standing in a money booth trying to grab and organize the dollar bills flying around. That's a pretty good picture still of me trying to get my thoughts on everything organized and tied together. I'm holding a bunch of pieces of rope and I know at some point they all weave together I'm just not sure exactly where and how that all happens yet. :)

When I catch up on the family blog then I will come over here and try to sort out some of those thoughts and share them. :)

Blogging draught

Well....I have been wanting to upate both blogs with pictures and video and stories....but between The SB's teething (MOLARS!!!), his first little cold, my sore throat, lack of sleep and trying to get ready to go on vacation....it's just not happening. I might get it done tomorrow, but I might not. And if it doesn't happen tomorrow, it's going to be a while before I can get it done. So to all two or three of my regular readers (ha ha) I apologize!

I.....

Courtney stole this from Amber, who stole this from Carrie and I am stealing it from Courtney. :)

I AM ... so incredibly blessed.
I WANT ... to live close to family.
I HAVE ... lots to do before I can leave for Texas next week.
I WISH ... I had little magic housecleaning elves.
I HATE ... feeling sleep deprived.
I FEAR ... fear itself :)
I HEAR ... Sean throwing a bit of a fit.
I SEARCH ... for good deals online.
I DON'T THINK ... we will be moving this year.
I REGRET ... not being better about taking pictures when I'm out with friends/family.
I LOVE ... my family and my dogs *wink.
I ACHE ... for mistreated children.
I AM NOT ... motivated to do housework today.
I DANCE ... for The SB to make him giggle.
I SING ... loudly in the car...by myself.
I NEVER ... like to admit my weaknesses.
I RARELY ... cook.
I CRY WHEN ... something hurts my heart.
I AM NOT ALWAYS ... a good steward of my time.
I HATE THAT ... our society is so me-based.
I'M CONFUSED ABOUT ... what to do for The SB's first birthday.
I NEED ... to do laundry!!!!
I SHOULD ... buck up little camper and get stuff done today despite my exhaustion.

I went with the Little Black Dress

Many of you know I had a big debate on which dress to wear for the Nutcracker. It has been a while since I've been dress shopping like this. Last year the only dress I needed was for the STRATCOM Ball and I was pregnant, so my options were Motherhood Maternity which had two or maybe three to choose from, tops...makes choosing a dress very easy.

My situation this year is a little different. :-) JC Penney was having a phenomenal sale on their holiday dresses so I took The SB there and met up with Lucy and KJBeth. We were there for three or maybe even four hours! Yiiiiikes! That's a LOT of dress-trying-on!! The SB was SO good. He started to lose his joy towards the end, but so did I. ha ha ha

I must have tried on at least 20 dresses and had it narrowed to three that I couldn't choose between. A gorgeous silver dress (that I had to go to another JCP to get in the right size...), a satin little black dress or a black and gold lace overlay dress. I loved the silver one for this occasion, the black one because it seemed to be the most flattering, and Lucy preferred the lace overlay. I got all three of them to bring home and try on and see what BigDaddy thought and then had plans to return the other two.

I tried them on and had him take pictures (which I later deleted because...well....I wasn't excited about how they looked. ha!) and he said the silver was the least flattering, the black one was "boring" and the lace overlay was the best of the three.

I looked at the pictures and sadly agreed about the silver one. It had kind of a square shaped top that made me look....well...square. But between the other two, I preferred the little black dress.

So...I put the pictures up in the Ju Ju Be Pink Room (yep, that's the diaper bag board community of moms and other JJB fans) and asked for their opinions. :)

The little black dress won in a landslide.

I tried them all on again. Still WANTED the silver one to be the best, but it just doesn't work on me. :( Sad. Such a gorgeous dress! The lace overlay fit very well, but I just didn't love it. :( Back to the little black dress.

(Can you believe all of this over what dress to wear to a ballet matinee?? I'm nuts).

And then when BigDaddy's family came out, I tried them all on for Granny M, knowing I could trust her honest opinion. AND the little black dress won hands down!

Little black dress it is...and because of the sale I got around 60% off!!! It almost feels wrong to spend so little on such a nice satin dress...ALMOST. ha ha

So, here it is, with a little cropped sweater jacket and 4" gorgeous sparkly stiletto heels I vowed NEVER to wear again after my toes went numb from walking in them at the ballet...

Double posting

This post will show up on both of my blogs because I'm not sure if I have the same reading crowd on both but ALL of you need to know about this!!! (And no worries, this is WAY better than just winning an Ergo carrier).

I have mentioned on this blog for sure and maybe on the family one as well a blog I keep up with called My Charming Kids, written by "MckMama" (who, by the way, I want to live next door to! ha). Without going into a lot of detail, her family has experienced a TRUE healing miracle with the birth of their newest son, who is just over a month old now. You can read more about that here by scrolling down and reading the introduction she has for each of her family members on the right side.

Well.....she is hosting a giveaway/raffle/fund raiser all in one!!

All of you photographers need to pay close attention.....the prize centers around a Canon Digital Rebel XSi....but there is soooo much more to it! The fundraiser part comes in that EVERY penny raised in the raffle goes to support three different organizations that are close to her heart. String of Pearls, No Hands but Ours, and The Elison Project. Anyway, I won't say anymore....you need to click on the button on the side of my blog (or this one below):



Once you get there and read all the details, click on the "chip in" and get your ticket(s) for a chance to win a great camera while donating to an amazing fundraiser! The contest goes through the 14th of the month!!

Lots of stuff....

Alllllrighty!

