To my baby, on her fourth birthday.

I cannot believe you are four. (Do all moms say this on every birthday that each child will ever celebrate? Probably so.)
You and me - we've had our ups and downs. You have been the guinea pig in this whole experiment called motherhood I am in. Your fevers have been the ones I have agonized over - to call the doc and look like a lunatic, or not call him and have you die of some unheard of disease? You were the one who had to endure hundreds of different kinds and sizes and brands of diapers till we found one that worked! You are the one who has brought me to the very core of my being searching for the strength to get through the next day{hour-ten minutes - thirty seconds}...
You are the one who first spoke the words "i love you momma" to me, and with those four words brought me instantly to my knees in tears. You are the first human being I have ever taught correct toilet habits to. Or the english language to from scratch.
Yours is the cry - laugh-voice-hair I can pick out over any crowd - from almost any distance.
You were the first person to instill a deep sense of terror the first time I could not find you after you wandered away from me in the store.
{And you better not EVER tell her this, but you are the reason I suddenly understood Memaw's seemingly irrational fear of the fifteen foot height of the second level of the mall when you went to look over the railing. My whole life I never understood how such a small distance could create such a fear. Now I do.}
I feel like we have reached a milestone this year, without me truly even thinking about it.
Today you became my little girl, no longer my baby.
This year you will perform in a ballet recital, swim by yourself, play with the neighborhood kids in someone else's back yard till the sun sets lazily on those long summer nites.
This year I will buy you a special backpack and a shiny new outfit (or five) and send you off to preschool.
You will come home excited to show me all the amazing wonderful things you are learning in school, from your teacher, from your new friends.
and I will be happy for you - oh so happy my baby girl. You will be growing up and getting even more of a taste of this wonderful thing called life. I know you will live it out loud. You have been since almost this exact moment, on this exact nite, four years ago, in a little white room, in a circular hospital tower room.
I was in a place beyond pain. My eyes were clenched shut(I remember this cause I never knew why they turned all the lights off - figured it out once I watched the video later). Your daddy was on my side whispering encouragement to me, just sharing his gentle strength with me. But I knew I had to leave that place and go beyond myself to reach out and take hold of you and push you from me, and into this world. Part of me wanted to keep you tucked inside me forever - my baby - forever protected from anything bad. Always next to me. Always mine.
But that isn't love.
Love is letting go. Letting you make your own choices.
So from a place deep deep inside me - You were born. We did not know you would be our baby girl. I didn't even really realize you had been born - so relieved was I from the pressure of pushing you out that I didn't realize what the relief meant.
I finally opened my eyes and there you were on my chest. This tiny little scrawny wet little birdlike creature. And you weren't crying. You opened your big huge eyes and looked right into mine - and I said - "hi baby, I'm your mommy, and I love you so much. I am so glad you are here."
And it was just our moment. It forever will be.
The nurses started clamoring - what did you have what is it? Look!!!!
And I am sorry to say - I had no idea what I was looking at. My first thoughts were oh no we are having one of those babies that end up on Dr. Phil hating their parents for making the wrong decision. I started sobbing. They all shouted - its a GIRL!!!!
and I looked at your daddy and he was sobbing and we were both so happy to have you - our Kealey Grace-Elisabeth.
Your name means God's promise of a beautiful gift.
We knew it fit you perfectly the moment you were born.
Some days have been more like white elephant gifts - where you want to trade up with the person holding the quiet baby, or the baby who went by the books. But those days are all worth it now - looking at the absolutely sweet, precious, fun, silly little girl you have become.
You are my beautiful gift from God, baby girl.
This is going to be a fun year, I promise you.
I cannot wait for all the memories we will make this year, all the fun things we will learn and do together.
You make me smile and laugh EVERY SINGLE DAY.

