Vacation... and it feels so good

I'm on the last stretch of my vacation and it feels pretty good. Today I am deciding what to do. Should I go shopping, finish my handmade Christmas gifts, clean the house or make cookie dough for my upcoming Christmas party? yeap a lot of choices on the table today. I'll probably do a little bit of everything. I am also going to call my sister so I can take my neice to see Santa Clause on Saturday up at the Country store. I'm looking forward to it.

So we are home and as usual have been very busy. On Tuesday evening I volunteered for a Parent Information Session at Ty's highschool, yesterday I did grocery shopping, got a haircut and then we had youth group at Church so I ran up there... then after church Ty had a hockey game so we went to that (they won 5-2). I'm telling you - even if I'm on vacation I'm still busy. The good news is that normally I'd be working AND doing all this stuff...lol So I really am getting a break compared to normal life.

I'm REALLY enjoying my new camera. I've taken a ton of pictures, and am perfecting all the neat settings. I need to sit down with the book though because I'm not sure about certain things, like zooming on video....
Got my hair cut yesterday and I really like it. It's a cute wedge but the front is long, and the back is really short so I can spike it out. I like it. I'm so glad I found that little salon, and even gladder that it's close to my house. The girl, Tina, is a sweetie. I've been trying to get a good pic of the cut, but it's near impossible to take a great pic of the back of your head. Trust me I tried! LOL

Have you gals checked out Snapfish.com? Every two days until the 13th, they are having great sales. The other night I ordered 3 photo collages. One for Ty, one for his girlfriend of all their pictures together, and 1 for my friend's daughter from Kingdom Bound. I paid $17 for all three of them, and they are pretty big - 11x14" which is pretty large considering... each one holds 30 pictures, but unfortunately - they figure out the whole 'layout' of the collage. I would have liked to have more control over that. Today I'm working on a flip book for my mom - those are 20% off, and you can have up to 45 pictures in a book.
Well I won't leave you in suspense - here is a couple shots of the new hair cut. It's finally starting to grow into what I want - the stylist thinks after the next 2 hair cuts I'll have what I finally wanted in July when that other girl chopped it all off. Took these last night around 11:30pm...so forgive the icky makeup job!

Today... we go home.

I hate going home. I hate leaving. I miss my mom when I'm not here. But, home I must go. I have work, and a house, and 3 kitties who are probably beside themselves in lonely... We had a full weekend. Five full days. Holidays, shopping, sight seeing, and visiting family. Yesterday we went to see my Aunt Kathy & Uncle Bob, her daughter Dawn and Dawn's 3 kiddos, Danny, Kathy and Victoria (Tori for short). It was awesome. But today... it's all done and Ty and I will shuffle off to Buffalo to resume life as we know it. Hopefully we'll get home early enough to get the tree stuff out and get the decorating done. I'm looking forward to that! :) Here are a few more pics from the weekend - First - Candy Cane wars. I believe Tyler was the clear winner in THIS fencing match!

I'm sitting here listening to my son's tummy growling big time while he sleeps. It's going nuts. I wonder if it's going to wake him up? I'd have thought he'd be up by now because it's sooo loud!

This is my mom's tree. She puts up 2 - one real one, and one fake one. The real one is put in her ADK room (Adirondack) and has all sorts of woodsie type ornaments and things. I told her the fake one is suffering and will need a lot more ornaments - it's practically naked!

As you can tell I'm really enjoying my new camera. I believe I've taken close to 200 pictures this weekend. The camera is amazing. It takes moving shots, it takes dark shots, It lets me record sound bites on the pictures (Which is going to come in SO handy for Hockey!). It has so many neat little features I can't wait to sit down with the book and go thru it.

Well that's really it. I'm going to make some pancakes, and then hit the showers so I can hit the road Jack!

See you back in the B-lo!

We are home...

We had such a long day today. We left the house
around 9:15 and headed out to the Adirondacks, which is about a 2 1/2 hr drive from my mom's. We drove thru a myriad of little towns, villages and hamlets. It was a bit tedious, not really knowing where we were going, sitting in the back seat and having no real idea of the time frame. Doug was great and told me lots of neat history around the towns we were in while we drove. Also - once we hit the actual Adirondacks, I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures. Really cool is that I can actually take pictures now while the car is moving, and they come out AWESOME.



