happily random

Happy 3rd Birthday Tyler!

Our little Ty-guy is the big THREE today! He is just one of the sweetest little guys around. This little guy can melt your heart with just one smile. Of course he also make you climb the walls with his whining. Just that stage, I guess, but he's a sweet little guy most of the time. He's completely into Monster Trucks right now, although race cars & trains hold a close second. He enjoys almost anything with wheels. To celebrate his day, we're going to the Mobius Children's Museum in Spokane this morning. Then tonight we'll be having a family party with cupcakes that Ty picked out at the store. The perfect day for a three-year-old. Happy birthday son!

Potty training is next on the agenda. We've been talking it up for a couple of months now, but Tyler has claimed that he's "too little." When asked when he would be big enough his reply was, "When I THREE!" Now he's three, so we're going to give it a go this week. My older two kids potty trained at about three, so I'm hopeful that he will too. But then every child is different, so we'll have to see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I've been MIA blog-wise for awhile. What have I been up to? Wow, lots of stuff. I'm taking a class "The Art of Choosing Joy" from Big Picture Scrapbooking. It's amazingly insightful & I'm getting a lot out of it. I've also spent a lot of my free time working on training videos for a program called Chief Architect. It's a CAD-like architecture program for designing blueprints. I'm hoping to become a draftsman (woman) & start doing the plans for my husband's contracting company. I'm really enjoying this program & I think doing blueprints will be fun. :)

Well, we're off to the museum! :)

Getting caught up

I have been working on getting caught up on all the things that that I put off while finishing up my HOF entry. I had a couple of layout assignments to get done, the house to clean (what a mess!)  & the kids to reconnect with. LOL. I've also been aquainting myself with my new computer & printer. I'm loving them both.

Windows Vista is a lot of fun. It reminds me a lot of a Mac in its design. It has this neat rolodex feature that will show all your open documents in a rolodex-like manner to scroll through. One of my favorite features is the Google toolbar down the right side of the screen. It has news (which I never get to keep up on ususally, the weather, photos & webclips from sites I visit. I also added a birthday reminder. Loving that. I just played with the movie editor last night. I'm sure it's designed after iMovie, as it's very easy & FUN to use. 

It definitely has some bugginess issues, like all new operating systems. It likes to drop its connection from my wireless network when it goes to sleep & only want to reconnect if I restart it. It also has had issues with downloading my email, probaby the same network issue. Looking forward to working out some of the quirks over the next few weeks.

Loving my new HP printer. So far it's much more user friendly than my Epson printer. That thing always had weird issues, although it printed awesome photos. The HP does equally awesome photos on my Epson paper & no weirdness. Very straightforward. I'm going to keep it. :)

Right now I'm checking out Photoshop CS3 (the beta version is available for download from Adobe) & considering purchasing it. I have to upgrade my PSE 4 or my PS 7 to use on the new Vista operating system as there are compatibility issues. So far I've run them just find, but I'm just waiting for my computer to explode. LOL. It's a good excuse too. :)

Spring is starting to peek out. The temperature has been up over 40 degrees this week. Yesterday the sun made a much-needed appearance for a BEA-utiful day. The kids wore short sleeves (it's ALL relative, you know) & were asking to got to the lake. Everyone I met seemed to be in a very pleasant mood. Unfortunately the sun went back into hiding today as it's overcast & cloudy again. *sigh* I was hoping to get rid of some more of this snow. Not that I mind the snow. I LOVE the snow. I just don't like the inbetween, while it's melting. It's such a slushy, muddy mess out there. Ick. It's absolutely pointless to wash my truck when just one drive up my road will dirty it up again. Anyway, I'm starting to look forward to spring. :)

Happy Valentine's Day to me!

My husband came home with a Valentine's Day gift & set it on the table. I said, "Oh great, now I'm going to have look at it for 2 days!" Luckily he said that I didn't have to wait to open it, that I would probably be mad at him after I opened it & knew that he made me wait 2 days when I could have been using it. LOL. So I opened it...

...to find a new laptop!! :) It's a Toshiba running Windows Vista with a dual processor 2 Hard Drives totaling 180 GB & 2 GB RAM. I'm cruisin' now!!!! No more opening Photoshop & having to wait 10 minutes for every change I make to a file!

But that's not all. After I opened that, my husband says, "There is another box in the truck but I didn't wrap it because I didn't have enough wrapping paper."

More? Yes, more! He brings in a new HP 8750 Wide Format Photo Printer! My Epson 1280 died & I have been printer-less for a few weeks now (which made doing my HOF entry rather challenging). Don't know how I'll like the HP, but I have 2 weeks to try it out. In that time I can return it for any reason, so I'll be giving it a serious test drive. My Epson was very temperamental, but it printed fantastic pictures. But I hear this HP is very good too, so I'll give it a shot.

