Land of the Free, MotorHome of the Brave

Generation X, I demand you stand up and take action against the Baby Boomers of this country. The Baby Boomers are starting to retire and what are they doing? They are filling every nook and cranny of their property with obtrusive, obnoxious and ugly motor homes and boats.

Since I have recently been looking for a new home, I have noticed the invasion of the mini mansions on wheels sticking out from behind bushes, over block walls or just audaciously sitting out in plain view. Against their tires lie slabs of wood to protect them from rotting in the Arizona sun.

If the owners have any money left from their retirement fund after their $100,000+ splurge on one of these babies, some of these homes on wheels have been graced with special carports built just for them. They seem large enough to hold a small airplane. They stand taller than the homes their owners live in year round and their roofs are made with only the best corrugated aluminum found on this side of the country.

These are a new generation of eye-sore.

At what point would I pay nearly a half a million dollars for a home that has a perfect view of my neighbor's motor home? I ask myself this question at nearly every home I've looked at.

When I was looking for a home 10 years ago, I don't remember the real estate listing stating whether or not there was RV parking available. If it was there, maybe it was at the bottom of the listing, not near the top of the listing with the square footage and price of the home.

Nearly every open house my husband and I have been to, the first thing that comes out of the real estate agent's mouth, after shaking our hands and introducing himself is, "You got an RV? There's room for an RV here."

It takes everything I have not to just turn around and run. Instead I politely look around and when I get in the backyard, I see not only the owner's RV, but their neighbor's RV sticking up over the back wall.

Yeah, this is where I want to live. NOT!

Katrina in Time-Out

"Am I done?"

"No."

"Am I done?"

"No."

"Am I done?"

"No."

"Am I done?"

"No."

"Am I done?"

"No."

"Am I done?"

"No."

"Am I done?"

"No."

"Am I done?"

"No."

"Why?"

Sweetwater

Hello! Here are the layouts I did for Sweetwater. These are all from their Remember When collection.

SEI at 3SB

May's kit (geez, I can't believe it's May) for 3 Scrappy Boys was the new SEI.


When flowers bloom, Baby Kat always says that they're "On", not "Open".

Yeah, this is seriously becoming an issue in this house.

I got a new white pen. ;)

There was something in the air that night...

I have joined a circle journal/round robin started by Marilyn Healey. She was inspired by the Alphabetica book. Everyone in this project is so talented. As I was struggling to come up with a topic, as a joke I suggested, "Everything I know about life I learned from ABBA".

I was actually surprised by the positive response I received from it, even though it was a joke. After several more days of trying to come up with another theme (I was thinking of an "Eye Spy" kind of theme) I decided to keep the ABBA theme.

I had a vision in my head of a long, thin album. One weekend, I found a ledger journal at a yard sale. It was perfect. The exact thought I had in my head. I bought it for $1.00 and brought it home.

I have never altered much of anything before, especially nothing like this. I had a little issue with the cover. I soon discovered I needed some sort of binding tape. I made the cover design too big and had to cut down the tape. It's not as perfect as I want, but it will have to do. I have spent way toooooo much time on the cover. To re-do it, would take too much time and I didn't have anymore of that BasicGrey paper.

Here's the cover. It's gold, it's shiny, it's ABBA!!!!

...and more

More uploads from the 15th. These are from DML. The theme this month was Creative Photos. I printed a couple pictures on a transparency:



Kinda different for me, huh? I had fun with it, though. You have to experiment every once in awhile, right?




This one is all about Baby Kat's obsession with Hummus. She loves the stuff.




I just love Daisy D's. In addition to Sweetwater, they're one of my favorite manufacturers. Oh, and there's a little K&Co. mixed in there, too.

Check out the rest of them here.

More Uploads

It was upload day at several places. I'll just do one place today, another tomorrow and so on.

