My Musings and Stuff!

Archive for April, 2009

In 22 days, 07 hours, and 24 minutes since I wrote this post Sea World in Orlando is opening up their newest roller coaster.   This roller coaster puts together all the fun thrills of a normal roller coast and bringing riders up close to the animals with close animal encounters.  Right now Sea World is hosting a really exciting contest to win a “front-of-the-line” pass so that a lucky winner can get in on the action first and without having to wait.

There are six activities to choose from to enter to win.  But before any acitivies you must register and log in at the Manta page.  First you can choose to take a quiz on mantas and show off your knowledge on them to enter.  Or display how much you love manta’s by uploading a picture of yourself displaying any “I heart Manta” paraphanelia on flickr, this could be a sign, a shirt, or my personal favorite write it on a baby with a washable marker and hold up the baby, everyone loves babies.  Another way to enter is to fill your row, refer friends to enter using a referral code.  Also to enter video yourself talking about Manta and how your excited about it and of course upload it to Youtube.  After you make your video go back and download the Manta mask and follow the instructions to cut it out and wear and take a picture of you wearing it and upload it to your flickr.  And don’t forget to follow what has to be the worl’s most famous whale Shamu on twitter to enter.  It is exciting and fun to ride new rides and coasters, I know I can’t wait to get to go on one this summer, hopefully even this one!  So go through and do all of the activities to win a “front-of-the-line” pass for the Manta.

~sharon

The last couple of weeks have been very busy around here, barely been able to get drops in.  It alstarted a couple of weeks ago with Wes’ school field trip.  We went to a place in a near by town called The Science Discovery Place, it was a pretty cool.  There were activities for the kids to from a play tv station to caves simulating the inside of the Earth and even a section where kids could dress up and play in all kinds of local different careers.  We had a lot of fun there. 

We had tons of fun there and want to take Hal with us and go again.  The other thing that is been keeping me busy was going to see the band Cold’s reunion tour show in Houston, it was an awesome show.  I got to get copies from Jason’s camera and post them but I got autographs of all the band members and pictures wiht some of them as well.  Pretty cool stuff and music.  And the band that opened for them was called The Drama Club was pretty cool and had some awesome music.  So I would look them up on myspace and check them out and Cold as well if you have never heard of them before.  Once Jason brings me a copy of the pictures I will put some up.  I will try to make a slide show or something and Jason videoed the whole thing and will be putting it up on youtube, so I can post those links as well.

~sharon

As a scrapbooker I have used stamps quite often on my pages and in designs that I had been working on.  Stamping things can be quite addicting, to me its almost as addicting as rubbing ink pads on the edges of all of my page elements in my scrapbooks.  But getting your own custom stamp for business or personal use is also a must I believe.  I have also used them at various jobs that I have had and they come in pretty handy when have to label or either write the same things over and over again.

Right now Vista Print have stamps starting at $12.99 that you can either choose a premade design or upload your own complete design for your stamps.  They have a large assortment of different designs from the customary address and important information stamps.  As well as stamps for everyday use to mark receipts or documents as paid, past due, original, copy, and a lot of other designs.  More recently I haven’t been using stamps very often but I could see myself using one often whenever I need to mark something on a scrapbook back or on the back of something I made, sort of like a signature.   I am also thinking one of my own signature might come in handy when I do cards for like Christmas well just when I have to do a lot of something.  On the ones where your information just has to be added they even have quite a few with cute little pictures like holiday themes and such.

My mother in law makes cards monthly for the elderly, sick and home bound from her church.  A stamp with all of the important information that she signs them with everything month would be really handy for her since this is an ongoing monthly thing for her.  I think she prints that part out right now from her computer but if she had a stamp it would be more convenient and save more ink if she had a premade stamp with the info that she needed.  There are a lot of designs and the neat part is that you can choose your own design so check out the different designs and great prices that are available.

I know its kind of late during the day or evening for a post, so I hope that everyone had a nice Easter. We started ours off with decorating eggs yesterday and with dinner and egg hunting today. The kids had an awesome time even though it was raining, but the Easter Bunny was prepared and hid eggs all through Grandma’s house and the covered back porch plants and furnishings. I haven’t gotten my pictures from today off of my camera but here are some of the egg decorating photos from yesterday.

~sharon

How awesome is this?  Everyday through the month of April, Charter Communications will be giving away a 22 inch flat screen  HDTV to people who order services and also those who upgrade their current services at Charter.com. Charter is making it easy for customers new and old by offering bundles for their service with cable, Internet and even phone service, which saves money and in my opinion makes bills so much easier to pay when you pay one instead of three.  Last month’s contest that Charter held had more new customers signing up than any contest held to date.  In the past Charter has given away such things as Xbox 360’s, laptops and even a grand prize of a 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid, I would so have loved to win one of those.  This time a lucky party is going to win a grand prize package that includes a 52” LCD flat screen HDTV, a Home Theater System, and one year of free Charter Digital Cable® service with HD programming.  I wish I could be so lucky, but I don’t think I would ever leave the couch if I won something like that.  This is a really awesome sweepstakes with some great prizes and all you have to do is order your new service or upgrade or add features to your current Charter service at Charter.com.  Good Luck!