I love you forever.
I'll like you for always.
As long as I'm living,
my baby you'll be.
(from your favorite nigh-nigh book)

Just take me out back and shoot me now

Cause this old cow is DONE. I am so sick. I do not even know how i am sitting upright long enough to type this stupid post. I have not been this sick in a long time. Something is desperately wrong with the innerworkings of my body, but at this point I am too far gone to even care. What makes it worse is that the whole family is sick with it. Between ben and I we are trying to take shifts in bed to gather enough energy to try to keep this place from falling completely apart. The house is a mess, I am a mess, everything is a mess. And I just do'nt care. I do'nt have the energy to.
If you are the praying type - please offer one up for us gimpies over here.
Cause only the Good Lord knows how we are gonna make it through this weekend unless some SERIOUS health and healing smacks us all on the head.
I have so much to do.
I am overwhelmed.
I just want to go crawl back into bed. for a long long long time.

I hope you are all having better weekends than this.
Any thoughts or tips on how to get over this crappy cruddy cold/throat infection/random high fever stuff - leave themhere - taking any and all suggestions!

Will be happier later - I promise!

Terra

Ok this is more like it!

Two days? i can do two days. Cause they were two DANG COLD semi busy days.

I am completely uninspired today.
I have laughed a lot reading the crazy action over at Gina's CT board. There are some CRAZY gals in there - shout outs to all y'all - you know who you is and why you made me laugh today.
Every day I should say.

I love people who are REAL and genuine. Sure they sometimes attract stalkers, and that is ok too. But i love that sense of reality that shines from within them. No complications, no gimmicks, just what ya see is what ya get.

I should be doing work. Or if not work, at least doing some CT scrapping. But I have no desire for either.

I just feel like I want to go back to bed. I hope to the good Lord that I am not coming down with something. Cause if it is gonna start off this slow, it is going to build to a full steam. Like a two week type deal.
I cannot deal with that right now!

I am just in a blah mood. don't want to do much of ANYTHING. it is very strange. the house is semi clean cause we had company last nite. There is really nothing to do. except the aforementioned items which have already been ixnayed for today.

gross. just gross. Gross that i just ate like seven buffalo chicken pieces for lunch. Oh sure, they were good at the time, but now they are just sort of - sitting there - in my stomach, taking up space and not digesting.

Why am I discussing this on my blog?

I need to make my blogprettier. How many times do i say that?

I need to take a deep breath.

T

oh my gosh a whole week????

Surely I have updated in a week!?!?! This can't be TRUE.
oh heavens. no wonder I am losing my faithful readership right and left.

i have so much work to do to spruce this little place up.

tired of it. know it can be so much cuter, even if it IS blogger. gotta work at that!

Anyways - why is it that when the weather outside is ungodly freezing (we are supposed to reach a HIGH temp today of 6. SIX WHOLE DEGREES. For all my tropical friends, that is FRICKING A COLD.) - anyways , the weather is freezing and i just want to hibernate. I do not want to DO a thing. I feel like I am moving through jello. and i have even had two mochas today. No wonder bears just call it a season and curl up in a cave. They got the right idea fo shizzle.

So.....
going to attempt to figure out the web pic thing.....

Coming up in two short weeks will be Miss Kealey's 4th birthday. Think back to your birthdays - do you remember your fourth? I do, my hubby does, most people I have asked do. Why is this?
Well anyways - since it is a memorable birthday for whatever reason, I really want to do it cute.
But two hundred dollars for the ULTIMATE birthday party kit???? Yikes.
Convince me to do it. I mean, this is one AWESOME Tinkerbell party, don't get me wrong. But I just dropped a LARGE chunk O change on the girls' portraits. I cannot wait to get them back. Totally sobbing through the whole photographer's presentation slideshow of all the pics of the girls. I can't even begin to describe it to you so I won't. Just prepare to be blown away on the 11th or thereabouts of March when I get them back!

So anyways - on top of that money, and the taxes still being screwed up (I don't think I blogged about that, but basically my tax statement reflects about $17K more than I actually made. Just a simple mathematical error I a sure! grrrrrrrr) - I just - can't quite bring myself to do it. But you all know how suggestable I am!!!
Make me want to do it! Cause I want to cave and do it really bad.

