Wow, Elden is 4 months today. And Brennan is going to be 3 years in a month and few days. Time sure does fly. And I don’t have any video tape to show of it because apparently, I recorded over the tape that pretty much had Elden first month on it. Elden’s first beach trip was pretty much deleted. There is 5 minutes of it. At least I didn’t erase the pumpkin patch sutff. That was the end of October stuff. But most of August was taped over with the end of August through September on through October and November. Does that make any sense. Oh, and I guess I also deleted his first bath too. Thankfully, I didn’t erase the actual birth. No clue on how that happened. I guess I forgot to remove the tape out after it got to the end.

Elden two bottom teeth are quicly growing out. I think his top teeth maybe starting to sprout out soon too. I noticed that there is this tiny white blister looking thing on his front left tooth. I didn’t see how it looked today though. He has been making a lot of raspberry sounds followed by lots of chatter. He is definitely trying to comunicate something. Heehee!!! Overall, he is pretty mellow. He used to cry a bunch when we put him in the carseat, but now that is starting to subside. He actually only cries a little now. Also, the only time he really cries is when he is really tired and of course, when he is hungry. I’ve been fairly good about putting him in his bassinet, but sometimes, like yesterday, I left him in the bed with us. I have been trying to make it a habit to put him in his bassinet, but yet I still feel so much more comfortable with him in bed with us. He is starting to be able to sit up, although it just may be that he is able to stay up because his belly kind of supports him up. He is extremely alert and is very entertained by his big bro. Brennan is starting to calm down a bit and doesn’t hit him much now. Brennan loves to make him laugh, which in turn make Elden laugh. It is so cute to watch them interact with each other. This is only the beginning though. I am really looking forward to seeing them grow together.

Thank goodness Thanksgiving is done with. I can only handle seeing family for so long. Now we have tons of turkey and ham leftover to make sandwiches and soup with. We went to Den’s sister’s house in the early afternoon. We did not plan to stay for turkey, since my mom was cooking dinner. We ate tons of chips and onion dip, which is actually Den’s family food tradition for any of their gatherings. My MIL was there. She actually looked pretty good. Her sugar levels are kind of high, in the 200’s, so I am not really sure if she is actually taking any measures in eating healthier. Who knows, but is has been a month since her incident.

We only stayed for a couple hours. I was craving a gingerbread latte. Luckily you can depend on St*rb**ks to be open on the holidays. It was so scrumptious and gave me a second wind to face more family. When we got to my parent’s house, I realized that my glasses were missing. So I called my SIL and Starbucks. Neither of them was able to locate them. I looked through my purse, through the car, several times. It apparently disappeared into the black hole with my car keys. So now I am wearing my snuglasses. My optometrist is closed today unfortunately. Although, I look really cool in my sunglasses, I don’t really like wearing them to see because the prescription is actually a litle old. Maybe I can talk Den into taking a beach walk or maybe taking Brennan to the park, since it is a lovely sunny day and I can see much more clearly outside, instead of being cooped up inside.

So most of the time at my parent’s house, I was stressing over where my glasses were. It actually wasn’t too relaxing. Come to think of it, I don’t think Thanksgiving is ever very relaxing. Oh, I did see HP the other day and I have put my 2 cents in. I felt that overall is was super, but there were parts of it that sort of went by really fast. Probably because a lot of it was condensed. It also seemed that they focused more on character development, which I guess was a good thing. The CG and scenery was fabulous. For sure I am going to have to read it over again.

I think though for Christmas we may stay home. Although, I think we are going to my SIL’s house for Christmas Day. But my mom will be going to DC for the one year memorial of my grandftather’s death. I can’t believe how fast the year has gone by. I still can’t believe that it will be December in just a few days.

We had a lovely visit at Hermosa beach yesterday. The weather was just lovely. It was sunny and probably in the 80’s. I do love living out here. Den is leaving for Philadelphia today for a conference. He will be back on Wednesday. I’m sure it is pretty cold out there. I’m certainly not jeolous. I’ll be taking to kids to my parent’s house for a few days. Hopefully, I will get a chance to scrap. I can at least work on the Hawaii album. But then again, maybe I will just take some time off from scrapping and the computer.

I uploaded a bunch of pictures into Flickr. It is mostly pictures from the beach. I also uploaded our Christmas pictures. I decided that I was going scrap a picture and then turn that into a card.

I don’t know if it has to do with the time of the year (I always get kind of depressed right around this time) or because my mother pissed me off today, or because Den is leaving to Philadelphia for a few days. Probably a combination. I’m feeling kind of down, but not quite depressed. You know what I mean???

I can’t believe that Elden is growing so fast. He already cut two teeth out. Isn’t 4 months early for teeth to start coming out? Of course, I have no clue of all the stages of development. This past week he has also been starting to hold onto his feet when he is just laying there. He tends to do it more when I remove his diaper, probably because the diaper is so padded. He is really starting to bloom.