Man it's been a long time since I actually REALLY posted something on here aside from a contest or a giveaway!! So, what have I been up to??? I hoped you would ask.... :)

So, my last post was telling y'all to go vote...and I hope you did. I'm sure it's no shock to most of you that I was highly disappointed in the election results...and continue to be so as our president elect chooses his cabinet. However, I'm done pouting and am praying for him, his advisers and our country.

Ummmm.....let's see....what else....

I have been organizing, filing and shredding BOXES of papers. I like to think I'm an organized person and mostly I am. But some of you who think I do an awful lot of cleaning and organizing would be appalled to peek into a few closets or the desk or filing cabinet! I hate to say it out loud (or type it out loud I guess) but I hadn't properly filed a single bill since we moved in two years ago!! Yikes! It took a few days....and to be brutally honest there are still some things that need sorting and filing. HOWEVER, all of our bills and important paperwork has been taken care of. And I had a huge box of things to be shredded....and tiny little cute "pretend" shredder that requires things to be trifolded before they can fit in the shredding slot.


I also attended a Ju Ju Be trunk show. What is this, you ask? Well...I have mentioned in the past how much I love Ju Ju Be diaper bags....seriously the only brand I will ever own/buy again and I can look you straight in the face and say they are worth EVERY penny on the price tag! (Not to mention, they donate part of the profit off each bag purchased retail to breast cancer research!) So....they are a smallish company that isn't very old and so it can be hard to find a good variety of their bags in boutiques and stores in a lot of areas, so they do "trunk shows" which is where the rep shows up with a bunch of different bags and patterns and does demonstrations, there is usually a discounted price on the bags, maybe some giveaways and some little freebies. For those of us who are JJB addicts, it is a wonderfully fun time to check out everything we haven't seen before in real life!

So, that great little boutique I told you about a couple months ago called Milkworks?? They hosted a trunk show and you can bet your booties that I went! And it was fun. :-) I bought a Christmas present for someone and a couple BeQuicks to use for various things.

I also hang out on a message board for Ju Ju Be and so I took some pictures of the different bags to post on there to share the love. :-) Here are some of those pics....

(The BeQuicks laying flat on the table in all the different patterns and the MiniBe's propped up against the window)

(BePrepared, BeRightBack and BeSpicy)


And along these same lines....(I'm almost done with the diaper bag talk...I promise...) I won the Real Mom Giveaway from the Ju Ju Be website!!!!! Every single week, they have a giveaway. Sometimes they ask for recipes or ideas and sometimes it's traditions or memories. I nearly lost it when I opened my message to see that I had won!

And what does winning mean??? ANY diaper bag from their line that I want in ANY color/pattern it comes in!!! Woah! So I went with the BePrepared in Black and Silver. My reason being that it's a large bag that I wouldn't be able to justify purchasing on my own, but one that would sure be nice to have when I needed a big bag for an overnight trip, road trip, babysitter stay....etc. And they have some fantastic patterns, but since I plan on keeping this bag forever, I didn't want to get a pattern or color scheme I would get bored with or lose the love for, so I figured Black and Silver is great. (Aside from it being Raiders colors...hmmmm) And here are some pictures of this lovely bag that I have already used once! :-)



Ok, enough of Ju Ju Be talk. :)

BigDaddy and I went out on our first "date" since The SB was born a couple weekends ago. We went with another couple to dinner and a movie. The SB stayed at Lucy's house. He did great and they loved having him. :-) I was sure he would cry when we left or when he realized we were gone, but Lucy said there was not one tear shed! Yay!

We went to Granite City for dinner which was spectacular. Roberto was absolutely cracking us up. I hadn't seen either him or his wife since last year's Christmas party and I had forgotten how fun they are. We walked over to the new digital theater and watched the new Bond movie and I was actually really surprised that I liked it! I had never seen any other James Bond movies, but I might go back and watch the last one!

And I'll start bringing this monster long post to a close here. :) I just have to tell you all that I got a GREAT deal on a new camera on Amazon during their black friday sale. It is Christmas for me!! I got a Canon PowerShot SD70IS and it came in the mail TODAY! I love it. It is cute, compact, takes great pictures, has a quick reaction time and has more features than I can read about in one evening! I mostly just played around with it....I'll read and figure out how to use it better another day. :-) The first pictures taken with it were of....The SB, of course!


This is RomRat in mid air, jumping up towards me...he's got a good solid foot and a half between him and the floor when I snapped this!

Oh, one more thing....after we went and had 9 month pictures taken of The SB, I came home all inspired to decorate for Christmas because it snowed last night. It was a much much longer process than I had anticipated, having never decorated with a VERY busy 9 month old little boy before. What should have only taken an hour at the most dragged on into almost four hours of decorating and rearranging. Initially I was sipping on eggnog (I had NEVER tasted it before today), listening to Josh Groban's Christmas album and having a ball...by the end I was tired and frazzled and ready for it to be DONE!!

But now, as I sit here in my jammies in the dimly lit (and mostly clean) living room, I am very glad I put the four hours into it because I am enjoying the twinkling lights and nativity scene and stockings and...well....here it is

(We went with the little tree up on a table to be a little more baby proof...)

And presents behind the babygate so they would survive til Christmas Eve...

And our stockings!

The entertainment center....

A closer view of my hand-made Polish nativity set from Elim Christian Center in Lwowek Slaski, Poland. (And I happen to know where you can get yourself one like it if you want! *wink)

And a closer view....

Ergo Baby Carrier Giveaway!

Someday I will get back to actually "talking" on here...but I have to tell you all about this GREAT giveaway!!!! I have one of these and LOOOOOOOVE LOVE LOVE it. :)

Win a Free Organic Embroidered Ergo Baby Carrier Hands Free System from Along for the Ride

Go check it out!! :)