How many words can you think of for...

BATHROOM? This how many words game is something The Girls and I have been known to play. On occasion. Usually when we are all in the car. Maggie is the least willing participant. It's usually for something there are lots of "inappropriate" words for.

But I often think when I ask where the restroom is in a public place that lots of people ask where the "bathroom" is. Which is technically incorrect. Since a bathroom should have a bath. Or a means to wash ones body. So it got me thinking about how many different terms there are for the bathroom. Here's what I've come up with:

1. bathroom
2. restroom
3. water closet
4. loo
   
5. shitter
6. crapper
7. biffy (if it's outside)
8. ladies room
9. powder room

And now I'm stuck. I thought I had come up with more when I was pondering this the other night. But either I didn't come up with as many as I thought or I've forgotten them. So if you know of more leave a comment!!!

It's not all roses...

I used Owen's napping picture to create this layout. The prompt at Gutter Girlz for May 15th was "It's not all roses". And that made me think of being a mama. (If you click the images they will appear larger.)

The title words were created with diecuts from the cricut, foam stamps, and rub-ons. The "NOT" is stickled in brown.

Here you can read the journaling better. The heart is cut from a dark red felt with my old sizzix. I still LOVE that big red beast!

This is one of my favorite parts of the layout. The white dots are from a piece of bubble wrap that I pressed onto my white ink pad and then the paper.

When I showed Morgan the layout he said, "I think this is one of the best ones you've ever done." Wow! Quite the praise coming from my man!

Spring pictures...

I haven't posted very many pictures lately. And I haven't been taking all that many either until May came around. Then I felt like getting the camera out again. I don't seem to find as many things to take pictures of in the later part of winter.

Owen fell asleep last week after we came home from a day at Lisa's house. I asked him if he wanted to go and finish napping in his bed or watch some TV. He opted for the TV where he fell asleep in about 5 minutes!

This was taken last week when he was playing in the pool for the first time this year. There were also 3 other boys in the pool! They had a great time!

One of my favorite things of spring. Lilacs!

Now that the lilacs are done the iris are blooming.

And this is one of my gnomes hiding out between the hosta.

I get a little obsessed taking pictures of the dandelions in the spring. I love to get that perfect focus. And this was it! I was really happy with this one once I uploaded all of them to the computer.

Today I went to babysit Nikki and her daughter for a bit while her mom went to an appointment. She has been home since Thursday and is doing well. She is rather weak and tires easily and has to take an astounding variety of medications but so far she's doing well and her blood levels continue to improve. Thank you to all of you who are keeping her in your thoughts and prayers.

And a quote to share for Wednesday:

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. - Marcus Aurelius

Such a wonderful way to begin a day.

And the winner of the blog candy is...

Kelli!!! At Kelli Stamps 4 U...and U can 2! Thank you to everyone who stopped by the check out my card and leave a comment. I am still working my way through the blog hop! It's my goal to stop by all the blogs and leave a comment.

Hope you all have a great Tuesday!

In honor of...

all those who are serving our country and have served our country I am participating in a bloghop this Memorial Day weekend. The bloghop is sponsored by cardsforheroes.org. Their mission is To support our nation’s armed forces by sending blank greeting cards to write home on, as well as cards of gratitude to encourage them. To date they have sent 140, 875 cards. That is amazing! You can read more about it by going to the website. As for the bloghop you can just keep linking from one blog to the next to see all the cards created and all the wonderful people who are participating. The hop doesn't officially start until around 2pm (CST) so if you are here before then you may want to come back later too! If you start here at my blog but want to go back to the beginning of the hop then CLICK HERE. There are 130 bloggers participating in the hop!!! This is my first card for CFH, but I plan on creating a bunch more. And if you are one of my non-blogging friends stopping by and would like to create cards to send please let me know and I would be happy to send them!

Here is the card I created for the bloghop. The Freedom is from the Graphically Speaking Cricut cart. The stars are a punch. Pattern paper is by Reminisce and it has a nice shimmer to it which you can't see in the picture.

After the hop I plan to send it to cardsforheroes to send to someone as a thank you. I think it's important for our military to know how valuable and appreciated they are. If it weren't for them who knows what our lifestyles might be like.

Your next stop on the bloghop is Christy Sheffield's blog, Addicted to Creating. She created a beautiful card for the hop! And while you are there check out some of Christy's other creations. She does beautiful work!!

Please leave a comment about my card or your thoughts on Memorial Day or whatever you would like. As a gesture of my gratitude for you stopping by I will be randomly picking a name from the comments (Tuesday morning) for a little RAK . A Close to My Heart card making kit! You will receive everyting you need to make some cute cards! Which you can then send to CFH!

My little superhero...

One of my very favorite pictures of Owen right now. I used a cute frame in a set I got at 2P's. I downloaded 3 new sets today! Can't wait to start using them. I'm printing a few pictures to bring to my friend Nikki who's in the hospital right now battling leukemia. As some of you know she's one of The Girls (Maggie, Lori, and Nikki). Three of my dearest and bestest friends. Anyway, I thought she could use some happiness in her room so I'm brining some pictures of O and some lilacs and the 3 month pictures I did of her daughter (Baby Q).

A momentous day...