I wonder if this is like a second child syndrome, but Elden is like 200% easier then Brennan was. He still only wakes up like once, whereas Brennan woke up like every hour upon the hour. I certainly do not lose any sleep from this kid. The only reason why I lose any sleep is because I am up working on stuff. I really don’t need much sleep either. I think if I sleep longer than 7-8 hours, I actually start to feel pretty crappy. That’s weird how that works.

Oh Brennan was such a sweet, angelic child today. We were at Micky D’s today and he was so good. I couldn’t believe it. Also he played in the jungle gym for the first time there. For some reason, he never played in there. He just had a ball. And coincidently, two of his friends happened to be there with their moms. There was this one kid that came up to me and he said that Brennan was so cute and so nice. Hehe!!! He was definitely on his best behavior! Or maybe 123-magic is actually working. I’ve been very strict for the last couple weeks, ya finally, counting the 1-2-3. I also picked up a timer from Target in their dollar bins. I carry that around and flash it to him, when he starts acting up. He was definitely better in class the other day.

I am trying to finish up my three calendars. I am so behind. They definitely need to be finished within early next month. Arhh. Other than that, I am have this cute idea to alter a tiny LUSH lipgloss tin, but for some reason I can’t find the botttom part of the tin. LUSH has really cool packaging to alter. Also, I was thinking of altering the ipod earphone bud’s case. I want to make a little photo album that I can carry around in my purse. I really want to start applying to DT positions and submitting my work, but everytime I look at my stuff, I think, gosh that looks like shit, that one looks horrible. Uh, I hate that I am so self conscious about everything. It probably stems from my being berated and put down in my previous work industry.

I don’t know if I should call my mom tomorrow or just show up at her house on Sunday. Let’s just rewind to Wednesday, shall we. I talked to my mom that day and I wasn’t quite sure if we were going to go to her house today or if she was going to come over here. So she said, we will talk later in the week to confirm everything. So we hung up. Then about 10 minutes later, I callled her back and asked if she could come over. She said fine. Then we hung. Okay, so then today comes around. We are waiting around and Brennan is all excited because grandma is coming, supposedly. 12:00 comes around, and then I call my mom, wondering if she was coming or not. When I finally reach her, she tells me that she has been waiting for us. I’m like okay, so we had a misunderstanding. No big deal. Then she tries to lay some guilt on me saying that my grandma had prepared all this food for us. I say sorry and say, it’s no big deal. We will be there Sunday anyways. Then she says whatever, it’s not I care about you, I just want to see the kids. I don’t that was her exact words, but pretty much saying, I could give damn about you. At that point, I just lost it and said, I know you hate me, so we are not gonna come over, then bam, I hung up the phone and threw it. I was just fricken pissed. I tried calling her back about 20 minutes later, but she never answered the phone. So oh well. Now I am sort of over it, but it has certainly put a damper on my mood. It seems like every year around this time, we get into some heated fight, over the same type of thing. Man, I wasn’t planning to write about this, but I guess it has really gotten to me. A lot of my self esteem issues, kind of root from her putting me down and berating me. How depressing. Anyways, whatever, I’ll move on. I think I will try to call her tomorrow, but not talk about. Just tell her that we will be there Sunday and then let her talk to Brennan. Okay, this is seriously too much air time for her.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone, if I don’t hear from you this week!

I’ve been wanting to write something since Saturday, but I’ve been a slacker. Oh, which has me think of something silly. When I took a packaging class, I made this box for crackers. Dennis came up with this funny slogan, and it went like this – “Don’t be a slacker you mother facker, eat snacker crackers”. Okay, hehehe, you had to be there!

Damnit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just spent the last 30 minutes writing a huge ass entry on the podcasting expo and stamping expo and freakin lost it all because my pinky accidently hit a shift or tab key. I so hate when that happens. You just don’t know how pissed off I am now. Damm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So here goes again. This past Friday, I went to the portable media conference and podcasting expo with my dear ole dad! We had so much fun hanging out together, but really I thought he would get a kick of all this stuff. He is fairly tech savvy, but he just barely heard about podcasting. So it was mostly companies wanting to introduce their new produts for the ipods and half a dozen companies that sold their services and software that make podcasting easier. My dad bought SoundSoap by bias, which basically is a software program that scrubs clean extra noises from digital video and music files. He wants to digitize his old LP collection and clean out all the hissing noises. I thought the mobiBLUE “Cube” digital audio player was really cute. It is about the size of a dice, but boosts an impressive sound system. I would be afraid to lose it. I recently lost my keys, which was connected to a long lanard with about 10 keys on it. So I am sure I would easily lose this tiny mp3/wma, no problem. I got to demo the ultimate ears earphones. They suction into your ears and lets you experience the ultimate in surround sound. They seem similar to the Shure Sound earphones.