At Peek, we did layouts based on art pieces. Here are mine:

My handsome little dude

Baby Birds and Baby Kat

For the last 36 hours or so, we've been watching some birds that fell out of their nest. The other night, they had fallen out of the palm tree and rolled underneath the van in the driveway. Mama bird was mad when we got close, so we decided to leave them alone and go back inside. The birds were covered in feathers, so I was hoping they would be ok. They were a little young, but I was really hoping for the best.

The next morning, the first thing I did was check on the birds. They had rolled down to the end of the driveway and were stuck in a crack, on their backs, in the asphalt of the road. Both of them were still quite alive and trying to roll over.

At that point, since they were still alive, I put some paper towels in a box and picked each of them up with a piece of paper and set them in the box. I figured it was better than being on your back in the street.

I didn't think Mama bird would have anything to do with them after that, but she did. She watched them all day long. She'd hop in the box and feed them and scold any of us that went near the box. She was a good Mama.

Baby Kat was so concerned about these baby birds. Her catch phrase for the day was, "Baby birds ok." She told everyone about the Baby birds and how they were "ok".

This morning I checked on the birds right away. One was dead. The other one was still alive and Mama bird was scolding me for even being near. I thought I would wait a while before I removed the dead bird from the box. I went out an hour later and there was no Mama bird to scold me as I got near. I looked in the box and the 2nd bird was now dead.

I went inside and reported the news. Baby Kat was quite upset. I told her that it was ok. The baby birds were now in Heaven with Baby Jesus.

Without any hesitation or thought at all, Baby Kat replies, "BAD BABY JESUS!!! NOT NICE!"

I was a little surprised.

30th Upload

It was upload day again at Peek. We lifted each other. I had Linda, she had me.

Here's one of mine:

Mine is on top, Linda's is on the bottom. You can check out the others here.

Thanks. :) Have a great night.

Little Man in a Little Tux

We're home from Erik's sister's wedding. Here are some pictures:



I like Trent's suspenders. There were lots of chairs to play in, too. ;)



The bride's son. Is he like the proudest little dude ever??





These are Trent's cousins. These are some of my favorite's from the evening. I love the picture of Madison sitting on the curb.


Now, if you can get a picture of the flower girl picking her nose, be sure to do it! And if your GFIL in the front row catches you and giggles when he sees what you just did, that's even better.




Baby Kat and Daddy


Trent & his cousin at the rehearsal dinner. Erik helped me customize some settings on my camera for this picture. Without this setting, the picture looked just flat and gross.



The fountain at the entrance of the business park where the rehearsal dinner was held. Erik was so sweet and pulled over so I could play with exposure.



So, at the end of the evening, we went back to the changing rooms. We walked by the area where the wedding had just been. It was kind of eerily dark with the exception of the candles glowing. I thought it would make a good picture.



I have no pictures of the bride. I had such a hard time getting a correct exposure due to her white dress and the dark suits. I didn't know how to work around this. I will learn....I will!!

"Knock Knock

Who's there?
Lemur.
Lemur who?
Lemur out of this place, it's full of stupid poopy mommies."


Nice, huh? This is Trent's joke he said outloud to himself as I was putting away his freshly washed and folded clothes.

He was in bed, under the covers talking to himself. He knew I was there.

This was said even after he had been sent to time-out for his mouth, then had his Lincoln Logs taken away and when he still wouldn't stop I took away his new Operation game. However, none of these actions got him to stop singing, "Mommy is stupid. Stupid Mommy..." while in the time-out chair, which is why I sent him up to his room.

Yeah, we'll see who's laughing tomorrow.

A Little Confusion

So, check out this picture. My grandmother sent this to me yesterday. It's a picture of my mom and dad from when they were dating. I think they were going to the prom, not sure though.

Anyway, Baby Kat is sitting right next to me when I open the picture. She immediately points to my mother and says, "Gramma!"

I said, "Yes! That's right. You're so good. Who's next to Grandma?"

She looks at the picture again and without hesitation, says, "Mommy".

I thought perhaps I had misunderstood. I asked her again, "Who is that right next to Grandma?" This time I pointed and touched the screen to make sure she was really looking at the correct person.

"Mommy", she said again.