Today is a big day for me. Why you may ask? (And if you didn't or don't care this is not the place for you!) I MOWED THE LAWN!!!! Yes, I know it doesn't sound like a big accomplishment but the truth is I have never mowed the lawn before. I've pushed it a couple of times. Like a swipe across the yard. But I haven't actually done the task of mowing the entire lawn. No, not even as a kid. I was not allowed. My mom was afraid I would lose some toes. Yes, this sounds a little irrational. But it happened to her childhood friend and then for some reason she decided I wasn't going to use a lawn mower. And I didn't. And I've been totally fine with that. My sister mowed the lawn though. Perhaps my mom didn't care if she lost toes. Or maybe (and this is probably it) my sister bugged her enough times that my mom finally just said yes. Oh, and Miranda has a longer attention span than I do.

So fast forward a lot of years to today. We have a new lawn mower. As of last summer. The previous one finally got to a point where it was just not working and we invested in a new one. It's not a fancy one. It's a push mower and it mows the lawn. The fanciest thing about it is that it bags the mulch stuff. Now, Morgan usually mows the lawn. But it difficult for him to get to this during the week because he generally doesn't get home until after 6pm. (Despite the fits I throw about him considering coming home earlier.) By the time we've had dinner and he's had some time with Owen and we've put Owen to bed it's too late to mow the lawn. So this week the lawn was getting to the point where it needed to be mowed. Well, not the grass but the MF weeds in the MF sodded part of the lawn that the city put in when the road was redone several years ago. The city picked the cheapest, shitiest, weed infested sod they could find and put it in everyone's yard on our road. The people who have a lawn service or get their yard treated or water like mad don't have weeds. Us regular folks who don't give a rats ass about grass have a crap-ton of MF weeds. (MF stands for an expletive that I can't type out or I will feel bad about offending you.) AND when the weeds get too long the city will sometimes notice and send us a letter about noxious weeds and how long they are. Which makes Morgan mad. And me too. Since it's the city's fault the MF weeds are there in the first place. I'm working on forgiving the city for this err in judgement. But it's hard since we were assed almost $4K for the new road. The least they could have done is picked some decent sod. ANYWAY... the weeds were getting long. We don't like to get the letter. So I volunteered to mow the lawn. Even though I'd never done it before and I was a little nervous about being able to start the lawn mower. But since it's a new one it started just fine. (Yes, I remembered to check if it had gas and oil. It needed gas so I put some in.) I may not have done as fine a job as Morgan does but I got the job done and now the city can't send us one of their nasty letters. Unless it's already in the mail. In that case when I get it I think I will scan the photo they always send along (of the long weeds) and photoshop me into the picture giving them the finger and send it back! Or send a picture of the mowed lawn AND me with my friendly gesture. I know, real mature, but it's a sore spot!!! And I'll end there. Because I could go on and on about my beef with the city and their many errs in judgement!

A few thoughts for Thursday...

The boys are outside and I've had a bit of time to work on a new banner for the blog. It was time for a change. Then I decided to post a few thoughts. Nothing all that deep or revelationary.

• I don't like soap operas. I used to watch them but I don't anymore. They irritate me. And for the longest time I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized it's because no one is happy on them. I like happiness. I like the happy ending. I would love a soap opera where people got to be happy a lot.
  
• I am really thankful and appreciative for all the moms I've made friends with since Owen was born. They are a real blessing. It's great to be able to spend a day hanging out with Lisa or Liz while our kids play together and we chat and scrap and just enjoy each others company.
  
• I am so happy it's spring!
• I'm glad Owen's getting the potty training thing!
• Owen is a little bit more fun everyday. Even if he is challenging too.
  
• I've got a great husband. He is a blessing.
• I've got to get my butt in gear and lose some weight and get in shape. I need to get my head around that.
  

And that's about it. Happy Thursday. All most Friday. (Which I'm also thankful for!)

Super Owen... to the rescue!!!

This is Super Owen. He is three years old today! (At 3:50am to be exact).

For Super Owen's birthday we had a Super Hero party on Saturday. He was Super Owen. The only Super Heroes Owen knows are Buzz Light Year and The Incredibles. So we went with a general theme and the kids all got to be super heroes. I made them each a little mask and Owen his own special Super Owen cape. I took the pattern from a cape that one of my friends had, which is her husband's cape from when he was a child. Their son now wears it. He's the red streak in the photo below.

I also made Owen a shirt with a three on it. It went well with his Super cape. As you can see from the two photos below, he loved the cake! He requested chocolate.

We also had burgers and brats and other food fit for little Super Heroes. Then there was some sandbox play and some super hero fun in the front yard. A fun time was had by all. And then the Birthday Hero took a nap.

To celebrate Owen's actual birthday day we are having cake again. And giving him the presents we got for him. He will be super happy about this. Naunee will also be coming over tomorrow while I work and Mimi will be coming for a visit too. And we have the rest of a movie to watch together.

Mostly, I just can't believe he's three already. There are parts of his birth that I've forgotten (the exact timeline of events) and parts that are still crystal clear (throwing up blue popsicle). And the first three months were really tough. But then we turned a corner and whoosh, here we are! Three years later! He is a joy and a delight and a challenge all at the same time. Everything a child should be. And for that I am grateful and thankful everyday.