I didn't fall off the face of the earth...

It just looks that way on the blog! :) So here's the month in review.
I'm 17 days post-op and other than a little soreness, I'm fine. I feel much better than I expected I would. Brian was wonderful and took over for me completely so I could recover. He laughs and says "What did you expect me to do?" But really... taking over in every aspect of the child-rearing and running the house takes work! I only missed 3 days of work, but even after I went back, Brian took care of business around here. He is simply wonderful.
I had my birthday this month. The big 3-0. We kept it simple, just dinner and a movie, so I wouldn't go into shock or have a midlife crisis. Ha ha! Jaxon assured me that "30 is a lot" but that I'm "not old". :) I still don't feel like a grown up, let alone like a mom in my 30's (sheesh)! Ok... I need to stop now before I DO start to feel old... here's some scrap news from my fabulous designers that I'm lucky enough to CT for!

Andrea Gold is hosting a quick page exchange using her gorgeous "Discover" kit at GDS with some GREAT participation prizes. Check out her blog post for more info or check out the QP exchange at GDS.

Beckie Wallace will be hosting a lyric challenge all weekend long and having a huge sale in her Digital Candy Shoppe to celebrate NSD! So be on the lookout May 3-4th!

Brian and I will be sending the kids to grandma's next weekend (I must admit this was BEFORE I knew it was National Scrapbooking Day) but I still plan on checking out some sales! :) I know a gal started a NSD master sales list at DST which I'll be checking on. I also have gotten some of my ADSR prizes and WOW is all I can say. I can already tell you I'm going to be a Bella Scraps fan. And those memory purses are cool (just got to figure out what I want to scrap and put in it!) Anyway, more LOs to come- I'll update my slide soon too. :)

Surgery went well and some REALLY EXCITING news!

I can't really move my arms too much yet- I'm swollen and sore, but I'm feeling better today than I thought I would. I just wanted to tell everyone thanks for the well wishes. It really makes your day when you're feeling like this! I will still be limited on computer time, but hope to be back soon.

And for some REALLY exciting news... I had my husband check my e-mail this morning and he said "Melody is excited and says to check ADSR"...

If you have been living under a rock, let me fill you in. ADSR (the amazing digiscrap race) was a 6 week long set of challenges you worked on as a team. Some challenges were independent, some we had to combine pieces to make a layout, and some were "roadblocks" only 1 team member was responsible for. As long as you completed the challenge by the deadline, you were able to continue the race. You also got awesome gifts along the way for completing each challenge.

Ok, so I go check the ADSR blog and see these adorable kiddos drawing names from a hat for second place, first runner ups, and the grand prize... goes to ELECTRIC HARMONY!!!! OMG! WE WON! There are so many great prizes I honestly can't remember them all!

So, I'm going to hurry up and rest (ha ha) so I can get to scrapping with all of my new stuff! I'm not sure you can ever top that, but just participating in the race was awesome and NDISB folks have been so friendly, so I'll be back next year for ADSR 4 for sure and NDISB in general.

Off to the first doctor's post-op... hope to be back soon!

I've been tagged AND a kit for a GREAT cause

Ok, I was tagged- twice actually- by my friends Rose AKA RoseMcDigital and Beckie AKA Lillypug34 but all are invited to join in the Links fun! PLEASE just follow the rules!

Just copy paste THIS and everything below up until my Five links.

I thought it would be cool to have a meme where we post links. We can post up to five.

Then we tell five more people to share their links. If we all share who tagged us, our links are sure to be seen!

They can be business links, favorite sites, affiliate links, whatever you want…

There are Five Rules:

1. MUST be clean. No R rated sites.

2. Only FIVE links.

3. MUST tell 5 people.

4. A link back to the person who tagged you

5. Lara’s Place is the meme originator. (an active link is appreciated)

Here are my 5 Links (only 5? Argh... mine will all be scrapping)!

1. Go Digital Scrapbooking- I'm here a lot checking out challenges, posting in the forums and making new digi-friends.

2. Andrea's Bits, Scrap and Little Ironies- I LOVE Andrea's blog because she gives away FABULOUS templates all of the time. I am also VERY lucky to be on her CT and she is so great to us- no drama or pressure, just fun!

3. Peppermint Creative- First, I love her stuff. But her blog is a close second because she is hilarious! She has tons of tips and project ideas too.

4. Sunshine Studio Scraps- I found these gals through a HUGE freebie collab kit around Christmas and have been hooked on their stuff ever since.

5. DigiTreats- Pamela's blog is awesome. She was supposed to be on a break from designing when she started making these ABC Skip, Run and Jump kits. It is going to be HUGE by the time she's done. My first CT experience was with her and it was great too- no drama or stress, just having fun!

I am tagging these folks (whose links you should also definitely check out),
Nicole Great stuff and generous with freebies!
Theresa Great kits and a sweet gal!
Kim B She cracks me up- she laughs as much as I do!
Shana Great designer and a very nice gal!
Christy I'm new to her designs, but from what I can see so far, they all rock!

That was hard as several of my digiscrap friends don't blog (like you Melody!) and my friends who do blog aren't into digiscrap. What can you do? :)

Now for the info on the kit I mentioned earlier. This is from a friend of mine, and when I saw the kit, I HAD to get it. Most of my students are on the autism spectrum, so this is particularly close to my heart. Here's a link explaining about the kit, with big previews and the link to donate here in the GDS forum.

World Autism Awareness Day

Please spread the word! As many of you know, most of my students have autism, and it is rising at near epidemic rates, yet there are still many who know very little about it. Check out available resources, research and community support at Autism Speaks.

