99 Things

I've seen this on several other folks' blogs and thought I'd play along.


THE 99 THINGS


Things you’ve already done: bold
Things you want to do: italicize
Things you haven’t done and don’t want to - leave in plain font


1. Started your own blog.
2. Slept under the stars.
3. Played in a band.
4. Visited Hawaii.
5. Watched a meteor shower.
6. Given more than you can afford to charity.
7. Been to Disneyland/world.
8. Climbed a mountain.
9. Held a praying mantis.
10. Sang a solo.
11. Bungee jumped.
12. Visited Paris.
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.
15. Adopted a child.
16. Had food poisoning.
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty.
18. Grown your own vegetables.
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France.
20. Slept on an overnight train.
21. Had a pillow fight.
22. Hitch hiked.
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill.
24. Built a snow fort.
25. Held a lamb.
26. Gone skinny dipping.
27. Run a marathon.
28. Ridden a gondola in Venice.
29. Seen a total eclipse.
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset.
31. Hit a home run.
32. Been on a cruise.
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person.
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors.
35. Seen an Amish community.
36. Taught yourself a new language.
37.Had enough money to be truly satisfied.
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person.
39. Gone rock climbing.
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David in person.
41. Sung Karaoke.
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt.
43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant.
44. Visited Africa.
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.
46. Been transported in an ambulance.
47. Had your portrait painted.
48. Gone deep sea fishing.
49. Seen the Sistine chapel in person.
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling.
52. Kissed in the rain.
53. Played in the mud.
54. Gone to a drive-in theater.
55. Been in a movie.
56. Visited the Great Wall of China.
57. Started a business.
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia.
60. Served at a soup kitchen.
61. Sold Girl Scout cookies.
62. Gone whale watching.
63. Gotten flowers for no reason.
64. Donated blood.
65. Gone sky diving.
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp.
67. Bounced a check.
68. Flown in a helicopter.
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy.
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial.
71. Eaten Caviar.
72. Pieced a quilt.
73. Stood in Times Square.
74. Toured the Everglades.
75. Been fired from a job.
76. Seen the Changing of the Guard in London.
77. Broken a bone.
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person.
80. Published a book.
81. Visited the Vatican.
82. Bought a brand new car.
83. Walked in Jerusalem.
84. Had your picture in the newspaper.
85. Read the entire Bible.
86. Visited the White House.
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating.
88. Had chickenpox.
89. Saved someone’s life.
90. Sat on a jury.
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club.
93. Lost a loved one.
94. Had a baby.
95. Seen the Alamo in person.
96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake.
97. Been involved in a law suit.
98. Owned a cell phone.
99. Been stung by a bee.

Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas morning and I wanted to take a few moments to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

It's been a busy week or so and I'm way behind in my blogging :( I've got goodies to show you and news to share so let's get right to it:

Amanda from In A Fog Designs has a new kit out called "Purple Waves". She's also got a great alpha to match! They are available at Scrappy Thoughts and Bouquet of Pixels. She's also offering a coupon for 50% off anything in her Scrappy Thoughts store. The coupon code is FoggyChristmas. Not sure how long this sale will last so hurry over and grab some goodies.
I've also been working with a kit by desinger Blythe Evans. The kit is called Amethyst IHT ( I "Heart" Thee). Yes, more purple! Blythe's desings are availble at Oscraps and she currently has a snowflake ornament freebie in the store!
I'll leave you with some layouts, hope you enjoy purple!

Play Time and a Funeral........

I know, I know, it sounds like a movie title :) Hubby's grandfather passed away last week and the family gathered for the funeral this past Monday. "Grandpa Gene" was 90+ years old and his health had been failing of late. It's still sad to say good bye to the patriarch of the family, but our faith helps us to know that he is now with his beloved Nelda. Grandpa Gene always told us that when he got to heaven he would pat God on the back and tell him what a wonderful job he had done with all of this down below on earth. I'm sure his message has now been delivered. The day of the funeral began with frozen pipes in our kitchen. It was 15 degrees below zero and winds were forecast to blow up to 30 miles per hour! Way Cold!! Our family had some great laughs and rememberances of Grandpa. Yes, tears were shed as well, but only because we will miss his remarkable sense of humor, not because his passing was tragic. In the short years that I was lucky enough to get to know Grandpa Gene he impressed me with his dedication to family, belief in God and his pride in serving our country during WWII.