My mom and Doug took me to their favorite place in the Adirondacks - Long Lake. There is this cool Country Store (Hoss's) that Doug jokes about being the "Mall" because they have a bunch of little cottages behind the store, a pizzeria, a christmas store, an Art store... and some other things. It's kinda funny!

We left Long Lake and headed back up to Old Forge (there is ONE road to get in and out of these places) and on the way back into Old Forge, we encountered some of the locals.... lol These deer didn't even budge. My mom rolled down her window to take pictures (This was taken out of the front windshield) and they didn't even move. I'm sure they would have wanted food! LOL
Of course, no Christmas in the country adventure is complete unless you meet Santa or Mrs. Santa! Mom and I were so lucky when a man walked by and offered to take our picture together with Mrs. Clause. We saw reindeer too, but short of sharing all the pictures we took with you - These are a couple of my favourites :)
We picked up some treasures too. I got a cute little snowman ornament where the Snowman is holding ornaments in his hands, balancing one on his head and even hanging one from his nose. He's too cute! the other one says "please refreeze". I got a larger wooden ornament for the wall that says "When you stop believing in Santa, you get underwear!" I loved it since while I don't "Believe" in Santa.... I do believe in the magical time of Christmas- and honestly Santa is a big part of that... sooo I guess I do believe in Santa.

Anyway - that was our day - thanks for letting me share - and I'll talk to you later!

Some news to share! Well as you all know I am at moms. And if you're either a CTMH sistah, or a good friend of mine, then you know that we went shopping today for Black Friday. And well, aside from the HORRIFIC tragedy in Long Island, (more on THAT topic later - SHAME on you America!) we had a relatively uneventful day. However, Mom cleaned up on Black Friday specials, got ALL her christmas shopping done, and a little bit more...

Did anyone happen to catch the great sale Walmart was having on Digital camera's? Well, mom and I did, and we were pleasantly surprised to see that there were QUITE A FEW left of the particular camera we were looking for. The Kodak EasyShare ZD8612. YES Sir-eee I got a new camera for a mint of a price! YAY! I'm so thrilled. Mom and I now have matching Cameras. It's sooo awesome. 8.1 megapixels, and 12x zoom... I have so much to learn to play with this camera.. I think I'll be taking pics everywhere!

To celebrate - I'll show you the first pics I took, which is the project Rachele so graciously shared with me - and that I had to run out and make myself. I'm not sure what Rachele called this - other than Candy Cane Christmas, but I call it a Christmas Topiary, my mom calls it a Christmas Kissing ball. She's not overly thrilled with it, but I am! It was TIME consuming, I think it took me 5 hrs all said and done to put it together. I found a bottle of glittered snow that I put around the edge of the tin, and on the handles a bit. When that dries, I'll add the peppermints to it the way Rachele did. I'm really pleased with it - soon I'll figure out how to take better pictures of it and then you can see it much better. Anyway - just thought I'd post a bit of an update! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We're heading down to Old Forge tomorrow for an Adirondack Christmas which I'm really looking forward to :) Catch up when we get back!

being up late

or early in this case... is very bad for the wallet's health. My wish list is long, long and long...*sigh*

Since I am at mom's and can't sleep.... my little brother's room is horribly hot - I'm cruising the long long long list of blogs I haven't had a chance to see in well over a month and I'm checkin out artwork for inspiration for christmas cards. I'm going super basic this year... so I didn't bring a lot of 'stuff' with me to mom's to do them - but hey it doesn't hurt to pick up some ideas while I'm awake right?
Anywho - one of the most favorite lines of stamps that I wish I could purchase right now is MFT (My favorite things) - they just have such a cool 'insight' and their designs are real, and fresh. Love them! Well, while catching up on a 'blog' hop - they featured a while ago, I stumbled across this totally awesome set which is SO appropriate for me (Are ya feelin me Kari?) and my CTMH gal pals...

Who's that E-Girl is only $15.95 - not bad pricing for so many stamps, and what an awesome set! Love it! I might just have to splurge on this one as a B-day present for me :)

Enjoy!

Riley vs the Hot Pepper

Heres a fun little memory from mom's last weekend. My nephew Riley was being mr. tough guy and was eating some of Doug's really hot peppers! YIKES. He wasn't tough for too long though -after about a minute the heat caught up to him :)

enjoy!

