photos {frog float}

this saturday was the frog float - a family event that we've spent months organizing. it was a fundraiser for the foundation, in conjunction with a large spring festival that our city has. i will have many more photos but here's a few preview snapshots that someone sent. one shows mrs. south carolina (who has an autistic son) with the grand prize check (she's the one with the crown - ha ha!). the frogs are glen & glenda - our city mascots. the last one shows me at the mike with strait. i didn't actually speak but i was feeding him the prize info so he could announce it. it wasn't the most organized event ever, but i think it went pretty well. like i said...more pics to come!

{jesse mccartney}

My boy Jesse McCartney has released a new single, Leavin', and i love it! His new album, Departure, comes out next month.
I just learned something pretty cool...
I have always just thought of Jesse as another teeny bopper type singer. But he actually co-wrote the song, Bleeding Love (sung by Leona Lewis), which is the #1 song in the WORLD right now. That's a little past teeny-bopper status, I suppose!

{iphone}

so, i finally got an iPhone. my verizon contract was over last thursday. after spending some quality time at the at&t store on saturday afternoon, making sure i was truly in love with this tiny piece of metal, i made the decision. that evening i returned with my hubby and we made our official leap from verizon to at&t. i am now the proud owner of an iphone (and he has a new pantech duo, which is actually pretty cool too).

i know i will learn many more things about my new love (i haven't even read the manual yet), but here is what i love so far:

• it is as cool and slick as it seems...just a neat thing
• the perfect multi-tasking device. if i'm listening to music and entering something on my calendar and then the phone rings, the music will stop and the screen will pop up the call for me to answer. as soon as i hang up, music starts back and the calendar is back again. seriously cool.
• i like that you can jump around the various applications and when you return to one its where you left it (on the same website or note or contact).
• the touch keypad/keyboard is easier to use than i would've thought
• the automatic spell check (where it tries to guess what you want to type) is pretty accurate and gets smarter the longer you use it (it remembers words you use frequently).
• though its larger than a typical cell phone, it's not bulky
• holds plenty of music, allowing me to no longer have to pare down my playlists (my 2nd gen nano was only 2gb)
• the notes feature. i think i may be able to 100% replace my planner with this thing!
• i love being able to have a camera with me at all times. i take my camera a lot places anyway but there are just times/places where my bulky camera isn't practical. this is always practical

to be fair, i will also list what i don't like:

• the price tag
• the increase in my monthly phone bill (its not that much just for mine, but with matt's new phone and internet access on it, its a pretty substantial increase)
• i haven't been successful in getting it to work with my home wi-fi, but will work on that
• i had connection issues that lasted about 24 hours, but only once so far (internet connection issues only - not phone reception)
• you can only go to iTunes on a wi-fi connection (not sure why)
• the camera doesn't have any zoom capabilities (that i have yet discovered)

This was the first photo taken from my iPhone...notice their adorable matching John Deere bandanas!

what i learned over the weekend {4.21}

sorry...late again...

• cell phones can do a lot of cool things nowadays (but, man, you pay the price!)
• iPhones are as cool as they seem on tv (hhhmm...maybe even cooler)
• regardless of how much i'm used to speaking in public, i still hate to try and sell stuff
• year after year, come see me (a local spring festival) is still a blast
• i need to get a tan (ok, i didn't learn this just now...but it's good to continue emphasizing it until i actually do something about it)
• i need to lose weight (see above note)
• one should be careful about gloating over butt-whipping another team in baseball...the butt-whipping can easily be thrown your way in the same week (and it was)
• i like teal/turquoise way too much and seriously need to stop buying shirts that color
• my sister totally dissed us (it's ok, they are coming into town this weekend now)

A couple of pictures from Gourmet Gardens on Sunday. The little boy is Dalton and the girl in purple is Sydney (the children of our friends). photos taken on new iphone.

photos {matt's 40th part 2}

here are a few more. the two couples are my sisters with thier husbands.

photos {matt's 40th}

as i was looking over my blog, i realized that i hadn't posted a lot of pictures (thus the influx today), including any from matt's surprise 40th party! silly me. so here are some favorites. we had a group of about 35-40 people at a nice restaurant not far from our house. it was a joint surprise party because our friend strait's 40th is only 2 weeks after matt's. you can see both matt & i and the other couple below. we also got a london taxi for the night, which was super fun too. when we got home, we discovered our house had been seriously decorated by someone (still not entirely sure who did it). i might post a few more in a separate post...

