Meet Daisy!

Well, Daisy has been with us for about a month now, but this is the first time I'm getting around to updating about her.  My roommate rescued her from a wild litter that was born on her parents' property.  She was so young that we had to bottle-feed her at first.  She was weak and sick and frail, which was why my roommate took her at such a young age.  But now, she's pretty and fluffy and spunky, and healthy as a cow (is that a real saying?).  She likes to "hide" around corners and jump out at me and the dogs in a "sneak" attack.  It's pretty darn cute.  And so with no further ado, here is Daisy:

Frenchie in the Flowers

We went camping this weekend, and it was Frenchie's first time.  She is not the best traveling dog.  She gets really car sick, she gets easily distracted, and she doesn't come when she's called.  We had to tie her up so that she wouldn't wander off into the great outdoors, and she ended up knocking lots of things over with her leash and getting it all tangled up with trees, the other dogs, and her own legs ;p  She was also afraid of the fire and of the loud noises of the boys breaking branches up for the fire.  But she certainly enjoyed being with us, no matter where we were, and she loved lounging in the sunny meadow filled with wildflowers the next morning.

Birthday

My birthday was on the 24th, and my roommate's birthday was on the 9th.  So we went to Boise on the weekend of the 14th to celebrate together.  There were quite a few hitches, but we ended up having fun anyway :)  She is quite the talented photographer.  I just love how her photos turn out, whether they're with a fancy digital camera of nature, or "self portraits" with her cell phone.  She is able to capture aesthetically pleasing shots no matter what.  Here are a couple she took of us on our night out in Boise:

I also forgot to mention that she took most of the photos I posted of the mine visit below.  My real birthday was fairly uneventful because it took place on a work day, but I still got nice gifts, many wonderful birthday wishes, and my friends took me out for pizza and beers after work.

Just feeling so depressed and having a very sad day.  I can't begin to explain how tired of this I am...

Mine Adventure

Frenchie

The newest member of our family.

An Emancipation Celebration

I am in a choir.  It's called the Sun Valley Hallelujah Chorus.  I got involved because my Dad plays piano for them.  I saw their Christmas concert, and it was so much fun, I decided I had to get involved.  We've been practicing since January for our concert, which is tonight!  It is a celebration of emancipation and black history.  We have a special guest performer, Ms. Yve Evans, who is a well-known black jazz soloist.  She is amazing and has made our final week of practices so enjoyable and entertaining.  I have a solo, and I'm really nervous.  It will be lots of fun though!  Here's a picture from our final rehearsal last night:

I'm in the upper right hand corner.  The girl with the

microphone is the daughter of our director,

practicing her lovely solo.*

See here for more information:  Sun Valley Hallelujah Chorus Celebrates Emancipation Day

*Photo was copied from the Facebook page of the Sun Valley Hallelujah Chorus. Credit for the photo goes to Cintia Scola's husband, Joe Bobber.  Many mopre photos can be viewed here in the photo album: 
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=217452398270172&id=190430627639016&aid=68515

Meet Koda

Meet Koda:

My roommate brought Koda home about two

months ago. She is full of energy and mischief:

She loves Shadow and Rocky:

They think she's alright...

Creative Busy Hands is Turning Two!!

If you love digital scrapbooking, then Creative Busy Hands is probably one of your favorite blogs, as it is mine. This week, Creative Busy Hands is celebrating its 2nd blogoversary! To celebrate, Luiza has arranged some awesome giveaways! Checkout today's giveaway, sponsored by Creative Pixels Designs, right here: Creative Busy Hands Giveaway. And keep checking back to the Creative Busy Hands website, because she will be having giveaways all week!

Withdrawal

Crap! I'm going through withdrawal from the Creative Busy Hands daily digi scrapbooking freebies! Every day they are waiting here for me after lunch like a new bunch of presents under the tree. But they are still not here today, and I'm finding myself starting to panic! Hope everything's alright over at CBH :)

Ugh, crappy weekend.

Halloween Scrapbook

Here is a Halloween scrapbook (a real one) that I made two years ago:

Cheer up, it's Halloween!