~sharon

Since I am going through quite a few changes in my life and am absolutely positive that those are going to stick this time.  Mostly because I realize that it is a never ending cycle and I must put an end to it.  I just hope the other party involved understands that as well.  Anyway I have come to the conclusion that without a doubt I want to finish college, I have put it off too long.  And when I was going I have changed majors several times, and want to find something that I love and will stick too.  I had considered teaching, but after thinking about it I realize that I just do not have the patience to deal with others kids like I do my own.  I have also majored in computer information systems and to be a parallegal.  The first one I enjoyed but the first classes were all repetitive things that I had already learned about either in high school at the time or own my own.  The thing about the parallegal profession though while interesting the jobs just aren’t available where I am living, however that excuse is not sticking because I don’t want to live here forever.  I honesly would love to pack up my boys and myself and move somewhere else, my ex has already agreed to allow that in the divorce papers because well he says he isn’t planning on staying here forever as well.  However one thing that I would love to do has to be web design, I have been messing around with websites since I was around 14 so for about 15 years off and on I have dabbled.  Most of the things I know are self taught but I would love to get formal training for it and learn everything there is.  But I am just not quite sure where to start.  I am thinking of trying a graphic design major this time.  I want to figure out something soon because I would really like to get started on it this fall, wish me luck on finding my way.

~sharon

It is that time of year again when Fall and Winter items are on sale and it is a good time to perhaps get a few things for the next Fall or Winter.  Right now Sears is having a sale with 75% – 80% OFF Original prices on Fall and Winter clothing.  The sale is lasting from now until April 18. One thing I like about this sale is that over the years I have discovered that when Sears has a sale, it is really a sale.  They have some fabulous deals right now, a favorite of mine is this Studio 1 Tadashi Strapless Seamed Dress, it is normally $118.00 but is currently on sale for $41.99.  I really love the design and have always wanted a strapless dress, for some reason I just have never gotten around to buying one, or had anywhere to wear it to.

Buying for my children ahead of time is sometimes difficult because they either grow more than you expect or not as much as you think they will.  Also while looking at boys clothing I found Lee Boy’s 4-7 Long Sleeve Jersey Stripe Hood on sale for $3.99 from $26.99 what an awesome deal.  My boys love wearing clothes with hoods on them so this is right up their alley and in an awesome price range.  There are even more deals than that, so check it out.

~sharon

I believe I have posted a few pictures of my very pregnant dog recently.  Well Tuesday morning I noticed that she was acting kind of different and I figured it was probably time, I have never really been around pregnant animals so don’t really know what to look for.  Well I just decided that she had to be ready, and she seemed to determined to get under one of the beds to do it.  And my bed sits really low to the ground, so low infact that when she got under it her back touched the bottom of the bed and her belly the floor.  So I made her a pallet in my closet (big walk in so she had tons of space) and put the baby gate up and corraled her into it.  We ended up with 5 puppies all are doing well and very healthy looking, they are 3 girls and 2 boys.

This is her that morning before looking all pitiful and sad:

And the next morning with her babies all bunched up around her:

~sharon

Since I have been trying to get into shape and run and walk all of the time my Wii Fit, I think this is an excellent chance for me to help with a great cause.  Right now from 4/1/09 until 10/31/09 Bumble Bee Foods wil donate .15 cents per mile logged at BeeWell Miles up to $200,000 dollars.  This is for an excellent cause they are donating the money to help the Breast Cancer Network of Strength to help people emotionally who are unable to wait for tommorow’s cure.  I myself try to run or walk at least a 1 or 2 miles a day and myself could log about 428 miles or about $64.20 dollars.

I have already talked to my mother in law who is big into working out and always walking and trying to be healthy all the while wearing a pedometer, and she is also planning to log her miles as well for the Breast Cancer Network of Strength.  At the BeeWell Miles website you can log your miles, and see how many calories you are burning by walking, you can also intereact with healthy living experts such as Coach Jenny, Willow, and Stephanie.  You can also map out your route and figure out how many miles your route is and everyday when you log your miles you could win one of 15,000 prizes instantly.  It souns like fun and then the bonus for a social person like myself is that you can interact with other walkers!
Here I am with the Wii Fit running!

~sharon

This past weekend we took the boys to a local tamale festival where they had little train rides, craft sales, games, stuff for the kids to do and all kinds of stuff to do. But of course there were tamales, they were so good. I think I am going to go back every year just for some tamales, there is nothing like homemade tamales. The kids had a load of fun they spent most of there time playing on the blowup jump things and slides and being silly. Here are a couple of pictures.

~sharon