This is spring?!?!?

Of course, 48 hours later it was all melted. I thought the crazy TV weather people were full of hooey when they were predicting this. Guess I'll pay more attention next time.

A day in the life

A day in the life
Originally uploaded by Qcaller

The China Digital Scrapbooks forum is celebrating its 2nd birthday. There are challenges and prizes and chats, oh my! Today's challenge was to photograph some bits of everyday life. We didn't have to scrap them but I chose to put them all together in one simple page.

I forgot to take my camera to work so the first 3 photos were taken with my camera phone. I was surprised at the decent quality.

--P

Mardi Gras

We had King Cake in honor of Mardi Gras at our noon conference today. Then I got an e-mail from the Boston Globe with today's Big Picture entry on Carnival. Call me crazy but oh how I long to wear one of these costumes:

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COMMENTS
AUTHOR: Chubbie Hubbie
DATE: 03/11/2009 06:25:32 AM
Oh how I long for you to wear one of those costumes... :)
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AUTHOR: Tammy
DATE: 03/02/2009 07:31:35 PM
wow! that's gorgeous, looks so heavy though!! :)
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AUTHOR: Janet Butler
DATE: 02/23/2009 04:47:43 PM
I have a feeling that I might get charged with some sort of indecent exposure if I were to try to wear that! :o)
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AUTHOR: Sharon Adkisson
DATE: 02/23/2009 03:52:36 PM
Wow! What a costume! I don't think you could move in such an outfit, but it sure is enormous and over-the-top flashy gorgeous.
Mom

My Valentine Sweethearts

2009-02-14_BFF
Originally uploaded by Qcaller

Having fun with one of my prizes from the Amazing DigiScrap Race. Also doing a little personal touch up with Photoshop. I didn't have a chance to put on makeup before the wedding last Saturday so I used a little PSE magic to give myself some lipstick and hide my zits.

Life continues on here at the ranch. The kids are enjoying Kindermusik and think Ms. Heather walks on air. Tyler started speech therapy last week. I can't wait to hear what he has to say. Interview season is over at work. Next month we find out who matched with our program. Nadine, Johns, Marvin, and Marilyn died. Amy and Brian got married. Christmas, New Years, Chinese New Years, and Valentine's day all happened. There you go - now you are up to date on life with the Wests.

TTFN
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Sharon Adkisson
DATE: 02/18/2009 01:14:12 PM
Wow, you really condensed a lot of happenings the last 3 months into a very brief description! Yes, I am excited and looking forward to what Tyler will have to say to us (hopefully soon!). He really is trying to talk and put sounds together these days.
Love, Mom

Owii!

The kids are at NaiNai & PoPo's with cousin D so I took the opportunity to sleep in. It was lovely! Thanks family. Got up and made Alex play W11 bowling with me. Then I had to check out all the other W-sports games. Once I was good and worn out, I checked my fitness age (53-yikes). My arms are now pretty achy. I can even feel some burn in my core. Amazing game!

Ok enough fartin around. Time to find a home for all the new Christmas gifts and do a mega purge on all the old dried out markers so the new sets from Santa can invade the house.

Hope your holiday have been delightful.

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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Teresa
DATE: 01/24/2009 04:38:29 PM
we loved the purge fun :) love our Wii too...sounds like you had a great workout :)

A little history meme

10 YEARS AGO:

I was newly married to the guy now known as The Ex and newly transplanted from Oregon to Nevada, Missouri (pronounced nuh-VAY-duh muh-ZUR-ah) with the plan of going back to college. I still miss Oregon. We lived with The Ex’s mom and had a really miserable time. She was great. He was a total slug. I finally forced the issue and got a job in Kansas City. The Ex finally got himself enrolled in school and we found a shitty little studio apartment to live in. After hearing about the second assault in the hallway we moved to a better class of poor neighborhood and carried on.

5 YEARS AGO:

I met the wonderful man who would become The Best Husband in the World ™ (TBHITW). I was stage managing a show for a community theater and he was an actor. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out why I continued to live with The Ex. We were worlds apart and barely living as roommates. Basically he lived in the computer room in the back of the house. He worked 2^nd shift as a chef-in-training and hung out online til the wee hours of the morn. I occupied the front of the house and worked normal office hours. Although we still shared a bed our sleep schedule only overlapped by a couple hours at most. I started waking up at 4 and 5 in the morning and going to work 6 or 7 (instead of my normal 8:30 or 9:00) because I was so unhappy. Getting to know TBHITW reminded me that I was a person of value and needed to get out of that horrible situation.

I must pause a moment here to say that The Ex has turned out to be a rather decent human being. He even sent a donation to the LingLing fund. He and I were a horrible match. A bad case of friends getting married because that’s what everyone else was doing at the time. I think he truly loved me but I never loved him with the same depth. I did a huge disservice to him by going forward with a marriage I knew in my heart to be a mistake. Getting divorced was probably the best thing we ever did for each other. I found TBHITW and he has gone on to success in Minneapolis.

1 YEAR AGO:

TBHITW and I had chosen to adopt from Nepal and were settling in for the wait until our 4^th anniversary so we could submit our paperwork; however, we were starting to hear rumors of instability in the adoption program and general instability in the government. Within a few months the king would dismiss the entire government and we would dismiss the dream of adopting a little brown boy and seeing Mt. Everest on our adoption trip. I still have a soft spot in my heart for that country and still hope to travel there someday. Perhaps we’ll combine that with a heritage tour of China someday.

YESTERDAY:

Set up my new gmail account while trying to get motivated to get some work done. In the evening, my girlfriends and I made about 1500 cream cheese mints for SV & BC’s wedding.

TOMORROW:

I will go to work and earn my keep. In the evening I will clean sis-in-law’s house as part of our adoption fundraising efforts.

5 things I would do with a million bucks:

100K to God first, buy a big old house on Briarcliff, set up trusts for LingLing and the Godson, bankroll someone’s dream, quit work to become a full-time home schooler.

5 places I’d like to visit:

British Isles, Norway/Sweden/Denmark (I always think of that as one place), Nepal, Constantinople/Istanbul, Chile

5 bad habits:

reading blogs into the wee hours, not finishing things, not playing with my dogs enough, not washing my face at night, thinking about my angst so much I forget to be a good friend to my people

5 things I will never wear:

bikini, fringe, ruffles, sailor collars, anything smaller than a D cup

even after reduction surgery (which would be item #6 after the $ windfall above)

5 biggest joys at the moment:

anticipating meeting LingLing, setting up the nursery, scratching my dogs behind their ears, reading mom blogs, finding a store around the corner that carries large and luscious bras (bought a cute pink lace 34 HH last week - the girls are happy)