Saturday, December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas ~ (eve) 2010

Merry Christmas everyone!!! Can you believe how fast this year has gone? It seems like we just celebrated Christmas 2009! And how it's Christmas 2010! What a fast year this has been!!!!

So we had our Christmas eve at the house last night. I love to cook and have people over, but with this foot thing it has been really hard to get everything done the way I want to. By the time I get moving, I'm already so tired I can hardly stand it . . . dragging this cast around is too much . . . (enough whining from me . . . at least for the moment . . . at least about my foot)

Here is a picture of my beautiful Mom! I love her so much! She is my hero . . . a stronger, wiser woman you will never meet!


As a small family group we opened presents before people came over, I gave the kids snowboard passes, and a few small things . . . but their big gift was ski passes! They were excited.
I got Tim tons of stuff! Movies and clothes, and a ship thing and some cars . . .

As for me, apparently I was a bad girl this year because I got nothing. (ok so I'm going to pout about it for a second . . . Its amazing how hurt feelings can get when you start handing out presents and there is nothing for you. Tim said he ordered me a Gypsy (it's for scrapbooking for those of you that don't scrap) but it didn't arrive. So there was nothing for me. My feelings were so hurt. (I guess I've said that, but it warrants saying again.) When you put a lot of effort in to making sure that everyone else will have a good Christmas, and you assume that the only person you don't have to shop for is your self, your heart hurts when you sit and watch . . . and watch and watch . . . ) Enough said on that, it's out of my system, and I'm moving on . . .
This past spring, Tim and I were at the "Brass Armadillo" it's a HUGE antique store, and they have all kinds of wonderful weirdness there.
We stumbled upon this toy Mountain Bell van . . . My dad retired from Mountain Bell after 30 years, so finding this was perfect! had to have it no matter what the cost!
He was shocked and said, "It looks just like my van!"

Look at his face as he is looking at it . . . (I love that he loved it!)

Tim and Pop sharing a "phone man" moment.Here is my sweet Jessie and Auntie! Aren't they beautiful!!!
Mom and Jessie!!! Stunning!
Alex and Auntie!! They are so silly together!

Again, my beautiful mom!

Alex and Jessie have been "dating" for the past few months, and things seem to be going very well for them. They seem so happy! I couldn't wish for anything better for them that LOVE!

The boys love to try to get auntie drunk on the holidays! Its their special fun! but she is on to them now, and doesn't take anything they offer any more. So now they got Jessie in on it and she is pouring drinks for Auntie!

I was sitting on the hearth of the fire place, and had the camera in my hand so I was snapping all kinds of pictures. Here are a couple pictures of Alex and Auntie hiding from the camera. So silly!
Grandma Tony and Grandpa . . . I don't know what the story was he was telling, but aren't they cute?!?
Mom and Richard! He looks so happy! Nothing like a glass of wine and some good friends and loved ones !!
Alex and Grandma, she was reading his "Got meds" shirt . . . we have a running joke in the house about "meds".

Jessie and Tony and Jade . . . We put all the dogs upstairs so they weren't around all the food, but Jade was being super bad, and wouldn't stop barking and whining. and then she escaped and sat with Tony at the table. UGH! No one listens to me, so even when I tell Tony, "Dogs don't belong at the table." It's like I'm talking to the wall . . . The child may get older, but somethings never change. He still doesn't listen!

3 of my most favorite people in the world!!! Mom, Auntie and my BFF Jaqui!!! I love them all so much. and you know what, Jaqui has the warmest most loving smile on the planet! She is so warm and kind, and giving with the joy of her smile!

Tony being silly and Auntie got caught in the cross fire!!

"Don't take a picture down my shirt!!" Jessie telling Alex when he had the camera!!!

Sweet picture of Alex and Jessie.

I gave Jaqui a picture frame with BFF's and kissy lips on it . . . now she and I just have to find a wonderful picture of us to put in it! (notice her beautiful smile!)

Random Tony-ness!~

Looks like our dog Jessie is in Jail! (Yes we have a human Jessie and a furry Jessie)

Jaqui opening her presents from me . . . Look how tired I look.

I got her some scented lotions and sparkly stuff . . . I'm sniffing her to see how she smells! She smelled wonderful!
Jaqui got my some wonderful smelling candles and my most favorite pear cognac! Yumm!!! I am going to sit and watch movies today and sip my pear cognac (as today is Christmas day, and I am going to do nothing and just relax and recoop!)

