Reality check time: I am completely and utterly EXHAUSTED. Gotta love a mom, cuz she picked up on my exhaustion right away, even over the phone. And I know I’m not the only one. I think my sister Manda is feeling pretty exhausted lately too. I’m talking mentally, physically and emotionally just EXHAUSTED. Like I’ve been completely drained of everything in me. Have I been going to bed on time? No. But in my defense, I would’ve just tossed and turned anyway thinking of all the stuff I should be getting done. Right now it’s almost 1 am and I’m waiting for a load in the wash machine to get it into the dryer before I go to bed. Which means tomorrow morning I’ll have to be up by 6:30 am to iron something to wear, rush off to work by 8 am, scramble to process payroll at Kimmy’s office, hope the printer doesn’t eat half the checks like it has the last 2 times, finish the invoicing that I stayed an hour late trying to get done on Friday & still have an hour of it left to do, eat a pop tart in the car on the way to my regular job, finish entering year-end rental stuff that I fully expected to have done last week…pretty much a carbon copy of most of last week. Right now, work wise I’m wanting to be everything to EVERYone and it’s just not working. I’m loving the variety and the challenge but I feel like I’m running frantic (thus the video today).

I know it sounds like I’m complaining, and well…I am! I know there are people who have it worse. I know I bring the franticness on myself. I know I have sooo much to be thankful for. Problem is that enjoying those things is part of what makes my life so chaotic. I just want 3 extra hours in each day. 3 energetic hour. Not the wiped out 3 at the end of the day. I’d like my 3 extra hours around 5:00. If 5:00 to 6:00 could last 4 hours I’d just love that. That and one full weeks vacation. But that I want as a complete freebie. Not a vacation to do all the things I need to get done. No, those would be caught up because of the week or two of 27 hour days before the vacation. Organizing the basement, getting birthday presents, having the carpets cleaned, trimming the plants back for spring…all of these things would be done BEFORE the weeks vacation. The vacation would be for spending 7 whole days doing whatever my little heart desires. One day of staying in pajamas and scrapping all day long and not feeling the least bit guilty about it. One day to spend with Tam, Manda and Selena scrappin’ with all the neats playing in the other room distracting me but it doesn’t matter cuz I have a FULL day to hang out with them and scrapping is only secondary ‘cuz I just had a pajama scrappin day the day before. One day to sit and hold Kennedy all afternoon, order in dinner for Kimmy (cuz it’s my vacation and I certainly didn’t spend the morning preparing a meal) and enjoy the night hangin’ with her and takin’ pictures of Kylie. Two days to spend in Chicago taking tons of pictures and once and for all figuring out how my amazing camera works. The other two days would be complete bonus days to do whatever I didn’t get enough of in the first few. Maybe see a good movie, actually read some of the great books I’ve been meaning to read, a night or two of just chatting with friends online and not feeling like I have to be accomplishing anything other than having fun talking. Anyway, you get the idea. Three extra hours in each day and one full weeks vacation. And that’s ALL I need.

In the meantime I have been doing a little scrapping this weekend. I finished one LO of my newest niece, Kennedy, this morning but haven’t posted it in the galleries yet. It may be apparent that I’m creatively drained as well. Seems to go hand in hand with general exhaustion. I’ll post it tomorrow at SBB and link here for the credits. I think everything was from either Michelle Coleman at Scrap Artist or Gina Cabrera at Digital Design Essentials.

And then because I always love seeing the process other people use in scrapping I thought I’d post the one I worked on a bit tonight. It’s only half finished and I have no idea where I’m going with it from this point. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish it tomorrow and I’ll post the finished version. :) So far everything is either by Michelle Coleman from the Boho Chic element pack and the papers are from the Whimsy Style freebie all at Scrap Artist.

UNFINISHED LAYOUT Off to finish that laundry and try and stop my mind from whirling to get at least 4 hours of sleep. The weekend is officially over.

  I know I’ve raved about this site before but I went back today to buy some of the fonts I had on my wishlist and I just had to share. Hopefully these fonts will show up on more than just this little piece of notebook paper. :)

Off to go hang with my parents and play with Braelynn, Ainsley and Selah. Not that I need more pictures to scrap ‘cuz I’m WAY behind on plenty of scrapworthy photos but I could use the practice with my camera so I guess I’ll take it along. ;) Plus I’ve been trying to keep up a little better on my daily photo blog. Should probably change the name to 2-or-3-a-week photo blog but at least I’m not going entire months without posting there. :)

Any other Jason Mraz fans out there?! I love this guy. Absolutely love him! Can’t get enough of ‘em. If you’re a fan you’ve gotta track down some of his earlier stuff. I’ve got some old live songs that he’s never released on CD and they’re so fun. I wish I could figure out how to play mp3′s on this blog ‘cuz there are so many great songs that just don’t have videos. I’ve searched and searched and come up with nothing other than some french site where I haven’t the first clue how to read the instructions. Other than that it seems like a great blog tool. Maybe if someone knows a little french they could make a little english tutorial on how to use ‘dew player’. *wink wink*

LOVE love LOVE the new designer secrets book by scrapbooks etc. and can’t WAIT to pick up the new Autumn Leaves books coming out *I think* this month or next. You can order/pre-order all of these from ideabooks4u.com. I also picked up ‘the Big Picture’ book a week or so ago and am blown away by that too. Haven’t had time to look through it more indepth but so far I’m lovin’ it!

