Nothing is funner than sorting through boxes and finding some of your high school homework and school projects.  That’s actually what happened to me a couple weeks ago.  I ended up finding one paper I wrote about how Country Music was becoming popular.  That was back in 1992 and I’ll never forget one of the guys in my class saying I was wrong and country music would never be popular.  I always wonder if he remembers saying that to me since not only did country music because popular, but to me it keeps getting more popular as years go by!  ~grin~

Then there was my project where we had to be a  business plan writer.  We had to pretend we wanted to start a business and write up a business plan that would would “take to the bank” (turn into the teacher) so we could “get a loan” (grade).  I’ll never forget I had wrote about how I would open up a hunting & fishing store in Grandville.  Even though I did get a good grade, I seem to remember my teacher thinking that there were already quite a few in the area and that was way before the Gander Mountain opened up.   Now they opened a store like I would of wanted to do and look how good they are doing!  Of course I would never of been able to of had that much inventory since my store would of been way smaller.

Do you ever look through your old homework/school assignments?  If you do, does it bring back lots of memories?

Next year will be the year of travel for me as I will be going on 2, maybe 3 different trips for ME!!  I wonder how I’ll do since only one of them will be with the family, the other one (or two) will be just me, no Paul or kids.  I know I’ll have a good time, but I also know I’m going to be missing the kids like crazy.  Especially at bed time as I love to snuggle with Kevin & Katie.  I swear that’s my favorite part of the day.

In January I’ll be heading out to Vegas with my friend who will be turning the big 4-0.   When we first started talking about going somewhere we thought about looking at what kind of mexico vacation deals there were out there, but ended up deciding on Vegas since there are usually some really cheap airline flights out there which was making us think more people would be more apt to go out there versus Mexico.

Then in February I’ll be heading south with Paul and the kids for a couple weeks.  The first week will be spent in the Orlando area where we ended up renting Scrub Jay Villa for a week!  Paul’s parents are planning on coming up and spending a couple nights with us so they can go to Disney with us for one of the days.  Then the following week we will be driving over to Orange Beach, Alabama where we will be spending that week with my parents.   We did the exact same thing last year and it actually worked out great because we played hard at Disney and then by the time we got to Orange Beach we were ready to kick back, relax and listen to those waves crash on the beach.

Then my finally trip of the year would be out to see my friend in Portland, OR.   The only reason why I can’t say for sure I’m going is because I don’t have the dates scheduled in yet, or the money saved up.  I know my friend had said spring would be the best time, but with me going away in Jan & Feb, I don’t know if it would be to much to also go away in March or April.  It would be kind of nice if I could go more in the fall, that way I also would have time to save up for it as I know the airline tickets out there can be quite expensive.

Oh how I wish it was 2010 already!

Yesterday was quite the day for me.  I woke up thinking I was going to finish playing musical furniture….. I ended up moving Katie’s bookcase out of her room, moved her dresser where her bookcase was and then moved her Ryan’s Room Dollhouse back into her room from the basement as she wasn’t playing with it much when it was down there.   I then moved the desk out of our bedroom so I could move the bookcase in, but to put it where I wanted it to go I ended up moving the nightstand that was on Paul’s side of the bed to my side and moved the filing cabinet over to his side of the bed.   Then with Paul’s help we moved the desk downstairs so Kevin’s computer could go on that instead of the kids table we had it sitting on.  Now Katie will be able to use the kids size table when she gets her tea set for Christmas (or her Birthday which is only a few days after Christmas). 

While cleaning my friend ended up calling wondering if I could help her out as she ended up locking her keys in the car at Wal-mart.  She knew she had a spare set at home, so I started getting the kids ready to go pick her up.  Then she remembered.. the garage door opener was in the car so she had no way to get into her house.   She ended up calling the Lexus dealer to see if they could open her car and they said they couldn’t and they wouldn’t send out a person to unlock it as with those cars it would do more damage than anything.  If she wanted to call someone to try to get in the car she could, but they didn’t really recommend it.  So I picked her up and off to her house we went.

We tried getting in by pushing the garage door open, didn’t work.  We double checked all her windows and even tried to get Kevin up on her deck to see if he could somehow get her slider to open (she doesn’t have stairs off her deck) and that didn’t work either.   We had called all her family members to see who had keys to her house and the only person who did was her step-mom and that didn’t help as she is in Florida right now.    We called her friend who does windows in hopes that he could remove her garage window, but we were unable to get a hold of him.  We even called a local locksmith to see how much it would cost to have someone come out to pick her locks (normal & deadlock) and we were looking at $100-150, plus they didn’t have anyone in the area anyways to help us.  So that left us one option.. to break a window to get in.  We both didn’t want to do it, but it was our only way.  Thankfully Kevin was with us as we put him through the window (it was the slider kind and thankfully the side we broke was the side that stayed still so he didn’t have to go through any glass.   Once in the garage he was able to get into the house and unlock the door for her.    On the way home I talked to the kids about what happened and told them we shouldn’t break windows, only if Mommy says it’s ok. 

I got home and Paul had ended up finding the deer he had shot the day before.  Unfortunately he was unable to find it the day he shot it (he looked a LONG time) so by the time he found it, the buck was quite bloated and was unable to be saved.  He still had brought it home and OH MY!  Did it stink up not only our garage, but I could smell it in the house as well! 

