Takin' the Nacho Plunge

First, gotta start off with this:


Karl single-handedly raised over $1800 for Special Olympics by doing the Polar Bear Plunge yesterday! I'm so proud of him! And, contrary to what he may say, he loved EVERY SECOND of the attention the ridiculous stunt got him!

Not only was he recognized at the Plunge itself for being the top individual earner, but video of him and his students taking the plunge was on the news last night! Priceless!

So, now that that excitement's over.....back to my regularly scheduled post. Today I woke up with a massive migraine. Today has, therefore, been mostly a blur of popping pain pills. And I'm still in pain, but at least I can sit upright. that's progress!

The rest of the week leading up to the weekend wasn't too eventful really. It was mostly filled with getting ready for the Plunge.....Karl had to order his red Speedo online because no stores we could find carried them in red (or in his size!). And then we had to order tights......and then we had a friend sew him a cape. I can cook and I can scrap.....but I can't sew to save my life, so I called in an expert and our friend Melissa did an EXCELLENT job making a Nacho Libre cape for Karl. It's way cool.....I can see Karl dressing up like some superhero for Halloween in the future just so he can use the cape again. Although I'll be totally honest: if i never see the Nacho outfit again I won't be too upset. :D

wow....now that I'm scrolling through them, I actually have way more layouts to post than I thought I did......interesting! yay for me!

The big scrapping news though, is that I finished our DC scrapbook, woohoo!!! It's always a relief of sorts to be "done" with a book......and this is going to be my first attempt at a 12x12 photobook from Shutterfly, so fingers crossed that it turns out okay! I already ordered it....since they're offering free shipping and all! :P

So here's the last few layouts from that book:

an exhibit at the Smithsonian of this house and all the families and stories that went along with it:


The history of money exhibit.....complete with the story of the '3-dollar bill'....my dad has said that phrase so many times, it was hilarious to learn the true story of it and to see one!


The history of transportation exhibit....trains, a couple old cars, etc......I wish Zach had been there to see these trains:


just some odds and ends shots....archie bunker's chair, dorothy's slippers.....


And the war exhibit....which karl enjoyed of course....definitely a guy thing!


And of course, the cover of the photobook itself:


So that's done and crossed off my scrappin-to-do list! Now, PLENTY of other stuff to scrap....I'm always behind, kwim??? and that's okay....it means I have a full life to document!

New releases this week.......first up, Haynay's new kit! She's been doing a monthly mini kit, and for March, obviously, the main color was green....so I had to use a B&W pic to make it work.......just a quick shot I got of the kids actually not killing each other......always nice! So this is "Chronicling Life: March mini", "Chronicling Life" (for the black/white accents), and "Chronicling Life: wordart"


Sya's new release this week was a kit collab with WM[squared] designs.....Sya usually doesn't make kits, so when she does, it's exciting for us on the CT! :P I love the colors....makes me keep hoping spring is right around the corner! The kit is called "Forever Treasured", and when I saw the wordart and flair in it, I knew I had to scrap this........I've got such a nice hubby that surprises me like this:


So CT plugs overwith.......I'll just post the rest of the stuff I've scrapped:

The District Pinewood Derby for Matthew's CubScout pack.....they gave him a hat and a display case for his car.....very nice! He didn't place very well, but he still had a blast racing with the other boys! It was a lot of fun for them!


A couple Disney trip layouts from back in March.....both from Animal Kingdom.....Expedition Everest is like THE best roller coaster....I never get tired of it and I ALWAYS scream...even though I've probably ridden it 10 times now! It's so awesome!


And this is a standard picture spot....in front of the Tree of Life:


The last 2 layouts to post are a 2-page spread of Zach's PreK playgroup this past week that I went to. Those are always fun.....us parents get to play with them and we all learn a thing or two! Zach and I had a great time!



And that basically catches you up on us. I'll hopefully have a layout next time to post of Karl's Nacho Plunge! :D And this week is ISAT testing at school, so Alaina is all nervous and completely freaked out about it. Such a shame, I think, that these kids are feeling so much pressure in the 3rd grade about how they perform on some mandated state test. I keep telling her to not worry about it....but I don't think she's hearing me! So for her sake, I hope it's not TOO stressful of a week for her with all of that. I'll be glad when Friday gets here so it's overwith (until next year I guess!).

My dad SHOULD be coming home from the hospital tomorrow. He'll still need a couple more weeks' worth of antibiotics intravenously, but since Medicare won't pay for home health (insert rant on Medicare here) Mom will get to drag him back and forth to the hospital every day so he can be hooked up to an IV there. what a pain in the arse. *sigh*......I'm just glad he's improving enough TO go home. For awhile there, he was very VERY sick. So those of you that knew about it and were thinking of him, thanks. And for those of you that didn't know.....please say a prayer for him now. :D

It's ALMOST spring....I think! :D temps warm enough for the kids to play outside for a little bit each day......no more snow on the ground, even in the ditches.....I'm ready for the spring rains, even though all the rain drives me nuts! I'm just ready for warmer temps! :D Bring it on!