Amanda at In A Fog Designs has a cool new kit out titled Play Time. It is available at Scrappy Thoughts and Bouquet of Pixels. Amanda has put together bright, vibrant colors with fun embellishments. She's also got a great word art kit to go with all the papers and goodies! Here's an image of the kit and a few sample layouts.

It's been busy around here!

Life has been super busy in my world the past couple of weeks. My husband's Grandfather is very ill. He's been in and out of the hospital the past couple of months. He's now back in the nursing home and my mother in law has flown home from Arizona to be with him. He's lost the ability to speak and swallow and sleeps most of the time now. Noelle and I stopped to see him and more or less say goodbye on the way to Pierre last Sunday. He finally looks like he is 94. He's always looked much younger than his age, but now, his illness seems to be catching up with him. We pray that his last weeks and days will be peaceful and that somehow, the spirit of the Christmas season will give him peace.

Noelle celebrated her 21st birthday on Sunday, December 7th! She drove down from SDSU and rode along with us to compete in the State FFA Leadership Career Development Events in Pierre. We arrived on time on Sunday afternoon and got checked into the hotel. After the kids got changed we headed over to the competition site. Breanna presented the FFA Creed, Ethan competed in Prepared Public Speaking, Jeremy competed in the Job Interview CDE and our Ag Communications team completed their editing exercise and their communications tests. It was off to China Buffet after competitions. The reading of the fortune cookies was the highlight of the meal!
Monday morning we were up and off to competition again. The ag communications team of Stacia, Spencer, Joe, Shannon and Tucker gave the presentation of their life and led the judges through the question and answer portion instead of the other way around. After their presentation, it was off to the capitol to check out the Christmas Trees. Our capitol is a beautiful building and they fill it with real, fresh cut Christmas trees this time of year. Each tree is decorated by an organization or group from somewhere in the state. If you ever get to Pierre between Thanksgiving and New Year's, be sure to take it in.
We left the capitol in the rain and headed over for the awards luncheon. Some of us wer able to wait more patiently than others for results to be announced. Our major moment of excitement came with the announcement of the Agricultural Communications CDE ~ We heard what we'd been waiting to hear, "First place, the team from West Central". It didn't take long for it to sink in, that this team is now bound for national competition in October in Indianapolis!
Our drive home was a nightmare! Snow, ice, freezing rain, slippery roads - etc. I've added a slideshow below of pictures from our weekend.

State FFA Leadership CDE's

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm sure my story is not so different from anyone else's. I ate too much great food on Thursday, didn't sleep well that night and then got up at 3:30 in the morning to take Noelle and Ali with me for Black Friday Shopping! We had so much fun, met a lot of wonderful people busy getting in the holiday spirit. A nap was definitely in order Friday afternoon!
I want to share some samples with you. Amanda at In A Fog has a brand new kit out titled "Winter Blues" It is availble here at Scrappy Thoughts. This kit is versatile and great for winter layouts as well as many other pictures and themes. Great colors and textures and fabulous elements including winter inspired word art.The Scrappy Thoughts Design Team will have a great Collab Kit available December 1st. Here is a sneak preview of this georgous Collab titled "Lushious Lavender.

Sample CT Layouts

Cool News and a Sale!

First let me share with you that my mother is greatly improved and was to be released from the hospital today! Sure evidence of the power or prayer! Thanks for all the prayers sent on her behalf! The family is geared up to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. This year we are so thankful for all of our blessings. I'm relieved to have my mother's health improving and my hubby and the kids are so much happier now that Dexter is slowly regaining his strength and becoming more of his old self.

Bouquet of Pixels is having a sale! The entire store is 25% off Friday through Monday. Stop over and pick up some goodies.

