Farewell, Twenty-Ten!

2010 is quickly coming to a close. I suppose it's time for some thoughtful reflection on what this year has brought to our family....so here's the deep thoughts I've come up with in that regard:

2010 brought more video games to our household than I care to admit. The upside to this is that Matthew's now best buds with another boy who's similarly obsessed with gaming. oh boy.

2010 had Alaina becoming more confident in her abilities as a musician (flute/voice), but very unsure of herself in her schoolwork. My goal for 2011 is to help her feel more confident.

2010 started off with Zach sleeping with his momma, and thankfully ended with him sleeping elsewhere!

2010 started off with me not being able to run much farther than a couple miles. Now, I can run about 7 miles. I'm training for a half-marathon, if you can believe that! and all that running has helped me lose about 15 pounds over the course of the year...always a plus!

Our Christmas season was full of all the fun things everybody enjoys. I did lots of baking/candy-making/fattening-cooking......The kids enjoyed their presents.....Karl and I enjoyed our time off from work! we visited with my family and the inlaws and had good times all around.

so now a new year will soon be upon us, and I am pathetically far behind in my scrapping. It's sad. I'll admit it. I've never been this far behind before! What happened? LIFE! 3 kids, a house, a hubby, a job, dogs.....whatever. i've been busy! Plus, lately I've been kinda unmotivated to scrap (if you can believe such a thing!).

So I'll leave you with the last layouts I'll post for this year.....

Christmas kits from designers I was CT-ing for at the time (talk about being behind in the blogging, sheesh!). Chelle's Creations was my guest CT gig in the month of NOVEMBER, and she released a kit called "Holly Jolly Holiday" and this is what I scrapped with it....the entrance to the Magic Kingdom...all decorated for Christmas:



And Haynay's Christmas kit, "Fa La La" inspired me to scrap this:



(yes, they DO close the parks at Disney World...that's when you know it's CRAZY-CROWDED!)
Amazingly, this is the first New Year's we haven't spent at Disney in awhile.....I'm suffering some serious withdrawls here! :P

And this kit, from Haynay, "My Magical Place: Ship Ahoy", I scrapped this: Donald's Boat in Toontown at Disney.



That's all the plugs I've got....because I've been too much of a slacker to be a good CT member lately. My apologies. :D

SO here's the other stuff I've done though.....for your amusement.....in no particular order:

Zach and one of his many, many, MANY worms/"catterpitters" that he 'played with' this summer:



Zach's new Thomas bedding (bought in an effort to keep him in HIS bed at night....it worked BTW!)



Matthew, in his new Wolf uniform for Cub Scouts:



The SIU Homecoming game we went to this year.....go Salukis!



And random pictures from around the SIUC campus:



Picking out pumpkins at Eckert's:



My first 10K race, back in October (yay me! I'm still shocked I did it!)



Matthew's Soccer Season:



Matthew scoring 2 goals in a game!



So now you're all caught up with me! Have a great New Year everybody......here's to an amazing 2011!!!

The Happiest Season of All!!

Hello cyberfriends in blogosphere! Greetings from the midst of candy-making, cookie-baking, present-wrapping, last-minute-shopping madness! But I just LOVE Christmas. I'll even take the cold weather for this week, because we've done the beach at Christmas and it just seemed "wrong". So a White Christmas would be fine with me.

Happy Holidays to all our friends and loved ones from our little family. I hope that 2010 was a great year for you and that 2011 will be even better.

XOXO, The Herman family

Like a Fine Wine, my friends......

I only get better with age! :D At least that's what I'm telling myself today......this 35th (yikes!) anniversary of my entrance into the world....

I wanted to post lots of cool pictures of myself growing up....but alas, there really aren't any. Perhaps this is why I generally walk around with a camera around my neck....so that when MY kids are sitting at their blog (or whatever social medium they'll be using at that point in time) they won't have to lament the fact that there existed so few pictures of them when they were children. Anybody that knows me can attest that my kids will have NO problems finding pictures of themselves. :D

So anyhoo. Happy birthday to me. Looking at the few pictures I did manage to find on a whim......I honestly think I look better now than I did 10 years ago. Funny how that seems to be working for me!

so here's my life in pictures (kinda)

As a baby (love the hair, Mom, and GROOVY pants, Dean!)


toddler (where'd my curly hair go? *sigh*)




Glasses at age 4 (oh yay!)


another family picture, age 6 ish:


I'd guess I'm about 13 here? no dates on any of these old pictures of course...I'm guessing by bad hair styles:


This was 8th grade, I know that much:


Sweet 16-ish.......oh yeah......early 90's big hair:


Senior portrait:


Engagement Picture.....so I'd have been 21 here:


Wedding.....at 22 years old (gosh that seems YOUNG to me now!):


Fast-forwarding a few years......this was in '02, so I'd have been 26ish:


2003, Graduate School....preggers with Matthew, age 27:


2004, age 28:


2005.....subtract 100 pounds and you get this (my "victory dress", which I actually haven't really worn since, now that I think about it.....red's not really my color I don't think), 30th birthday:


2006, age 30


and yesterday.....35 years old:


so....I hope you got as good a laugh out of that as I did.......I'm just like a fine wine....getting better with age, right? :D RIGHT!

