And the Winner Is....

To those of you who participated by sending an email, a big THANK YOU!!!! I know April and many others are appreciative to you and so am I.

So for my 1st ever giveaway I used Random.org and the number it chose between 1 and 5......

And comment #2 was....

Angie over at http://loveisspokenhere.wordpress.com/ YAY!!!! This was fun. Angie, if you will email me your address or the address of a place I can mail this to that would be super! My email is Jill092375@gmail.com

So now what did she win??? Well, I hope she likes The Decorator Bottle Set from Pampered Chef. These are a lot of fun and great if you have children.

Thanks so much everyone. :)

HELP!

My super cool friends April and Brandon are trying to adopt a child from Vietnam. There has been some trouble between the 2 governments concerning international adoption in Vietnam. Tomorrow is the last day for you to issue an email with your support of Vietnam adoption! To make it super easy, April made a little template! Just insert your name and maybe change a thing or two to make it a little less cookie cutter. The emails have to be in by tomorrow to the address advocate@jcics.org Thank you so much for your help in this. There are so many children over there that need loving families like April and Brandon, who will be super parents I might add. I don't think I have many readers BUT if you do send an email please leave me a comment. Since tomorrow, May 30th, is the deadline I will give away a prize, randomly selected by random.org. All you have to do is send the email by the 30th and leave me a comment saying you did so before 7pm on the 30th. :)

Here is a sample:

Hi. My name is _________ and I am writing to express my support of the A Child's Rights Campaign for Vietnam. I am close to a family that is ready and willing to provide a loving home to a child that needs it. They have a heart for the children of Vietnam and I know that there are many others that feel the same. Let's express this and get the governments moving towards a new agreement in order to provide homes for the orphans of Vietnam!

Sincerely,
insert name here

Dean

I am totally ga-ga for this man. I love him more than it should be humanly possible to love another person.

Mother's Day

This was my Mother's Day. My girls even talked their Dad into giving mom a gift. I got a card with some money in it and a hilarious message from my sweet hubby (you have read how funny he is here). It was a great day for the 4 of us. We did call our mom's to wish them a happy day cause we love them and appreciate them very much. :)

Update

Thank you for your prayers. Jimmy made it out of surgery and is recovering now at home. It turns out his appendix had not ruptured yet. That must have been messed up in translation between all the people involved. Anyway, they found a suspicious fluid filled sack beside the "about to rupture" appendix. This came back as bacteria filled due to his appendix becoming inflamed a little at a time over a long period of time. Same thing happened to me about 8 years ago. My brother also tells me that my nephew and I may have more in common than the slow onset appendicitis, Jimmy may have Lupus as well. Poor thing. James is coming back to Nashville Sunday evening and then in 1 week Jimmy goes back to see if he can return to school. James is still going to see about Jimmy moving here. A lot happened out there that gives me concern to him living with his mom and I know James and Jami would feel better with him here too.

So Jimmy is getting better and my girls, Lucy and Daisy, are getting sick. Poor little Daisy Mae has been having rear-end "explosions", as my friend says, and threw up 3 times. Now Lucy has started the same thing. Don't you know all this has been while Dean is out of town again. He left Friday morning but just got back a littl bit ago so maybe they will get better. Maybe they just didn't want to be with out their dad. And speaking of dean, he has returned to me sick too. No voice, coughing, feeling bad. Man, a bunch of sickly one in my house. I hope I don't get sick!

Prayer Needed

I have 1 newphew, my brother's oldest child from a previous marriage. His name is Jimmy, he's 15, and he lives in California. My sister called to tell me that James was rushing out to CA to be with Jimmy. He had been in pain for days and his mother would not take him to the Dr. Today he called his grandmother to take him and it was discovered his appendix had ruptured, infection had spead through his body and he is in crital condition after his surgery. I have not spoken to my brother or my sister-in-law yet to find out the details. Please pray that he is alright. Thank you

When the wife is away...

Today, Jill hit the road with Pampered Chef. We've been examining ways to improve her business and she went to two shows today that were hosted by her up-line director, Stephanie, so she could get ideas to incorporate in to her own show. Jill was out the door by 7:30am and wasn't expecting to be back until 8pm!

So, the husband had the day to himself!

