New Travel Trailer

We traded in Tha Trala Hizzy (2010 Jayco 28 ft) for a 2012 Cedar Creek 36 ft fifth wheel, in hopes of retiring one day. We picked it up on Thursday, after spending 4 hours signing papers and doing our walk-thru. I am crazy busy at work because we went live on a new software that no one knows how to use, so I was a little disgusted with the whole thing. Jim brought the new fifth wheel to the Coast (with our boss' truck, because it is so big our truck won't pull it.). He left it here and came back Thursday night.

He spent all day Friday loading a cargo trailer. You would laugh if you saw how much junk we had in our trailer. After another crazy, crazy day at work once people received their paychecks, or not! I had steroid shots in my neck. Jim took me and afterwards we headed to the house to get the cargo trailer. Well, you might know the lights on the trailer do not work so we start back into San Antonio to get a new plug. We get almost to the trailer place and the lights start working (rusty trailer ball wasn't making the connection). We head back down towards the Coast.

We arrive at 7:30pm! Our first night in our new place! Much to our surprise, NO ELECTRICITY! We have to go to Walmart because all our flashlights are packed in the cargo trailer and who knows where. I buy soup because I hadn't eaten all day, some cheese, maybe a size 3t zebra dress and we go to the camping department looking for flashlights. None to be found. We walk all over the store and finally go upfront where the only old lady is working and she tells us sporting goods. We go to the back of the store and walk all the aisles, finally go back to the camping aisle and there they are 2 ft away from where we turned around before.

Back at the trailer with flashlights and of course a mini pink one for my purse, so we will never have this problem again (or until I change purses). We can see all the switches and buttons to push or flip, everything is on, yet still no lights, great!

At this time I have got to eat or pass out. Jim plugs the extension cord in the 30 amp plug and I heat my soup in the electric skillet that I finally dug out of the cargo trailer. Guess what! No spoon or anything that resembled a spoon!

At 10pm we are sitting in our brand new trailer, windows open, eating cheese and drinking wine. How much better does it get than this?

Project 365 and Project 12

Brady P won 4th place in the Science Fair. He gets to go to state competion just like his Mom did when she was in the 3rd grade. Yay Brady!!!

My first layout for Project 12. It is January in review for the Lincoln families.

Doing a little better on the Project 365. My photo for 1/29/11. My friend's little girl, Charity and Jim, walking the dogs.

Project 365; 1/30/11 75 degrees outside, will be 42 for the high on Wednesday.

Split Pea Soup

We went to the Coast this weekend. It was a little chilly, but enjoyed the relaxation. Jim would like to move our trailer to Lot 87, but no one in the office knew how much that would cost us or even if it was available. It is on top of a little hill, so we might actually get internet and cell phone coverage. But, I will miss our neighbors. Guess I will have to ride my scooter over to see them.

Our favorite place to eat breakfast in Rockport. Best food ever! I cook breakfast when we are there but on Sunday we go to this Mexican restaurant. Great food!

Now to the split pea soup. My Mother cooked every dried bean there ever was. My Daddy lived on dried beans. We had them everyday. I always loved dried beans, but now I eat them almost everyday, just like my Dad. We never had dried green peas. We have dried black eyes all the time. Did they make dried green peas then? That is a question I would really like to ask my Mother, but I don't know if she would really remember. I think green peas taste like canned green peas but, NO the dried ones are awesome. No pasty taste. Omg, this soup was awesome! Bacon, dried green peas, carrots, leeks, garlic, Mrs. Dash, bay leaf and chicken broth. YUM! went back several times and got another spoonful of YUM.

Kaitlin being baptized.

Jim and I.

Duece laying by the heater because it is cold.

The "before" photo of my messy scraproom. I am working on cleaning it. Just not ready to show an "after" photo yet.

I decided that I would try to blog every Sunday this year. We will see how long it last. hehehe

I am sort of doing Project 365 where you take a photo every day. I am not putting any pressure on myself, so if I get 4 out of 7, I am good. I am doing Project 12 at Tallyscrapper, so I will be doing a layout for each month. Which brings up the best news ever! Pinky aka Cristal Hobbs has taken over Tallyscrapper and we are back in the ballgame! I am so excited about this! Tally has always been the best scrapbooking store/forum that I have ever visited. I have done a layout everyday since I heard the news. Pinky gives me so much inspiration.

And we ended the week (I know Sunday is the beginning of the week but I do payroll so it is week ending to me.) with our granddaughter, Kaitlin, accepting Jesus Christ in her life, as her Savior! It was awesome! Although the heater was out on the baptistry, and she was FREEZING. The preacher said that he was telling Kaitlin how sorry he was that the water wasn't heated, then he stepped down in the water and his waders had a hole in them. He was freezing also. Jim's entire family was there. We all went to Bill Miller's BBQ to eat afterwards. Now, they live in the city where there are so many restaurants, why did we go to fast food BBQ? Sorry, a little gripe there, Bill Miller's is like McDonalds in bbq. It has its own unique taste.

Looking forward to next week and hoping it is as eventful in a good way as this past week has been!

Getting the house ready for sale

Putting in a new pool liner.