Happy Birthday to me!!!

Hello Holidays!

The fridge is bursting with Thanksgiving leftovers......I'm mourning the end of a long weekend.....the family is all napping......the bank account is starting to feel the hurt of the holidays thanks to online shopping (lol), and I'm happy as a clam because I LOVE this time of year. LOVE IT!

Plus, my birthday is next week.....who doesn't like their own birthday after all? :D Although, I love to remind people that those of us with December birthdays totally get the shaft......not only did 90% of my birthday gifts come wrapped in Christmas paper when I was a kid (a huge pet peeve of mine now)....but I just KNEW.......that I was basically getting one less gift for Christmas. bah! I admire the people that celebrate their kids' December birthdays in June instead. BRAVO I say! But I digress....rant over.....for now anyways!

The holiday festivities started off with the kids' programs at school. Matthew was a Pilgrim AND an Indian. I'm still not sure why, but whatever. He said his lines, he did well....he didn't humiliate me by inserting the words "poop" or "terd" in his monologues, so I was happy. At his age, that's saying a lot!

Zach's PreK class had a feast, but since I was watching Matthew's program, I missed most of it. They even made their own butter....how cool are they!

We hosted Thanksgiving here at our house, as we've done for the last several years now. Too much food was cooked and consumed.....and is still in my fridge. I pondered for the 12th year in a row WHY I bother making cranberry sauce when maybe 2 teaspoonfulls of it actually gets eaten! :P because it's tradition, that's why! and I've been told I make an awesome green bean casserole......but I don't eat the stuff, so I'll have to take their word for it.....again, tradition!

So then I started pondering other traditions that my family has...... My father always says the blessing before the meal. He and Karl argued for about 30 seconds over who would say Grace, but we all knew that in the end he'd do it. Because it's TRADITION! :P Mom and I made way too much food. Again, TRADITION! Dean and Stacy were late getting here.....which has become a new tradition (one that irks me, but eh, during the holidays, you pick your battles, kwim?). The meal that took me roughly 3 days to prepare was consumed in about 20 minutes.....tradition! then once everyone was done eating, we all disappeared, leaving Karl to do the majority of the dishes.....tradition! then it was dozing in front of the TV and chatting......and then a fairly-new tradition.....the impromptu photo shoot.

my SIL stacy is a photographer.....i sometimes like to think I'm one too. :D we have the same camera and flashes, so we set up a backdrop and attempted (note I said ATTEMPTED) to take some pictures of our dog for our Christmas card this year. eh, it didn't work out so well, shockingly....dog didn't exactly cooperate!

Then she wanted me to take pictures of her, Dean, and their little foster baby, John. So I got to play photographer then.......the instant i noticed one of the external flashes wasn't going off, Stacy jumped up and raced behind the backdrop (where said flash was) and started screaming.....I go and look and start screaming.

My fancy external wireless flash.....had melted. O.M.G. for those of you out there with expensive photography equipment.....share my grief for a moment. I get the sniffles just thinking about it. Apparently those "hot lights" (hence the name, duh) get way hotter than either of us had anticipated, and having a flash too close to one of them results in disaster for anything made of plastic. *sniff*.....goodbye, nice external flash. Expensive boo-boo! So since it was my flash and stacy was the one that put it where it was....she took the blame and is buying me a new flash. I'm guessing that's my christmas gift from her! still.....that totally stinks. poor little melted flash. *sigh*

That was enough excitement for one evening.....once that drama had subsided, everybody started to leave......and thanksgiving was done.

Black Friday: We didn't participate this year, woohoo! Karl was disappointed I think, because he's a morning person, so getting up at 4AM and fighting mobs of angry women over a $3 crockpot I don't need is his idea of a good time. Me? I'd rather sleep 'till noon and go to Amazon.com and shop there. :D And this year, online sites were offering some of the same prices as the early-bird specials (at least on the stuff we wanted), so there really wasn't much need to get up and fight the mobs. fine by me!

