Are you green?

First off let me say that I think the whole global warming thing is a crock! Hey my blog...my opinion! *L* Since I was in HS....some 30 yrs ago, we learned about the cycles of the earth and how we had times when the earth was warmer and times when it was colder. It's mother nature in all her glory!!!
Do I think Hybrid cars are a joke? YES!! Ok here in Cali we are told to conserve energy...CONSERVE CONSERVE CONSERVE! So now we are gonna have carts we have to plug in? Ohhhh yeah that will cut back on the use of electricity! What they gonna do when there is a black out? yeah yeah I know they run on gas also..but you know what I mean. Then not only that you gotta be able to afford one of these death traps..yes I call them death traps because they are so tiny. Had I been in something like this when that moron pulled out and smashed into us, I would not be here today! I will take my Jeep anyday thank you very much. At least I feel safe in it, and come on it doesn't use any more gas than some of these little cars....yeah have you checked the stickers on some of these little 'mid-life crisis' cars in the dealerships? Well my Jeep gets much better gas mileage and is gonna save me when some idiot runs a stop sign and smashes into my side.
Now what about the lightbulbs? You know we are all supposed to use these little swirly light bulbs right? We do...we have a lot of them here...but you do know they are jsut little florescent bulbs don't you? Know what happens when one breaks? Can you say toxic? What are we going to do when we have to start filling the landfills with these things?
How about the new digi signals that everyone is going to have to have to get tv in a few months? What happens to all those old tv's that you can't get tv on anymore...or even the ones that you can add a convertor box to...but the people decide to just go get a new tv instead. What is gonna happen to the landfills when we get a gazillion tv's dumped in them? Can we say way toxic?? Out here in Cali you can't take your tv to a landfill..it has to go to a special recycling center.
It has annoyed me enough with all the enviornmentalits out here preaching to us...yes I recycle..bottles, cans, and lots of times I donate my old newspaper to the pet store to use for bedding. The enviornmentalists want to preach to us about not cutting down trees...ummm hello...if you had been raised on a farm or knew anything about nature you would know about the life cycle and how some things have to be thinned out to make way for the new to come in..otherwise guess what? You are endangering the old stuff by letting it get overgrown. Maybe that is why we have over 1000 fires in Northern Cali right now?
And corn...OMG we can take the food supply...because you know there are farmers out there who have deals with the gov that they can not plant on their land for so many years...and they have to let that land sit dormant for a period of time...the government paid them to NOT grow things on that land. So the ones who are growing corn and wheat are hoping to make a heck of a profit by selling it for ethenol. What is going to happen to meat prices? That is also the grain that is raised to feed to animals...beseides the human kind! Oh we can't drill for oil off the coast, and we can drill here or there...because it will take 10 yrs before we are able to process the oil. Ok so where we gonna be in 10 yrs if we don't do it now? Wishing we would have done something about it 10 years ago is where!!
Sorry I am just sick and tired of the government and enviornmentalists stupidity!! We are going to green outselves to death!!!

The things you find!!

My oh my! If you have been reading my blog for a while you know that Jim and I were called to be the Ward Family History Consultants for our church. We have been taking classes on how to use the new system, which is so awesome!!! Last week I spent a lot of time on the site adding names and then finding that on my grandma's mother's side of the family there is a strong LDS background! I had no idea! My dad had no idea! I was so surprised and thrilled to find out I had family members who were baptised in the church back in the 1880's!!!! That's when the church was new! How exciting was that to find out!? Plus I found family info on my great grandmothers side dating back to the 1500's!
All of this just on my grandma's side. I have barely started putting anything in on the rest of the family, I was so enthralled with looking back at all this info and clicking on names to find out more!
We also taught a Family History class at the church last week to the Relief Society. The ladies were so excited when we were done, they are ready to start doing thier own searches!
I also spoke to them about the importance of journaling. Be it a regular journal that you write in or a scrapbook that you preserve family memories in. I have found that with this searching, the more I find out, the more I want to find out!! I have located a couple of distant cousins while doing the search (Anyone who registers...please put your email addy in your profile so if distant family finds your info and wants to learn more they can contact you!) and I have learned some great family stories this way!!!
But back to the journaling. No matter what way you do it...just do it! This will let the future generations of your family know you and know about the family. I have pictures of family members that I got from my grandma Elsie, pictures that have a name on them, but I have no idea who the people are. My grandmother is no longer with us, so I can't ask her. How I wish I could ask her!! Is this person an Aunt? Cousin? Who is she? And how I wish I had paid more attention to the stories she told me when I was a child! Sure I remember some of them and I am writing down what I can remember so my grandkids and great grandkids can know more about their great grandmother Elsie.
I have always been interested in geneology work, but this has rekindled and made this interest grow so much stronger!!

In other news *L* We are counting the days until we go to Utah to meet Patrick! The newest family member!!! Gosh I can't believe he is 2 weeks old today!! I went to a crop last Friday, so of course I had to do some pages of him! *insert proud grandma smile here* :)



And one of Brit in the baby's room shortly before Patrick arrived


And then of course I had to start scrapping the Knotts trip!!