So it was a good end to what had been a scary day. Samantha fell off one of the chairs in the dining room onto her head on the hard wood floor. A few minutes after that she threw up & of course I started to fear that she had a concussion. I watched her all afternoon & she was behaving like normal, so I thought she was okay. Then after dinner she threw up again. Oh no, I thought. But she still seemed fine. She seemed like herself, except that she threw up. Throughout the night I had to wake her to make sure she was okay, which she was. This morning she's just fine. She kept her breakfast down & still seems normal today except for a quarter-sized bruise on her forehead.

The chairs are now locked in the pantry unless someone is actively sitting in it. She is such a climber. Oh, and now she's a walker! Yesterday she decided to do some more walking & is now walking about 60% of the time. I know she's 14 months old & it's time for her to start walking, but really, I am in no hurry. They just grow up too fast!

More Monsters Trucks!

Day 2 of Monster Jam! While a little downscale of what you see on TV (mostly because our arena is so tiny I think), it was still a blast. We had incredible seats right in the 2nd row, which means the seats rumbled when the trucks drove by. I even got a bit nervous when they drove donuts right in front of our seats. I'm so glad that we brought earplugs with us because I think I would have been deaf by the end otherwise. Monster trucks are LOUD! I had a great time, so I know the kids must have just loved it. Why is it so fun to watch these giant trucks jump & turn & bounce around? I'm not sure what it is, but it really is a hoot. We're going to have to find a way to take the kids to the World Finals in Vegas someday. I think that would be a blast! Today the kids have been playing with the small monster trucks all morning. I'm pretty sure they enjoyed their trip to see the monster trucks live. That makes me happy.

On to other things. I just have to say how much I am loving my iPod. I didn't know how much I would use it when Joel gave it to me, but I use it several times a day. I actually listen to music very rarely on it, which is kind of funny. I do when I scrapbook, with the awesome Logitech portable stereo that it hooks into that Joel got me for Christmas. But usually I listen to podcasts, like Focus on the Family, FamilyLife Today, 66/40. Things I never seem to be able to catch on the radio. But right now I'm listening to a free book from Podiobooks.com called 7th Son: Book One. I've never listened to a recorded book before; I didn't know if I would like it or not, but it turns out that I do. And the books at Podiobooks are FREE. A good way to try them. Anyway, 7th Son is quite good so far. If you like sci-fi, you'll enjoy it. :)

My latest joy from my iPod though is GAMES! They just released a Sudoku game for iPod & it's very good. I love playing Sudoko before I go to bed as all that concentration makes me very sleepy. What's really nice though is that I can play it after Joel is ready to go to sleep, in the dark. He falls asleep much easier than I do & now I don't keep him up doing my game before bed with the light on. The only problem is I completely drain my battery every night. LOL.

Today I have finally started my diet. I have learned that I have to be mentally & spiritually prepared before starting a diet, otherwise I just flop. So if you could keep me in your prayers as I start my journey to better health, I would appreciate it. It's not that I just want to lose weight, which I do, but mostly I want to get back into shape. I don't think I've taken very good care of my temple (which is my body) & it's really starting to get to me. I need the energy that being healthy will give me.

He who gets wisdom love his own soul; he who cherishes understanding prospers. Proverbs 19:8 (NIV)

MONSTER TRUCKS!!!

Monster Jam has come to our area, so we got tickets for us & the kids. Today was the pit party, which means we got to go down on the arena floor to get an upclose look at the monster trucks. Wow! It's amazing to me how big they are. Of course the kids were even more impressed that I was. Especially Tyler, who has been totally obsessed with monster trucks for the last few months. His favorite truck is Grave Digger, of course, but unfortunately he's not going to be at this show. Tyler was delighted nonetheless & brought his Blue Thunder model (we knew he was going to be at the show) in the ring with us. That's a picture of it on the real one's tire. :) Tomorrow we'll be going to the show after church, so be ready for some action shots!

Well, for those of you that are wondering, I did get my Hall of Fame entry done in time. I finished my last layout for it on Wednesday night, FedExed it on Thursday & it arrived yesterday morning. I am very happy with each layout in my entry, which I believe is even more important than winning the contest. I'll be a nervous wreck waiting by the phone about a month from now though! Keep me in your prayers. I've claimed Matthew 17:20 as my support verse. :)

Dinner's on and I'm starved. More to say since it's been awhile, but I'll save it for tomorrow. Until then....

Update...

Trying to stay off the internet to get my HOF entry done....