Saturday and Sunday were fairly relaxing. We went out to run some errands and took the kids through the Way of Lights (drive-thru light display) after dinner (there's only so much leftover turkey/ham a person can realistically take, kwim?), and they loved it. it's beautiful! Highly recommend it if you're in the STL area!

and now the Holiday weekend is over and regular life is back in full swing.....which includes all the homework/activities we usually cram into a week! So with that I'm off to stop one child from stuffing another in a box. Yay for family fun!

Bloggin' 'cuz I'm bored....

Here I am, blogging twice in the same month! That's like a new record for me! Actually, I'm kinda bored (sitting in the living room of my parents' house back in my hometown, with no control over the TV and a dead battery in my eReader, *gasp*), so you'll get to reap the benefits of my boredom, which will equate to some weird random ramblings and some layouts I've managed to get done since the last post. Yeah, I know you're psyched. Try to contain yourselves. :P

So anyhoo.....since the last blog post....what have I done? Uhm....uh.....hmmm.... yeah. My life is REAL exciting lately. So instead, I'll back up and share some stuff I HAVE done lately, I just failed to blog about because in all honesty.....I'm lazy. Yes. I am a lazy blogger. My apologies for this bit of truth. The reason is that most of the stuff I write about just isn't 'complete' without pictures. And now we get back to the lazy part......I hate resizing pictures to post on the blog. It's true. But since I'm bored, you get to reap the benefits! Again, contain yourselves.

So I'm going to do a belated trip report....Mine and Karl's trip to Washington DC almost a month ago. I love DC. Great city. We both had a great time. So sit back and check out all these pictures!

First thing we did when we got to DC was get some lunch! We just set off walking from our hotel toward the Capitol (since we had a tour that started at 1PM), and just happened to walk right past the Hard Rock Cafe:


We'd contacted our Congressman, Rep Shimkus, to arrange a tour of the US Capitol building. He wasn't there, of course, but his intern, Stephanie, gave us a great tour of the Capitol complex, complete with stops in the House Gallery and Senate Gallery (where no cameras are allowed...boo!)

So here we are:
Me in Rep. Shimkus' office......i just HAD to sit in his chair....mwahahaha!


Karl and I at the Capitol:


I like this little spot....in the Crypt of the Capitol (directly underneath the Rotunda) is this star in the floor, which is the intersection of the 4 quadrants of the city.


Did you know there's a subway underneath the Capitol building? Yeah, I didn't either! Stephanie said it was the shortest subway in the world. I'm not sure if she was kidding or not, but it definitely didn't go far....maybe a few hundred yards? I just found it kinda funny....goofy-looking little thing:


And here we are back at Rep Shimkus' office....Thanks for the tour, Stephanie!


After we finished with the capitol tour, we had to walk down the Mall to get back to our hotel, so we decided to check out one of the Smithsonians, so we ducked into the Air and Space Museum.
Me and the lunar lander:


And I found this hilarious.....I work for a certain aircraft manufacturer, and I was happy to see that they sponsored this kids' area in the Museum:


I just wish I'd taken a picture of the Omnimax theater, which was sponsored by our competitor! lol......

Anyhoo, I was thrilled to see this little piece of my past preserved for all posterity......ah, the good ol' days:


We stayed at the museum until it closed, then went to go get checked in at our hotel.
I was most perterbed to learn that our room had been given out to someone else! uhm, WTH? I was NOT happy.....but as we were heading upstairs to our "replacement room", Karl assured me it wasn't that big of a deal, that we'd gotten fair compensation for the whole 5 minutes of inconvenience it caused us. :P

Yeah, I'm okay with this. a SUITE! HELLO! nice 'replacement'!!



After we called the other teachers Karl was attending the conference with and had them stop by "Chateau Herman" so we could brag......we all went and grabbed some dinner at this great place in Chinatown. wahoo! Then we ended up in the bar of our hotel for some wine and dessert.....ahhh, nice! End of day 1 in DC.

Day 2 in DC......Karl left for his conference sessions.....I slept as late as I could without being a total sloth. :D And to counter-balance the sloth thing, I went for a jog. I wanted to jog around the Tidal Basin.....

Beautiful morning for a jog....great scenery.....I can see why so many people jog in this city.....amazing! I had a great time....didn't jog as far as I wanted to, but I definitely enjoyed it.


After the jog, I got showered/dressed and went downstairs to meet Jan. Jan's an 'online friend' of mine in the digital scrapbooking world. Yes, we have our own "world".....we're like a cult. :D lol.....anyhoo, we're friends on Facebook, and the last time Karl and I were in DC (last year), she said, 'hey, next time you're in town, let me know and we'll get together!'.....so I held her to that!