What else....
Hmmm this cold is freezing my brain. So I have had to do like THREE All About Me pages in the last 72 hours. I am getting REAL sick of scrapping myself. But - here they are, since these are like the only layouts I have produced lately! And I have so much cute new stuff between the Shabby Shoppe re=open and some new stuff from Gina and a few other fave designers!!!
GRRRR - When will I get time to just sit and scrap when I want to???????

So this first one is for Digi Scrap Divas - YES - I was asked to be on the CReative Team there! I am SOOOOO excited about this opportunity! I love that place And now to be part of the team that helps make it what it is???? TOOOO much fun! Had to slap this one together entirely too fast for my liking. So there is something off about it, but not quite sure what. Probably my picture - HA HA HA. Anyways. this is the January Mega Kit from all the DSD Designers An absolutely huge kit with all my fave colors. Could not love this kit more. This one on top of the awesome Digi Chick New Designers one, on TOP of the like thirty five Valentine's kits I bought (Heather Ann anyone???) - good lord. I shoulda taken at least a full card (500+) pics of Valentines pics. Alas I did not. Guess I will have to find Valentiney type crap to scrap about!


This one was for JAn Crowley's team. Now I just love this girl. She is so cute and genuine and hello - you would never in a hundred years guess the chick had just had a baby. I mean like, 48 hours before. She amazes me. So anyways, she asked us to do a page about ten things we love about ourselves. I realize the journaling is suckily small. So here is a link to the page at TDC, so all you snoop scrappy dogs can read it. *cause let's admit it - the only reason we buy scrap magazines is to read the sordid journaling on everyone else's page*
And lastly - I guess this one wasn't required. And I did it BEFORE I HAD to do these other two. I just needed to get some stuff out of my head and onto paper. And I used this paper I designed myself *i had some help*. It is nothing noteworthy, but I LOVE how it turned out, and it just fit my page so perfectly.
This one isn't posted anywhere else, cause it was just sort of a page for me and my blog. Whatever. It is somewhat inspirational to me. I am thinking about printing it out and sticking it here by the computer, cause it reminds me to focus.

And yes I am now officially sick of looking at my own mug here on my blog.


Anyways.

got some good paper scrapping stuff the last few days. at TARGET of all places. Cute cute monogram magnets in the dollar spot. And tons of other cute magnets. My office magnet boards from Ikea are now plastered with cute magnets. Are they helping me organize in any way shape or form? No, but they LOOK darn cute! If anyone sees an excess of "K" monogram magnets could you pick me up some and send them my way? I will gladly paypal you!
I also got some new foam alpha and heart flower stamps from making memories along with a cute paint set at target last nite, then went to a special Archiver's event this morning and got fifty more dollars worth of paper crap to add to my collection. I might even use it someday. Someday when it isn't twenty below zero in my basement scrap area.

I am sitting here freaking out over having to clean the house for our company tomorrow nite, so I should sign off and get on that.

Hopefully I will be better this week about updating and will scrap some NON - ME pics soon to get these ones outta here!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Come to Gina's chat tonite at SBB - be there or be square!!!! You do'nt wanna miss winning one of her AWESOME new paper cd's!!!!

Check you all later!!!

T

{Catchin Up}

Feel like I am finally catching up - on life, on laundry, on cleaning, on sleep...
and of course just when i feel like this, everyone gets sick. I have been dealing with horrific gastic issues from both end of the digestive system from both kids ALL WEEK. And darling hubby goes to play poker all nite. how sweet.
I am in SERIOUS need of retail therapy right now.
I have bought a few new cute kits - which i LOVE - but right now i am needin the BIG TIME. I am So close to heading up to costco to plunk down the cashola for the laptop. Is this bad of me???
Tomorrow I finally get some "quiet time" as kealey likes to call it - time alone for mommy. The girls are going to see "queerious george" (kealey's stab at curious) I guess maybe he is queerious too. You never know about those cheeky monkeys!!
Anyways - mom and dad are coming to take little chitlins to movie and probably spend the nite with them, so i MIGHT get a date nite out of it! but if i do'nt, I will be at the awesome Miss Julie Howard's chat at DSD on Saturday nite. Sounds like fun. I love chat/crops. If you do too, read about Julie's here. Hope to see ya there!
So tonite is the awesome chat/crop at TDC. I tell ya, that place is really picking up again and it is awesome. There are SO MANY great designers there! My friends Kimberly Giarrusso and Jan Crowley are selling their awesome designs there. I am so blessed to be on both their teams. Awesome awesome ladies.
So anyways...