Life’s been crazy this week and I’ve been meaning for days to post an update here. I’ll be back with more tonight but I wanted to mention that Kennedy is home and doing great and thank you to all of you who said a little prayer for her while she was under the lights. I’m off to dinner with some of my family and then over to Kimmy’s to play with Kylie and hopefully hold Kennedy if she’s not sleeping. :) Why do I find it impossible to post on this thing without any pictures?! I’m super excited about a magazine/book I picked up this week and couple upcoming books so I’ll be back later tonight to post about that and I’m sure I’ll have pics to include with that one. :)

                                                     …She’s gotta wear shades. :)

Totally cheesy, I know. LOL Just some pics of little Kennedy from tonight. She’ll be under the lights at least through tomorrow morning and then hopefully going home. She’s now 4 lbs 15 oz – so tiny! Every bit of that 4 lbs 15 oz is completely adorable though and she’s just a honey. She was smiling like crazy tonight. I know the mom’s out there will say at that age it’s just gas but I’m tellin’ you she smiled big totally in reaction to touching her head and then again at Kimmy when she was talking to her. Yet another genius neat. ;)

I’ve watched quite a few movies lately and even though there really aren’t too many great movies out lately I’ve had pretty good luck with the ones I’ve seen. Failure to Launch wasn’t my favorite Matthew McConaughey movie but it was a fun movie. Great date movie. I think for me the wow factor was missing mostly because I’m not a big Sarah Jessica Parker fan and it was tough for me to buy the chemistry between a character like hers and a guy like Matthew McConaughey. Aside from her though I loved the casting in this movie. Very eclectic cast and fun to see on screen. I’ll actually be seeing this one again later this week with Jill and Dietra. :)

Then my boss treated for a movie again (gotta love that) and we decided to see the Bruce Willis movie 16 Blocks. One of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. If you like movies with an intense somewhat suspense filled plot with lots of twists and turns you’ll love this movie. Amazing acting in it. I’m impressed with Bruce Willis’ choice to play a much less flattering character than usual. Beer gut (which I’m guessing was part of wardrobe) and grayish hair. And I’m a big Mos Def fan. I know the name doesn’t sound like a serious actor name but he’s amazing. 24 fans would definitely appreciate the way this movie was filmed and they did an excellent job making the relationships between the characters as important as the action in the movie. You can watch the trailer for the movie here. Definately a good one to see in the theatre on the big screen and without all the distractions at home.

And if you’re looking for a great movie to rent you’ve gotta see Serendipity. One of the few movies I actually own. Gotta be one of my top 5 favorites of all time. Love John Cusack and since he’s done a horrible job choosing films lately I’ve gotta haul out the oldies to appreciate him again. AND, if you love music you’ve gotta check out the soundtrack to this one (I own that too). Can’t get enough of it. Bap Kennedy, Annie Lennox, Shawn Colvin, John Mayer. With the exception of one Louis Armstrong holiday song that doesn’t play well in the summer I can listen to the whole album straight through.

Have I mentioned here how much I love music?! Pretty much all types of music actually. There’s some super heavy stuff that I don’t care for and if it’s full of vulgar lyrics or hateful stuff that’s definitely not my thing but other than that I can appreciate almost anything. Oh, except opera. Josh Groban I LOVE but that’s as close as I come to anything operatic. I think my favorite type of music right now and has been for quite awhile now is the style I have in the video clips today. The singer/songwriter type stuff. Lovin’ alot of piano lately. The new Daniel Powter CD is excellent and I just found this new band Augustana last night and downloaded it on itunes. Lovin’ it so far. Also picked up a new small live album by Jason Mraz that’s awesome. And next Tuesday Teddy Geiger’s album comes out. Can’t wait for that one. Lovin’ the websites for these musicians lately too. So creative and interesting. Lisa sent me a link to Bethany Dillon’s website awhile back and since then I’ve been checkin’ out all my favorite artists and have been so impressed.

Kay, off to work for the day. Hopin’ to get off a little early and hang out at the hospital with Kimberly and Kennedy for awhile. Kennedy ended up having to go under the lights to lower the billirubin levels so they’re likely going to stay there through tomorrow now. Sounds like once the levels go down she’ll be doing just great but 5-6 days is a long time to just sit around the hospital so I’m sure Kimmy’s ready to get her home. Any extra prayers for her would be so appreciated. :)

Happy Tuesday :)