Talents

Ok, so I have this uber talented brother in law. Excellent artist (see below) these are 10 min sketches of he and his brothers.


Charlie




CW


Ben



Me myself, not much with this kind of talent. Not that I don't have them, just that they are quite as observable.

What are your talents? Come on you know you want to share!

The Great Debate

So as I have mentioned before my bro in law is getting married in a couple of weeks. We will be going to California to be at the wedding and then do take a short vacation for ourselves before school starts.
Here is the problem...it's a wedding, we need a gift. I generally pick out the gifts for these occasions, usually one of my siblings as the last wedding in his family was in 1998, just a year after we were married. I think our gift to them was just being there, that was hard enough at the time.

With my own siblings I tend to be generous, I am the oldest and I remember how hard it was starting out. We can afford to give a nice gift. Also I don't believe in giving money, my reasoning is that although it helps out in the short run, it not a gift that brings to mind the giver. With my own wedding gifts I remember who gave me what, mostly, but I couldn't tell you who gave us money (sadly).

That being said I looked at the registries and a lot of the stuff has already been bought. There are 2 big items left one of them, a Dyson vacuum cleaner, is something I won't consider. The other is a gas grill which we would have to have someone actually go to the store and buy for us as who wants to pay shipping for something like that.

My mom will be contributing a little money as he has always been especially generous and nice when she has come to stay with us (she usually comes at Christmas and my in laws always buy her gifts). He himself has always given us very nice gifts for holidays/birthdays etc...

So I brought this up to CW he thinks our presence is enough. He doesn't want to buy a gift. He feels like he didn't buy anything for his other brother back in 1998 so why buy something for this one. I feel like we were in a different situation back then and now that we are able to contribute a gift we should and it should be something good.

What have you done or would you do?

Great Ebay Find!

So this was my great ebay find this last week. I am very pleased with myself and Lily is so excited to have this cute new chair and toy box in her room :) Amazing what you can find these days.

Eclipse

So yes, I am a book reading fiend. I can't help myself sometimes. I have read 5 books since Aug 1st and am working on my 6th and 7th.

The new Stephanie Meyers book Eclipse came out today, I went a picked it up. Unfortunately I couldn't stop thinking about it and started to read as we sat at stop lights on the way home, we got here about 4:30pm. I am 3/4 of the way done.

I did clean up today and make dinner (kinda, grilled cheese and soup) and put the kids to bed. It is almost 10pm. I think I can finish before I go to bed. Hehe.

Ah Bliss...(which oddly enough happens to be the name of a vampire I was reading about earlier)

My baby is now a toddler...sigh

Yep you heard it. Ed is walking, he has been trying for the past 3 weeks but as of Sunday it has become a full time thing for him. He loves that he can carry things and move at the same time. No more pushing things and crawling after them.

He is a beauty by the way with his big blue eyes and blonde hair. He is naturally very light skinned too. So unlike my other kids. Not that they aren't beautiful too, just different.

Happy 14th month my baby. Your growing up so fast.

Unfortunately I don't have a picture of it yet, card seems to have gone bad on the camera, time for a new one I guess.

Hip Hip Hurray! For my VP of DBA

As of July 1st my dearest husband was promoted. His official title is Vice President of Database Administration and Hardware. He has been with his current company 5 years in December. It is a huge company, probobly the biggest he has worked for since he started working. He took a pay cut to go there but to be honest in these last 5 years his salary has almost doubled. He is amazingly good at what he does. And although he is a scientist at heart he is striving to make it in a management world. Considering his humble beginnings he has done extraordinarily well. We have been so blessed and are so thankful for his abilities.

Congratulations! I am so very proud of you!

My Cute Cousin Amy Marie

I spent the afternoon with my cute cousin Amy Marie, she was in town this week for the Mary Kay Conference. Who knew you could really make a living selling Mary Kay, well she does. She has a degree in music education but has quit teaching (for several reasons) and has been selling Mary Kay full time the past year. It is amazing, she has such drive.

Anyhow, I picked her up and we had lunch at the Macaroni Grill. We drove up to the temple and looked around a bit and then went to Moon's I got Lily a coloring book (in hopes that she will cease and desist coloring my walls) and Alex a copy of Scripture Scouts. We chatted some more as we made our way back to Northpark Mall. Once there we cruised around for a bit looking for a bathroom.

As I was walking out of the bathroom I noticed how dark it was outside.

To be honest I was a little worried about making it to the airport. I have never been to Love Field and wasn't sure now to get there. I ran out to the car,even with an umbrella, ella, ella, eeehh,eeehh,(sorry couldn't resist) I was totally soaked. By the time the kids were in I was swimming. I am glad we decided to leave because even though Love Field was very close it took us forever to get there because traffic was standing still. I dropped her off at 6:30 and just made it home.

It was great to renew our relationship, I hope we are able to keep in touch, I didn't realize how much I missed her.