A Father's Love

First watch this video:



This song reminds me of dad. He's a mechanic. He helped me with my first car and worked on it and made sure that it was a good car for me. He has always done this for me with all my cars. I've called him from Rochester, knowing that he can't come down and help me, but some how he is able to diagnose the car over the phone if it's making an odd sound or something. Just knowing I have someone who I can call with car questions is a god send.

The Kia is getting older, and since it is, there are more repairs that are needed. When the car couldn't start in September, and the dealership tried to rip me off, Dad drove 2 1/2 hours down to fix my car.

I'm up north for Thanksgiving right now, and he wanted to take my car in to just look it over before winter came. Dad took it to the shop today and checked it over. He ended up replacing the thermostat. He won't take a dime for it. Not only that he filled up my gas tank and refused to take money for that.

It's just one of the ways that Dad shows me that he loves me. I think you can tell why this song makes me think of him.

Kent & Doreen's House

This afternoon while at work I learned that Kent, Doreen, and Michael's house burned down last night. Kent and Doreen are my Uncle and Aunt and Michael is my cousin. Called Ma as soon as I got in the door. Basically they think that something electrical happened to start the fire. They lost essentially everything. Pictures, clothes, everything. Thankfully all the humans made it out fine, but sadly one of their cats, Rupert did not make it out. Ma was out there today and snapped a few pictures. I am so saddened by this, and can't imagine going through it. I'm devastated that this happened and just want to cry. I've shed a few tears already, and I'm sure I will shed more. I just can't imagine this happening.

I'm going to pick up some things for them and bring them up when Jason and I head up north in December. Everything was lost. Expect for 2 baskets of laundry, both Kent and Michael's since they didn't put theirs away yet. All Doreen has is what she was wearing yesterday, plus she found 1 pair of jeans that could be saved. I honestly can't imagine going through this, but I know that I need to do what I can to help, and that I will do.

My Weekend

This weekend Jason and I went up north to see my family!! I had a fabulous time, although the weekend seems to always go by so fast. :( I wish it were longer. I need to head up north and spend a week up there again. That was so much fun.

Anyway, here are some pictures from the weekend!!! The captions are directly below the pictures. :)

Trying to take a picture of Hobo. As soon as I pointed the camera in his general direction, he was trying to sniff it and wanted to play with it. I thought he was going to eat it!



































Since we haven't been up north in forever, we celebrated Birthdays! Dad's was on September 17 and Julie's was on October 1. (Yup, just a little late!) Back when I was younger Grandma and Grandpa Rapp always gave me and the girlies an un-birthday present when it wasn't our birthday's. Just a little something that we could open. I thought that was really cool and despite the girlies being 17 and 15 now, I still do it. Though they are old enough to understand that they don't get presents when it's not their birthdays! Anyway, I got Susan a VERY cute (if I do say so myself!) stuffed Hello Kitty! Isn't she adorable? Susan needs to keep it away from Hobo though....apparently he has a thing for stuffed animals.


































Julie opening her presents! She got a book, "Into the Wild", a Barnes and Noble gift card and some scrapbooking supplies. She wanted to do a book for Eli's niece who passed away when she was only a few days old. Later that night we did a few pages! It was a lot of fun!


































Julie and the birthday cake! I thought it was so cute and fun!

Eli tried to give me Revenge as a gift! As much as I would have loved taking her home, it just didn't happen. :(

But isn't she just adorable? And she is so sweet and loves to sleep on you!

Revenge and Biscuit eyeing each other.

Apparently I'm an auntie! A cow auntie that is? Perhaps? The little black calf in the center was less than 24 hours old! Awwww, so cute! His mom is the big brown heiffer. The little tan calf to the left is about 2 months old. So very cute!

Eli had Jason show him how to play PackRat. (A Facebook game.) Revenge loved just sitting on him and sleeping.

The best part of the weekend? DAD! He has stopped drinking (again), actually sat and ate supper with us, and spent a bunch of time upstairs talking to us! It was great and he looked amazing! I love it when he doesn't drink. I'm praying that he will stay sober. It makes a world of difference.

Today Mom, the girlies, Eli, Jason and I all went out to eat at the Casino Buffet and boy it was good! Yum. A wonderful treat. One funny part of the meal was teaching everyone that the fortunes from the fortune cookies should always have "in bed" added to the end of them. There were some hilarious ones!

It was a great weekend and I had a fabulous time. Weekends like this make me wish I didn't live so far away from them.

Sisters

Oh how I love this picture of the three of us.

Susan, Amber, and Julie

August 18, 2009

At the Rapp Family Cabin

Taken when we did a "Trash the Dress" photo shoot.

Larger image can be found here.

Day 356 {Cutting Hair}

Day 356

Ma colored my hair when we were up north. Then I let my 16 year old sister, Susan cut it. I'm shocked I did, but it turned out great!!! And way cheaper than a salon! :)

Day 335 {Guitar the Leggy!} + Kya

Day 335

Jason has this thing, where he likes to Guitar the Leggy!! My leg, to be specific. It tickles like crazy but cracks me up!



Nothing like going to the in-laws and having Kya (who is currently almost 3) run up and jump in your arms and not want to be put down. I just love it.

{Music Layout}

I am in love with this picture of Susan. It is just so her. I really struggled with this layout. I'm still not sure that I love the layout though. Anyone have any constructive criticism for this one?

I am in love with the bird stamp set I used here! It's "Birds Galore" by Inkadinkado. I am using it a lot. LOVE the birds and owls. I stamped the birds on green cardstock with pink ink and then cut it out by hand. Used pop dots to add dimension to it.

The strip that you see here under "Music" is a Bazzil strip. LOVING those as well!

I made the journaling spot! I was so proud of myself, LOL, though I don't know why since it's so easy to do. Brackets are once again Quickutz and then I just made the lines and did the journaling. I still need to add the date of when the picture was taken to the layout. Must not forget that.

I inked the edges of the black border with white ink. I so need a white ink pad. I LOVE this look. Flourishes were cut from my Quickutz.







If you want to view the pictures larger, check out the set on my Flickr account. Here is the link: http://flickr.com/photos/gamerbabe360/sets/72157608692782207/

Oh and a layout of Julie is in the works. It's all planned out in my head, just haven't had the time to scrapbook it yet.

Thrilled!

I am thrilled that my younger sister Susan asked me to go prom dress shopping with her! I wished I had someone to go prom dress shopping with when I was younger.

State Fair Pictures!

Yes, I realize I'm very, very, late in posting these, but better late than never right?

I'm only going to post pictures here and not descriptions. If you wish to read my descriptions for each picture and see them larger, please view the set on my Flickr account. Here is the link.

Now on to the pictures!