HAPPY NEW YEAR! {and a Blog Hop freebie}

This has been one heck of a year for me and my family! I hope y’all had a wonderful Christmas and looking forward to what’s to come in 2010.

We had a nice Christmas {even though my Mom was in the hospital}. She came home Monday evening and passed away after only being home 5 hours. We are having services for her this Saturday, Jan 2nd at 1pm. It has been a struggle for me to say “Goodbye” to her because she was my BEST friend! But I know she’s not in any more pain and with her family that passed before her. Thank you to all my amazing family & friends that have sent loving messages to me. I am so grateful. ♥

Ok I don’t want to dwell on the sadness right now because today is the beginning of a New Year and new beginnings!

If you are still finishing scrapping your Christmas pictures, check out my Deck the Halls kit plus all the extras!

Here’s my 2-page layout

Look at these fabulous layouts from the DSO CT:

These layouts were by Kerri (kayjaydo)

 

These were by Karen (bydelstorp) also using Jazzy’s A Christmas Song wordart on the 2nd layout.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today! The DSO Gals have been busy making gifties for y’all.

 

So, you probably hopped over from Shannon.

Since you’ve gotten this far, here is my special TREAT for you!

You can grab this HERE

For your next treat, go back to the DSO Blog to see what you’ve missed or hop over to Jazzy!

Since this is a Blog Hop, if you get lost along the way make sure you stop by the DSO Blog for directions! {Plus there may be a surprise for y’all there too!} Please remember that we’re all in different time zones around the world, so some may not post at the exact same time. Thanks!

**Ooooh I almost forgot, ONE LUCKY commenter will win a $25 gift certificate to DSO! Don’t forget to comment on THIS POST {and all the other blogs for more chances} to be entered to WIN!!! The WINNER will be announced Saturday, Jan 2nd on the DSO BLOG!

GOOD LUCK!!!!

ONE more day…

until CHRISTMAS!!!

Are you ready?

Are you having any parties/celebrations tonight?

Every year on Christmas Eve my husband’s family comes to our house to celebrate with a big pot luck dinner, plus treats and sometimes a gift exchange.

I did some baking yesterday with the kids and brought some goodies to neighbors and my Mom in the hospital. {oh she went back into the hospital Monday morning. She already received some plasma & vitamin K to thicken her blood, then had her left lung drained of fluid this time. She may have fluid in her right lung again that they will drain today and start chemotherapy because her breast cancer has spread to her lungs & throat.} My Mom is such a trooper and is MY HERO!

I still have a little more baking to do, plus clean up & start cooking the ham, meatballs, creamy corn, wassail, make a cheese spread & slice the cheese for the crackers.

I haven’t even begun to wrap presents. I guess it’s a good thing there aren’t very many this year.

I hope you & your family has a wonderful CHRISTMAS!!!

Don’t forget that you can TRACK SANTA. We’ve done this the last 2 years and the kids love it! Go HERE and select your language, then you can see him throughout his journey! It’s really cool. We just leave that site open and the kids come back and see the updates. Sometimes they race to see who can tell me which country he’s in now and where he’s going next. hahaha

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Have you heard of Fruitcake Lady?

oh. my. gosh. This lady is hilarious! Apparently this was on Jay Leno.

She reminds me of the “Shoebox” cards lady. You’ve gotta watch this (don’t forget to pause my playlist on the right first, so you can hear what she’s saying):

{warning – you may not want young ears around}

UPDATE: My Mom is doing very good! I saw her at the hospital last night for a little while. Her morphine has her making up funny stories and wanting to bust out of there & go home. LOL She was cracking us up as usual. It was good to finally see her much more awake and aware. She’s been in the hospital almost 2 weeks and majority of that time she has been in tons of pain, very uncomfortable, and unable to talk much or be herself. We can tell she’s feeling better because she’s suddenly worried about getting her Christmas shopping done and cleaning the house for the holidays. She really wants to eat – when she was able to eat, she just kept vomitting last week. They wouldn’t let her eat or drink yesterday. Hopefully today they will give her some liquids, then solids soon. She overheard some nurses talking about pizza in another room, and my Mom said if someone couldn’t get her at least some ice chips that she wanted to leap out of bed and hunt down the pizza and eat it all. hahahaa

She just had some x-rays this morning and now they’re waiting results.

Gotta go. I’m heading to my parents’ house to help get some cleaning done so my Mom can stop worrying. Plus my Brother’s coming in town tomorrow night, so we are ALL very excited to see him! Hope you have a safe flight, Spencer!!!

Come See the Light

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with family and friends.

It’s been kind of hard getting in the Christmas spirit {which usually decorating the house with the family does it} because my Mom has been in the hospital for the past week and a half. Earlier in the week, Ben, the kids and I went to my parents’ house and set out their tree with lots of lights and garland, and we found some decorations to place around the house too. We wanted my Mom to feel “festive” when she comes home. I finally started getting us ready for Christmas by putting lights on the house outside and setting out a few decorations. I’m really hoping we can get our tree set up this weekend. Are you ready for Christmas?

Have you seen Mark Mabry’s photo exhibits called Reflections of Christ and/or Another Testament? They are so amazing! I have the book with all the pictures from Reflections of Christ and my parents have the CD, which they play often – it’s so beautiful and peaceful.