William thought it was a giant playroom.

But Jason and William just played in the yard, for the most part.

Two little monkeys.
We really want to sell our house and get something smaller with a smaller yard. If it were up to me we would live in an apartment but Jim doesn't want to live that close to other people. We have done a lot of work on our house to get it ready for the market. All that's left is a new driveway and cleaning out closets, cabinets and drawers. We may be done by summer.

Jim and his son, grandson and granddaughter got the new pool liner in quickly. It seems Amanda has done this several times and new all about it. Her Mom helped her and they got 3/4 of it done while the 3 guys worked on the rest. I had my video camera ready, just in case I could capture something to win $10,000, but nothing very interesting happened.

On to the fun part of cleaning and getting rid of a lot of crap!

Autumn Chowder

I haven't blogged in forever, I know. I bought a blog digi kit and really messed it up. I finally think that I have fixed it. My Mom is still okay in the nursing home. The last time I saw her was her birthday, October 18th. Since then, we have had William's (greatgrandson), Kaitlin (granddaughter) and James' (grandson) birthday. Next weekend we are headed to Rockport for Adeline's (ggd) birthday party. She is having a Princess Party. She is turning three.

Britianny emailed pictures of Halloween so I scrapped several layouts of Adeline. Stupid me posted them on FB and said she is my favorite ggd. At the time, I was thinking she was the only one. That's what happens when you become a greatgrandparent. I swear I get more like my DH everyday. I do apologize to Lexie.

We have been remodeling the house in hopes of selling. We need to move to a smaller place with a smaller yard. Hope to put the house on the market next year. That is it in a nutshell as far as what we have been up to.

I have been making a lot of different soups lately. Shrimp bisque was the worst! This is sorta, kinda Bin 555's recipe for Autumn Chowder only I used lactose free, skim milk instead of cream.
Butternut squash, onion, celery, carrots, salt, pepper and nutmeg. It was Yummy!

I hate cats!

Actually, the truth is, I am scared to death of cats. It is because of my childhood. We had an ice machine in our garage. One of my chores was to get the tea every night for supper. I would have to go to the garage to get ice. (My Dad sold ice machines and COKE machines.) My sister, Debbie was an animal lover. She had so many animals she picked up off the street. My younger sister, Judi, who was born on Halloween, (just sayin') was so mean to Debbie's cats. She would grab them by the tail and spin around and let them go flying. The cats lived in the raftors of the garage. When I would go out and get ice at night the cats would jump down on me. FREAKY! To this day, I am terrified of cats. But I have gotten better in my old age. I can actually visit people who have cats. When they start to rub on my legs, I get up and walk away. I don't freak. I also let my exchange student have a cat in my house. I didn't like it, but I did.

So yesterday, my friend Patricia calls me and says do you know you have cats? Yes! We have wild cats in our garage that my DH feeds. He says they keep the snakes and scorpions away. Well we have had several litters of kittens this summer. I carried one to work under my car. It mewed all day. Brought it home and it came out from under the car. We have 3 kittens that have NO MAMMA. We don't know what happened to the Momma. We bought baby bottles at the store today, but the nipple was too big. Trying a squirt bottle, but they aren't getting a whole lot. They are too small to even eat. Why do I care? I don't like cats!

Yes, it has been forever since I updated......

The summer has been so busy with grandkids that I have lots of photos and no scrapbook pages. I had better get busy.

Mother's Day

I have lost 40 lbs but it wasn't by eating like I did last weekend. Jim and I went to the Coast. We did nothing at all on Saturday but lay on the beach. Saturday evening, we took our grandaughter, Krystyna out for Mexican food and a Margarita to celebrate her 21st birthday. I forgot my camera. This is the only one I got with my phone. Adaline at 2. We hurried home Sunday morning to make our 1:30 reservations at Bin 555. My son, Chef Pj Edwards was cooking for 150 Mothers but especially me. We had a mixed greens salad with dried cherries and goat cheese. It was goooood! Then we had Halibut with peas and roasted scallions. The cheese after the meal was goat cheese rolled in herb with Spanish tortas, honeycomb and almonds.My dessert was whipped cream frozen by liquid nitrogen, berries and mint salad. I had the most wonderful Mother's Day you could possibly imagine. I not only got lunch but I got a very cool sewing machine and a Zable pandora style bracelet. I talked to Kaden on the phone and Brady actually got on the phone and talked to his Gamma for quite a while. You know he is 7 now and too cool for that

Surprise!

Today, we went to a Paella Cookoff at the Pearl Brewery in San Antonio. PJ was cooking with his boss Chef Jason Dady. They should have won. They definately had the best presentation. Ben Ford, who I understand is Harrison Ford's son, who owns a restuarant in CA, won. He even told them afterwards that they got robbed.

Yesterday, we had a surprise 40th birthday party for Jim Jr. at our house. He was completely surprised. It was a lot of fun and the whole family was here. Jim built a playset in one of our many trees. The kids had so much fun playing on it. We ended up with about 10 people spending the night, so there were blankets and pillows everywhere.

