Awww man! Back to work!

I had a lovely weekend.

Saturday~ The games were great! I didn't get too many "fun" pictures as we ended up watching Allen compete most the day, but it was a lot of fun! I got some great action shots of Allen (and the underside of his kilt! Oops!) that I'll post when I get home tonight. I also got a picture of Matthew, Brian and Allen in front of the dyed water fountain just before we all went home.

I almost convinced Matthew to let me buy this beautiful Royal Stewart kilt for me for $95 but we really just don't have the cash flow right now. Why does he always have to be practical when it comes to buying stuff for me?! :( Oh well, maybe next year... when I'm skinnier anyway! :D

I had fun scrappin' on Saturday night too. I sorted a bunch of pictures into page piles and almost finshed 1 layout (pictures of the games LAST year) and had a lot of fun chattering away. Next time we're all going to MY place though. I've got the most stuff and I packed WAY too much to go to Katie's. It' one of those fears where I don't know WHAT I want to do yet and then I don't want to leave anything behind for fear I MAY need it.

Sunday~ I organized a lot of pictures that I'd had on my camera. I also backed up my entire file of digiscrap stuff. It's a good thing our external HD is so big. Once I get my own laptop it'll be much better though. We had Liam's 4th birthday party that night too. That kid is too cute for his own good. He's been making these crazy cheese-grins lately for the camera so my brother-in-law figured out to trick him. With camera at the ready you hold up fingers and ask him "how many?". Just do random numbers and take his picture when you get him to say "three". Now we've got his beautiful smile!

Monday~ My good-bye to favorite foods. We went to our usual Indian buffet for lunch. The raida was superb and the makini made me die and go to heaven! Then it was off to see X-Men 3. *Sigh* I was very happy with it. If you still haven't seen it and plan to, make sure you stay until the END of the credits. If you don't you'll miss out on a vital piece of information. We then did laundry (since it got neglected on Saturday) and went for a pizza dinner at my mom's. It was nice and quiet since Dad was studying for a insurance license renewal test and Kate had homework that she'd left to the last minute. Roxanne is out of town visiting my cousins too so it was mostly just me, Matthew and my mom. Then we went to the grocery store on our way home.

I'm starting the George Stella diet today. It's another one of those crazy low-carb suckers. It's very similar to the Susanne Sommers diet... he modified it from Adkins. Trena's sister has lost a crazy amount of weight since January (like 25 lbs or something) on it so here I go! If I stick to it I should be able to a good 30 lbs off by Christmas!! Matthew is doing it too, so that'll help my cause and we're going to start walking too to help it out! So far so good. No carbs today. This one will be tough for me since that's all I really LOVE to eat... rice, potatoes, pasta. I almost cried when we went to the grocery store and realized that there's like 4 isles we can't even go down anymore (crackers/cookies, pasta, bread & cereal). The stuff I'll go through in the name of my health. Ugh! At least I can eat lots of cream cheese and lots of meats and cheeses. Berries too, yum!

I burned the candle at both ends

I’m so exhausted. I’ve finally “let down” and now my body is punishing me for the last 2 ½ weeks of pushing myself. I’m really proud though as I’ve never been much of a studier. I REALLY pushed myself (well… I could have done more, but going from NEVER studying to 2-3 hours a day is pretty good) and hopefully it’ll pay off. I’m just glad it’s over now. I should be able to get my grades in a month… I’m sure I could go down there and get it sooner… but I don’t think I want to go back just yet. It’s really nice that it’s over for Memorial Day though. I’ve got a fun weekend ahead of me.

Tonight is a party at my in-laws to celebrate the end of the semester… like we really need an excuse to hang out? Aaron and Trena are just party people. :D It’ll be nice because we’ll project a movie on the back of the garage again. That’s always fun. Not to mention the dinner made up of appetizers and brownie sundaes. YUMMY! I’m waking up and feeling hungry just thinking about it.