My busiest month is almost here

...which is both exciting AND stressful! Let's see... I'm getting blond highlights back (the old reliable) so my mom will be very happy! :) My sister and I were referred to as "Brownie" and "Blondie" respectively as children and apparently we need to remain that way. Ha ha!

I have tons of meetings coming up too for my kiddos headed to kindergarten and end of the year stuff. I am also presenting a few trainings for staff and parents with my teammates which is giving me gray hair (now you see that my reason for the blond highlighting is NOT to make mom happy)!

Next week I have surgery which I'm only moderately nervous about, but I'll be sore and out of whack for a bit, and that has me more worried than the process itself. It's tough to tell the kiddos to go easy on mama or the teacher for that matter- I think my title should include "child wrangler" and "human jungle gym"! That week is also when Jaxon has kindergarten round-up and kinder buddy day which I'm excited about. I can't wait to see what he thinks about the whole thing.

The last but not least of the stresses... I turn 30 this month. Yes folks, it's all downhill from here! Ha ha! I wasn't all that concerned about it until my friends kept reminding me about it... and now I'm thinking I'll make 30 fun. Maybe it'll be my year to lose those last 10 pounds I want to rid myself of, and get more organized, and I WILL do more for myself this year. So, if I'm not around much this month, you'll know why. Anyway, keep your fingers crossed that all goes well.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes...

Ok, so I'm a dork, but is that really news? Yet again I'm playing around with my blog. I changed my template and then fiddled with all of the html code (I realize that this adds "techie" and/or "geek" to my title as well)! Anyway, I'll probably have a new blinkie sometime soon too. Well, back to scrappin'...

Spring Break = lots of scrap time!

Spring Break starts tomorrow after school and I am SO excited! I have no plans other than to relax, hang out with the kids and scrap (oh and clean house)! I am on a guest CT spot for Theresa Borntreger this month so expect to see some new things from me. and I plan on doing the bonus and optional challenges for ADSR this week too.

Also, as you know I'm VERY lucky to be on Andrea Gold's CT, so I'd like to take a minute to thank her for reading my mind when creating her newest product! :) Ha ha! My hubby's grandma passed away recently and she was always quite the cook. Everyone loves her recipes, so I thought it'd be nice to type them up and send copies to all of the aunts, uncles and cousins (this was BEFORE I realized how many recipes she had)! These new recipe brag book templates are a must have in my book! Check them out here while she's got them on sale!

My messy Marley

Perhaps she has a green thumb? I need to add some LOs to my slide, but don't have the time right now, so here's a quick one.

:) Credits: Andrea Gold's new "Pink Parfait" page kit.

And one more from the same kit...Andrea Gold's new "Pink Parfait" page kit and Template Set #25

ADSR3 is coming!!!!

What is ADSR3? The Amazing DigiScrap Race of course. Ok I admit, I didn't know what it was until I saw a post about it on GDS, but I'm SO glad I did. Here's some info about it:
At NDISB, we've come up with a cool internet digital scrapping game that will mirror the excitement of the TV reality show "The Amazing Race." Teams of two will traverse the digital scrapping world, site by site, completing challenges and collecting prizes along the way. Everyone who completes the week's challenges in the allotted time frame will move on to the next week, where they can collect even MORE prizes! And at the end of the race, everyone who has travelled around the digiworld and completed each and every challenge will be entered into a drawing for the GRAND prize!

A gal from GDS named Melody and I have teamed up. Our team is Electric Harmony (you know- Schock/Electric and Melody/Harmony). It sounded like an 80s cover band at first, but darn it, we're going to ROCK ADSR! Ha ha! Melody even made a blinkie for us... check it out in the sidebar... we are going to have so much fun. :)

The bad news is GDS is down right now for site maintenance. I know it won't be long, but I have found such a digi-home at GDS that I miss it already. Ha ha!

The good news is my sweet husband surprised me on Valentines Day with a new Sony H3 Cybershot (we weren't going to "do" Valentines, so I had nothing for him, but he didn't seem to mind too much). AND, Andrea Gold has some GREAT new mini-kits and full page kits going into the store at GDS. Keep an eye out for them... her new one "Pink Parfait" is going to be a new favorite of mine already I can tell! More LOs coming soon...

Back in time for the Superbowl...

Well, most importantly, we are back from Kansas and Grandma's service was lovely. We got to spend a lot of time with Brian's aunts, uncles and cousins which was really nice as well. She was such a wonderful lady and it was great to think back on her life. We flew in during a snowstorm (they got 5 inches that day) and I was in shock. We don't "do" snow in Texas, and on the off chance it does snow, it lasts a day at best. It was 15 degrees when we flew in...eeek! Anyway, luckily it warmed up some ("warmed up" for Kansas is in the 40s by the way)! So we're glad to be back in Texas! :)

We made it home just in time to watch the Superbowl (thanks to TIVO we could rewind the first 5 minutes we missed and catch up during commercials) and the GIANTS won!!!! Since our teams didn't make it, Brian and I were both REALLY rooting for the Giants, but didn't think they'd be able to win. As the game went on and they kept sacking Brady and doing well on offense, we thought "Well this may be a game"... but holy moly they WON!

The bad news On my trip, my camera was safely under my seat in my carry-on... or so I thought. Someone sitting behind me was kicking under the seat and now the lens keeps giving me an error, so basically my camera is broken so I have no "snow" pics to show the kids. Then, on the way home, my EHD cable was lost (I think it must have fallen out of my bag when we changed planes). The good news My husband said I can get a second EHD (good to backup the backup anyway right)? AND a new camera!!! WOO HOO!!! So, if you have a camera you LOVE, please e-mail me with your camera, what you love about it and what you wish you could change (link to e-mail is on the sidebar). I want to get to shopping before Brian realizes how much this may cost him! :) Thanks... more Layouts added to the slide so check it out!