Yes & No!

I had some more eye opener's this week with the whole nothing thing. I was coming into today fairly confident that I had come in under the grocery spent total of $150. But no! When I added up the little shopping trips, here and there, to the grocery store it was $205. So this next week I’m going cash only for groceries to see it that helps me keep better tabs on it. I can honestly say that all food purchased was an absolute need or something to stock up on the food storage. I know $60 was spent on really good sales to cushion some of our food storage.

I was also able to get Evo-man two pair of pants for school at the local thrift store for less than $6 and they don’t even look used. Hopefully he won’t notice when I slip them into his closet.

My biggest light bulb (DING, DING, DING, DOOONNNG!!!) moment for the week was when Prince Erik installed some more security stuff on the computer so that we could better track how much time the whole family was spending plugged in and what they were doing. Well zap me with a lightning bolt! The worst computer time sucker was me. I didn’t see that one coming.

For example my pirate day - last Thursday. I thought I was up and doing stuff. Like canning that Pear Butter that took 3 ½ hours, changing laundry, driving to Value Village, picking up kids from school, etc. Sure every now and then I’d run check email, or look up pirate lingo. But at the end of the day when you added all my hours on computer, the time added up to was over six hours. That was a reality check. Kind of like running into a light pole you didn’t see standing there. Running not walking. Enough to ram some sense back into your head banging. Before - I couldn’t understand why I felt I was working so hard and getting so little done. I had this secret time zapper sucking me dry and I didn’t see it. UGH!

I guess I'm offically addicted to spending time on the computer. Why can't I be addicted to something productive like cleaning or exercising? Or not addicted to anything at all. Why do my passions get the better of me?

So this weekend I was reading about Trenadolls trip to her last organization class and I was disappointed it didn’t tell me to throw out half my knick-knacks, clean the light fixtures, or organize the spices. Instead it said.

4. "Anytime you say 'yes' to something, you automatically say 'no' to something else." Translation = Don't fool yourself; there's always a trade-off. Bonus related quote: Say 'No' to say 'Yes'!

So I took that advice and made myself a challenge. Sooooooo, judging by the unequal time I’ve been giving the passion of my dreams and the computer I’m switching it around now. I’m saying NO to the computer between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. and saying YES to my dreams of decluttering, losing weight and having a stress free Christmas. And I’ve got proof that it works.

Thursday’s kitchen time…

Saturday’s kitchen time…

Hooray - The Canning is Done!!! Now I can get rid of those pesky fruit flies.

And bonus… more clutter for the Thrift Store.

I noticed that Busy Mama did the same thing a week ago and has had marvelous results.

I’ll still get to see my blogging friends but not during the day when I should be spending time with my family.

I’m hoping for an amazing week.

Breaking Dawn Girls Night Out = National News Story!

Have you ever attended an event that was worthy of a blurb on National News. For me this is only the second time. The first was when I was in a crowd of people in SLC, UT when they announced that Salt Lake City was awarded the Winter Olympics. But I couldn't even pick myself out of the crowd even though I knew where I was standing.

So, Could this be my nano-second of fame? You may see my backside on the National News (Nightline on ABC) tonight because I and another 2000-something obsessed fans went to Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn Book Tour in Seattle on Tuesday. I think the camera’s were rolling (behind us) when they opened the doors as we went into the theater- if that clip even makes the program I'd be surprised. I’m wearing black like maybe 9/10th of the other attendee’s, a Bella pony tale and have my book waving high in the air as I’m giggling hysterically like some teenager high on something other than life. Although to be honest I don’t need any substance other than life to make me happy. Whew!

I had enormous hopes that this would be my chance to get a good picture of Stephenie. What with being on the Ticketmaster Website within 100’s of a second of the tickets going on sale secured me seats in row 30ish. I thought when they said orchestra seating DD meant I would be near the front. But alas we were a mere 30-ish rows back from the stage which means that my camera only picked up blur. So here is Stephenie in all her vampire speed blurish glory.

