I miss you Lucretia!!!!!!!

Lucretia - I miss you... it has been too long... you are still so special to me and I cannot wait for us to have more adventures.....

Scanned more images... lots to go

I am a scanning ninja right now... and I am posting a few as I go... sorry to bore you guys.. but it is so much fun to look at these pictures...

This is me and my little brother in 1980... This is me and my dad in 1989.. I have a bandanna on as a belt... who knew????

This is my mom and me... I was very little :-)

This is my sister Barbara... not sure when, though.. will have to see what she says when she sees this!

This is Tuesday, Hannah, and Utah with a little tiny Cosmo...

This is my mom one Christmas...

This is my sister Elizabeth, mom, me, and sister Barbara... don't remember the occasion but I do remember the picture and I know Barbara was pregnant with Ray.

Tuesday and Hannah with little Cosmo...

This is me at my Mammie's house (where I also grew up basically) in Sherwood. These flowers are forever my favorite (along with dogwoods and crepe myrtles)...

This is my brother Phil with me at Christmas.... we miss you Phil...

This is my senior picture.. wow, what was I thinking... mom had me get it in black and white so she wouldn't have to look at the different colors in my hair...

2009 Goal!

One of my goals for this year is to scan all the pictures, certificates, letters, notes, and cards that are in bins in my garage. It is obvious the scrap booking thing is just not going to happen for me, but having the digital image will give me the chance to great heritage maker scrap books and post a variety of pictures...

I am going to have to get a faster scanner, but using my old scanner, I picked some fun photos to start scanning.. here they are...

Debt?

In an effort to put myself to sleep last night, I opened Redbook to an article title 'Life After Debt'. It was really quite interesting and focused on four women and their desire to no longer be dependent on credit cards and to live a debt free/cash only life. I liked this article because it wasn't about paying off your mortgage and car payments (which overwhelms me completely) but it was about a lifestyle of living within your means.

Tod and I have paid off our credit cards and use only a gas card each month (paid off each month, too). We occasionally put other items on the credit cards but only for convenience and we pay it off asap. It took a VERY VERY long time to get to this point and it is still terrifying to me that we might end up deeply in credit card debt. The only exception we will consider is the 12 months same as cash option and that is because it leaves our savings alone and we can avoid finance charges and pay the item off within a specified time. It has worked very well for us at least 4 times.

(this is from the article) Please people, do not use freecredit report.com. It’s not free. Use annualcreditreport.com instead.

Anyway... this article had a link to a blog and some books that are supposed to be great reads and first steps for those of us not using credit cards or payment plans in our daily lives.

http://www.beingfrugal.net/
Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
The Complete Cheapskate by Mary Hunt

Spring Break To Do

I cannot sleep because of my back - agh! I thought I would post my spring break to do list... I know, boring, sorry!

1. Run a million errands tomorrow, including taking Rudy to the vet... him and Hubb were goofing around and Hubb's big paw cut Rudy's shoulder and we want to make sure it doesn't get infected... poor little guy!
2. Scan pictures so I can have them online to post and safe from any possible damage from storage
3. Haircut for Utah on Saturday - or more like a hair intervention - he has gradually returned to a hair helmet and needing a comb all the time.. sheesh!
4. Hair color and cut for me on Saturday.
5. Consignment and/or donation of three large bags of clothes.. if anyone is interested in size twelve capris, let me know, got a big bag full of Dockers that can be yours for nothing!
6 Clean house (Tod vacuumed today so all that is left is bathrooms and dusting).

I want to watch Twilight at least once more this week... and Utah and I are going to Branson (he is inviting a friend) for a couple of days... we have baseball practice starting Monday, too..

first weekend of spring break

** Today has been 8 years without you, Dad... we miss you...

Tuesday is home from Florida... we are hoping the Young's took some pictures of Tuesday.. she took a lot of awesome pictures but we don't have one of her with her grandparents, aunt, uncle, or cousins.. so we are waiting to hear if some other pictures were taken that we can frame for her and Keely!

This is the sunrise the morning they left for Florida! Their plane left around 5:30am, so they had a great view of the sun coming up that morning! This is Grandpa and Grandma Young's pool yard... Tuesday and Keely spent some quality time by the pool and in the hot tub... Grandpa washes this screen every day to keep it nice and clean..

Tuesday loved the shrub art...

She also went through an exhibit that is growing cucumbers and watermelons at giant proportions.. below is a 9lb lemon, yes LEMON!

This is Tuesday's cousin Claire... below is Lindsey...

Keely and a 'cool dragon'...

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Mom would have celebrated a birthday on March 16th... we miss her so much! She taught me so much about courage, independence, and perseverance... she was so tenacious in her own way and she made sure each of us had everything we needed to succeed. She made sure I had many opportunities to travel... she was a gutsy southern woman who always looked beautiful and put together!

I am still working on my picture scanning project and hope to have more pictures to post soon!

What a weekend!

Tod got home about 4:30pm today... right AFTER baseball try-outs were over. Unfortunately, Tod will have to depend on my notes and baseball knowledge when he drafts his team on Tuesday... :-)! It is so nice to have his home.. and this is what he looked like when he entered the house.. obviously, Memphis was fun! We are just glad it is only one weekend a year that he goes away...

Our loyal companion and friend, Cosmo, lived a devoted 14 years with us and on Friday, March 13th, we had to make the difficult decision to have Cosmo set free from his painful and debilitated body. We miss him deeply and I plan to find many pictures of him when he was younger and post them.. until then.. in memory of our Cosmo.. been with us since right after Utah was born, we miss you and will miss you each day.

Really nothing more can be said.. Emmet loves jelly and we LOVE Emmet!

We spent Saturday evening with the Wood Family and friends celebrating Brayden's and Israel's birthday. It was an awesome evening of family, friends, and yes, fun! It renewed each of us after such a sad event on Friday.

Tuesday leaves for Florida on Tuesday morning with Keely... this is her new camera so she can come home with lots of pictures! They are meeting Uncle Mike and family on Wednesday and going to Orlando.. that will be such fun and we are looking forward to hearing AND seeing all about the week!

March 14th (3-14, 3.14) is Pi Day and is celebrated by math teachers all over the world. It fell on a Saturday this year, so it was celebrated on Friday. Each student had a slice of pi(e) (parent, teachers donated pi(es) and supplies). We then surprised the students and the top three homework percentages from each hour (100%, 98%, 94%) got to pi(e) the math teacher (ME!) and then three most improved students also got to hit the math teacher in the face (or top of the head) with a pi(e). It was ridiculously fun! These are just some of the photos!