Portrait all done (2:20am Sunday morn). I was at Jeannie's house scrapbooking til midnight. Arg, I'm wide awake and we have church in the morning. 

Darling 

Micah reading to Elaine tonight. He was playing his guitar earlier and Elaine was doing an interpretive dance. 

I worked on the portrait during 'Monk' tonight. Got some more wicker done and perfected the sleeves, his hair and facial features. More wicker to come. *Tomorrow I am meeting some church ladies to scrapbook about the Youth Mission Trip, and Jimmy is taking the kids to Garland with Micah & Dave* 

This is where I am stopping for the night. This portrait is taking longer than the others. It's been 3 hours and I still have maybe 2 hours to go on it. I have the right side of the chair, his sleeve and some detail work still to complete. Also , he's looking a little old, so I need to double check all my hilights and shadows around his hair and face. They baby is only 2!

...he just HAD to be sittin' on a Wicker chair, huh? :)) It's taking a while to get the wicker looking right. 

work in progress  

Just started a new portrait. It's for a friend from church, Marci. 

FYI: Info about Ben's Legacy (clean beef)

I got some questions about where the clean beef can be shipped to. After talking to Robert and Jim, the answer I got is that for now, it can't. Their business isn't set up to handle mailing out beef. Robert researched it and the Kinkos/FedEx place wont mail anything with Dry Ice in it because of liability. If the beef goes bad in transit, the guys would have liability issues too for like Food poisoning. So for now, if you aren't living in or visiting the DFW metroplex, then your Clean Beef needs will have to be met elsewhere.

Also, I learned that the guys are working on updating their website (www.Benslegacy.com) with this season's price list.

Organized Scrapbooks

I ran across this scrapbooking link.
http://organizedscrapbooks.com/printable/index.php/cat/3097

It has FREE printable pages to help organize scrapbooking layout/project ideas. Hope it helps yall.

Pamela looking pretty at her baby shower yesterday 

been hanging w Pamela

So my big sister Pamela is still very very pregnant. Today I was tapping the top of her belly (where I think her son's butt is) and trying to encourage him to go for a swim. Pam laughed at me.
Jimmy watched the kids again, so I could have a day with Pam's family.
One day last week and then again yesterday I hung out at Pamela's house and helped her with some chores. Certain tasks just are not suited for a 5ft tall pregnant woman; like climbing up to clean fan blades. Yay for my Amazonian height advantage!! Today we ran errands, buying the last minute neccesities, just in case (un-named male child) is born like tonight. We had fun. Pamela and I fall back into our old Big Sister/Little sister roles easily. It doesn't seem to matter what kinda mundane stuff we do; it's just good to chit chat and see eachother. Her second baby shower is Saturday. That's the one I'm going to. If yall are lucky, I'll post some pics. :)
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Tomorrow the Grass-Fed Hormone Free beef is coming. So if anyone is interested in buying some, let Jimmy know. jbrank@benslegacy.com
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update: Jimmy heard that Pawpaw does not have spreading prostate cancer or lymphoma...the cancerous tumor behind his heart must be something else.

Heard this from my buddy Tommy...

The lesson is how to convert cricket chirps into the temperature....


To convert cricket chirps to degrees Fahrenheit, count number of chirps in 14 seconds then add 40 to get temperature.

Example: 30 chirps + 40 = 70° F

To convert cricket chirps to degrees Celsius, count number of chirps in 25 seconds, divide by 3, then add 4 to get temperature.

Example: 48 chirps /(divided by) 3 + 4 = 20° C


Take this new found knowledge and do something stupid with it...
-Professor Tommy

PawPaw's sick

Some tests found that Jimmy's paternal grandfather has a Cancerous tumor behind his heart.

Pawpaw is very achy all over his belly, but with an endoscope the Doctors saw that he doesn't have any open ulcers, that might be causing the pain. When they went hunting for what might be causing the pain, they found the large tumor. The tumor is the slow-growing type, but it has started to grow already... reaching out to see where it can spread next. His docs think it could be Prostate cancer that spread upward. So, next Friday Pawpaw will see a Urologist to check out if this guess is right. Pawpaw's normal doctor comes back to town on Monday, so we're all hoping he can pull strings for Pawpaw to be examined by a urologist sooner.
Yesterday he was given some pain killers with codeen, so he can finally get some good sleep. His belly ache has been keeping him awake. He's moved into the smaller guest bedroom because it doesn't take as long for the A/C to fill the room when he gets hot. Overall, Pawpaw can't stay warm though. When we saw Jimmy's grandparents last weekend Pawpaw seemed like he was moving a lot more carefully, but he still had his sense of humor. :) He's lost a lot of weight.

Keep him in your prayers. I'll keep yall updated.