THIS is why when you "see" me on the message boards, my avatars are mostly monkeys.

"BAAAA EAT IT MOMMY!!"

This is what Katrina says to me when she's mad. She was mad because I wouldn't let nurse anymore. Yes, I'm still nursing her. Her "yiddle bit" turned into more and more and I told her she was done.

She was MAD!! She crawled over to Daddy (we were in bed) and said, "BAAAA EAT IT MOMMY!!" before she covered her head under the covers.

What is she really saying, you ask? Let me translate it for you:

BAD IDIOT MOMMY!!

Nice, huh? 2 1/2 years old and already has an incredible attitude. Her brother taught her that darling little phrase.

As I was saying...

Saturday was upload day for several places. At Peek, the theme was "Signs of Spring".

<----This is one of my favorites, which happens to have the same name of the theme. Check out the others here.



It was also upload day at Down Memory Lane.

And, here's my favorite from there.


In addition, I made some cards for a raffle. Please check this out and buy some raffle tickets. It's for a good cause. Thanks! :) There's some really, really cool stuff.

Manto Fev

Uploads

Yeah, it was Easter. I took 12.5 million pictures and I dislike nearly every one of them. Why can't I get the exposure and/or color correct??? It drives me nuts. It will probably take a few days/weeks for the pictures to grow on me before I can decide I like any of them. I did come across this one. I guess Baby Kat was tired of me taking pictures, too.


Ok, so for uploads, I'll start with Sweetwater. Here's my favorite from last month's:

You can see the rest of them here. Mine start with this layout, "Summer Glow" and end with "First".
At Peek, the theme was "Signs of Spring".
My favorite from the group:
Well, forget it. It seems that Blogger is not letting me upload anymore pictures. :P

Egg Day

Today we attended the annual community center's Easter egg hunt. We've gone every year. I took a few pictures of the kids. Of course, most of them were of Kat because Trent refuses to look at the camera without making some sort of face.




Both kids had carrots in their mouths. I perhaps should have waited until they had finished chewing and swallowing before taking their pics. Ahhh, live and learn, huh?



So here's the conversation with my husband regarding the above picture.

"Do you like it? This is one of my favorites."

"Where's our son's face?"

"It's a picture of Baby Kat."

"Yeah, well, where's his face?"

"I did it that way on purpose."

"Whatever."

Ok, thanks. I like it. Whatever back at ya.



They hid the eggs on the sand at the playground. Not so fun for the little kids with sandals on (like mine).

Afterwards we had cake, cookies and punch. It's the only time of the year where I get to eat cake before 11:00 AM, in public anyway.

Today is also upload day at several places. I'll do that tomorrow.

Bye for now.

Spring Fling

tWell, it's that time of year again. The UofA Spring Fling is going on and the kids love it. A couple pics...

Trent loves the face painting. Last year he wanted a Spider painted on his face, this year he decided to go with the Rocket Ship. I think it's a good look for him.

Baby Kat was into it this year, too. Last year she was a little young, but today she was right up there, picking out exactly what she wanted: a SHARK.

Both the kids love the Applebee's commercial with the shark in it. I think it's Applebee's, not sure now that I think about it. Anyway, wherever we are, both kids shriek, "LOOK MOMMY!! LOOK DADDY!!! SHARK!! SHARK!!" The shark has become Baby Kat's favorite new animal.
Of course, the girl painting the shark on BK's face may have thought it was a little odd for the 2 year old little girl to pick a shark over a butterfly because she added some glitter to her freshly painted masterpiece.
And why oh why is my right margin all the way at the bottom of the page? It irritates me to no end. It's like the itch I can't scratch.

Neighbor

Ummm, excuse me...but at what point did wearing flip flops, a bikini top and your ex-boyfriends boxer shorts become the hottest fashion item? If you're going to wear that, please take it inside...along with your non-stop barking dog and screaming kids.

Thank you.


I feel much better now.

Spring has Sprung

This is my layout I submitted to the BasicGrey spring contest. Didn't win. Oh well. Move on. Big deal.

**sigh**