Then I found out that there was a wedding reception that we were invited to by word of mouth and it was to start in 2 hours!  I was so not in the mood for it, I don’t have any good clothes to wear as I really don’t get out much being a stay at home mom that all my good clothes no longer fit due to the weight I have gained.  (I can’t believe I wrote that on here)  I probably could of found something in my closet if it wasn’t for my stupid belly fat.  Of course it would of been a lot better had I not of had a 2 hour notice.  So between me having nothing to wear and being behind in my plains for the day Paul and I both had decided it be best if we didn’t go.  He had a lot of things he had wanted to get done too as he was going to go deer hunting this morning due to it being gun opener.  Plus maybe if we had actually gotten an invite like everyone else it would of been a little different too because my thoughts were we never RSVP’d, did the bride and groom know or think we were coming?  I just felt as if we would of been wedding crashers and it wasn’t feeling quite right to me.   We did end up sending a card with money in it with our friends that were going, so it’s not as if we ignored them all together.    What would you of done?  Would you of gone to the wedding?

I found this on youtube this morning and wanted to share with you all and to also say THANK YOU for those who have and are serving our armed forces! Thank you for giving/risking your life for us to be the land of the free and home of the brave! You are my hero!

So the past week I’ve been doing a little bit of shopping due to Kevin’s birthday coming up next week.  What have I noticed since Halloween?!?  (Some stores was even before)  I think every store I’ve gone to has their Christmas decorations and artificial christmas trees out already!!  In one store I even heard one Christmas song playing on the radio as well.  Here I thought it was bad having this stuff coming out around Thanksgiving, but now they have it all out around Halloween… what’s next?  Will they start putting it out with the back to school sales?!?

I’ve had people ask me before why I blog and if I make any money because of it.   The reason I started blogging was due to I thought it would be a little easier to keep family & friends updated as to what we were up to.   After blogging for awhile I ended up joining some places where you could get paid to blog, but due to my blog not being that popular I never really got that many jobs. 

Maybe if I knew what to write about that would keep people’s attention I would do better, but it seems like I go in spurts way to much.  There will be awhile where I do good, to only get busy with the kids and life where I find myself not coming on here and all of a sudden I look and it’s been a week with no posts. 

So maybe if I started making sure I set aside a certain part of the day to blog I would do better?  Of course I’m wondering if I would have to advertise more like at http://onewaytextlink.com so people would find me that would be better too.

Why did you start blogging? Do you find yourself running out of things to blog about? Do you make money blogging? If so, how did you start doing that? By writing reviews or by selling ad space?

My friend is going to be turning the big 4-0 this upcoming January and a group of us girls have decided to fly to Vegas for the weekend.  (Leaving Friday night and coming home Monday)   The last time I was in Vegas I was in 4th grade so needless to say the only thing I can remember is circus circus. 

I’m not to much into gambling.. $20 and I’m done.  Thankfully my friend isn’t either and she would like to do some fun things like maybe taking a tour of Hover Dam, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, things like that. 

So, here’s my questions to those have been to vegas….

1.  Beside gambing… what was something fun that you would recommend doing?
2.  Is there a certain place you highly recommend eating at?
3. When you are there.. are you a contant busy?  I’m debating if I would want to bring my laptop or not.  My guess is it will be staying home since I have a feeling we will be busy, but sometimes it’s nice to have to look something up.  Of course the hotel my friend was thinking we were staying at you have to pay extra to be able to go online, so maybe I will just pass on that.
4. Is the strip far from the airport?  If you were going to be staying at a place on the strip, would you rent a car, take a shuttle ($14.50 a person) or pay a taxi?  (there currently are 4 or 5 of us going)
5. Is there a hotel you would recommend over another?  My friend was thinking Planet Hollywood…

If you have anything else you would like to add that I might want to know, please leave me a comment!!

Thanks in advance!!

Do you ever start dreaming about moving into a different house? Even though I like my house, there are quite a few days where I wish we could move into something with a little better of a lay out. When we bought this house I liked the open layout where the kitchen, dinning room and living room were all one big room with no dividers.   Now that we have lived here for 8 years I’m thinking differently.  I’m still thankful that we have the 3 bedrooms together on the main floor so when the kids yell for me in the middle of the night I might here them.   (I tend to sleep quite soundly)  I just wish the bathroom would of been between our bedroom and the living room as those two rooms share the same wall and with Paul working 3pm-1am, it makes it quite hard to keep the kids quiet in the morning so he can sleep. 

I ended up finding a house that has the floor plan I think I would like.  Granted it’s out in the country so we no longer would have city water and I’m sure would end up having to look at water softeners someday, but to be able to also have the piece and quiet of no neighbors nearby would be heavenly!    Thankfully our current neighbors are great neighbors, no loud parties at all hours of the night, they keep their yards up and they don’t let their kids run around like Indians where they get into trouble.   But there are just the days where I wish I could go outside with Kevin & Katie where we could enjoy the outdoor just the 3 of us by ourselves without all the other kids coming over to play or at least feel like we are being watched.

I don’t know if I feel that way just because I did grow up in the country and was used to having more privacy, but that’s one thing I still haven’t gotten used to.  Maybe someday we will end up finding our dream house in our price range where we wouldn’t have to take another mortgage out and it could be more an even swap for our house.   Hey… a girl can dream right??

May you and/or your little goblins have a fun & safe Halloween today!

I know most of us want to lose weight not just we will look and feel better, but did you know that you can actually save money as well?   If you don’t believe me, just ask your insurance agent and ask them who gets better life insurance rates.    People who are at the healthy weight or over weight.  When we signed up for life insurance I’ll never forget our agent told us then that if we lost weight and I got back down to 130 lbs (that’s what I was in High School!) that our rates would drop!  I’ll never forget that so in case you do have a life insurance policy and you did end up losing weight and are at where you are suppose to be… call your insurance agent as you should end up saving some money on your life insurance policy!