KB Day 4

Last day - *sigh* it has such a bitter sweet taste to it. I'm glad to get back to life as I know it, and I'm exhausted, so I'm really looking forward to sleeping tonight, but at the same time - it's such a cool world to be at KB immersed in what I feel like Heaven will be like with all these Christians everywhere!

Today I spent the early part of the day with Johnny & Charity - that was fun. I saw Kevin Leman who was an absolute RIOT talking about male/female relationships. He was awesome. I think I'm going to invest in a few of his books. also I think eh said something about coming back to Buffalo in late Sept so I'll have to look that up and see when so I can go see him again. In the afternoon I went over to Marybeth's camper and she made a great dinner for us. Eggplant parm, lasagna and baked rigatoni. YUM. It was very good. Then I met up with Lisa for the last of the concerts - Delirious and Newsboys. It was a fabulous day with lots more details but I am too tired to recount them all. I have no complaints whatsoever about the week - every bit of it was awesome and I'm so grateful that God is so good to me that we can go and do these things. He is awesome!

here are a few pics to share and then Off to BED!
Love you all!
Kisha


Gotta Love the dancing Feet!
And it's a group thing!
SCRUNCHY FACE!
Hey it's me :) And it's a decent pic too!

This guy named Eric something painted this in about 5 minutes to music. What a talented man. It was for Compassion International awareness. Afterwards they had the painting in their vendor tent. I love Compassion, and sponsor a little girl myself. Her name is Inez and she lives in Peru. One day I am hoping to go visit her... I hope you will visit the Compassion website and consider helping a precious little one yourself!

KB Day 3!

Well today was another eventful day. Whew am I beat. So glad to be home an entire hour earlier than the last two nights. We cut out of the Jaci Velasquez concert about 1/2 hr or so early to beat traffic, but I still had to wait for the kids to join us! Grr... kids.

So today we started out a bit late. After sleeping in longer than I wanted (8:15) and picking up Sam and Jenna, we didn't arrive at KB until around 11:15, but that was ok. We promptly put all of our stuff in lockers and hit the water parks. We hit the blue and white water slide first, which is hands down my favourite, and then the Tornado which is my 2nd favourite. I love the ride, but I'm always terrified that I will be the ONE person who goes flying out of the tube and over the edge and dies...lol even though I KNOW God isn't done with me yet here on earth, and is totally ok with my enjoying water park rides! After that we headed over to the big Kahuna which is a large red water slide which I enjoyed, but not nearly as much as the first two. Still... the 45 minute wait paled in comparison to some to some other rides! LOL

We enjoyed some extra time in the wave pool, and hook's lagoon which is quite the riot let me tell you! It's basically a bunch of 'ship wrecked' pirate ships that have been taken over by the 'lost boys' who wreak havoc and mishap on all the unfortunate souls who wander off there... buckets of water to tip on people's heads, flexible hoses to squirt people below, lots of water just about everywhere, and about every ten minutes this HUGE bucket of water that must hold easily several HUNDRED gallons of water tips and goes pouring down all over everyone standing in it's way. there are also two small water slides there that aren't really anything amazing, but fun none-the-less!

today we opted for the 'less expensive' route for lunch and had sandwiches in the parking lot with music and swedish red fishies. yeah. I know really healthy Kisha... what do you expect? It's kids for crying out loud! LOL And it's Darien lake! After that it was down to business. We had to drive to Orchard Park to help my friend Robin out of the house. She had ankle surgery 2 weeks ago and hasn't been able to do stairs since. Talk about stir crazy. She literally hasn't been out of her house the entire time because of her steps on her porch! Anyway we just needed to get her out of the house so her son could take her to the dr. So we drove from KB about 1/2 hr to East Aurora to help her, and then we drove back :)

I let the kids go off on their own after we returned. Heck they don't need me in their faces all night right? We are having a Serious issue (discovered this morning in line for the tornado) because my son does appear to have a 'hicky' on his collarbone, which he insists he got "shaving" (yeah and I have purple eyes, green fingers and was born YESTERDAY! NOT). So lets suffice it to say that I am not allowing them ANY alone time anymore and I am THRILLED that his girlfriend is going on a 2 week trip to Chicago with her grand-dad.

ok I really didnt' take many pics tonight and I don't have a lot of energy for loading them up so I'm really sorry this is wordy, and not any pics, but i will catch up I promise! Tomorrow is the last day and while I'm glad it's over - I'm also SO sad its over!

