family

Oct202011

West Virginia Vacation Photos & a Future Giveaway

Wow, did we really get back from West Virginia 3 months ago? I miss it. While it was a really small town we were staying in and traveling around, it was fun. I met both my sisters-in-law, brother-in-law, 2 nephews, and saw my brother-in-law and mother-in-law again, as well as meeting several of Steve’s friends from when he lived there.

About a month ago, I received an email from Jessica at Inkubook. She saw that I had previously blogged about my amazing experiences with Inkubook (here) and graciously offered up the opportunity for a giveaway for my readers and another book for me to review. Now, I’m not doing the giveaway in this post, but will hopefully be posting it in the next couple of weeks. I want to wait until I have the book in hand.

In the meantime, here is a small sampling of the pictures I took during our week in West Virginia. It really makes me want to move up north so we can be in the mountains!

Create your own Photobooks with Inkubook.com!

I really hope y’all can see the book as I can’t no matter how many times I install and re-install and re-install Adobe Flash Player. It also doesn’t care that I have a full version of Flash CS4 on my computer. So, good luck to you!

Sep272011

Happy Birthday to my Beautiful Boy

OK, so he’s not actually my child, he’s my godson. My oldest godson. But he is the best thing in my life. I haven’t seen him consistently since he was a wee little one when my best friend moved to Jacksonville/ I moved to Gainesville/ North Carolina, but he is still my little man. And I can’t believe he’s 10!

10!

I remember when he was born. 10 years ago when I was living in Orlando. I was actually playing hooky from work and sitting in the DMV getting my license renewed. My best friend was scheduled to be induced in enough time for her and her doctor to watch the Canes game. No, I’m not kidding. And they beat Pittsburgh, so Nicky was good luck! (duh)

Our 2005 trip to Disney (this picture) I’ll never forget it.. He spotted the butterfly tattoo on my hip and asked if it was my pet butterfly. Of course it was the cutest thing EVER.

I remember how itty bitty he was. And how sweet he smelled. Baby powder!

I miss this little man. So freakin much. He will always be my first born.

I love you like crazy my little Pickle Bits!
xoxoxo,
Your Becca

Sep142011

Oh, Hello Fabulous New Adoption Information Site

image source: AdoptUsKids Facebook page

Don’t you just love it when you find a new-to-you website chock full of information on a subject you are passionate about? Yeah, me too. Yesterday afternoon I clicked on a link from the AdoptUsKids facebook page entitled “Grandparents – How to Support Your Foster Parenting Child” and, after reading it, realized I was on a yet-unexplored site. And wow. Upon exploring, I found a huge wealth of info relating to not only adoption, but foster/adoption and foster care.

I love this stuff.

Sure, we don’t have a time frame yet for adoption, but that doesn’t stop my research. I love digging up all the information that I possibly can about a subject of interest. It helps me make extremely informed decisions.

Like last night, we went into Barnes & Noble and started playing with the Nook Color. When the sales person came up to us, I was able to rattle off all sorts of details from a couple hours of Kindle vs Nook comparative research. It was enough for her to say “wow, you should be doing my job!” So, yes, I am a researching nerd. 🙂

But anywho, here are some great articles on foster/adoption, but bear in mind that this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg over at adoption.about.com…
Adopt a Foster Child
How to Better Understand the Profiles of Waiting Children
How to Know When an Adoption Match Is Right for Your Family
How to Know When a Child Is Not a Good Adoption Match for Your Family

There are so many great articles all over this site and to try and list them all would be somewhat pointless. Yes, I only linked to a handful of foster/adoption articles as that is the route we are taking. Like I said, they have everything including international and domestic adoption of infants and older children. It all depends on what you are interested in doing for your family.

Now go forth and research. <3

Aug282011

Missing my Mama Karen

You know those people that come into your life and make you a better person? That was Karen. She lived across the street from me in college and was such an amazing woman.

And I miss her so freakin much.

She passed away in May 2006 and every so often I’ll think of her and get really upset that she isn’t in my life anymore. Her birthday is/would be 10 days after our anniversary. But I’ll never get to wish her another happy birthday.

I’ve tried finding her husband, but he doesn’t appear to have a Facebook account. He isn’t FB friends with Karen’s son, nor can I remember his daughters names. I wanted to tell him that I too got married in Vegas, as they did, and when we saw the ship show at Treasure Island, I thought of them.