So have a great week everybody! Catch ya later!

Sickies! Sickies! GO AWAY!

Greetings from Germville, population: 5 Hermans! :D

Actually, so far (knock on wood), the sickie has just been little Zach. Poor kid. He woke up covered in puke Sunday morning, so he and I skipped church and stayed home. We basically cuddled on the couch and/or slept all day long. Monday I stayed home from work with him, as he was still running a fever.

Neither Alaina nor Matthew ever acted the way Zach does when he's sick. Take his temperature? GOOD LUCK! He will fight you to the death before he'll let a thermometer anywhere near his body. Take medicine? Again, GOOD LUCK! IF i can even get it into his mouth, 9 times out of 10 he'll spit it back out at me. lovely. So I'd rather not have him be the sick one actually!

By Monday afternoon he seemed to be doing better, but then the 'south end' kicked in, which forced me to cancel my girl scout meeting. But by bedtime, it seemed that even that part had run it's course. So we sent him to school yesterday (Tuesday) and he seemed fine.

Fast forward to today (wednesday)......I'm minding my own business at work, munching on leftover Valentines' Day candy I'd stolen from the kids when my cell phone rings. I KNEW that was not going to be a call I wanted to answer, because during the day, my phone never rings for a good reason. I knew it would either be 1. Karl with some crisis, 2. My Mom giving me bad news about my dad, or 3. "THE CALL" from the school nurse we've gotten I don't know how many times already this year.

It was the nurse. I expected it to be about either Alaina or Matthew...assuming one of them had gotten whatever bug it was that Zach had. But nope.....it was Zach himself, sick again. BAH. So after a quick call to Karl, he got a sub for his class at school, picked me up and we were on our way to pick up Zach.

And the little bugger is FINE. Tired, yes, because he didn't sleep well last night....crabby, yes....because he's tired. but SICK? no, not really from what I can tell. He says his belly hurts though, so he's probably not back to 100% yet, but I don't consider him SICK per se, kwim? But anyways, we're all home now, waiting on school to let out so I can pick up Alaina/Matthew at the sitter's.

So that's the excitement for today. What else has happened around here??? I got a call Monday while I was home with Zach from my mom telling me that my dad was in the hospital with pneumonia. bummer. He'd just gotten over pneumonia in one lung and gets it in the other one....the guy can't catch a break! So he's still in the hospital at Fairfield, taking fluids/antibiotics, and complaining loudly about the cr@ppy food. :P That's my dad! :D So hopefully in a few more days he'll beat the sickies as well.

And then there's the rest of us......you know how sometimes you wait for the other shoe to drop? That's me right now: wondering who's going to get it next! We don't really have time to be sick! We've got a jam-packed weekend ahead of us, dernit!

Saturday afternoon......my DH Karl......in his BRILLIANCE......volunteered to do the Polar Bear Plunge at Creve Couer Lake Park in St. Louis. If anybody's in town, it will be a spectacle to behold, trust me! :D

Not only did he volunteer to dive into 30-ish degree water.....but to spice things up and encourage more donations, he volunteered to dress up like Nacho Libre for the occasion:


but only IF he got $1,000 in donations.....and thanks to the help of lots of people wanting to encourage his public humiliation......he's well past the $1k mark!

He ordered a red Speedo swimsuit and blue tights for the occasion, and a friend is making him a cape......so he'll be ready with his costume. We have music to set the 'mood' as he makes his entrance......people are already begging for the video to be posted online.....which it will be! :D So that's our plan for saturday: Public Humiliation. But all for a good cause. Donate to Karl's Polar Bear Plunge for Special Olympics here:

http://www.somo.org/karlhermanpolarplunge

So ya see.....we can't get sick and miss all that!

If we get done in time (which I'm doubting we will), Alaina's brownie troop will be going bowling Saturday afternoon.....then a quiet night home watching the Olympics probably!

and since I'm blogging, I might as well post some layouts I've done since my last post:

With Sya's new kit, 'movie-spiration: take two', I scrapped these 2 layouts:
This one of Matthew's District Pinewood Derby race a couple weekends ago:

And an exhibit at the Smithsonian that was really cool:


These last two are from our March Disney trip (yep, still not done scrappin' that trip....LOTS left to do, trust me!)

This is a standard family picture from Animal Kingdom:


And another picture, in front of Expedition Everest....home of one of the best roller coasters around!!


So that's it for me for now.....I'm off to go console a little boy that's still whiny and clingy, even if he isn't really sick! Stay healthy!

Pages to Post! :D

Just a quick post to catch up on my scrappin'!!