In more exciting news, I've joined the CT for In A Fog Designs and am enjoying doing some new layouts with her Olive Oil Kit. Olive Oil is available at Scrappy Thoughts. The image is clickable to the store.



Here's a layout with Olive Oil. I love the colors and textures that Amanda put into this kit! they go well with many pictures and themes and will even work well for some Holiday layouts!


More exciting news in the works, stay tuned...... Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Enjoy your time with family and friends.

Things to be Thankful for:

With the Thanksgiving Holiday coming up this thursday and due to recent events in my life, I'm taking time out to reflect on my many blessings! My mother had a near fatal heart attack on Friday, November 21st. Luckily, she has great friends who insisted on calling for emergency medical personnel. After an angioplasty and placement of a stent in her right coronary artery, she is recovering at Straub in Honolulu. My weekend was spent worrying and praying for her. To make an attempt to keep my mind busy, I read the book "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer, cover to cover! It was great mind candy and I now find myself needing to read the other three books in the series!

My husband's best friend, Dexter, the chocolate lab, is also recovering. We had him at the Vet most of last week, not sure if he would live or not. First they thought he'd been poisoned, then a brain tumor, then a stroke. It turns out that it seems to be some sort of inner ear condition that is prevalent in dogs who have trouble with ear infections. He is slowly improving, can go up and down the stairs on his own but still has control issues with walking and standing up and laying down. I really wonder if he is milking his illness to become a "house dog"? At any rate, it's kind of fun having him in the house except he really is a bed hog!

School is busy with prepartion for the State Leadership CDE's in early December. Most of us are rather preoccupied with the short week and anticipation of Thanksgiving. I look forward to time with the girls. We'll miss Jenna but can't wait until she is home for Christmas break in about 19 days!

Snow Day!

I woke up to freezing rain this morning. Lot of late schools scrolling across the TV. Soon the call came in, we were going to start school two hours late. About the time I was getting in the shower, the next call - no school today! I've worked on a lot of catching up here at home today. Been trying to get information posted on the Cherylbration website. I worked on the graphics most of the morning and have a banner already made at school that I just need to upload. We're getting closer to having this event ready to roll! I hope that attending the event gives Dan and Cheryl the boost that they need to continue fighting her cancer.

I found time to complete a page for this weeks' challenge over at ScrapbookMax. My inspiration is our weather. I guess winter has really arrived.

While watching election returns.......

I watched election returns this evening while creating a couple of pages. The first is made with materials from the Colab Kit "Gratitude" from Kim B's surprise birthday blog train. Click here to follow the train. The other was made from Boo's kit available for the November color challenge over at Stone Accents Studios.

Home for my Birthday!

For the first time that I can remember I am actually at home for my birthday. I got home from the 81st National FFA Convention in Indianapolis, IN on Sunday afternoon. The trip was great although a little bittersweet. My oldest daughter had worked to fulfill a dream that she'd had since about 8th grade. Disappointment was a part of our convention as she was not elected to serve as a national officer. She surrounded herself with supportive friends and they will help her through it all. The positive comments that she and I both received from my colleagues and friends helped to reassure her that she had the skills and talent to serve the organization. I got to spend a lot of time with Ali during convention. She had a great time with my students.

Jenna got to hang out with family and attend my cousin Dave's wedding this past weekend. She had a blast meeting family that she had never met and only heard stories of in the past. My cousin Jim took her flying and she actually got to fly over her dorm and the Stanford campus! I'm glad that she has family in the area that welcome her to spend time with them. It makes it a little easier for her to be so far from home. Jenna's also been officially invited to the Stanford Rowing Winter Camp over Christmas break! How exciting to have her walk on to the team and be one of four walk ons invited to camp. Her first race will be this weekend!

The weather is starting to turn. We had a hard freeze last night. I think we hit something like 15 degrees! Winter must be on it's way! Our football team begins playoffs tonight when they play Milbank here at home. Go Trojans!

Coming up for air!