Highland games are tomorrow. I’m pumped up for that. My buddy Allen will be there, and I think that’s all me and Matthew may do there… hang out. I don’t think anyone else we know is going. Allen usually competes but I can’t remember if he is or not this year. I got a pretty cool shot of him last year tossing a caber (well, really setting up, the actual toss picture didn’t turn out as nice). I’ll play around with that some more this year if he does compete. This will be the first year we go and Matthew will actually have a kilt. Pretty fun! I have NO idea what else he’ll be wearing since he doesn’t have the rest of the traditional clothes (just his kilt, sporran and belt) but that’s his job to figure out. I’ll post pictures when I get a chance this weekend.

I really want to find a good tartan skirt, but most of them are WAY too short. Matthew keeps trying to get me to wear a Wallace… sorry this isn’t Scotland in the 1600s, I will not wear my husband’s tartan. I’m a friggin Stuart and Robertson, and I’ll die before I wear Wallace. Okay, so maybe it’s not that bad, Grandpa was named for William Wallace, but I’m SO not going to back down on the whole thing about him needing to wear a Stuart tartan. We both have lines there… it just makes sense. Whatever, it’s what our kids will wear. I just wish we had a little more cash right now so that we could actually register with a clan. If we did it’d be Wallace probably since he actually OWNS a tartan for that. I’ll be nice and back down on that one detail. It may be more fun to register for multiples though. *shrugs* All I have to say after that is…

“If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts we’d all have a merry Christmas.” –Colby Donaldson, Survivor, Season 2 (Yeah, the guy who likened his mother visiting him in the outback to a “conjugal” visit.)

And a fun link for the day: http://www.toilette-humor.com/the-man-song.html

School is out

And JUST in time. I was about to go absolutly insane.

I was playing with my photo editor a little over a week ago... but since I've been studying...


That's my friend Damon and his new wifey Tiffany just before they got married. This photo was actually used in their wedding slideshow. I was rather proud when I saw it (their version still had color but you get the idea).

I'm just so excited to have the creativity to be able to come back that I don't really know what to do with myself. I'll just have to play around until I figure something out. Darn! ;)

Love you all and until later...

A Great Big Sigh of Relief

Oh glory be. I made it to work today. Now starts the fight to stay up all day. I was up until 2:45 this morning finishing that damn paper for my LBST 300 class. It's finished! Now I get to work until 4, meet for study group at 5 (really my only final left), turn in my paper and watch the rest of the class presentations from 7-10. THEN I get to go home. I think I'll be stopping at AmPm for one of those HUGE cans of Amp sometime today. I don't know how else I'll make it through the day. Let's not forget the sweet nectar of Mountain Dew. I'll taste that sugar for weeks.

Summer break is so close I can smell it!

As much of a pain in the ass that paper was, I learned a lot doing the research on it. I discovered Robert Mapplethorpe. Granted, some of his works fall under the TMI category, but they're still beautiful. I got several books at the school library with his works spread out all throughout and one of just his flower photos. Amazing! Someday when I have a real place to decorate I just may buy a few of his prints. This one was one of my favorites. He had several tulip photos that I just loved. The funny thing was that with all the criticism he got with his explicit stuff, very few seem to notice how sexual his flower pictures are. He's got some gorgeous calla lily photos that are extremely sexual in nature. I'll never look at one quite the same again! :)

Oh how I wish I had money for a Cannon Digital Rebel! I'd have a field day with taking pictures. My creative juices are beginning to flow, it's such a good thing that school ends this week, I've felt blocked for so long and now that I'm getting inspired I'm VERY excited. Sheila is opening her site next week and I've got to make a few more layouts for her to use in her DT area. I'm actually on a DT! I can't believe it. I'll be even m

Funny tidbit: Kristen Bell (of my beloved show Veronica Mars) was voted by PETA as sexiest female vegetarian of the year. (Prince is this year's sexiest male winner) Odd way to get press, but I don't care, any way to get VM more in the public eye is a good thing!