Back to the grind

Day 80 is in the books now. The kids did well today!!! It wasn't an awful, practice procedures, pain in the neck kind of day. The little babies are growing up.

I previously mentioned that my crazy storyteller was moving. Well guess what?! That fell through. I wasn't going to believe it until he was really gone. I am glad he didn't move. He makes me laugh; however, today he kind of worked my nerves.

In a few weeks, my kids will be DIBEL'd. DIBELS is a state mandated test that helps us see how children are performing academically. We started today preparing for it. We are going over letter sounds, reading nonsense words, and making up sentences for random words like no one's business! Hopefully it will show in their scores (which don't mean a whole lot to me but apparently the state loves them).

On an at home level, we are 4 days into 2011.

• I have walked 6 miles in my guest room, also known as the lakehouse, with my "friend" Leslie Sansone. I am getting ready to have to kick Hubby off of his video game so I can go walk 2 more miles.
• My Grandma turned 90! Seriously.
• Our "better late than never cards" should be here tomorrow. Hubby has the address labels ready to print so hopefully they will be in the mail by Friday at the latest.
• My adorable niece and less than adorable brother will be here Friday!!! I talked to my principal and plan on leaving in the middle of the day to go pick that little cutie up at the airport and then go back to school. I will finish the day and then be Enid bound for the weekend.

Off to walk. The last two nights I have started at 10:45-->Not good. I have got to get into my school sleep again, which isn't a whole lot different, but I don't enjoy going to bed at 1-1:30 and still laying there for another 30-45 minutes before falling asleep.

YAY! YAY! YAY!

Today, I checked my school email to find out that my project has been funded!!! Thanks to some amazing donors, some who I know and some who are strangers, my project will be coming to life soon! I have done my part of accepting the project now just have to wait for Donors Choose to order and send out the materials!

WooHoo!!!!

Funny story about the cards

Now that the 50 free cards from Shutterfly are submitted and being printed, I can look at it and laugh. You see, I knew about the opportunity for over a month. Timing was not right on taking pictures so it was put off until it was almost too late. We took our pictures two days after Christmas.

After visiting Grandma in Guthrie, we got home around 8:00 on Monday night. I felt the need to get the cards done when I realized that I needed to upload the cards to snapfish so they had good quality, which is not where I had loaded [to them walgreens]. Luckily, Hubby and I are in good with our photographer, his mom, so we called and asked her if she would upload them to snapfish. She lovingly obliged so I gave her my account information to do it. She promplty did it and we got to work.

We came to a standstill when it came to what we wanted to briefly say about our year. So, I shut the computer down for the evening and figured I would finish on Tuesday. After all, I have until the 31st. :)

Tuesday comes and I log in to snapfish and start working again. I finish it up and Hubby approves. I place my order of 50, put in my code and click check out. A message pops up along the lines of "we don't know that coupon code." I try it a few more times and keep getting the same message. Then, I look on the email to find a customer service number. That's right, I am going to call about why my free card code won't work. I dial, here that there is a possibility I may have to wait 15 minutes to talk to someone and now know that if I press 6, I can "hear these options from a pirate."

While waiting, I am reading my email again to make sure I did it right and that the code hasn't expired. Just as soon as Zander from Snapfish answers, I noticed SHUTTERFLY, nice and big, in my email. I am too caught off guard and not completely sure that I understand what I have done to hang up or admit what I just figured out. So I listen to Zander explain to me that just because I see a code, doesn't mean I can use it, which isn't what I asked. He misunderstood me, just like I had done the whole card on the WRONG website. I thanked him for his time and quickly hung up.

Did you catch all that?? I chose an adorable card on Snapfish (which Hubby said he "fell in love with"), had my mother-in-law load all of our pictures to Snapfish, and twisted Hubby's arm to help me get the card done on Snapfish all to figure out it should have been done on SHUTTERFLY. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

So, I call my MIL again, ask her to upload our picture and give her my account information. This time it was to the correct place and she again lovingly obliged. Who knew something free could cause such a ruckus in my head.



This is the cute card Hubby "fell in love with" from snapfish, which noone will be receiving since it wasn't free.

I do love our SHUTTERFLY one but thought this was a funny story. Hubby also fell in love again... with our SHUTTERFLY card.

Finished 50 free

The finished product for 50 free! Previously, I had posted about Shutterfly's awesome chance to get 50 free Christmas cards [See here: 50 free post]. Plans were made to take pictures over Thanksgiving. That didn't pan out. So, we took pictures over Christmas break.

I like to call these our "better late than never Christmas cards."

Joy Wishes Ornament Christmas 5x7 folded card

Personalized Christmas cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Ho! Ho! Ho!



Merry Christmas from the Snow! Snow! Snow's!



I've said before that my in-laws aren't crazy but I think silly is fitting word. In the picture: Priscilla, Ryan holding G. Boone, Jimmy and Kay holding "the girls," Amy and Callie (also known by Ryan as "those damn dolls"), Preston holding Pistol Patti, Jennie, and "little brother" Spencer in front.

Christmas at home was lovely. Can it be Christmas break every day?

Everything but the kitchen sink!

That is what this new phone has. Seriously. There is a flashlight is on it! You can adjust it to three different levels of light too! I spent some time last night reading the manual online but still don't know what the heck I am doing.

I made it through about 35 pages of the 161 so I still have a little way to go to understanding. Hopefully it will make a little more sense. I suppose this is how my Pa feels using his electronics. :)

Calling Snow'd Inn

Here at Snow'd Inn, we have entered a new digital age. Tonight we got new cell phones. I already want to throw it out the window because I don't know how to use it. Who sells a product without an instruction manual anyways?! The answer to that: T-Mobile.

The good thing is that I have a few days to read the manual online while trying to learn. Hopefully, we will not turn into the couple that sits at a restaurant playing on our phones instead of engaging in conversation. Poor little Tobie was kind of ignored by her Daddy tonight. She already doesn't like the phone either. :)