I was so enthusiastic that I bought eight tickets to the book tour. My family wasn’t interested in sharing more mental time with me but these brave and courageous chicks were, and I think they had as much fun as I did.

Rkimedes had to be the bravest since her own little Bella is due within days. I was wondering if the hysteria of the evening would put her over the top and we would have to make an emergency trip to the baby ward of the local hospital. We might have scared her little larval unit into staying where it was nice and quiet for a bit longer.

We even braved taking my gas-guzzle tank into a Seattle parking garage. Then we all repeatedly winced as the antenna scraped every bit of pipe or concrete outcropping of the ceiling. Fortunately we cleared everything by maybe ½ an inch. Never again will that beast venture into Seatlle. It’s just too darn big.

This creative family did, I think, make the news.

At least they said they were interviewed. I think they deserved the award for the best eye catching T-shirts. I may have to copy their shirts they are so creative. Especially the teenage boys, ‘Someone feed me, my mom’s reading Twilight again.’

Had a blast, even enjoyed a little new-age rock and roll provided by Blue October’s Justin Furstenfeld. The songs were more mellowed out because he preformed them on acoustic guitar. I don’t think I’ll count this as my first official concert because it was only around 5 songs. Still great!

Stephenie was as fun as last time I saw her. Thankfully the program lasted for just over an hour. Last time it was all of twenty minutes. Then it was the wait for the signing. And guess who surprised us as we were standing in line?

Our Best Western check-out lady from our Forks weekend. And Shocker of all shockers – she remembered Pazzaz and myself. Well I guess that isn’t too much of a shock seeing that we are a bit odd and stand-out as wanna-be teenagers. So our Forks-y Lady friend kindly caught us up on the festivities planned for Stephenie Meyer Day in Forks, WA on September the 13th and now I’m seriously tempted to make one more trip this summer. Hummmmm? Wonder if Prince Erik is opposed to a road trip?

My Twilight Pilgrimage

I’m going to now vicariously take you through the Most Fun, Most Grown-up, Giddy-Girl-High Weekend I’ve ever experienced. However, as I’ve never been on a Grown-Up (though we don’t act it) Ladies weekend retreat in my life, (Another Fawndear 1st) I have nothing to compare it with. But as you can see from my photo ops, my perma-grin of happiness from experiencing several Fawndear firsts is plastered onto my face and will probably be there for a while.

DaringYoungMom and Eve started the whole idea rolling a while back and invited a huge circle of friends to come partake of our inner-child, school-girl, and obsession-fest with the Twilight Book Series by Stephenie Meyers. Nine of us were brave enough to make the once in a lifetime trek to the Olympic Peninsula to visit the settings described in her series. And we did it on the very weekend that the Fourth Book in the series ‘Breaking Dawn’ was released.

So here’s my trip in a long photo adventure nutshell – many of the pictures are taken with my B.A.B friend also named Fawndear who stood in as my replacement.

Wait three hours to ride a 20 something-ish minute ferry ride across the Puget Sound. Not too much fun...

However, It wasn’t too bad because my van buddies...

Pazazz, Ethel & Lucy, and Angela (poor-human-lady-who-has-never-even-heard-of-the-Twilight-Series-but-wanted-to-take-a-girl-break), and me had too much fun telling everyone on the ferry what we were off to do, eliciting strange and 'your mental' stares from many fellow passengers.

On our way to our evening gathering location in Port Angeles we made a little detour so Fawndear could drive through a local game preserve and meet some of her not-yet-vampire-food relatives.


Oh so cute!

Then it was off to the cushy Best Western.

...where we gladly paid and arm and a leg not to sleep in the beds for more than a couple of hours. We were there long enough to unload and then we needed to make it to our dinner reservations at Bella and Edwards’s first-date-but-not-really restaurant the Bella Italia in Port Angeles.

Where we're joined by DaringYoungMom, Eve and her 2 1/2 week old baby sweet Miss Annie, my roomies for the night. We figured sure bring a newborn along because we weren't planning on sleeping anyway. She was a doll and people were lining up just to snuggle her.