Jessie and Auntie in their matching Jammies. I bought all the girls matching jammies. Well kind of, I bought 3 of one kind and 3 of another kind, as I couldn't' get enough of one flavor.
Here we are minus Destiny . . . she had to go out of town . . . :( (I got Kennedy purple jammies too . . . it would have been so cute if they had been in our matching jammie picture too!! oh well, maybe next year!)

I think I have a picture of Alex at every holiday and every function of him standing at the sink . . . well here it is from Christmas 2010.

I had gone to bed at this point . . . and I guess they moved my formal dining table out and played beer pong on it, and notice my christmas tree in the background . . . Tony knocked it over and I got up this morning and there were ornaments all over the floor . . . UGH! He is a mess.

As a special gift, another of my extras showed up last night. (like I said I was already in bed~ but I came down and gave him a hug and told him to EAT EAT EAT! We have so much food!!!


Ooooops I just knocked down the Christmas tree!!! Mom is going to kill me!~

It was another . . .Christmas, with random weirdness and craziness at my house! I'm so glad we got to have this time together! I love these crazy, wonderful people.

Friday, December 24, 2010

The best gift . . .

If you've known me for longer than a minute, you know I love my "Extras" that some of the biggest blessings in my life have been from being a part of watching these kids grow up.

I have seen them have to hold hands to cross the street, to coming to the house for first day of school pictures~ to now, when they are scattered to the winds, in college and at work at various places, in the military, and off doing wonderful things . . . I have been there for their weddings, at the hospital when they are broken and even at their funerals . . . I have been Momz to so many.

People have said to me, that "I" have touched so many lives, but I think it's the other way around . . . They have touched mine! These kids are my heart!

They are always in my heart . . . but rarely now, do I get to see them, since they are scattered, but Tony is home! for the holiday! and he called some people, and they came over.

Justin came in and gave me such a big hug! I almost cried! Then he went to the wall and had me measure him!

this is a picture of Justin when they were all still in Middle school, and the boys camped out in the garage, and I gave them glow sticks I had left over from a party at work, and they danced and played with the glow sticks till the early hours of morning.

So many of them home for Tony's graduation. It was a full and Crazy house!

I have missed them all so much! I wish I could step back in time and they could be little again, and need me and come through my house on a daily basis . . . .

But I guess that's the joy of mother hood, you raise them, so they can go off and conquer the world . . . I'm just glad when they pop in and remember that they were mine first!!!

Monday, December 20, 2010

Not my fault!

So yesterday Sunday December 19, I had to deliver flowers to Maggianos, the party had to be there by 930, I was there right about 9.

Got all the flowers and balloons into the room where the party was going to be, and was going to leave and come home, when I stepped through the door of the party room and slipped. They had just washed the floor right by the doors to the room (there was no "Wet floor" sign) and my foot went forward and my back went backward, and my arms swung (is "Swung" a word?) like a windmill trying to find some purchase . . . I'm sure I looked hysterical.

I righted myself before I hit the floor, but jarred my back, my bad foot and my good foots knee . . My good foots hip is sore too . . .

Well crap! I know I'm klutzy, but this was not my fault.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

I have been scrapbooking a bit . . . I always give my mom, dad and auntie pages for their books for Christmas . . . It's fun to sit and watch them look at their new pages and then trade their packs with each other so they can see what the other got . . .

I am so close to being totally caught up on all my family members albums!!! Then I want to work on Heritage albums, but that is not something I'm in a hurry to get done or work on. But I would love to have all my family books done, and actually in albums. They are NOT in albums because I do NOT scrap in order, but I like the books in Chronological order . . . so they are just kind of sitting and waiting for me to get done, so I can put the books together.

Here is a picture of my youngest son Avery, when he was about 7 or 8 . . . What is so funny about this picture is now Avery has NO sense of humor, so it's good to see that he used to be more laid back and funny!

At Thanksgiving, my dad drank a whole bottle of wine by himself . . . Tony kept getting up and pouring him some more to drink.

My "Fairy Scrap Mother" Mimi sends me all kinds of cool things so I am working on learning how to do more and different things on my layouts. On this one I inked the edges of the paper with the "pounder thingy" I think it turned out really cool!~


My little turkey! I love this picture of Kennedy . . . (My stickles got messed up, because I'm not supposed to be up and walking around on my foot, and so I asked Tim to carry them to the table to dry for me, I said, "Be careful, they are still wet." So what does he do?? He stacks them!!!! I nearly cried . . . but oh well . . . I'm not in the Redoing kind of mood . . . so we have stickle goobers on our layouts instead of pretty drops . . . )

These are the pictures my Girl Rahni Rae sent me from their family photo shoot~ I think my girl and family look so wonderful. And can you tell that my "Badness~ Gabe" was in one of his moods where he just wasn't having this picture thing go on any more.



