Homecoming!!!

Praise the Lord! My brother is home with his twin boys and his wife after fifteen months in Iraq!!!!

Sunday Scrappin'

Amy came up with this cool meme where people share their craft ta-das and to-dos for the week. Go here to check out lots of other awesome creations...

I have a goal of 200 pages this year...to keep current and when I have time, go back and work on 2003. I've now scrapped 149 pages and am in December of 2003, in part helped by these awesome scrap nights at a local scrapbooking store where me and my scrappin' sistas go to scrap from late afternoon until midnight.

Here we are at the one from last month. The far left is Toni from In The Midst of This Season; next to her is Wani from Wani's World, then my snizzle-sis Leah, and me. Not pictured is our friend Kara from My Train of Thought Has Derailed. We have so much fun at these things, snacking, laughing and scrapping.

So anyway, we had another all night crop Friday where I scrapped seven pages....

This one is the next two pages of last week's black and pink layout.

We're supposed to share our goals for the coming week, but the only goals I ever seem to have is just to scrap whenever I have time. Not very glamorous, but it works for me!

Bees may be a beautiful part of God's creation, but they are also mean little....

Yesterday I ran five miles. I just had to say that because I'm kinda in shock myself.

OK, over Labor Day, me and the fam spent the long weekend at my Grandma's in Ohio. (The one that has the lake). Since she's in the country, most of her grass is clover and the bees are all over the ground, busily collecting pollen. This summer, several children got bee stings from stepping on bees and we found that toothpaste smeared on the sting immediately soothes pain. Who knew?

Anyway, I was the adult in charge of watching the kids swim one day. I walked to the shed to get a floaty, watching the ground carefully for bees as usual. Then OWWW! I was in disbelief as I fell to the ground, clutching my right foot that now sported a swollen, angry red sting. The kids all gathered around me in fascination, watching my face carefully to make sure I wasn't going to start crying which would make it imperative for them to panic. But one thing I learned as a flight attendant was the ability to keep my face impassive, even if the plane was going down and we were all going to die. Couldn't let them see my fear you know! So I kept my expression as bland as possible and my rocking back and forth in pain to a minimum. Besides, I felt uncomfortable with their little faces so close to my unshaved legs (hey, I was on vacation...showering, shaving, and/or grooming is optional!).

So as you can imagine, when I got to my feet, I was especially careful. My nose was almost to the ground as I kinda stoop-walked, hunchback-style, back to my chair. One minute later, pain radiated from the bottom of my OTHER foot. Wha...?!? No way did I get stung again! I was watching every square inch of ground that my foot stepped on! But when I turned my foot over, THE BEE WAS STILL IN IT! Folks, my fear of insects affected me not at all as I grabbed the sucker, squishing him all over me and pulling the stinger and clear, stringy bee-venom from my foot.

Well, I smeared toothpaste on the stings and the pain subsided. It wasd=n't as bad as I would have expected and I soon forgot about them.

Until the middle of the night.

I woke at 2 am to an itch that was deep, painful and all-encompassing. In fact, I couldn't sleep one more minute that night, but just writhed in agony while BD slept peacefully beside me. I was having an allergic reaction, something I'd never had before, but has come upon me in my old age! Well, I was in misery for the next couple of days, hobbling around like a cripple and finally binding and taping my "injured feet". Everyone was laughing at me as I wound the medical tape around and around my feet and propped them up on a folding chair. BD snapped a picture of me. They were laughing, but in the end I think they just wished I would stop whining about my measly little bee stings. Anyway, I don't know if you can see my bandages well and I'm sure it doesn't look as funny as it was to my family, but use your imagination...

But come on! Really, what are the chances?

Sunday Scrappin'

I scrapped seven pages this week. Here are three of them...

Carmel or caramel?

BD loves to try new, ethnic, local places to eat. It's a habit I've grown to love too. Tonight we were going to try a new Cajun place, but since it was closed we ended up going to a Mediterranean restaurant. It was really good even though I couldn't pronounce most of the items. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when I looked at the wine list and saw Carmel Riesling. Yum, I thought. A wine with hints of caramel! I promptly ordered a glass.
After the waitress walked away, BD looked at me.
"You know that wine doesn't taste like caramel. It's from Carmel, the place."
I just stared at him. I had said CAR-mel, like the candy, not car-MEL, the place in California. As I've said before, any attempts on my part to look sophisticated usually backfire on me. I would say I'm like Lucille Ball from I Love Lucy, but I think my friend Toni's got me beat in that department. Check this out for a GUARANTEED laugh (I mean I really, really promise). Warning: Her story isn't for the squeamish.