Happy New Years!!!

cookie decorating on a snow day

The other day, on the kids snow day I decided that it would be fun to come to my house and make the cut-out cookies. All went well for awhile, as you can see from the below pictures... but it wasn't long before things went south.

This one's for Jim

Unfortunately, for the sake of the process, the actual decorating part went painfully slow. I decorated an entire rabbit family in the amount of time it took them to decorate one cookie. Their cookies were lovely though, but in my family, cookie decorating is serious business. It needs to get done as quickly as possible to maximize eating time potential.

Before the decorating even began though, they got ahold of my video camera and went to town. while i was going through all the footage to edit, I found some less than appropriate mooning, which I kindly cut out. however, i laughed SO HARD when I saw it! (note, if you're watching this from the actual site, you may want to scroll to the bottom and pause the music player :)

my first v-blog

i don't know where the inspiration for this came from, except that i was more in the mood to talk than to write. which i'll end up doing a lot of anyways, since I didn't cover everything in the video!

I would like to pay tribute at this time, however, to my Mom and Melissa for surprising me with one of the sweetest and heartfelt gifts i've ever gotten. I was feeling really down about Christmas this year and about 3 weekends ago, Melissa came over while I was gone and my mom and her decorated my room :) They wrapped all the pictures on the wall like presents and put huge bows on them. then the strung Christmas lights all around the one room. i seriously cried when I saw it.

Anyways, you will see the result of their work in this video... plus a lot of other things i can't believe i'm airing publicly... (might i add what a lovely angle the camera is at on this first frame)

Decision 2008

I usually don't get too involved discussing politics. I don't like to be at odds with people and I often feel that talking about my political views is just an open invitation for disunity.

However, I just watched this video, and while I'm skeptical and hesitant to let myself be swayed by political videos, this one (when watched in it's ENTIRETY) was very good.

I'm totally stepping out of my comfort zone putting this up here, but I was very intrigued to hear and watch this info.

It explains a lot of things that I have heard about but not really understood.

So, agree with me or not, I'm just puttin it out there. Let me know what you think if you want to.

"exchange" the movie

I've mentioned in previous posts that while I was in Mexico I performed a drama with about 8 other people. It was called the Exchange, and since coming home, we've had the opportunity to perform it 3 more times.

I FINALLY was able to get a hold of the video... I tried recording it myself (well letting someone else record it with my camera) like 3 times and somehow it always got messed up!

This is actually a better recording than I could have done with my camera, and because this particular performance was at my church, the lighting was very cool.

Unfortunately, it is a quite dark recording, so it's hard to see a lot of what's going on and because it has to be low-res to upload you can't really see our faces.

But I still get chills everytime I see it... It's very powerful...

Ron's Slip 'n Slide Extravaganza

Earlier, I let Andy watch this video. I prefaced it by saying that these boys are really big boys and they know how to do big boy tricks, but that he was too little to try it...



And here's what he had to say about it...

"I want my dad to build me dat."

Note the guy in the video with the sling on his arm... wonder how that happened...

the contest, rules and a prize!

***Posting date is Monday, June 23. When you visit, scroll to the bottom of the post and then add your name and url to Mister Linky. Then visit the other links to see what everyone else did!***


Thanks to the help of a few friends, I have come up with a giveaway and what you have to do to win!

However, comma, before I go ahead with said giveaway, I want to be sure that there is enough interest out there. And since I'm not hugely blogtopular (made up word by mwah) I want AT LEAST 5 people to comment on here that you will participate.

So here it is. The theme is "things you can't live without."

And the way I want this represented is on a scale of percentages. You might remember the pie chart I made last week as an intro to this giveaway/contest thingy.

What you need to do is come up with a list of the "things you can't live without" there's no limit as to how many things that might actually be. Then they need to be prioritized and assigned a percentage that will ultimately add up to 100%.

Now the way you choose to represent this is up to you. You might do a pie chart like I did, or come up with something else cool and creative. You could add photos if you wanted to, or add in a story... anything you come up with is ok as long as in the end it satisfies the requirment of adding up to 100%.

The winner will be picked by me *maniacal laughter ensues* haha just kidding... I am going to pick a winner based on creativity and originality.

On to the prize! I thought long and hard about what the prize should be and I think I came up with a good one. I wanted it to be meaningful to the contest, and since two of the things I can't live without are Jesus and music, I thought this fit the criteria. It's a new cd from Jonathan Stockstill and the Deluge Band. I first started hearing this album about 2 months ago and couldn't help but be grasped by the powerful worship. I won a $15 itunes gift card from Kim and used some of it to download this album.