Sorry the photo is fuzzy, in real life it's not fuzzy . . . but I was taking pictures in the dark, I wander around in the dark a lot in the mornings. I love the negative space on this layout. This is the kids in the back of the RAV4 on the way to the Melting pot for my birthday. The Rav 4 isn't very big for my big boys who are closer to 7 feet than they are to 6 feet tall. They were squished!


I was going through cards the other night to put in my Christmas card album, and stumbled across this card from Thomas! It's always such a surprise and blessing when I have a "Thomas-ness" when I least expect it.
So I took the card apart and sprayed glimmer mist on the gold paper, and then on the flower paper I put flower soft and soft fluff (I think that's the name of it) in the center of the flowers. I also painted the little coin gold with this glittery paint stuff (also from my fairy scrap mother) the coin says "Forevermore". Sorry about the weird flash on the photo, again, taking pictures in the dark.

In my last box from my "Fairy scrap Mother" I got a note! I love notes, so I decided to scrap it with a little bit of the yarn I used when I put the boarder on her Afghan I made her for her birthday/Christmas present.

I wanted to document for Thomas' book that I got my tattoo for him . . .I didn't use as many pictures as I thought I would. I figured I would use tons of pictures but I could tell the story I wanted to tell with just these few. Thomas would love the simplicity of the layout and the wonderfulness of the title!


This is the Thanksgiving layout for Tim and my book . . . I made 9 of this same type of layout, so that everyone could have it for their books, the thing that changes is the pictures that are on each persons layout, they get the pictures they are in, and the things that will make the layouts special for them.
I made 9 of these "Colorado Christmas" layouts. Colorado Christmas by the Nitty Gritty dirt band is my dads favorite Christmas song, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b3hfepgZxg so I thought the words to it would be great on this layout. I had the idea to make this lay for a long time, I just finally got to do it. It was a lot of work to ink the edges of the snow for 9 layouts!!! But I think everyone will really enjoy having them.

Here are the nine of them sitting together . . . the second page is under the first one . . . it took me like 4 hours to get them all done! lots of work!
So that's what I have been up to lately! What you been up to???

Monday, December 13, 2010

I choose . . .

There are words that keep coming up in my life lately . . . they are, "I choose to love you." I have always told my extras "I choose to love you, you are not of my body, but you are of my heart." I always said that to Thomas, "Child of my heart."

I'm writing again, and I'm working on a new book, a book I didn't know if I would ever write, but I'm inspired, and one of my secondary characters in this book (She was the star of her own story before) has a little bit to say about "Choosing", Here is a little bit of that story. Every time Sammie called Ruby “Ma” Ruby felt as though her heart would swell and burst from her chest. She loved being the little girls “Ma”. Even though she hadn’t given birth to Sammie, she loved her as though she had. At night when she was tucking the little girl in to bed she would tell her, “You weren’t born of my body, but you were born in my heart, I choose to love you always.” (I just wrote that about 3 days ago.)

The choices we make with our hearts seem to be something that I am meant to notice lately.

Yesterday, we went to church, not the Church that we have decided is our "Home" church, but to our second choice church. Our home church has been doing something funky, the last two weeks and we chose not to be a part of it. (Its not even worth talking about) Next week we will be back at our Home church.

So here we are at our second choice church, and we are singing Christmas carols, and other songs, and they pray kind of during, afterish songs, and one of the prayers the guy singing said, "God you choose to love us . . ." he went on saying things like "even though we are sinful . . . " but my brain caught those words "God you choose to love us." Wow! I hadn't thought of that. That God is kind of like Ruby . . . Or I should say, "Ruby is kind of like God." Choosing to love. Humm . . . isn't that kind of cool?!?

It has had me thinking . . . What do you choose to love? Who do you choose to love?

Sunday, December 5, 2010

We were laughing

My oldest brother died in 1986, January.

I loved him so.