I have to admit I have been a bad blogger and haven't been getting my pages up here for anyone to see. Soooooooo excuse the long post..but I am going to add just a few more of the pages I have done in the last month. *L* Here are some assorted pages for your viewing pleasure!










Dawn McD and I are playing the Birthday Bash game at TTS this month. We are 'Scrappers Gone Wild!' *L* Here is the page we did for last weeks competition. What we do is one of us does part of the page then we pass it on to the other and that person does some....and we do this until we are happy with the page then we post it with a list of who did what! Fun game!!!


Speaking of TTS! Check out what is going on now.....

He's here!!!

Baby Patrick is here at last! He was born at 10:15 this morning and weighs in at 8lb 1oz and is 20 1/2 inches long! He has a TON of dark hair!!! hehehe
Britney had to have a C-sec because the baby started going into distress and Brit developed Pre-eclampsia.




Isn't he absolutely precious!!!!!

Birthday Bash!

Come join us this month for TTS 3rd Birthday party! The party starts today with a chat at 8 Pm tonight in the chat room.

Busy, busy, busy

That's what May was. The first part of the month we were without our internet service for a week, then Jim got sick, then I got sick just a couple days before I was to fly to Denver so I could go to my 2 neices graduation. I spent a week in KS and Colorado, mostly at Jamie's house. Then my parents and 2 of the grandkids..Jon and Kayden (Jamie's 2) and I drove back here to our home for another week and then the month was over! It went by way too fast!! I am missing the kids so much I could cry and they have only been gone a little over a week. Someday we plan on selling the house and moving closer to the kids so we can see them more than once a year.
Right now we are just waiting for 'the' phone call from Shaun telling us that they are heading to the hospital for the baby's birth! Brit is 'due' on the 12th, but she is already dilated 2 cm..maybe more by now as that was almost a week ago. We will be going up for the baby's (Patrick's) blessing the weekend of July 4th. Tomorrow Jim leaves for training for a week down in Huntington Beach. Neither of us is looking forward to that, as we hate to be away from each other. But it is a good thing that he is getting trained on more machines.

Here are a few pics (ok maybe a little more than a few!) from my trip to CO and some of the fun stuff we did while the kids were here(I will save some others for another time *L*).
I am still bummed I lost about 200 pics when the cat ran across my keyboard and deleted a bunch of them. I lost pics I took while I was in the airplane or the ultracool clouds, and pics of Kayden making bread with me and making a birthday cake for my mom (although I do still have a close up of her face with flour all over it from the bread making and a close up of her chocolate face from the cake making). If I had an extra $100 or so laying around I would get them recovered, but at least I do still have the close ups thank goodness, so I can still scrap those memories. Unfortunately I also lost the pics from the kids feeding the ducks. Will just have to take more next time they visit! :)


On the trip out I learned that Elvis IS living AND he flys Southwest Airlines! *L* Imagine my surprise when he got on the plane I was on!!


My nephew Zach brought his Wii along with him to my parents house so we had some fun bowling with his Wii! It was my first time playing and what a blast!!


Kayden looked so cute in her little halter top dress. Her and Audrey spent a lot of time walking along these rocks at the grad. reception.


Here are my 2 neices whose graduation I flew out for. Mal and Jess. Congrats girls!!


Kayd's cute little flour covered face from helping me make bread. She is such a good little helper!


The kids traveled so well for the long drive! It took us 2 days to get back home and they really did good for being cooped up for so long.


On the drive through Utah we hit SNOW!! IN MAY!! Not only in May but it was the end of May for crying out loud! It was sooooooooooo cold in Utah! Here is Jon trying to catch a snowflake on his tongue!


Of course once we got back home to Cali we HAD to go to In-N-Out, mom's fav place to eat out here! *L* It was the kids first time there and it was a big hit with them as well!


Jim had gotten us tickets for the Mav's game for Friday night. Little did we know how cold it would be! Who in thier wildest dreams would have thought we would be sooooooooo cold at the end of May! The cold seemed to follow us from Utah! We stayed for 3 innings and left. We couldn't beleive all the people who bailed out as well, it was just too cold. At least the kids got an autograph from Wooley Bulley before we left. Kayden loved the game while we were there though, she said when she gets bigger she wants to play ball!


We went to Knott's Berry Farms and the kids LOVED it!! Kayden is a little daredevil! This girl has no fear! Although she didn't like the kids roller coaster. I think she was just too small and it bounced her around too much. Jon rode the Sidewinder by himself! WTG Jon!! He said he loved it but when the ride stopped he looked like he was ready to lose his lunch! *L* Despite the sibling rivalry *L* Kayden didn't want to go anywhere without her big brother!



No trip to Cali is complete without a trip to the beach. We took mom and dad and the kids to Huntington beach one day. It was dad's first time walking along the beach and he loved it. He wasn't able to last time because he had just had surgery on his leg. Mom had a blast collecting seashells, and she found some real nice ones since they had recently had some storms in the area. Of course Jon was so excited to be at the beach again and Kayden's trip this time was much better than her first time. The last time she was there she was scared to death of the water, this time you practically had to pull her out of the water!


Just some fun pics of us girls in the backseat of the pickup on the drive home. It is right there mom...see!!! *LOL*


And finally, I just LOVE this pic Jim got of Kayden and me. She was giving me Eskimo kisses.