It's Monday, and I'm not sad about it. :) The kids are in school and Chad left also, which leaves me here with just my furbabies, having quiet time. I just did a bunch of cleaning, and it's all done except the continuous laundry which is being caught up with each load that is dried, and except for my floors, which I can't keep clean to save my life. I never knew tiled floors were such a PITA.

Micki wasn't feeling her best this morning, so I hope she's ok. She has strict orders to let a teacher know and to call me if she feels she needs to come home.

Chad has another detail in San Antonio. This one is lasting until Friday. Poor thing - NOT. He is actually not happy about going, he's supposed to be able to accept it or not, and he should have more advanced notice. He was at a training facility all week last week, and when he finally went to his station on Friday evening to turn in his hours and do payroll, there was a note that he was to report for a detail Monday morning. His supervisor didn't get advance notice either, and they had to adjust everything. Thing is, this has been happening a lot lately, and it's frustrating for him without notice, and for the supes who then have to get people to fill in for him. There are many other people he trained with to do these special details, but for some reason the supe in charge always wants him to go, while others are biting at the chance to get out for a change.

I've done my mini challenge for this week of the CP Queen of the Island challenge. It was kind of a hard to interpret challenge, but basically we were to make something without using pattern paper unless we designed our own pp or incorporated the paper into an embellishment, and no store bought embellishments except to use them as accents on handmade embellishments. I hope I interpreted it right, but I'm not the only one who was confused. I used only cardstock and either left it blank or used embossing folders on it or wrinkled it. I hand made the tree and the bird. It's not a normal style of mine, but it was fun, and a challenge that I prefer b/c I can incorporate whatever theme I want into it. Voting is tomorrow (Sunday) sometime in the afternoon.

I just got back from the live simulcast viewing of Beth Moore's women's study. A church here in town hosted and invited surrounding churches to go. It was last night and this morning. Really good. You can see some info about it on Beth's blog. http://livingproofministries.blogspot.com/

I made it to the next round with my mini challenge on CP. They just posted the immunity winners for this week and I didn't win immunity. Dare I say that I wasn't impressed with any of the immunity layouts? I think the most gorgeous one I saw for this challenge was from someone who didn't make it past the vote on the mini challenge. Anyway, the challenge was to scrap about your favorite book. Not my cup of tea, but I did the challenge about a book that is my favorite of recent books I've read.

Kids started school today!  Yippee!  It's bittersweet for me though.  Derek  is starting his first day of high school and Micki is starting her first day of Middle School.  When did my babies get to be so big and grown up?  **sniff**  On the upside, the only noise I hear is the dog snoring - NO griping or bickering!  

Here is a sneak preview of the challenge I did for CP's voting challenge coming up Sunday. The challenge was to emboss a card or tag. I dry embossed, using embossing folders on my card.

A friend just sent this pic she took of Chad and me at her birthday dinner a couple of weeks ago. I like it, we don't have any real recent pics of just the 2 of us.

I didn't win immunity this week for the CP challenge. It's ok, I thought the winners did a better job than me anyway. LOL I whipped mine out really fast this morning and only got it in with less than a half hour to the deadline, so there really wasn't a lot of thought involved.

Wednesday mornings are the day the CP design team posts their 4 immunity winners for that week's layout challenge. The layout challenges are posted on Wednesdays and have to be turned in by Sunday night. This was challenge #2, and there was a tropical beach picture posted, lots of blues and greens and tan. We had to use at least 2 colors from that picture. Well, I think I used them all. LOL

Oh, and I won immunity this week!!! That means I don't have to do the mini challenge and beg for votes this time.

Our first mini challenge for the CP contest was to make a tag and include kraft paper, green ribbon and fruit. I wasn't all that pleased with how mine turned out, but I did not get booted out this week. I must admit that I shamelessly begged for votes. LOL

I've been looking for some sb motivation this summer, although it seems by the time I really sit to do it, I discover I feel like doing something else. I am really enjoying reading a lot this summer, but I know these things come and go in cycles. Anyway, I was looking for some kind of contest or something to motivate me and came across a scrapbook site called Croppin' Paradise. They're having a month long contest and the idea is to try and not get voted off. They post a layout challenge and then we have a certain amount of time to do it and submit it to them. They give immunity to their 4 favorite layouts and then post a mini challenge for the rest of us to complete. On Mondays they put the mini challenge up for votes to whoever wants to go to the site and vote, and then those with the lowest votes gets booted. We just completed our first round of this. Voting for our first mini challenge was yesterday. They put up a new twist today though, and for those who get booted off, if they still complete the challenges and post them, they go into drawings for prizes, I really like that idea, because the real goal is to be challenged and motivated.

SO, here is my first layout, the challenge was to scrapbook about our favorite restaurant. I really hated this challenge, it's just not a subject that I care for or care about putting in my albums, there is so much more things I need to scrap about. Anyway, I was pleased with the layout, regardless, although it did not get immunity.

Look what crawled on my foot yesterday! I was on the computer and felt something tickling my foot. It was this silver dollar sized spider, which I am guessing to be a wolf spider. Oh my gosh! I was on my feet fast. I took a picture before I had Derek flush it down the toilet. I had the creepy Crawly feelings all day.

2 Sundays ago we went to Corpus Christi and played on the beach on Mustang Island. This seems to be our "go to" beach. It was really nice and relaxing, we brought a picnic and the dog and just lazed around, flew kites, boogie boarded and played in the water a lot, buried ourselves in the sand and had a good time. We also found a shark, you can see the pics here. It washed up on the beach, but was alive so Chad took it back into the waters. Derek looked it up to see what kind of shark it is, and it appears to be a black tailed shark, which get pretty big, so this was definitely a baby. I was kind of hoping it was a full grown small shark, I don't like the thought of swimming out there with the big-un's. I didn't do any photoshopping and color corrections on these pics, so some are fairly shadowy and dark.

We decided to have a little outing a few weeks ago and settled on going to Sea World. We got the fun passes, which basically are like a season pass for the rest of the year. We had fun and spent 2 days there, so we already used our money's worth. There will definitely be more trips there. It's only a couple of hours away in San Antonio. In my opinion, it doesn't compare to San Diego Sea World, but it's still fun, and especially refreshing in this hot weather.