We had some tea at Starbucks (neither of us are even coffee drinkers, go figure!), then went to lunch at this pub across the street from my hotel. Then we went to the Art Museum....uhm, the National Portrait Gallery (the one with all the portraits of the presidents), and then there was the Norman Rockwell exhibit, where we both got busted for taking pictures. :D oops!

This was one of my favorite exhibits we saw though...the Preamble in license plates......darned cool.


Jan and I had a great afternoon getting to know each other, chatting about just about anything.......thanks for playing tour guide, Jan!

So here we are, ngneer98 and QuiltyMom:


After Jan had to take off, I still had some time to kill before Karl was done with his conference for the day, so I went to Madame Tussaud's wax museum. lol....boy did I have way too much fun in here:

hangin' out with the Prez and First Lady:


the Clintons:


and all I can say about this one is....YUM. hubba hubba....*sigh**swoon*


The next day, I slept so pathetically late, I didn't have time to do any exploring until Karl was done with his sessions and we met up for lunch. Then we had to scoot to our White House tour.

No cameras allowed on White House tours either, but thankfully, everybody had their phones with them:


After the tour (which I highly recommend....just send your congressman an email....they're quite happy to hook you up, especially in an election year, lol!)
we went to the Natural History Museum, while Karl's fellow teachers went to the American History Museum (which we went to the last time we were in DC)

The similarity is kinda creepy, don't ya think?


I'm putting this on my list for Santa.....Hope Diamond? yes, please!


And this has GOT to be the funniest thing ever.....they had this photo booth thing where you got your picture taken and they morphed it into a caveman. Neanderthal specifically. Karl's was just TOO perfect. Scary!

Mine just turned out stupid, so I refuse to post it. My blue eyes just didn't jive with that whole Neanderthal look. :P But Karl.....looked hilarious.

Once we were done with the museum, it was time to go get ready for our big fancy dinner. We like to have one super-nice meal when we go anywhere without the kiddies. We'd made rezzies at Ruth's Chris steakhouse. YUM.

I like an excuse to get dressed up:


Dinner.....YUM......and that martini was mighty tasty too....so was the 2nd one! :D


After dinner, we changed into more reasonable clothes for sightseeing and then went for a walk to the monuments. I'd never seen them at night, so I wanted to attempt some night pictures...and considering I had no tripod, I thought I did pretty well:

White House:


Washington Monument:


WWII Monument:


I liked this shot....Capitol in the far background.....pretty!


Lincoln Memorial




And this is my favorite shot of ol' Abe:


So that was it for that day.

On our last day in DC, I insisted on going to the Vietnam and Korean memorials again....we'd gone to them the night before, but they weren't lit up well enough for decent pictures, so I wanted a re-do!

Korean War Memorial:



And the Vietnam Memorial. This place was PACKED. And of all the monuments/memorials we went to in DC, this was the one where I really felt as if I were invading people's privacy by being there and taking random pictures.

Like this guy....I never even saw his face, but I could hear him weeping. I have no idea if he was mourning the loss of a friend, father, brother, or what......does it really matter? I was bawling watching this guy. I actually deleted the first couple of shots I took that had him in it because i felt like I was intruding on his private moment. But this one I kept, because I finally decided that THIS is what this memorial is about: honoring those we lost:


So whoever you are, I hope this visit brought you some comfort.

And then there was this older gentleman, who was wanting a rubbing of a name he couldn't reach on the wall. I heard the park ranger offer to get a ladder and do the rubbing FOR him, but this guy was adamant about doing it himself. I started crying. AGAIN.


And the last picture I took at the Wall....again, had some random stranger in it, but I love how it turned out, with the Washington Monument in the background:


Once we were done at the Vietnam Memorial, it was time to head back to the hotel, grab our stuff, and get to the airport to get home! So that was our trip to DC. I can't wait until we can take the kids. They need to see all of this!

So, now that I'm sniffling again, I'll get back to scrappin!

Alaina and Matthew's first day of school (yes, i'm THIS FAR BEHIND!)



Zach's 4th Birthday party:



And now for some plugs..... Chelle's 'hangin' alpha' and 'on the trail'


Chelle's new kit, 'Rub a Dub'......this is an OLD picture of Alaina as a baby...*sniff*, where do the years go??


And Haynay's 'Pile of Leaves' and 'Dates: Strips'.....of just how big my little girl has gotten....again, *SNIFF**SNIFF*


So that's it...this post is long enough, don't ya think? :P