It is a Terrapinia Miracle!!!

Remember this post? About these horrible toys:

Well Chris decided he would give it a try and see if he could get them to work. He called their customer service line. He got off the phone with them and followed all of their instructions and it didn't work. So he called them a 2nd time. Did the same stuff again, which always involves letting the computer "sit" for about 30 minutes while the portal is downloading. And guess what? It still didn't work. So he called them for a third time today,
and I guess finally got someone that had him do something completely new and ..........by gosh, it finally worked!!!! The boys are so excited to finally be playing the new Funkey. I know in this picture it doesn't look like they are very excited, but take my word for it: they are very happy guys right now!

Finally, everything is good in the land of Terrapinia again!

(Until another new set comes out and then we are back to square one!)

Project 365

I decided to jump on the Project 365 wagon this year. If you don't know what that is, you must not visit any scrapbook sites on a regular basis. ;-) Basically what I'm doing is taking a picture every day this year. Yes, all 365 of them! So far I've kept up. And yes I know it is only January 22, but I can't believe I haven't forgot yet! Actually, it is starting to become habit to remember to take a picture of something every day. This isn't all of the pictures that I have taken so far, but it is just a little sampling of the things I have been capturing.


This one is for today. Our Guitar Hero World Tour drum set had broke, and thankfully the makers were awesome and replaced it for free. We got the replacement parts yesterday, so today Connor was playing the drums like crazy!

This is from a few days ago. Spencer playing his DS.

I took this picture of Connor after I had picked him up from preschool. That is the rear-view mirror of my car. I thought it turned out cute!

This is one of those days where nothing much was happening, so I took a picture of my favorite drink. I'm kind of sad about this because I think they are not going to make the Diet Coke Plus anymore. I haven't been able to find it for a few weeks now. I saw this story at the end of year, so I'm guessing that they aren't making it anymore or they are going to change the packaging. I just liked the taste!

Spencer doing his homework one night.

Spencer going back to school after Christmas break.

The new rails and baskets that I bought at Ikea. It can hold two Cricut carts in each of the baskets. I was hoping to fit the carts sideways, like books, but they were slightly too wide for that.

Chris taking the Christmas lights down.

Me enjoying a Margarita! Chris and I took advantage of the grandparents while we were in OH for the holidays and went out to dinner. Yummy! This one was taken with the camera on our Iphone, so it isn't the best quality. But I love having that option for when I forget (or don't want to) bring the big camera with me.

This is turning into a fun project. And I hope to improve my photography skills by the end of the year! I will probably share a few pics here and there throughout the year.

Thanks for stopping by!

Countdown to Disney Continues...

Now we are only 7 weeks from our trip! Yea!
This is Day Two from our trip last year.






Next Tuesday, I will post Day Three. This is fun to go back and look over what we did last year and know that we will be there again very soon. Just a reminder that you can click on any of the layouts to make them bigger.
I also have the scrapbook I did from the very first time we went; back in 2005. Maybe I will post that one too!

Disney World, Here We Come!!!

We have decided to go back to Walt Disney World this March! We weren't planning on going back so soon after our trip last year, but Disney is running a very good special right now and I found awesome air fares on Southwest Airlines. So two weeks ago, we booked it! We usually plan our vacations out months in advance, so this is kind of fun to plan it so fast.

We are leaving eight weeks from today, so I thought every Tuesday leading up to our departure date, I would post a portion of my Disney Scrapbook album from last year.

This is my title page.
This is the only Disney scrapbook thing I buy at the parks.
I think it is a fun way to open my book.

This is the story of our horrible flight getting there last year. We ended up on that plane for 7 hours. Not a great way to start a trip, but at least we got there safe and sound!

The way I sent my book up was to divide it into each day we were there. So the rest of my layouts today are all about our first day.

I also took a picture each day of the big landmark for each park,
and used that opposite my journaling for the day. I had the pictures printed as 8x10 and then just cropped two inches off, so they would fit into my 8x8 page protector.
I found this setup to be the easiest way for me to include everything we did on one page,so then I could just concentrate on the photos for the rest of the pages.

You can click on any of the layouts to make them bigger to read the journaling. I kept the red and black theme throughout my album, which ended up being 60 some pages long! And I got the best tip for the autographs from a wonderful scrapper friend of mine from Hawaii, Joscie. She suggested taking 4x4 white cards and an archival pen with you, and having the characters autograph those. That way you can incorporate those into your book when you get back. Genius idea! But then I have known Joscie as nothing but an awesome scrapper for a while now! Click on her name and get ready for some scrapping goodness.

So check back here every Tuesday and I will post the next day of our trip.

All is not well in Terrapinia....

If your kids ask you to buy them UB Funkeys, I say run away as fast as you can from that store aisle! You don't know what I'm talking about? Consider yourself lucky!

Here is the official description of these little guys that I got from the Mattel website:

U.B. Funkeys™ - the collectable figures that unlock a virtual world filled with games and items. Each Funkey that you collect unlocks new zones.
Play the games in the zones you unlock to earn coins to
buy items you can customize your “crib” with.
Post your virtual world crib online for all of your friends to see!

Sounds like loads of fun, right? Not if you are a parent with limited computer skills. (And on a side note, that last line of the description talking about posting online, we don't do that in this household. We just play the games. They also have chat rooms for these things. Another big no-no here!)

Okay back to why I was about to pull my hair out this morning over these things. Those little guys cost around $5 each. The boys like to buy them with their allowance money every now and then. We were at Target last night, and Connor bought one with some of his Christmas money. The problem is that each time they come out with a new "set", they don't work. You have to call their customer service line and download new "portals." Yep, you heard me....portals. So I have done this a few times now, and each time it takes me an hour or so to get it to work. It is a major pain, but I have got them to work each time. Not today. That little guy front and center in my picture just doesn't want to cooperate. I was on the phone with customer service for over an hour this morning trying to get this new portal to download. Won't work. After my last 30 minutes of doing who knows what on my computer the guy told me I would have to uninstall the program and then reinstall it. Sounds not too difficult right? Well if I do this, the boys could lose all of their progress in all the other games they have played on this thing. Plus there are 23 pages of download instructions to follow. 23 Pages!!!! Needless to say I hung up the phone and announced to Connor that we will not be able to welcome any new Funkeys in our house. We can only play the old ones. The new ones won't work anymore for the simple fact that your mother can not handle the stress of trying to get these downloads to work anymore.
I. JUST. CAN'T. DO. IT.

So how is your day going?

(And a note to all my scrapping friends out there, yes this is my 365 picture for today. One day I will look back on this and laugh. Right?)

2 Weeks from tonight!

I can't wait! Any other Lost Fans out there?!

Happy New Year!

The boys stayed up until Midnight to see the ball drop. Connor actually made it this year. Last year, he fell asleep about 11:45pm and just missed it!

I'm taking the Christmas decorations down today. I hope to have some time to scrapbook this weekend and finish my December Daily album. Wish me luck!