It happened to me:(

Well, it finally happened. I ate a piece of fish too fast. It got stuck. It hurt so bad. I had heard all about it, but thought, I will do what I am supposed to do and that won't ever happen to me. Ha! It was the most horrible experience. I went outside and walked while everyone else ate. It helped a little, very little, so I came back in and sat down. I tried to be pleasant until everyone finished but when I got in Jim's truck, all heck broke loose. I had no idea I was about to throw up and it went everywhere. Thank goodness, I have such a wonderful husband. He cleaned it all up. I couldn't. The more I looked at it, the more I wanted to do it again. So, if anyone of you are considering lapband surgery, just know that one day it will happen to you and it is NOT fun. Don't let that discourage you in any way, just know to expect it.

64 Degrees

Jim and I took our grandaughter Kaitlin to the Coast this weekend. She and Adeline wanted to go to the beach. They rode with Aunt Jodi, Adeline's grandmother. When they got out of the truck they had on swimsuits, ready to play in the water. Omg, I was cold and I had on clothes. Those girls had so much fun. Their laughter could be heard all around the beach.

I decided to get my excercise in and walk on the beach. I wore myself out, really quick. When I got back, the girls had decided to sit down and eat some chips. That is when the shivering started. Everyone was trying to wrap them up in the 6 towels we happened to bring. Finally, Britainey took them to the truck and turned the heater on. It was a fun, fun day.

Jim and I rode our bikes when we got back, while Jodi had the girls and Britainey cooked for us. What we thought would be a weekend of entertaining Kaitlin, turned out to be a very relaxing weekend for us. We rode our bikes again this morning. I just have a real problem riding with the traffic. I want to see what is coming towards me. We rode along the road that follows the Coastline in Fulton. I did great with my diet. I am on soft foods now and if I didn't think I could digest it, I just drank a protein drink instead. Never got hungry. Anxious to see how much weight I have lost this week.

1st Adjustment

The adjustment went well. The Dr. filled up the band where nothing would go through. He showed me one the Xray. Then he backed it off a little at a time until the white stuff I drank ran barely through, the way he wanted it. I can't really tell yet if I have more restriction, as I am still on liquids. Tonight, I get to have a protein shake. That will be for the next 3 days. Then 3 days of mush and 3 days of soft foods. So about 1 1/2 weeks and I will be able to eat again. It is killing me. Do you know they show nothing but food commercials on tv at night, while I am walking on my treadmill. The 1st time, the liquids did not bother me, as I had just had surgery. This time, I want to eat. I cheated and had a cup of Chick FilA ice cream yesterday. It was so good. I figured since I am not eating any calories, it wouldn't hurt me.

So that is the story of my first adjustment. The photo is a scrapbook page for a challenge at Tallyscrappers. We are doing an Idol challenge and this week the challenge was to pick the number one song the day your subject was born. Adeline's was about the only one in the family that I could make work.

Wow! A great Valentine's Day!

What a wonderful weekend! My daughter had her 35th birthday on Sunday. We celebrated all weekend. My grandson was baptized on Sunday. It was so great, we all cried, including the Pastor. My Mother attended, as well as, Brady's "Uncle Bryan". I took Kaden and he was so happy for his brother even though he really didn't know what it meant. There were lots of friends there, also. Afterward, we all went to Olive Garden and I had to catch a plane shortly after. Now you may be wondering where the photos are. I left my camera in MS! Can you believe it? It is a good thing I have a few more, but I wanted to scrap all those pictures.

I do have a few photos of what has been going on here since the scraproom was flooded. Crocheting an afghan for the orphans in China. When Tobie and Tony go over to get Baby China, they need to take gifts for the other children. Tobie and I are both working on blankets. And I got my treadmill! I have been working on the length of time and miles more than the speed. Tonight I bought a workout for the Ifit by Jillian Michaels. She kick my behind in the first 5 minutes so I just turned her off and did my own thing. I do want to work up to being able to keep up with her, but I need to get used to walking first.

I have lost 21 lbs. Thursday will be my first adjustment. It should make the band tighter. Even though I am still doing WW, I am anxious to see if I can eat everything I am eating now. I will let you know.

I am eating!

I am on soft foods now and let me tell you, everything tastes so good! I can't eat a lot, which is the plan, and I am being choosey about what I do eat. It is SuperBowl Sunday and I am making turkey meat Chili! (I know I live in TX but I can use turkey if I want to.) Of course, no cornbread but I can put low fat cheese on top because it has protein.

I worked out on the eliptical for 30 minutes today and tomorrow I get my Valentine, which is a new treadmill. I am pretty excited!

My scraproom is flooded again due to the hot water heater. This is the 3rd time we have replaced it in the 14 years we have owned this house. Why it is always my scraproom, I do not know. Jim has been sucking up water for 2 days. We have decided that we probably need a water softener and will have to tile the floor. The carpet has been replaced once and now its has been wet again twice in the last month. Time to put in tile. So anyway, I had the urge to scrap so I did 2 digis. It is a kit by Kim Gehring called Boy Oh Boy. I get my digis printed at Costco for 2.99 for a 12 x 12 but I may also do these in paper, I like them so much. Theyare my handsome grandsons, Kaden and Brady.