Austin's Redskins Room

I have to admit that Austin's room was the easiest room to do. All I had to do was create a Redskins theme and both he and Todd would be happy. A little Redskins Red wainscot and a bold gold stripe above it. We actually ordered the bedding on this, which made me very happy as it made my workload a little less. We got it from the Redskins' website, which ended up being the most cost efficient that we could find. I was very impressed by that. Now we have a place to put all of the football paraphanalia and Austin is very excited to add to it. He is already planning his second nicknack shelf. Wait till he sees the magnet board that I am going to paint black and have Todd paint a game plan on. He will love it.

Unfortunately none of the pics that I have do the room justice. We have realized that we need a wider angle lens as we couldn't get a full pic of any of the rooms. However, you can see how much Austin liked his room by the very fact that he is smiling. I was very glad because I worry that he gets the raw end of the deal by being the only boy and by being quiet in his opinions.

Kailey's Bedroom

In a continuation of my last post, here are a few pics of Kailey's bedroom. I will admit that I am impressed that it turned out as well as it did. I was a bit worried when I painted a big sillouhette of a yellow flower on the back wall and it looked like poo. Well, not literally, but it was a letdown when it didn't match the vision in my head. Kailey's room was a hard one for me to design because she loves yellow and flowers, but I still wanted something a bit modern in there, even though that combination usually lends more towards a country feel.

At the last minute, we ended up coming up with a completely different design and spending the last 2 days straight redoing what we thought would have looked good. A bit of a stressor, but Kailey loved it and it matches her personality perfectly. We were extremely conscious about matching the rooms to the different personalities of the girls because they are so different in so many ways from clothing and style to temperaments.

Here's the final result:

Blog-a-Palooza

Get ready for blog-a-palooza. I have spent a lot of time working on some projects and so admittedly my blogging has been somewhat lacking in the past month. Well get ready to catch up. I have got plenty of pics to show. This first blog is pics of the bedrooms that I have been working on. For Christmas we finally got around to decorating the kids' bedrooms, and boy was that a project. Seriously. I spent about a month working on the bedrooms. LOL...actually, I spent a good week and a half working on Jessica's bedding. We took a basic white eyelet bedding set with the bed skirt and all the pillows and dressed them up with two shades of pink costume satin. We sewed several layers of ruffles to create a "flamenco dancer" skirt effect. We painted the wall with a two-toned green wainscoat and did the top half in a light pink. Add a mini canopy and some sequined pink curtains and you have Jessica's personality. We still have a few things to put up on the walls, but you are definitely able to see the effect. It is bright, loud and pink...but not so pink that she looks too princess-ee...or whatever it was that she was worried about. Here are a few pics, unfortunately, Todd didn't think about the labor intensive ruffles that I feel really make the room, so I will have to post a pic of those later.

Email

Denae sent me this. It is one of the few chain emails that I have actually read, and I am glad that I did.

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning


Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees.. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu .. If people want a church, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham 's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Katrina ) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

In light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem ( Dr Spock 's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Christmas Wishes

Wake up, SleepyHead

Any of you who know me, know that I have issues when it comes to sleep. I have insomnia part of the time, but am also extremely fatigued. It has been a problem since I can remember. School was made that much more difficult because I would miss half the lecture due to my extremely regular in-class naps. During this last stretch of school it got to a point where I couldn't even control it. I remember a teacher making the comment that if anyone slept through his class he would wake them up unkindly. When he said that, everyone in the class turned and looked at me.

Well, it is so wonderful to finally have insurance and get all the blood tests done and whatnot to figure out why I am so blasted tired all of the time. It turns out that I am extremely vitamin d deficient. This also pulls together all the symptoms that I had, which are very similar to PCOS and hypothyroidism. I was convinced of hypothyroidism and my friend was convinced PCOS.

As it turns out, most people are somewhat deficient of vitamin d. We just don't spend much time outside anymore, and when we do we are too slathered up with sunscreen to really be able to produce vitamin d, which is a chemical reaction created by the sun. The levels that the doctor told me were normal was between 30-80, but about 50-80 is best. Want to know my level? Oh yeah, I'm totally rocking the scale at a lovely 16.

So now I am on a prescription vitamin d pill that is gi-normous and I only have to take it once a week in order to get my levels up. Hopefully that will take care of some other issues I have had for a long time now, too...like my ever-present shin splints and knee pain. Here's hoping.

Anyway, here are some of the symptoms that I found through different articles:
High blood pressure*
Weight issues, hard to lose, weight gain, etc.*
Fatigue*
Depression
Low immunity*
Periodontal disease
Affects insulin resistance
Muscle pain/weak bones*
Sleep irregularities*
and even intestinal issues*

*all symptoms I have.

This could go back as far as when I started working out in gymnastics more and so didn't spend much time in the sun. That was when some of my symptoms started.

Oh, and just a note: When the doctor is talking to you about vitamin d deficiency, don't make a joke about osteomalacia. He won't laugh.