He treated me like a treasure, I was his Baby sister . . . and I'd love it when I would get to see him. Those times were few and far between (he was a lot older than me~ nearly 15 years older)

When he was home, we would laugh, and have so much fun! He wanted to take me out for my "1st" drink, (It didn't matter to him I was only 15 at the time) So he took me an Jaqui to a bar, and wanted them to serve us . . . when they wouldn't he got mad and poured his drink on the ground.

He went with Me and Jaqui to a play a friend of ours was in . . . at our school.

We had this family balloon fight, (Left to right~ Roy, Ray, Mitch, Me, and Ralph. Roy and Ray are my brothers, Mitch and Ralph are cousins) Out of my whole life, "THIS" day was one of the best days. Its the thing that sticks in my head and heart and comes out in sad times.
Roy felt that as his little sister I was entitled to be abused by him! It was his job to pick on me when ever and how ever possible. He took that job VERY seriously . . . And loved to pick on me.
Well, when Roy died. It left a big hole in my heart. I missed him terribly and grieved him badly. (When I loose someone "I" feel shouldn't have died, I have a hard time moving through the grief, with Roy I had a really hard time. Just as I have had a hard time with Thomas' death)
For about 13 years I grieved badly, and could even feel his presence in my house with me. I wasn't afraid, but I knew it was probably time that I let him go and get on with what he had to do. I contacted a friend of mine, and she told me I needed to "Release him". So she said to write him a letter, and then put it in a bowl of salt and on the full moon, take it out side and burn it and "Really let him go". I did what I was told . . . my letter was 7 pages, single space typed. I had a lot to tell him . . . I was angry at him for leaving the way he did, and leaving his kids and wife. I was angry that he didn't say good bye to me, (But when I think of it now, I think he did . . . or at least tried to, because on the night he died, I kept hearing in my head "Sometimes you love someone so much, and you never get a chance to tell them" Which are NOT my words, I tell people I love them all the time . . . I think it was him telling me, "Sometimes you love some one so much and you never get a chance to tell them.)
My times are probably a little off, but around the time I needed to "Release him" I had a dream!~ I was in a motel with Drew (former hubby #2) and he had to walk out side, there was a package (Wrapped in brown paper) on the ground by our door, that had my name on it (It was the size of 2 vcr videos Sitting side by side, so it was long and flat) and there was a letter with it, and I opened the letter and it said "Cheri, You have grieved me so long. If you need more answers watch the videos."
So right away I put the first video in the vcr, and there was my brother Roy! And he was young and beautiful! It looked to me like he was in Moab Utah (where the arches are) The sky was so bright and beautiful, and the arch behind him was orangy red and so lovely. He was looking at me and smiling.
And then he told me the story . . . He had lost his job at John Deere, and he hated what he was doing, and he had no pride in his job, and he and his wife were fighting all the time, and he was doing drugs, and he owed people money . . . He went on and on, telling me the story, and then telling me how much he loved me and how he was proud that I was his little sister, (I was adopted~ but he never treated me like I didn't belong.)
In my dream I watched the whole video and was so happy . . .

But I have never put the second video on to watch . . . I still don't know what that second video is . . . what's on it or anything about it . . . I have always thought that when I "needed" it it would be there for me to access, as I know he gave it to me to have answers to questions left unanswered. Who knows it the answers are things he needs to tell me, or if they are other answers to other things. I guess I will know if I ever see the other video.
So the point of this long drawn out story is~ Within the last month I have found Roy's girls!!!! I was so young when he died, and I think my mom and dad didn't feel overly comfortable with staying in contact with Roy gone . . . But it had always troubled me, that we had lost his children, so I have been searching for them for a while . . . probably for about 2 years now. And I found them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I found Jill and Lucy!!
We have been in contact via Facebook!
They are grown women now! Beautiful women! With children of their own!
I have been taking the contact slow . . . letting them set the pace because you know me, I could overwhelm them with my Cheri-ness . . . if I wasn't careful. And I don't want to scare them off.
So early this morning I was sleeping, and dreaming . . . and I dreamed that Roy was with me and he was teasing me, and we were laughing and we were throwing balls along this green belt to see who could throw the ball further, (I think he was even letting me win~ because I know I can't throw a ball further than he could) and we were laughing so much we fell on the ground and laid there and talked and laughed . . .
I haven't dreamed of Roy since the dream of Moab . . . but I think it was his way of telling me that he is happy I found his girls! That he is happy, that I didn't stop caring just because they were not a daily part of our lives.
I really believe this dream was his way of telling me "Thank you for finding my girls." Today is going to be a wonderful day!!!