Well, I just received an email notice with this info:

“Dear Friends,
Great news! Deseret Book is offering a friends and family discount of 40% off the Book, DVD, and CD from Another Testament. This is for in store only so print and enjoy:
COUPON

“Also, we've made a new video combining images from both projects put to the music of Come See The Light:

“The biggest thrill of my life over the last two years, other than the birth of my son, Canon, has been the chance to speak often about the making of Reflections of Christ and Another Testament. The process of making of these two projects effected me deeply and positively. These projects deal with my personal understanding of the Savior and how His gospel works in my life.
This email reaches out to people of various faiths. Whether we're Baptist, Catholic, Mormon, Methodist, Unitarian, or anything else, the intent of this work is to let us all imagine together meeting Christ in person.

“The new video combines my two most recent projects and focuses on two different communities of people coming to the Lord. We are all familiar with the first group of people as those in the Holy Land at the time of Christ. The imagery also introduces another group living across the world on the American continent who knew about the Savior and awaited His appearance after His ascension to Heaven in the book of Acts. The stories combine the Biblical record of Christ and the record kept in the Book of Mormon.

“If nothing else, I hope these images give us pause to imagine that Jesus is among us and that we can see each other as we are... brothers and sisters.

Merry Christmas,
Mark Mabry
markmabry@mac.com “

I just watched the youtube video and it is incredible! I really hope that you’ll watch it. It’s only a few minutes and already I feel some peace in what’s been a really hard past week and a half, especially today.

My Mom is about to have surgery again tonight. Please keep her in your prayers. Her surgery last Sunday went fine until she didn’t come out of her anesthesia, the doctors gave her something to counteract it, then she stopped breathing. She had to be on a respirator for a day or two until she could breathe on her own. I’m praying that her surgery goes well tonight and she can wake up from anesthesia and get well so she can come home.

* * EDIT * * Received message from my Dad - surgery went well & my Mom is waking up! He is with her right now. THANK YOU for all your prayers! I was getting really nervous and scared most of the day since her surgery kept getting delayed. It's been a long day for everyone. Now my tears are tears of Joy! I can finally breathe easy tonight.

Shocking News & a little Hokey Pokey

For those who haven't heard yet, my Mom had been really sick all last week and my Dad finally took her to the ER last Thursday night because she couldn't hardly breathe and was coughing like crazy. Turns out she has pneumonia and they drained a LOT of icky yellow fluid out of her right lung and put her on antibiotics. So, with that she's feeling a little better now.

However, it doesn't end there. She has had a lump in her breast & hadn't seen a doctor about it. I have known about this for a while. My Dad and I have tried to convince her to get it checked out. She's so stubborn. Well, now that she's in the hospital, they have discovered she's in the advanced stages of breast cancer. It has spread to her lymph nodes in both armpits and may be in her right lung (or could be part of her infection).

They have done a full body scan, biopsy and bone scan. The bone scan results came back clear. YAY!!! A little bit of good news! Still waiting on the other results. She is optimistic and really likes her team of doctors. They want to start chemotherapy as soon as they get all the test results. She will be in the hospital a couple more days. We are all hanging in there and doing fine. We've all visited her a bunch of times, I even took the kids a couple times (we had to meet her in the lobby of her floor since the kids are under 12). She's excited to have her family near and enjoys receiving phone calls from friends and family.

We were still able to celebrate Father's Day this weekend. My Sister and I took my Dad to a movie of his choice. He chose UP in 3D. It was SO CUTE!!!! We all loved it :)

After the movie, we took the kids to McDonald's for a late lunch and then went to visit my Mom at the hospital again.

My sister, Dad, and ME

We always have a FUN time when we're with our Dad! He's an amazing Dad and he's always been there supporting and encouraging me! Thanks Dad - you're the BEST!!

The kids enjoyed shouting "Happy Father's Day!!!" to Ben several times Sunday morning!
They love their Dad so much!! Ben is such a wonderful father & husband!! We hit the jackpot with him :)

I also invited my Dad and sister over for dinner Sunday evening. We had a good time together. Then my Dad, Ben and I visited my Mom at the hospital (w/o the kids).

Oh my goodness! We were all laughing for hours! The nurses must've thought we were all nuts! We finally left around midnight. Under the circumstances, it's been a good weekend.

We all really appreciate all the warm thoughts and prayers everyone has been sending our way!

Now I've been doing laundry most of the day so we can pack. We're going to Utah for a few days for Ben's family reunion. It's more like a sibling reunion rather than huge extended family one. We're excited to see everyone. Not looking forward to the drive, but there's no way around that.

On to some more exciting news! Well exciting for me. I have finally finished a new kit!!! It's taken me a while, but I had fun creating this one.

HOKEY POKEY SAVE 25%

Somehow I got this silly song in my head, so that's how it got it's name:

You put your right foot in, you take your right foot out.
You put your right foot in, and you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around.

That's what it's all about!

You singing with me yet? hahaha
That song is fun and quirky, just like this kit!
There are lots of fun pattern papers with birdies, gems, glitter, strings, swirls and flowers to play with.
17 Papers and 52 Elements (not all shown)

Here's a better look at the pattern papers

And the Solid Papers

I took a little time {in between doing laundry} and made a layout with the kit!

I also used my Deck the Halls Alpha.
It's for the DSO Template Challenge.

These pics are from Easter this year. I just love their matching dresses and so do they! They look so beautiful! I can't believe how big they're getting.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!!!