i'm spent.

tired.
wiped-out.
exhausted.

i suppose that's what a good birthday party will do to ya.

so, today we're in recovery mode. we'll be laying low, tidying up the place, catching up on laundry, playing games, maybe even building a snowman since it snowed all.day.long. yesterday. a light, non-stop snowfall. i don't think anyone was prepared for it because the roadways are a mess. so we'll stay home from church this morning, in part due to the snow, but mostly because ashlyn is still complaining of a belly ache and has had her head hanging over the comode for most of the morning. daddy's been giving her lots of love this morning. it used to be that you'd give the children a bell to ring when they were sick, but now we're in the age of technology and he tucked her into bed with a movie, a can of Sprite and the home telephone with instructions to dial his cell phone number if she needed anything. now that's service, hahaha.

the other one is happy as a lark since we found the new yo-yo ball she had already lost from her birthday. it only took 3 hours to find after a very thorough sweep of the house. the good thing is my house is no longer an organized chaos. only a few piles still linger. it was on the floor of the kitchen behind the curtains.

the yo-yo ball is the coolest invention for kids i've seen yet. if you have a younger child to buy for, for Christmas, i highly recommend getting one. it combines a ball with a yo-yo type mechanism inside the ball with a plastic ring on the end of the string for their finger. they flick their rist just like a yo-yo to drop it down but it ALWAYS comes back up and you never have to rewind the string! it's perfect for kids not old enough for a real yo-yo and you can still do yo-yo tricks with it, but you by-pass the frustration a younger child would have of winding it back up. we found this one at Toys-R-Us for around $4 or $5.

anywho.
so today, we'll also sort piles. laundry piles, shoe piles, winter gear piles, and school paper piles. speaking of school paper piles, i came across this and got a good laugh out of it. ashlyn made this in school last month and it came home with a book telling what they'd each take.





the irony in this is just too much! we all got a good laugh out of it. the blanket she's speaking of is one that Grandma Verna made for her when she was born, but she doesn't take it anywhere, cause it's her special blanket. but the kid doesn't go anywhere without her baby. the 3ft raggedy ann baby. and yeah, she is probably right that i couldn't live without my scrapbooking stuff. for some reason she has it in her head that i only do stuff for daisy ds. must be the easiest for her to remember of all the things i have my hands in. and doug---with tools---funny. let's just say he isn't the master of the tools. he does try though. and he's willing to learn. but tools would probably be the last thing he would want to take with him if he could only take one thing. but she sees her daddy as the provider and what little girl doesn't think her daddy can build or fix anything? just cute and funny how their little brains work.

okay, enough of my blabbering for now. i've got puzzles to put together, and castles to build and rainbow crayons to make...........
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the winner of yesterday's prize is: Kristin in OH!!!! Kristin, please email me at taniamwillis at (yahoo.com) with your mailing information!

18 more days until Christmas!!!
up for grabs today we have..................
a HUGE smattering of journaling tags and stickers, a CD Minibook, a pack of embellishments, an acrylic tag book. there's more than is even shown!