Good night all!

Kisha

KB day 2 pics

Just some quick pics to share - here are my favs for the day! Enjoy!

KB Day 2

Today was a better day at the festival. My friend Lisa & Sam joined us and Lisa stayed till about 4:30. Sam stayed the rest of the night. It was fun. I did more coasters today than I have I think the last 3 times I went to a theme park! LOL Lets see - first ride we did was the Motocoaster which is funny. It's kind of a lame roller coaster, but it's a bunch of motorcycles so it really was hysterical. Well that and all the jokes about what kind of 'rocket' it was! LOL What did we do next? The vendor tent for a little bit, Tyler split and went to hang out with his girlfriend for the day - what else? Gosh it is sooo hard to recount the whole day. I think we went and got lunch. We had subway subs, and fries which were soo good. Every year we buy a 'commemorative' cup for like $8 and then we get refills all week for $1. The problem is that this year they ran out of the normal cups we buy - won't have new ones till Wed sooo I bought the slightly smaller version and YIKES does it go down quick. I think it's only like 20 oz or so and when it's hot its easy to suck it down fast!

Sam pretty much hung out with me most of the day. We went on several coasters, the motocoaster, the viper, the predator (which HURTS), and then I did the boomerang too which was horrible, and fun all at the same time. Although I did feel like I was going to 'toss my cookies' when I was done... I was ok after a couple tylenol and sips of my lemonade. We saw the really awesome Cirque Neuvaux (sp?) - and then we ran over to see Skillet, but since KB didn't pre-think it and put them on the park stage (they are pretty big rockers) it was SOOOO PACKED. I mean not only standing room only - it was backed way up to the vendor tents which is crazy. I think that more than 1/2 the park was there! Tyler made his way up front, but didn't stay long. I got some great pics of the kids, and then Mary Beth and I headed over to see Third day. It was fabulous! OH! I forgot to mention we did stop at the Worship Tent and saw Vicky Beeching, who I am going to head right over to Myspace to add as a friend, and put one of her songs on my page. She was fabulous!

We did hit the wave pool for a while, but we didn't have our suits so we just got wet up to our shorts and then hung out there for a while. It was a long day on my feet, and I've got a bit of a blister to show for it. I'm probably going to wear sneakers tomorrow to try and baby it a bit, but heck it's been a good week so far! LOL

Now I am just catching up this post so I can download it in my head, download the pics and head off to bed. I'm watching Nashville star, and wow. I knew Shawn Mayer would go - really glad Melissa is in the final running. My poor dog. She is soo lonely - now she's trying to play and we need to get to bed. I think next year I am REALLY going to look into kenneling her for the 4 days so that she can get her play time and all that and I don't have to feel sooo guilty coming home at 1am and then getting up and leaving at 9am again!

Until next time!

Kisha

KB Day 1

Well KB Day 1 is over... and I'm whipped. Not too much exciting happened today but I did run into a few friends, Bob & Sue, Mark and Johnny & Charity, and Mary Beth. Tyler didn't spend a whole lot of time with his momma but hey he did come for the communion which somebody messed up and served at 6pm instead of 8:30 like the Schedule said they would. Oh well - seems not quite right to get worked up over Communion being wrong....*sigh* almost defeats the purpose it would seem! I didn't do any rides, but Tyler met up with his GF and they did the Scrambler, the UFO, the Viper...and a couple others. I hit the vendor tent. I bought him a new bible but don't tell him that - I haven't decided if he's getting it now, since his is falling apart OR waiting for Christmas. Its a nice one - leather bound NIV teen bible. I like it alot. Hopefully he does too. I also picked up a book that is out of print - Becoming babywise by Gary Ezzo. It's about training your babies up the "natural" Godly way. I love the series on teens and tweens, so I'm guessing the baby one will be JUST as good. anyway I got them for friends of mine who just had babies. I also picked up a fiction hard cover that looks like it'll be some good reading. After that I'm done for shopping - I've spent ENOUGH this week for a while....

The concerts tonight were Robin Mark who I'd never heard of but he's from Ireland, and then Lincoln Brewster who it turns out I did know his music and both Tyler and I enjoyed his guitar talent - he was VERY good :)

ok till tomorrow! Asta la vista....

