Happy Birthday to me

Yesterday was my 35th birthday. Sigh. I did get some nice gifts though. Some cool scrapbook stuff, a new bag, a cd I'd been wanting, etc. Also, Kyle made me the cutest/most hilarious damn card:


The "S is for sarcastic" part is my favorite. Does he know me or what?!
I had some friends over this past weekend for a day of scrapbooking and I wound up getting 17 pages done. Some long overdue things, like fall and football. Oh and some Christmas. Here are some of them:

Wojo

Wojo from Barney Miller (aka Max Gail) is on Days of Our Lives now. And not even a regular role, just a guest starring role. That is a major career slide, Woj.

Do you like good music.....do you like to dance?

Lately I've been going through a Billy Idol phase. Back in the day I LOVED Billy Idol. I had albums, posters all over the place and pretty much worshipped at the altar of the Idol. So to this day I still think it rocks. Anyway, my point is, I have found that it is physically impossible to sing along without doing the Billy Idol lip sneer. You know the one I mean:

I've made a conscious effort to not do it and pretty soon I'll find myself doing it again. It's a lost cause. I surrender to the power of the Idol! ;)

Post Its

Get this.....last night I took Emma to tap dance class. I dropped her off and as I was getting into my car I noticed the car next to me had a bunch of "post it" notes all over the rear passenger side window. I thought it was odd, so I looked a little closer. It was the window with the infant car seat. So I went around to the other side to see what the hell was on those post it notes that were "for baby's eyes only". Take a guess....that's right....inspirational messages. To a fucking baby. An illiterate, probably sleeping most of the car ride, couldn't give a shit less anyway, baby. "You are special" "You are loved" "God made you perfect" "You are the light of my life" Holy shit I was gagging. The unfortunate part was that there were too many classes going on to pinpoint whose car it was. Hopefully I'll figure it out because I've got to get a look at this nut job.

Half office/half scrap room

We decided to turn half of the office into a scrap space for me....and sometimes Emma. ;) So we bought some shelves and rearranged and here is the finished product:

Sledding

It warmed up enough today to take the kids sledding and snowboarding. We got kind of spoiled in Ames because across from our house was a huge hill to sled on and here it took some driving around to find a place that was adequate. The hill wasn't as big as we were used to, but this kids still had some fun.

It's beginning to look a lot like.....Valentine's day?

So we missed the boat on holiday coldness/winter/snow, but we've made up for it now. Here is what my lonely mailbox looked like yesterday morning before I took Kyle to school:

We had gotten a new/used snow blower over the summer and Rob used it yesterday morning and said it was a "beast". Unfortunately it snowed some more and blew a lot after he left so Emma and I had to go back out and shovel again before we could pick up Kyle from school. I didn't know the first thing about starting the snow blower so I used the shovel and got some cardio. ;) The nice thing about being "snowed in" was that I got to use my "new" scrapbook area and did 6 pages. I've also been using the hell out of stamps and that shit ton of 12x12 white paper I have. So good job, me.

Scrapbooking

I went scrapbooking last night with some friends at our local store. I got a few things done like Emma's birthday and some leftover Halloween.


I also moved my table into my office so now I can scrapbook at home conveniently with my stuff all right here. This has made Emma want to scrapbook with me. She calls it her "project":

Martin Mull

There is this art museum in the Quad Cities that Martin Mull, yes that Martin Mull.....Roseanne's gay boss, Sabrina the teenage witch's principal, Glad zipper bags spokesman. Anyway, apparently he facies himself an artist and donated some paintings to the museum to be auctioned off. The idea was that the museum would get all the profits. Check this shit out:


Fucking stick people. Stick people that look worse than my four year old could do. And the starting bid is $2000 per piece. Keep your day job, Martin.

Hmmmm, Let's see.....

What's been going on? Ummmmm, the kids went back to school, Kyle on Thursday, Emma on Friday.
I got all of my scrapbook pages in albums. I had something like 150 finished pages just sitting on my book shelf. So it took 4 albums and 4 refill packs to get them all put away. It's a nice feeling to get that done, but it was hard using my entire Michaels gift card on just boring old albums and refills.
I watched the series premier of "Dirt" last Tuesday in my Nip/Tuck time slot and I think it's going to be a good/raunchy/fun temporary replacement while I wait for Nip/Tuck to reappear.
We tried Z/Mariks noodle cafe in Clive and it was fantastic. Inexpensive, too. The meals are only about $5 to $6 and we had a buy one get one free coupon and kids eat free on Saturdays. Needless to say, we'll be going back on a Saturday.
Last night I watched Kill Bill volume 2 on TBS. My brother and I had gone to the theater to see it and we had rented it at one point, but I haven't seen it in awhile. The first one was necessary, obviously, but I like the second one better. I like to say "wakey wakey, eggs and bakey" when I wake my kids up in the morning.;) And I especially love when the 2 amazons are fighting in the trailer and Uma snatches Daryl's eye right out of the socket...then drops it on the floor and squishes it with her giant amazon foot.
Speaking of Uma's amazon feet....we rented "My Super Ex-girlfriend" on New Year's Eve and although it's certainly not the greatest movie, it was mildly humorous. At one point another character says to her "what are you going to do, kick me with your giant feet?!". I laughed so hard.

Ice skating

We've decided that we need to make our own wintery type activities as Mother Nature is not helping us out, so I took the kids ice skating today. They opened up a new rink in downtown Des Moines and it was small and cute and really was geared towards the non-skater. There was a grab bar all the way around and it might have been because it was about 45 degrees, but the ice wasn't super hard so you kind of got your grip a little easier. Last winter I took Emma to the ISU hockey arena and we fell down constantly, but today I didn't fall once. And I know it's not because I'm getting any better. ;) So here are the customary highlight photos:

SNOW!

I didn't think we'd see any for awhile considering that in the past week it's been in the 40's and 50's, but last night we got some. The kids took advantage and were out for a couple of hours this morning before it all melts away.