photos {february scrap retreat}

this is the scrapbooking weekend that i did with my mom and sisters back in february (in myrtle beach). i didn't get any pictures of me, but here is everyone else (and my work area). my sister, michelle (in green) won the layout contest for the weekend! we all got tons of freebies and three free classes! if anyone ever vacations in that area, definitely check out this store - Scrapping at the Beach - the owners are super nice.

photos {hannah montana}

i'm a firm believer that you are only as old as you feel. so, when my friend invited me to tag along to the 3-d hannah montana movie to which she was taking her 10-year-old daughter, i said "heck yeah". and i don't take this type of commitment lightly. in preparation for the big night, i got my niece (also, 10) to burn me copies of her hannah and jonas brothers cds so that i could "study". not only did i have a blast at the event, but i am now a huge fan of hannah/miley and the jonas brothers. sad, but true!

photos {mountains}

here are some of my favorites from our trip to the mountains in february. we went rock mining, ice skating and snow tubing (those photos were taken on a disposable waterproof camera so i apologize for the poor quality).

photos {canine close-ups}

photos {matt & spencer fighting}

i am so seriously behind on editing photos, it's awful. these are two months old!
anyway...some snapshots of matt and spencer fighting. they were really going at on this night so i thought it'd be a cute piece of relationship to capture on film.

photos {studio sneak peek}

ok, here are the first "sneak peek" photos of my new scrapbook studio. i still have a long way to go (well, considering how much is done, maybe it's not that much farther). anyway...i did manage to get a lot done over the weekend, including some decorative things. i made notes on the photo if you enlarge them.

{happy anniversary to us}

today marks six super special years with my dear hubby! some days it seems like we just got married, and other days it feels like we we've always been together...
we agreed to no gifts (using our trip to charleston as a gift, i suppose). matt never sends me flowers, so i was clearly shocked when these arrived at work today. and to make it somewhat amusing, the delivery guy handed them to me while i was in a meeting (on video conference with our home office, no less!).

what i learned over the weekend {4.14}

i'm on time this week :)

• reorganizing my scrapbook studio is an enormous amount of work!
• when being very lazy on a friday night, you can catch up on some serious DVR'd tv shows.
• though we need the rain, i'm tired of it
• where did spring go? apparently mother nature forget that april in the south should be WARM!!!
• it feels good to scan some layouts and post them (even if your slack butt did them several weeks ago)
• the color on my scrap studio walls continues to make me happy
• what makes me even happier is the new cowboy metal thingie i hung up (hold your horses, i'll post a picture eventually - and yes, the pun was intended)
• yankee mom/daughter pairs fight alot (as a means of normal conversation) - hahaha!
• it's super hard to go back to work for one day after having 4 off.
• michael clayton wasn't a very good movie (friends had warned me but i'm stubborn and insisted on watching it)

layout {going green}

here's the last layout for awhile (until i scrap more, anyway). again, this was from the weekend crop but i added the journaling this morning.

layout {come see me}

this is another layout that i completed at the weekend crop. i just had to add the computer journaling, which i did this morning.

layout {dalton's crop for autism}

last foundation layout... this is the from the crop i put together last year.

layout {walk now for autism}

another layout about the foundation, but for my albums. we participated in the autism speaks walk this past october. i tried to copy the stripes from our shirts...can ya tell?

layout {golf tournament}

yes, i actually do still scrapbook a layout on occassion...

at the crop a few weekends ago, i did a lot of easy and quick pages to get caught up on 2006 Christmas and the autism scrapbook. Since I was already working on foundation related things for that book, I went ahead and did some 12x12 pages for my albums as well. Still very simple though...

This is from last year's golf tournament

over the weekend {4.7}

due to our mini vacation, i'm really late this week...

• it's great fun to hang out with friends, but even more fun when you can mix up some friends and new people and everyone meshes well.
• a somewhat friend (acquaintance?) and his girlfriend are moving soon (about an hour away)
• even though i have never owned a "name brand" pocketbook, it's fun to finally own a coach bag.
• the house is so lonely when the dogs are at the doggie hotel
• some people will do silly things just to be spiteful. i don't like those people.
• it takes a little over three hours to get to charleston.
• walking the streets of charleston is always fun, but when the weather's nice it is pure heaven
• our hotel was a little farther from downtown than i was hoping
• the streets of charleston are just down right confusing