So, of course I did what every husband in his right mind would do.... what Jill instructed me to do prior to leaving!

Of course, my day started earlier than that. Jill's uncle Fred and aunt Joyce were returning from a short stay in Rome, Italy, and their flight landed at 12:30am Saturday morning. I tucked Jill in to bed, took the dogs out to potty, put them in the bed with Jill and headed out the door. Once back at the house, Fred and Joyce were exhausted from their day of traveling that we all went to sleep.

Well, by "we all", I mean Fred, Joyce, Dean, and Jill. Not included in that list? DAISY AND LUCY! That's right. Lucy knew someone was in the house and was horrorstruck to come to the realization that I had no intention of her getting riled up and meeting new people! She refused to sleep on her doggy bed, so I finally succumbed and let her sleep on the bed by Jill's legs... thus Daisy pitched a fit and was soon nestled under my left arm in the bed, where she always finds herself at 6am.

When morning came, Daisy's bladder had been on hold long enough, so she got me out of bed and my Saturday morning was underway at 6:30. After taking care of the dogs, I quickly got Jill ready. I made her scrambled eggs (with Pampered Chef's Southwest Seasoning, YUMMY!) and a bowl of blackberries from Costco (they have HUGE blackberries, if you didn't know). She drank three ounces of Mona-Vie (usually only one ounce) because she would have a long day and needed the extra health boost.

With her out the door, I set out on my tasks. First things first, I had to handle "LIVE UPDATES" from the Rivals.com NIKE Camp in Tuscaloosa, Ala. (ie: University of Alabama). This was pretty easy and I was able to accomplish a number of things in between phone calls and posting on the message board.

I worked on the laundry (three loads!), I sorted through bills, then headed to the post office to mail some catalogs to a future host for a Pampered Chef show. I picked up a package (Spode Salt & Pepper shakers), then made a quick stop by TJ Maxx and picked up a "Strawberry and Papaya" sugar scrub and some "Luscious Berry" bath salts. Jill had mentioned wanting to take a bath once she got home, so I thought I'd pick up some pampering products for my Pampered Chef! (Best husband ever? Yeah, that's me. Humble, too!)

Once back at home, I made lunch, baked some cookies (a reward for myself) and then set my sights on the next big task: vacuuming.

This is where the story gets depressing. No, not because I was vacuuming. Rather, because of how awesome our vacuum is. However, what makes it awesome also makes it the most HORRIBLE VACUUM EVER DESIGNED BY MAN!

Let me explain: We purchased this vacuum based on the recommendation of Consumer Reports (Love them!) because it works on carpet AND hardwood floors, it's bagless, AND the reviews said it was excellent for DOG HAIR (we have 3-5 hairs occasionally on the floor). We used some money left over from wedding gifts for the vacuum, so it was like a late wedding gift (or NIGHTMARE!)

Amidst all of the wonderful features on the vacuum was the AMAZING "Dirt Sensor" or the "Intelli-clean" feature. There are four colored lights on the front of the vacuum. Green (clean), light orange (the dust bunnies are coming), dark orange (the dust bunnies are armed with bazookas!), and SATANIC RED (the floor is dirtier than a 13-year-old boy's mind!).

This is the most depressing vacuum EVER. With any other vacuum, you go over the carpet, you see the hair is gone and you move along. Oh no, not with this monstrosity. After 10 minutes of vacuuming the same 5 square feet, the blasted thing STILL flips over to "SATANIC RED" sporadically! And, even worse, it will flash "light orange" JUST as you move to a new section. Sure, you COULD just leave it, but in your mind, you just know there's some gunk sitting in the carpet, ready to stick to your feet! So, you continue to vacuum the same spot... over and over again, until FINALLY the carpet gives up, releases the vermin within the fibers, and the "Intelli-clean" feature flashes green "All clear, captain! The bunnies have been obliterated!" So, you push the vacuum forward 1/2".... SATANIC RED!

Not only does our vacuum suck out every atom of dirt, it also sucks your will to live.

With all that being said, I still giggle when I tell someone how awesome our vacuum is by saying: "Our vacuum really sucks!"

It's 11:30 now and Jill is asleep on the couch. I think we're going to go see Iron Man tomorrow. If so, I fully expect his nemesis in the movie to be our vacuum.

I'm serious.