First up, stuff for Haynay:

Pictures I took of the kids' snow day last week. They didn't last long out in the snow playing....they're wimps and got cold! :P
Using "Chronicling Life Photo Clusters", "Chronicling Life: January Mini" and "Snow Games"


And with another kit of Haynay's: "Simplicity", and "One for the Money v2" template, I scrapped this layout of Julia Child's kitchen at the Smithsonian in Washington DC:


Another layout from the Smithsonian, using Sya's new template pack, "Movie-spiration: Take Two"....of some electricity exhibit...I don't remember what half this stuff was, so Karl's going to have to help me with the journaling! I just took pictures of stuff he pointed out. :P


This was of the Presidents' exhibit at the Smithsonian:


Karl bailed on this exhibit....he wasn't too interested in the dishes and dresses of the First Ladies.....but I thought it was cool! :D


some misc. pictures from our tour of the Capitol building:


Statuary Hall in the Capitol....ALMOST done with my DC book, woohoo!!!


so that catches me up on the scrappin' I've done lately......as for our LIFE.....eh, not too much to report really.

Last weekend, Alaina went to her first softball practice at the batting cages in town. We were SO impressed with her.....she hit 60 mph fastballs! I'm not sure I could even do that, and she's 8! :P So woohoo for her....maybe she'll do okay in softball this summer after all! Her season starts in April, so we'll find out soon enough!

Zach is walking around singing the ABC song like crazy....it's so cute, I never get tired of it! He talks so much now....I love it! it's always so fun when you can have entire conversations with him. Last night, on his way home from class, Karl called and Zach wanted to talk to him on the phone.....he told his daddy all about his trains.....how he couldn't find a 'tunnel' to complete the train tracks....it was quite the crisis for a little boy! Thankfully mommy found the lost tunnel and all is well.

And that's about it for around here....perhaps I'll have something more exciting to relate next time!! my brother, dean, who thinks he's a meteorologist, is predicting the kids will get another snow day on Monday, so we'll see about that! :P

later gators!

Waitin' for the storm.....

Ah, no more trip reports (for a few months anyways!), so it's just back to blogging about my regularly UN-scheduled life. yeah, i know...YAWN!

Oh, wait....my big accomplishment...DUH! I ran a 5k. Well, "RUN" is a pretty loose term in this respect. I didn't WALK it, that's for sure, but it was probably the slowest jog on human record. :D or darned close. But that's okay. it was my first time running that far, and I'm pretty proud of myself for even DOING it. The time doesn't matter to me at this point.....I'll get faster.....eventually....I hope! But for anybody that's lost a lot of weight like I have, being able to achieve something like that that you knew would NEVER have been possible BEFORE you lost all that weight........it's a big deal. a HUGE deal really. I couldn't even tell you how long it took me to run all those laps around the track. To me, the only thing that mattered was that I kept going......I didn't stop....I didn't give up....I made it. WOOHOO!

so anyways, this week has been more of the usual......school for the kids, homework.....WORK for us...blah blah blah. On Tuesday, I learned that Vicodin is not my friend. Or at least not that day it wasn't. I've taken it before, for EXTREMELY bad headaches, etc......and that's why I took it on Tuesday....for the combination of a bad sinus headache and a body that was screaming at me for making it run 3.1 miles the night before (I'm thinking the only part of me that didn't hurt that 'morning after' were my elbows and my eyelids). And that one little pill made me so pathetically sick it wasn't even funny. My world was spinning for several hours! Yeah, I wouldn't last too long as a drug addict, would I? :P I had Karl drop me off at home before we even picked up the kids after work so I could lay down. And I fell asleep....when I woke up, I'd discovered that he'd cancelled his class that night because I was so 'out of it' he didn't think I could handle (or SHOULD handle) the kids. So I took it easy and eventually felt better. Vicodin is not for sissies! :P

That was probably the most exciting thing that happened the whole week, it's been that uneventful around here.

So yeah, that was a pretty lame update about us, but we haven't really done much this week. While I"m running, Karl takes the kids into the pool at the rec center. Alaina and Matthew are both getting better at jumping off the diving boards....Alaina swims actual laps.....they're both getting decent at actually DIVING into the water....and then Zach has progressed leaps and bounds.....my little "TERRIFIED of the water" child was floating today on his back.....WOW! that was a HUGE deal!

And I really haven't even scrapped that much this week.....I was doing a lot of reading.....trying to work my way through some of the old classic books (that are free out on the internet and I can download to my e-reader), so I finished one of those...and read a couple trashy romance novels for fun. So I really haven't been in a scrapping mood this week.

So first off, Haynay's newest release: Chronicling Life Photo Clusters
I scrapped this one of Karl and his former students, Andrew and David, who are cadets at the Naval Academy:


And with Sya's new release: double trouble set 2 I scrapped last week's Pinewood Derby:


2 more layouts I've done......"the snake".......that Matthew found outside Le Cellier at Epcot on our March trip....of course he has to pull the tail...hopefully it wasn't poisonous....Karl's convinced it was.....I dunno.....


And this was one of the cutest moments of our trip...at the princess breakfast, all of the princesses gave Zach lots of kisses and left him covered in liptstick....it was the sweetest thing....and he thoroughly enjoyed it....the little cassanova that he is and all!


So that's it for me for now....we're off to my brother's house to consume mass quantities of junk food and probably not watch much of the Super Bowl! But Go Colts! (I don't really care, but since a beloved co-worker is a die-hard Colts fan, I'll root for them)

Have a great week everybody!!