I am excited for my day of quiet tomorrow, have about six hours of unzipping to do here.... (ugh, my almost least favorite digi task - right next to the pain of uploading and typing credits for each layout!!!), gonna curl up with a beer and a good movie tonite by my lonesome, and dream of my new creating machine - it will be mine someday...

Can anyone tell me how you do like webshots as pics? in your blog entries? I am guessing it is going to entail something utterly time consuming and ridiculous such as saving as, uploading to photobucket and then pasting code in here....(do i sound like the world's laziest person today or what???? geez)
anyways...

I will leave you with this hilarious FW FW FW: email from my sissy poo. We both hate forwards. Never forward them on. But this one had me DYING laughing. My apologies to those of you who have seen this before -but I hope you still get at least a little laugh out of it! {Editor's Note - I apologize for the language on some of it - but for some of them, it just makes them that much more humorous - so in they will stay for now!!! Just laugh - life is short!!!}


1. People who point at their wrist while asking for the time.... I know where my watch is pal, where the hell is yours? Do I point at my crotchwhen I ask where the toilet is?

2. People who are willing to get off their ass to search the entire roomfor the T.V. remote because they refuse to walk to the T.V. and change the channel manually.

3. When people say "Oh you just want to have your cake and eat it too".Damn right! What good is cake if you can't eat it?

4. When people say "it's always the last place you look". Of course itis. Why the hell would you keep looking after you've found it? Do people do this? Who and where are they? Gonna Kick their asses!

5. When people say while watching a film "did you see that?". No Loser,I paid $12 to come to the cinema and stare at the damn floor.

6. People who ask "Can I ask you a question?".... Didn't really give mea choice there, did ya sunshine?

7. When something is 'new and improved!'. Which is it? If it's new, thenthere has never been anything before it. If it's an improvement, thenthere must have been something before it, couldn't be new.

8. When people say "life is short". What the hell?? Life is the longestdamn thing anyone ever does!! What can you do that's longer?

9. When you are waiting for the bus and someone asks "Has the bus come yet?". If the bus came would I be standing here, dumbass?

Oh I am laughing all over again just putting them in here!

I have done a TON of layouts the last few days. But didnt want to flood any galleries this morning, so I spread them all out over my three main galleries - TDC, DSD, and SBB. (what is up with the acronyms in this hobby???) Anyways - three were for my grandma's b-day yesterday. i whipped them up, shipped them off to costco, my mom picked them up and drove them up to milwaukee in new frames for grandma. She loved them all. What an awesome gift to be able to share. Without further ado - here are the grandma pages.

This one uses Gina Miller Polka Papers in Punchy and some Jen wilson elements from the alphabet pack. Available at SBB. Inked edging by Nancy Rowe Janitz at Scrap Artist. Used a built in DIP filter on all the pics.














This one below uses the DSD mega kit for January. An absolutely HUGE awesome kit from all the DSD designers. The stamp is from a Ashley Olson Hot for You kit at Modscraps.























This last grandma layout uses the beautiful Napa Valley kit by Kimberly Giarrusso available at The Digi Chick. I just cannot say enough about how gorgeous this kit is. well paper pack and element pack - but both are equally awesome.













And that folks - is all she wrote for today.
I have a ton of other layouts to post. But i don't wanna make this post three miles long.