Boy, it sure never seems to slow down any around here! We had our district land judging near Parker yesterday so I hopped on the big yellow school bus with about 40 of my students and off we went to "play in the dirt". It was a beautiful day and a nice way to get to spend an afternoon outdoors.
It's Homecoming week here at WC so the craziness abounds! We have different dress up days each day. Tomorrow is "Fake Injury" day- hmmmmmmm, I may have to think about that one for a while?
National Convention is a little less than a month away. I'm so excited! It's just aobut my favorite time of year. Preparation for convention this year is totally different. Since Noelle is our National Officer Candidate I've been trying to help out wherever I can in developing test questions and sending her practice tests. I should have quite a database of questions when I'm finished with this process. Today I started a blog for Noelle today and will post writing prompts for her there. Ideally, she'll post her response then several colleagues will read and respond to her post. I hope it works as well as I think it will!
Jenna had her first crew practice today. She texted and said that "rowing is fun". They had their first workout over lunch today! As a result, she's eating granola bars in her math class!
I've finally downloaded pictures off of my camera. Found some real treasures! Pictures from last spring - evidence that Jenna and Rowdy have very little artistic talent!

Recovering from the water and electronics don't mix episode!

Well, the week started out kind of tough! My freshman class was really a comedy of errors so if it could go wrong, it did! We had a little water episode which ended up soaking much of my classroom and my teaching laptop. Just to you know, water and electronics don't mix! The computer remained running, only a few of the keys would not work. We finished class and then things got ugly. No more computer. Not even the blue screen of death! After "baking" the laptop in my truck for the rest of the day I was able to log on and boot the computer and burn a cd of all of my tests that are stored on it's hard drive! YAY! The next day - only annoying beeping noises could be made by my laptop.
I've got another laptop rebuilt with all my software and my test files loaded. Now I just have to learn the new version of the software. I guess things could be MUCH worse.
On the kid front - Noelle leaves this afternoon for a National Officer Candidate training weekend in Minneapolis. I hope that the experience gives her a good bench mark for what she knows and where she needs to work. National Convention is coming up fast, I hope not too fast! Jenna is continuing with the New Student Orientation events at Stanford. She met with the Crew coach yesterday and is pretty pumped to try out this new opportunity.
At home things are pretty much the same. Jay worked until 8:30 last night. The grasshoppers are taking over the garden. They have stripped the broccoli and eaten 90% of the leaves off of the potato plants. Guess I won't be harvesting any more broccoli? Tonight is KRRO fest at the Canaries Stadium featuring Avenged Sevenfold, Buckcherry, Avenged Sevenfold, Shinedown and Saving Abel. Not my normal choice in music, but should be fun!

It's officially Fall!

It must officially be Fall. School has been back in session for almost a month, we've had the first threats of frost over night and football season in in full swing. Jenna flew out to California today to begin her adventures as a college student at Stanford University! I'm excited for her yet so sad to say good-bye. We've spoken a couple of times and I know she is fine, but can't help but worry. I guess that's what mom's do best? I'm so excited to hear about her adventures and all the new experiences she will be having.

The Middle of April!

Can you believe how time flies? It's already the middle of April. We just finished our State FFA Convention - our state officers did an amazing job and have much to be proud of. My senior daughter is going to the prom tonight - oh goody - more stuff to scrap:)
Here is the word art I made for my daughters' state officer team. They chose this as their theme for the year. I've used it in a layout published earlier in this blog. Help yourself.

Our Weather just can't make up it's mind. One day it's sunny and warm and the next we get 15 inches of snow. The pics are two that I did for challenges over at www.scrapbookmax.com

Word art freebies.

I'm helping my daughter sccrap her senior year in high school and working with my oldest daughter to capture some of her great memories from this year serving as a State FFA Officer. I thought these would work for both of them.

My First Entry

Ok, I'm BRAND new at this. Thought it was time to begin and see if I can maintain a blog. I'm hoping this will give me a place to reflect on things happening around me and the world. I've recently gotten addicted to digital scrapbooking and my blog will be a place where I can post some of my efforts in that arena.