I just really really started missing her today. To the point of going back through my Livejournal and reading everything I’d written about her. She was such a great friend and surrogate parent to me during the 12 years we were friends. Last night (as I was writing in bed at 4am) I was crying. Big fat tears were rolling down my face.

I love you Karen and I will always miss you.

Aug212011

Lola Loves Steak Bones

When mommy and daddy go to a new BBQ joint and daddy orders the massive rib platter, Lola get this, [and finally managed to pick it up]….

I am currently watching her try to fit it through the door in her crate so she can better hide it from the cat. Too bad it now makes her head 3 times as wide.

And she’ll be enjoying it for weeks. Or until the cat goes near it and she snaps at him. Then it’ll get thrown to the Jake the shepherd outside.

Aug162011

Old Friends, New Opportunities

Source: google.com via Becca on Pinterest

Yesterday was really rough for me. It started off on the bad foot, but turned around into a potentially amazing opportunity. I’m not going to say more about this opp until I hear something else about it. The outcome will be finalized in less than 2 weeks so one way or other it’ll be posted here. =D When I told Steve about it, he was pretty excited. OK, once he woke up and comprehended what I said he was. Poor guy has a messed up sleep schedule most days from his job and unwillingness to miss out on his life by sleeping.

It really helped a lot to text most of the day with my friend Marie. We’re in similar situations and wanting to make a change and she was an awesome friend and cheerleader today. Thanks Marie!

Today I am having lunch with one of my college roommates, her husband and their 4-month old little beauty. I haven’t seen Vic in what feels like forever and they happen to be in town for a few days from Ohio. It couldn’t have worked out better! Our last meeting was when I was living in Gainesville, part 2, and she came to my job to print up some stuff for their upcoming wedding. We had so much fun living together and I think she was one of my last roomies in the house I owned. My brain is a bit fried and spotty from back then from trying to graduate. No, not from bad behaviors! I gave up drinking long before graduation and never touched any drugs to this day. Go on, be proud of me!

What was I talking about?

Right, people that make me laugh and smile and make efforts to keep in touch. They’re pretty darn awesome. I am so fortunate to have so many amazing friends.

Jul102011

Back from Vacay! …and my Internet Hiatus

Hello my bloggie friends!

It’s been a long time since my last post due to my being on vacation in the West Virginia mountains and having truly horrific internet access. In truth, the best access was from my iPhone and even that was spotty. The motel’s wifi was too far from our room to have decent access. Yes, motel. with about 35 rooms and the only one in the town. And when we drove up to another little town, there was absolutely no data towers to be seen so I didn’t even have my iPhone. I couldn’t even use AroundMe to find restaurants. OK, the town was so small that the “old fashioned” way of just driving around worked.

For someone as connected as I am, this was horrible! Seriously, it was like going through a pretty major withdrawl.

I did keep up with my FourSquare check-in’s so folks knew where we were, and even became the Mayor of several businesses up there. But overall, it was horrible for my social media obsessiveness. As part of my 101 in 1001 list, I did say I would be without Facebook and Twitter for our week away, but it wasn’t so easy. I kept my promise to myself to not check any of my feeds, so I actually feel like I accomplished a true social media vacation.

Have you ever done a self-imposed week away from all social media?

I brought my knitting – 2 projects actually – and only managed to work on 1 of them in the hotel. All 4 of our plane rides were like being squashed into sardine cans with no extra arm room to knit.

I promise to post a recap of our trip soon. It was beautiful country and I have lots of pictures, but there was so very little to do that much of our time was spent visiting with friends and family, driving around and sleeping. Yeah, we slept a lot. On ridiculously bad beds. But alas, that’s for another post…

Apr202011

Why Do I Bother Looking…

Add to this the average 36 days for a lovely total of 143 days

I really have no idea why I keep checking on this stuff. All it does is piss me off. I mean, I still do track stuff and use the app, but I wish I could disable this pop up notification.

Yes, I probably can. I just need to dig around in the app options to find it.

***** 4 hours later *****

Apparently it’s Murphy’s Law to post about not getting my period for something to happen. TMI? I can’t help but be kinda excited about it. What can I say, it gives me a flicker of hope..

I wonder if I really did ovulate 2 weeks ago like a normal, regular woman does before her period. In that case, umm mayhaps we just might have news? Nah, most likely not.

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