Been Scrapbooking this weekend

"Jacob and Lainey" page 1 of 2
ALL the patterned paper on this page is from the dollar store (from the other weekend in Garland). How cool is that? Oh, and the alphabet stickers were $1 at Big Lots for 2 full alphabets. :)

"Jacob and Lainey" page 2 of 2 

page 2 of 2 

Pg 1 of 2, finished these yesterday. 

we spent the afternoon/evening in Garland today. YES the car made it to Garland. Big Allan looked under the hood and said that they boys (Dave and Jimmy) did a good job with the plumbing parts. Steven made fried shrimp, fried mini-pizza and fried chicken for dinner. You can probably gather that his new toy is a deep fryer that he found at WallyWorld. I liked the shrimp :)

this page will be the partner with the layout I posted earlier. I had these recent photos on hand, so I used them. I like that the title-thingy says "Stars & Stripes" and Pawpaw is wearing those patriotic suspenders again.  

Pawpaw was in the Dallas paper today. Big Allan let me get a copy of the story from his newspaper. I copied the newspaper on to acid-free lignin-safe paper and made this scrapbook layout tonight. I had a stash of WW2-themed scrapbook supplies, so I had no trouble getting two layouts done in 2 hours.

Here's the link to the article about Pawpaw. It's on page 17. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/dn/neighbors/pdfs/garland070806.pdf

her lil black eye from Allan's headbutt. When it happened, I asked if her eye hurt, because she was holding it. She said, clearly, "No, but my cheek does".  

better?

We haven't driven the car anywhere yet, but we think it's better. Dave and Jim used a hack saw, some tubing and plumbing supplies to Frankenstein a solution. Looks good and Dave says we might get better gas mileage now. They also bought and put in new spark plugs, since it needed doing.
The cubbards are looking bare, so I think we'll test drive the car out to the Krogers tomorrow. -I'll let yall know how it goes.

p.s. Yesterday Allan headbutted Elaine on the cheek and today she had a little black eye. She says it doesn't hurt. :(

STILL Stranded

After Micah got off of work this afternoon, he drove Jim to the Ford Dealership to find the part we need for the car. The dealership wasn't open yesterday when Dave tried. They don't sell the car part either!
The car dealership is gonna call around and find the part at another dealership. Pray for us. this little repair is becoming a BIG annoyance.
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Micah is driving Jim by the Krogers to fetch diapers, bread and Milk. Then they'll be home.

We're starting to potty train Allan, since he's constantly pulling his diaper off. He doesn't mind sitting up on the toilet, on Elaine's potty seat, but he's not stable enough to climb up on his own. We need to buy or borrow a lil' potty chair, so it's at his height.

*cheese* 

Noitice: when following your baby brother up a slide, if he falls, so will you. 

She told Daddy that he's too close to the slide for her comfort. She thought he'd tickle her....she was right. 

Allan with his Buzzed hair. He takes his shoes off and climbs up the slide barefoot. We had to buy him two new pairs of shoes last weekend, when we were in Garland. His feet grow SO fast at this age. We bargain shopped and got two pairs for under $15. 

I buzzed Allan's hair again last Thursday. Elaine said she wanted a haircut "like baby's again". I just trimmed her bangs and told her she looks just like baby. She was happy and I didn't have to buzz off her hair. :)  

Elaine painting yesterday 

asleep in the middle of the living room floor 

STRANDED

On Friday we went out to the Minimalls around Denton's square and had fun window shopping. I kept my impulse buys down to $10. I got 2 disney VHS's and an Eeyore doll. :) Our non-impulse buy was a large 5-drawer all-wooden dresser. It has a fresh coat of paint and is in good shape. Robert met us with his truck so we could get the dresser home.
We noticed the car was overheating and by the time we got home the car was super hot. So, we've been car-less since Friday afternoon. Jim and I traced down a leak in a hose on Saturday, but when Jim has found rides to AutoZone or O'Reilly's, no one knows the name of the part he needs. Jim didn't know how to take the part out, so he could take it with him.
Today Dave came over to take a look. (Jim's boss picked him up to work at Ranchman's). Dave got the part out of the car and took it to AutoZone, but the AutoZone people looked at it and said they don't sell that part at all. So we don't have the replacement part, and now that the busted part is missing from under the hood, we can't drive the car at all.
------In other news, MICAH'S BACK!! He's been gone to Florida on a Mission Trip for 10 days. We all missed him a bunch. When we saw Robert (Micah's Dad) the other day, Elaine ran to the window and asked when Micah was getting home. We let Elaine call Micah's cellphone a couple times while he was gone. It throws her off when she is use to seeing someone almost daily and then they are gone.
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I've been organizing the house, room-by-room. I cometed the bathrooms last week and thoroughly organized the drawers and bathroom cabinets. I picked up and vacuumed our bedroom and fixed the broken bookshelf. I cleaned the kids room, with clean linens and all the toys off the floor like 4 days ago (not that it's still clean NOW). I need to tackle my craft room. It's a mess. Too many projects going on at once.
------My brother and mom are coming here for Thanksgiving, for 4 days (including traveling days).

Jim got registered for Devry and he ordered his books online. Some of this classes start next week and then another class starts like a week later. Odd, but all of Devry's schedules have seemed odd to me from the get go.
I think that's all the news here. Happy 4th Ya'll!