Fabulous Sugar Doll Blogger Award

Thanks to Jackie and Phyllis who passed on the Fabulous Sugar Doll Blogger Award to me. I'm not sure I've ever received an award. I know I've been tagged many times, but this is way more fun! And now I'd like to thank.....

Okay so the deal is I get to share 10 random facts about me so here they are:

1. I'm a trip planner. In fact my family calls me their "travel agent". If anyone wants to go anywhere, I'm the one who finds the directions, prints out itineraries, etc. Maybe it's a calling....

2. Speaking of trips, when I'm on one, I love to go, go, go. So much in fact that one morning on a cruise Troy and I went on forever go, about halfway through, he woke up ahead of me and managed to climb over me to shut the heavy curtains to make our room pitch black. I slept until 11:30 am and when I woke up and realized it, I was MAD at him!! He just kept repeating that I must have needed that sleep!

3. I used to hate sour cream and suddenly (within the past year or so) I've realized I love it and don't know how I managed to live without it for so long.

4. I love watching HGTV and House Hunters International. (See number 1 and Number 2) A girl can dream big right?!?!

5. Speaking of TV shows – I'm still hooked on Survivor and now Daniel and I watch it together every Thursday night and share a bowl of popcorn. I used to watch it with my dad every week until he passed away and so I've passed it on to Daniel. Troy knows he is not to interrupt us OR try to eat any of our popcorn! Daniel sortof watches, but it works for me!

6. I am trying really hard to like venison. Troy killed 2 big bucks this past week (more to come on that later) and we have tons of meat in the freezer. Sometimes it's okay, but I didn't grow up around hunting or eating venison and frankly I can't believe I married a hunter. What was I thinking?

7. I love reading. If that's not random enough, let me elaborate. I used to hate anything that was remotely scary, but suddenly I'm finding myself immersed in books like the Twilight series, the Blood Brothers series, Morrigan's Cross series, etc. I find it all fascinating now.

8. I still dream of being a romance writer one day, but maybe with a twist now (see number 7 above). I have about 10 or more pieces of work started, but not finished. One of which is probably 60 pages or more already!

9. I also still dream about being an archaeologist one day. When I was young (because I'm so old now) I wanted nothing more than to travel to Egypt and see the pyramids. It's still on my list, and after watching Transformers II the other night, I'm ready to go!

10. I love being a family. One of the first things we taught Daniel was that Papa, Mama and Daniel were a family. We would all hug together and tell him that. And now I love it when he runs up to us and says "Papa, Mama, Daniel – We're a family!!" Sometimes he includes all the dogs and cats names too!

I think I'm supposed to tag 10 people, so here I go:

Angie - she is waiting for a referral and we all know how hard that is. We're thinking of you!

Clarese - also waiting! They just got their I-171H!

Danica - they have adorable twin girls from Russia

Becky - she's so busy lately that we are missing reading her posts - maybe this will help?

Marie - she has an adorable son and husband who should not be sent out shopping together anymore!

Okay - that's five and while it's not 10 I was hoping to pick people who haven't been picked before. Have fun!

Big Cousin, Trip to the Local Park, Sentences and Tagged

This is going to be an all in one post!


Last Friday night I hosted game night at our house for my side of the family. Both of my sisters came, my mother, my two neices, one of the boyfriends, and of course Daniel was here as was the infamous Baby Eli and my grand niece Karmen! We had a house full! We played lots of Boggle and cooked dinner and had a great time. I took this photo as Daniel has expressed a real interest in holding Eli recently. We tried it once before using a pillow, but Daniel didn't seem very thrilled about it. However, this time, he loved holding his little cousin!


Aren't they adorable!!

Then this past Sunday Troy, Daniel and I headed to our local park to feed the ducks and have some play time. Funny how I was just posting about our lazy winter days and then we have some oddly warm weather. Of course last night and tonight we have had 60 mph wind gusts which always make for a pleasant driving experience to and from work! At the park we fed the ducks, walked acrosse the big bridge over the water and because Papa was around got to play in the big boy section of the playground while Mommy had multiple heart attacks!! It was a great day!

Lately Daniel has started putting together more and more sentences. It seemed to almost happen overnight. I am thrilled, but let me tell you...that boy can babble up a storm. I love every minute of it! Some of his newest phrases are "I'll be right back", finger in the air to show the one minute sign; then the other day while I was putting on my shoes, he came over, pulled the tongue of the shoe up and shook his head up and down and said "all set Mommy"; and lastly (my personal favorite) we were rocking two nights ago and he starts fingering my necklace. I asked him if he liked it and he replies "way cool Mommy". Obviously I need to update my vocabulary!

Finally, I have been tagged several time lately from several different people on a couple of different topics.

The first:

I was tagged by Chris and Danica and then by Jill, who by the way adopted the cutest little girl from Ethiopia, lives down the road from us, used the same agency we did and we went to high school together! The rules were:

1. Open the 4th picture folder on your computer.2. Choose the 4th picture and post it on your blog.3. Explain the picture.4. Tag 4 people to do the same

Well, our laptop blew up that had all our pictures neatly in folders and thankfully I had stored most of them on disk, but for the purpose of this, I am using the 4th picture from the 4th folder of our office computer. Ironically it's one of a series I took (not the best one as I posted the best one in a previous post) in which Jill recognized the background and realized we really did know each other and then contacted me! The folder was entitled Stuff (I'm so creative) and the photo was Stuff004! Without further ado...

I am not going to tag anyone else since it has been a while since my tag.

I was also tagged by someone else to do a book tag, but I can't remember, so I apologize for not doing that one.

Wow - I think I'm all caught up now. I'm exhausted!!

I've Been Tagged!

I got tagged by Amy - thanks!

Six Random things about me:

1. Before I met Troy, I swore I never wanted children. Every time I got around children they seemed to cry. My firends used to tease me about it all the time. Now I can't imagine life without my son and secretly dream of heading back to Russia for another child. Boy things change don't they?

2. I swore I would never watch a realty show and now I'm hooked on Survivor, The Amazing Race, The Bachelor. Even playing in the background now is America's Got Talent. Help me please!!

3. I love animals. I talk to all of them. I even think groundhogs are cute. Troy thinks I'm a nut and rolls his eyes when Daniel sees a groundhog and says hi to it (from the car). He jokingly refers to me as the 'animal whisperer' and asks me not to pass it on to Daniel who he hopes is a hunter like himself. (I do allow deer heads on the wall, but he can't sop me from apologizing to them! It's an interesting mix - an animal lover and a hunter. It's true that opposites attract.)

4. I hate sea food and mayonaisse, but I love tuna fish salad. I know it doesn't make any sense. Is there a law that says everything has to make sense??!!

5. Troy and I met at a party about a year before we met again. I didn't remember him, until he told me who he was. Then he claims I blew him off and went dancing with my friends. The truth is he just stood there so I basically said 'see you later'. I was the one who asked him to dance later on. He used to be shy - what happened?

6. I worry about everything. I do mean everything. The tiniest little thing and I'm on it. Troy swears I am going to drive myself batty. I jokingly tell him that one day he's going to come home to find me stroking a My Little Pony mane (yes, I still have that darn collection) saying "nice pony" over and over.

I'm going to tag the following people. Hopefully you haven't already been tagged and if you have, consider yourself popular with the natives!!

Amy
Stephanie
Kim
Carolynn
Kristine
Jackie

If I have tagged you, here are the rules!
1. Link to the person that tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random facts about yourself.
4.Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged.
6. Let the taggers know when your entry is up.

These are always a fun way to get to know each other and to take a step back from posting adoption news!