Kisha

Kingdom Bound here we come!

DANGIT! Oh I hate when I do that! I tried to select all my text and REMOVED my entire post! GRRR! Oh I hate it! We are going to be coming and going for the next few days to Kingdom Bound. It's a 4 day Christian Music Festival held every year at Darien Lake. I'm hoping to see Big Daddy Weave, Skillet and Newsboys. As we speak, Rebecca St. James is performing in Binghamton today - but I'm sad that she's not coming to KB this year.

In the meantime what the heck has been going on the last couple days? Well... lets see. Friday was REDICULOUS trying to get out of work. I mean crazy nuts. There are so many teeny details to share that I will drive myself crazy just thinking about what the heck Friday looked like sooo I'm not even going to bother re-typing it however lets just say that I should have been on the river at 6pm where my friends graciously invited me on the boat, and I didn't get there till almost 9!?!!!! They were sooo sweet to come back to the marina and get me but still!

Saturday I worked from 9-3pm. We have gotten funding to run a Digital Camera Class for 60 inner city kids. It's really just an intro to using cameras and then they go on field trips to take pictures. Then next saturday we will be teaching them to download their pics to the computer to then upload to Photobucket and finally to make a Blogger account that they will share all their favourite pics. Once the project is finalized - I'll share the blog with you all to see :) Please check it out as it'll just tickle them pink that they have visitors from all over viewing it!

What else? When I got home Tyler and I kicked butt and cleaned the downstairs of the house. It needed it. I still have to dust the furniture in the living room but other wise it looks really good and I'm feeling much better about being mostly gone this week without having to worry about my stank nasty dirty house! After cleaning Mary Beth called and asked if I did want to go on the boat again, so I took Malik out and oh my he actually went swimming in the lake, AND he went out on the tube! I am sooo proud of him for getting out of his control freak shell and so grateful to Brad for being so patient with him and helping him have so much fun!
Today we had church and afterwards ran over to Penney's for their 'doorbuster' sale which we missed because I ran into Bernie and Rhonda and got to see their precious new baby girl Faith. She's such a doll. So teeny! I ended up spending about $200 on Tyler for school, but he got several shirts, 4 pair of Jeans and 2 sweatshirts. So it was a good deal. I was thrilled when I saw that 2 pair of jeans he had picked out were marked down to $15.99 but then even MORE thrilled when I saw that they rang up as $8.99! YEAH! Now that's a good deal right? I Know! So that really helped take the sting out. Oh yeah I also got him another dress shirt (royal purple) and 2 purple ties. So really for $200 we made out like a bandit. All he needs are underthings and shoes and he is done.
Here are some pics from yesterday - I'm sure I'll have tons to post over the next few days :)




Brad, Malik & Mary Beth getting on the tube

Mary Beth, Malik and Paul floating around in the water

Sue, Bob & Jim watching everyone in the water :)

Cedar Point Pics!

Here are some Cedar Point Pics - First is Ty and Meech waiting in line. There were these really awesome Tent covers and also these huge fans with water misters that would blow out cool mists of water over the crowd as we waited in line. It was the most awesome thing.
I wish Darien Lake did that here in Buffalo!



Ty & Meech on the first ride we went on. They HAD to wait for the FIRST car!
On EVERY ride! LOL

This is my cousin's little boy Connor. He's so stinkin cute I could just eat him UP!
He kept saying "Hi Kisa" - LUV IT!

There is a ton to share about this weekend, and I will update as much as I can however - it's alot! I will try and get a bit done over the next couple days, but my house REALLY needs some attention! I really didn't do much with it before we left, and well after 4 days of being empty except for the cats, who had themselves a ball.... well it's a bit on the icky side! Also, I'm back to work, but I refuse to work 10hr days in the summer... sooo maybe it won't be SO bad :)

We're home!

Hi all! We're home :) We had a great time and it was a lot of fun. Hopefully I'll have time to tell all about it and share a ton of pictures (I took over 100) and share with all of you my new-found family... Just wanted to check in and let you all know we got home nice and safe :)

Here is a super quick pic of our family. From right to left -
Tyler, Doug, Mom, Me, & my baby brother Meech

Have a great night!
Kisha

off to ohio!

See you monday when we get back! with lots of pictures!

Love and God Bless

Kisha