After peeking into the ilounge booth, and getting bored a little bit with all the ipod accessories, and chatting with all the podcasters, I met my new love (sorry Den) and ultimate christmas present, the Archos AV 500 pocket digital video recorder . It is a mini dvd player, recorder, music player, photo viewer, and then some. You can record off the tv, vcr, dvd player, computer, etc. I can finally record my favorite tv show Reunion and carry them around with me and watch them in my own convenient time. You can also transfer DVD’s onto it. So now I can put all the Soprano episodes on it. Way cool! Seriously, this is the only thing I want this year.

So me and my old man had a grand ole time. Afterwards, we ate lunch at De**y’s.

Then on Saturday, me and Elden went to the Carson stamping expo, while Brennan and Den hung out and had some father and son time. I mostly bought unmounted domino stamps . They are the exact size of dominos. I also got this great 4- sided block stamp of a ruler, a three ring binder, a spiral binder, and those black plastic spiral binder on it. I also picked a Tim Holtz’s distressing inks in antique linen and milled lavender. I already had the tea dye. I was about to buy the TH embossing powders, but I held back. Of course, now I regret not buying them. I also bought an unmounted outline stamp. I’m trying remember what else I bought. I did a few make n takes. Elden started screaming when I had to put him down in the stroller a few times. Some nice complete strangers asked if they could hold him, while I did my make n takes. Of course, I said yes, and Elden quieted down as soon as he was held. I didn’t there would be a problem with them running off with him. I also made a neato glass ornament with Luminarte Primary Pigments. All in all, it was another fun filled day. In fact, the whole weekend was a blast.

Today, was a lazy azz day. I just lounged around, but did take Brennan to the park. It was freezing and foggy as heck, so we only stayed for about 45 minutes. Then I lounged around some more and took a long nap with Elden. Dennis got Taco Bell for our dinner. Yum, yum!!!

Finally, on Wednesday, I get to register for my second MLIS class, which will start in January. Woohoo!!!

I’ve been tagged!
2 things (THE list)

Two names you go by:
1. susieq
2. susiescraps

2 things that scare you
1. Death
2. -

2 of your everyday essentials
1. Kiehls lip balm #1
2. La Croix carbonated water

2 things you are wearing right now
1. underwears
2. pajama dress from the Luxor, Las Vegas

2 of your favorite bands or musical artists (at the moment)
1. Elliot Smith
2. Black Eyed Peas

2 favorite songs (at the moment)
1. Angeles
2. Bebot

2 things you want in a relationship (other than real love)
1. security, not necessarily financial
2. respect

2 truths
1. I am really insecure of my abilities
2. I tend not get close to people

2 physical things that appeal to you (in the opposite sex)
1. his sexy legs
2. his eyes

2 of your favorite hobbies (besides scrapbooking??)
1. anything computer or technology related
2. exercising

2 things you want really badly
1. Archos AV500 pocket digital video recorder
2. new cabinets

2 places you want to go on vacation
1. Ireland
2. Cruise to Alaska

2 things you want to do before you die
1. Meet my great grandchildren
2. Too many things to name

2 ways that you are stereotypically a chick
1. I talk too much
2. I’m bitchy

2 things you are thinking about now
1. Gosh, I can’t believe how cold it was at the park today
2. Why is this house so messy

2 stores you shop at (Only 2?!?!)
1. Scrampers
2. Hows

Okay, so I tag Klaudia and Amber.

This is the front of the get well paper bag album that I made for Den’s mom. You can see the rest of the pages after you click the image.

I am so excited! I registered for the portable media and podcasting expo, which happens to be this weekend at the Ontario Convention Center. If you haven’t already starting listening to podcasts, then you are way behind the technological times. Dawn and Drew are going to have a listener appreciation party. They happen to be a pretty popular podcast. I listened to my first episode today, in fact. They are quite hilarious.

I’m also excited because I am also going to the Stamp in the Hand, rubberstamping expo either on Saturday or Sunday. As always, there are a bunch of stuff that I want, but probably won’t be able to get because I am on a restricted budget. They are also having an ATC contest and swap. How freakin fun! I better get cracking.

So more of the same stuff going on in our life. Same stuff, but different day. Hehe. Oh, I had a yummy peppermint mocha today and yesterday I had the egg nog latte. So much for cutting back on calories. I did exercise today for about 30 minutes and tomorrow I will be doing a power walk at the beach. Slowly, yet surely, I will get back into an exercise routine. I miss exercising so much.

*update on Den’s mom. She had surgery on Friday. They replaced one of her valves with a cow valve. Pretty crazy. She will be going home either tomorrow or Wednesday. Apparently, she is doing well. I haven’t seen her because the hospital doesn’t allow kids under 12, but Den did see her today and she is looking better. She is in some pain, but they are making her walk up a flight of stairs. I guess, they want her to exercise because if she lays for too long, she could risk developing a blot clot. That wouldn’t be good. So I guess she is okay now. For sure, her life is changed forever. I am not sure when she will be able to return to her job as a cafeteria lady. She is going to have to take it easy from now on.