Happy 13th Birthday Samantha!

Thirteen years ago, I became a mother when Samantha was born. She came into this world backwards (Breech) and has been bucking the system ever since!!

We now officially have a teen in the house!

Happy Birthday Samantha!

(picture is fuzzy because its a zoom in of her in a group shot and it was such a good picture of her, I wanted to use it!)

Ready for Black Belt

Michael completed a Tae Kwon Do test this past weekend - this was the last one before his black belt test. He is currently a Red belt and when they reach that level, they need to "relearn" all of the routines they have learned at all of their previous levels. He has participated in 3 tests since his Red belt, each time demonstrating the routines that he was relearning.

He is now ready for his black belt test - scheduled for Feb 27th!















Michael above is demonstrating a routine (called a form) and a kicking technique. And in the photos below, he is demonstrating some of his self-defense techniques, including taking down his instructor, Instructor David.















We are very proud of Michael's accomplishment and look foward to celebrating his black belt in a little more than a month!

Done (enough)

So Mike put my new cubbie shelves together last evening and I got to work organizing my supplies. I have TOO MANY scrapbooking supplies, especially for the amount of time I spend scrapbooking (not enough).

So, anyway - here it is. I'm pretty happy with it. There are a few little things I still need to do, but they are little. I have a huge "leaf-sized" bag of garbage that I cleaned out from double/triple memorabilia, etc. The black shelves are still right beside this space, but the only things left on those shelves are things I'm currently listing on eBay to sell.

And notice on the top row, second from the left, are the light switches for the room. I have to keep small stuff in that cubbie but it works well!

Maybe this will motivate me to scrapbook a little more!

Happy New Year - 2010!

Well, another new year.

In the spirit of the New Year, I'll share a few resolutions.

I'm going to get some more of the C.R.A.P. out of this house. It is amazing how much stuff you can accumulate. I've been doing ok recently, especially with kids stuff, by consigning items twice a year as a fundraiser for Michael's baseball team. But, there is so much more I need to get rid of.

We went to IKEA the other day (ugh, I hate going to the store but I love what I got) and got these new shelves for the basement. We have replaced a cheap set of plastic shelves with these nice cubbies. Easier for the kids to keep it neater because they are only dealing with one cubbie at a time, instead of an entire shelf.



We've moved all the games into the cubbies and I need to start getting into the toy closet and purge, sort, and organize into these cubbies.

And, I went back today (yes, two trips to Woodbridge this week) and got a smaller set of these shelves. These will be to organize my scrapbooking stuff in the basement that is currently on a table, under a table, and in a corner. These are the before photos - I'll share the after photos after we get the cubbies up and I get my stuff sorted into the cubbies.









Oh yeah, and I'm gonna lose weight. But that's not just a flippant resolution. I'm already 8 lbs down on my 25 lb goal (I started the day before Thanksgiving). I look forward to being at my goal weight by the time I'm done wearing sweaters for the season! (end of March)