It's almost Halloween - my favorite holiday!! I'm trying to get myself psyched up to have fun and enjoy it. Despite my social failings, I do have plans for the weekend. Tonight, my roomie invited me to go to a haunted house and see a scary movie. Then tomorrow there is a beer festival during the day and then a Halloween street party in Ketchum at night. A bunch of us are going to the street party: me, my fiance (Henry), some of his friends, my friend Kira, and my roomie and all of her friends. All of the bars along the street will have music and costume contests. We might head down to Hailey later to the Hailey Hotel, because Henry and I had a blast there two Halloweens ago. I've still gotta try on my costume and see if it looks OK. It's a little skimpier and tighter than I'd like. The dogs have costumes too: They both have bee costumes. I think that will be cute - a little bee and a big bee. Rocky also has a little headless horseman costume that makes him the horse with the little horseman riding him. I'll post pictures of all the costumes and fun later on. For now, I'll post a Halloween layout (below) that I created. It was mostly created using Chaos Lounge's ESS October Color Challenge kit. The creepy girl and the "Witching Hour" word art are from other designers. I'll do my best to find and post their information soon. Hope you like it :)

Yes, I'm still alive.

I am down in the dumps, and have been neglecting all of my social duties while struggling to just stay afloat emotionally. I feel like a terrible friend. I only see the people that I have to interact with on a daily basis, but I haven't made any effort toward hanging out with friends, and I feel really guilty about it. I rarely return phonecalls, and hardly ever respond to emails. I recently made two new friends via email/blogger that I was really excited about. Well, I guess it wasn't recently; it was more like several months ago. But my grip on time is really tenuous. One day I just stopped writing back. I kept telling myself that I would do it tomorrow, but kept putting it off. Now I'm afraid that they think I stopped writing because I don't like them or because I'm mean. Neither of those is the case. But I'm afraid that no excuse or explanation will be acceptible. I also have a good friend who is a mother to two boys and lives 20 miles out of town. I have to go to her if I want to see her because she is so busy with her kids. It feels like such a chore to get myself out there that I haven't seen her since early summer. I wish I would pick up the phone and call her and apologize, but I feel too paralyzed to do it. Someday I will - I just hope it won't be too late. I hope my friends won't give up on me.

It's been a really long time since I've posted. I turned 31 a couple weeks ago, and it was pretty uneventful. That also means that Henry and I have now been engaged for a year. We moved out of our house on Memorial Day weekend. It was a long and difficult process, taking up every waking hour of three days. We're still in the process of unpacking and organizing. He moved back in with his parents, and I moved back in with mine. We'll both be closer to our jobs, so hopefully less stress, but neither of us relishes the idea of living back with the 'rents. This spring has been really cold, wet and dark, and I'm really ready for some summer weather. I haven't been taking many photos lately; I'm trying to get back into that. Below are a few random shots:

Me loving sleepy Rocky

Rocky fell asleep in my arms. He never does that!

My Birthday

Christmas

Christmas Eve we went to my parents' house. Shadow and Rocky had a blast playing with their cousins. Here they all are, waiting expectantly for scraps from dinner:

After dinner we opened stockings. The dogs got theirs first. They were pretty excited:

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Rocky helped Henry open a gift:

Shadow was actually a really early Christmas present from me and Henry to ourselves. We just decided that if the right dog came along, we wouldn't wait until Christmas and let the opportunity pass us by.

My parents got me and Henry snowshoes, which is pretty awesome because mine are really old and Henry doesn't have any. Now hopefully we'll get a chance to go soon. Henry still needs snow boots to wear with the snowshoes.

When we got home, I decided on a whim to put up some last-minute Christmas lights. It was really cold outside and I froze my butt off. The wood stove helped out with that. Note our stockings hung by the fire. Henry got me a hand-made one with Tinkerbell on it.

We stayed up late drinking cocktails and watching Elf. Henry made popcorn for the movie, but we can't make popcorn in the kitchen because the popcorn maker always blows a fuse, so he made it in the bathroom:

Christmas morning we opened presents at home, which was really nice. Our first Christmas together in our own place. Henry got me Sketcher's Shape-ups, and I got him a Blu-Ray player. He also got me a beautiful blown-glass necklace. Then we headed to Henry's parents' house where we had Christmas dinner and even more presents. After that, we headed to the bar where Henry works because his bosses were working and we hung out with some of Henry's co-workers while his bosses waited on us for a change.

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The Dogs