So I wanted to share the love as it were. I tried and tried to find a link to any of the songs online so I could share a preview of it with you, but alas I failed. I ended up having to make my OWN video thingy for it so i could upload it on blogger.

Anyways, I picked 3 out of 14 tracks for you to sample. So turn up your sound and start listening :) I removed the music player from my page for awhile so that it doesn't interfere with this post.

Please don't forget to comment back and let me know whether or not you're interested in participating! I need YOU to make this work!!!

chapstick convenience

This post is to explain the extreme convenience that you can have for your chapstick habit. I don't feel the need to go into too much detail, I think this is mostly self-explanatory.

An image to capture the pocket

A short video to capture the convenience of the chapstick pocket. It's only a thumb flick away.

sledding on saturday!

This last saturday, we had a sledding party at mendon ponds... suicide hill style! I forgot to get a picture of the sign that says "snowboarding, skiing and sledding prohibited." HAHAHA! Good one! Anyways, there were about 20 people give or take that actually came and we had a blast.

We went down the hill with three sled trains, and this was the best of the three. the first one my bottom came off of the sled i was on and i was dragged down the hill bare bottom... yah, it was cold. This was the second one we made...

My two bestest friends were there, Melissa and Alicia! Unfortunately, there aren't any pictures of melissa because she was the awesome one who took all of them! She really did an amazing job... score for stupid hands???

By the time we left, I was pretty much wet through both pairs of the pants I was wearing. Mostly because of the one ride down the hill with no sled barrier.

This was the third and last train we attempted. It started out as a "U" shape for who knows what reason... and then proceeded to completely reverse and while we went down for a little ways, the whole thing came apart and we crashed all over eachother. Wow, this sounds like so much fun when i describe it like that *sarcasm*

After about an hour and a half, we'd had enough, so we left to go in search of some hot chocho... among other things. There were five of us altogether. Alicia, Dave, Christa, Josh and myself. Alicia, christa and i changed into dry clothes and then we headed up to the city in search of Java's. None of us really knew how to get there, so with the limited experience I have driving in downtown, we were just going around in circles. But thanks to melissa, we found it and then had the yummiest hot chocho ever!

while we were at java's we decided that it would be fun to go to a movie... unfortunately, at the dollar theatre, nothing that everyone wanted to see was actually playing. PS I Love You was actually playing which is indeed one of the BEST MOVIES EVER... but stupid boys can be party poopers ya know? (disclaimer for any boys who might read this *i love them anyways*) We ended up settling on Vantage Point which was definitely a "boy" movie, but i liked it anyhow. It did however, lack plot in the beginning... whatever.

we had an awesome time and i can't wait to do it again!!!

winter favorites

i've read a few blogs lately that are a list of "favorites." at first, i really didn't want to do it, since it'd been done, and redone... but i have been thinking lately about the things I love about the different seasons. So i decided to list out the things that i actually DO like about winter.

There are just so many days when the sun doesn't shine here that it is hard for me to think of the things that i love. But when i think about the things that make me feel warm, i start to remember what they are...



my kitty cat sleeping next to my face because it's warmer there :)

going to sleep in a nest of blankets and pillows (honestly, I would do this year round, however, it is just too warm in the summer to make that comfortable)

putting on my slippers in the morning (it helps make getting out of bed a little more bearable)

hot chocolate with coffee flavor (notice this is not coffee with chocolate flavor... i'm talking mocha EXTREME)

getting into a hott shower in the morning and finally shaking off all the cold from getting up

sitting in front of the fireplace doing varying activities... such as reading, watching tv or scrapbooking

Notice, most of these have to do with sleep, bed, resting or waking up. Winter is truly a time to hibernate for me. I am extremely reflective year round, but i hold a certain fondness for the season of winter... it seems like I have to try harder to be happy so it helps me to see the beauty all around me. I love when it snows new and all the dirty snow gets covered up and all you can see is white... yah I like that too :)

backtracking a bit

ps: since i learned how to upload the videos, you are going to be seeing a lot more of them. this particular video was indeed shot at the zoo, however, it was taken this summer. but since this post was about the zoo, i felt that it was an appropriate place to stick it. the adorable albeit almost scary laugh in the beginning of the video is my nephew nick.

notice the music in the background

this was supposed to be posted LONG ago around the time it was taken... that would be Christmastime. however, i am somewhat technologically challenged in some areas and it took me awhile to figure out just how to do this. So here it is.

--> For those of you who know my brother Dan at all will totally appreciate this clip. Heck, even if you don't know him you still might appreciate it. We were setting the table for Christmas dinner when this took place. He is completely OUT OF CONTROL... or am i because i took the video?