Needin to spice up the blog o rama a little bit. toying around with possibly moving to typepad????

nahhh - maybe i won't... dunno.

Anyhoo
have a fantabulous weekend. I will post more saturday and sunday you can bet -so if you are bored - peek in here - i will have some mindless drivel for you to read i am sure!!

C-YAAAAA

Terra

Random As Usual

ohhhhhh so mad i am green like the incredible hulk!!!! Blogger lost my draft from last nite!
I suppose it isn't ALL bad since it was written at like midnite and it was mostly random gibberish to begin with... but MAN that is frustrating...
Anyhoo.
I am in a creative mood today. If it weren't freaking ten below zero in my basement I would be down there creating more. I actually did brave it for almost an hour this morning, bundled up the kidlets and went downstairs to the frozen tundra. Made a few shrinky dink elements that i have yet to bake, UTEE'ed a chipboard element (my heat gun woudln't even heat up that is how cold it was), organized my cute stamps into my cute stamp organizer, then stopped having feeling in my fingers so we trudged upstairs and went for some healthy McD's. I hate when they advertise their new toys and get little kids all hyped up "oh looky - we have strawberry shortcake toys!!!! PAY ASTRONOMICAL PRICES FOR OUR HAPPY MEALS SO YOU CAN HAVE ONE TOO!!!!!" So you fall prey to it, only to be given a leftover piece of crap RAVEN toy from earlier this summer. Are you kidding me???? Had I not driven to the McDonald's in my houseslippers i woulda gone in there and DEMANDED my strawberry shortcake toy darn it!
Ok deep cleansing breaths -- wooooo saaaaaaa, woooo ssaaaaaaaa........

and we're calm.

here is my other random thought for today - two songs that WITHOUT FAIL make me laugh out loud - Baby Got Back and The Bad Touch (the discovery channel song). I do not know why I laugh at these utterly crass songs, but no matter what I always giggle out loud whenever I hear "Oh my god becky LOOK at her butt. I know = she looks like one-a those rap guys, girlfriends...but,,,you know, who understands those rap guys...."
HA HA HA HA HA.....too funny. Takin it back to the old school there.

Ok back to this century, I did some layouts today!

If you want full credit details, please visit my main gallery here at DSD.

Otherwise, these first three are all by Gina Miller, the first two using her new It's My Life kit and elements, and the third one using her new Dew Drop kit and elements, and her Perfectly Imperfect Stitches pack ( LOVE THOSE THINGS!!!) All available HERE.

The next few that I did were using some fab stuff from Kim Hill, available at CGEssentials.com , her personal store. The colors of this kit I used, LIttle Ladybug, are truly unbelievably bright and vibrant! I love it!

And Lastly I did this one for a challenge at DSD by Julie Howard, to use a different graphic space than we usually scrap in. This was actually quite a challenge for me - I do not think rectangularly at all, and it probably took me longer to do this layout than most of my larger square ones! I guess I am just hip to be square, but it was sure fun to try this!

This is using stuff from Michelle Underwood's Carnival kit, available at Scrapbook Bytes also. The stamp alpha is by Michelle Coleman, and I BELIEVE I got that at Scrap Artist. I was very bad in my early days about keeping track of that sort of thing!

anyways - I think that is about it for this exciting episode of mi vida loca.

Oh my gosh I gotta do my joy list layout too. I think I need some exciting new notebook paper stuff from darling Gina!!!! Might wanna run and snatch that up yourself!

Speaking of dear Gina - if you REALLY REALLY like her stuff, you might wanna be stalking her blog the next few days! She has a surprise in store!!! There is a link conveniently located on the upper left hand side!

And OH MY GOSH have you seen this?

I am dying. No I have died and gone to heaven. I must have that. MUST. It screams my name.

I aslo know of another very fun CT call coming up VERY VERY soon from my good friend Kimberly Giarrusso. Watch her blog for it!! You wo'nt wanna miss it!

I will bid you all farewell - hope you have a fantastic weekend!

Terra