And get this (as I scream with excitement) we got the happy couples (Bella & Edwards) booth around the corner and next to a line of other booths. DYM ordered Bella's dinner of Mushroom Ravioli ...

Heavenly taste - However the price-tag was a once in a lifetime but worth it ticket

DYM graciously let me have one of her raviolis’. I'm not a mushroom gal - But Yummy!

I would have got the whole dinner but it had prawns in it and I didn’t feel llike tempting my seafood allergy so I ordered the Chicken Storm..a..bocca or something similar sounding that was divine. Well, we daintily ate, gabbed, giggled, conversed with our cute (Edward crushing) waitress for a couple of hours before we headed off to the… very same bookstore ...

(that Bella did not go in, on her scary evening in Port Angeles) for the midnight release of the Breaking Dawn book...

Talk about a party!

with hoards of real life, honest to goodness teenagers. It’s o.k. we fit right in.

I think they had handed out all the books by 12:05 a.m. I got mine around 12: 04: 30 sec.

We were soon back to the lobby of our nightly lodging establishment.

Where we quickly found out who were the sleepers and who were the Twi-hards who could stay-up-all-night reading. I made it till 6 a.m. then zonked for 1 ½ hours.


And our reaction to page 360…


Silent Screaming because we didn’t want to get kicked out of the establishment and DYM collapsing from the sheer brilliance of Ms. Stephenie's Writing…

And… yes my first adult experience with bed-jumping.

And no, I didn’t break anything.

Let me tell you eating and taking showers are inconveniences when you’re so sucked into reading a book. But we did them anyway and were off by noonish Saturday to continue our journey on to Forks, WA.

The primary setting of the novels and location for the most Fawndear cheesy grins and girly squeals you can get in any one town.

Poor Angela had me sitting behind her in the van, screaming and giggling hysterically (probably from lack of sleep) whenever I would see different locations mentioned in the book. All my vehicle occupants agreed that I should continue seeing my Young and Gorgeous Counselor on a regular basis.

So Forks, WA was very Giddy-Tourist-Camera-Wielding hospitable town. I was regretting that they didn’t have more Twilight souvenirs but its o.k. because the pictures are priceless.

Here we are visiting the fictional character’s very real sites. Like...

Bella’s truck in front of the Chamber of Commerce Building with an oh-so-adorable city greeter who would pick up and read her own copy of Breaking Dawn in-between the hoards of romance fans who entered the premises.

Then we visited Sully’s burger for a Bella burger with pineapple and plastic vampire fangs, the Thriftway grocery store for some of Charlie’s (explode the microwave) favorite spaghetti sauce…

The Swan Residence… The funny thing was they had a motercycle parked in the driveway. I think Charlie must have been on vacation or something.

And look whose parking spot we found at the Forks Community Hospital (more girly screams). The Dreamy Dr. Cullen.

However, the Mercedes wasn’t there so he must have been off hunting, I mean hiking. Drat!

Back to Forks High School and a few other drive-by photo spots before it was off to our favorite Werewolf haunt down at…

and my favorite destination of the Day - First Beach.

Could this be Bella and Jacob’s favorite seat?

Or was it this?

Love is in the air - Look how sweet. We found this cute couple on the beach reading the novel of Breaking Dawn together.... Oh How Romantic! (Prince Erik take notes)


Stunning Location! I had to shamelessly collect a few pieces of red-brown driftwood and rocks that looked like perfect moons to bring home. Look Kids what mom brought home for you from my trip - ROCKS!

Then all too soon it was over, and we were headed back home to finish reading the book and join the land of reality.


Total time it took to read all 700 plus pages of Breaking Dawn – 25 hours. But consider that we visited all those locations as well, not to bad.

Now I just need to get some sleep and plan my return trip. I can’t wait to come back!

My Lucky Day!

For some of my more avid blog readers I'm sure you know by now about my guilty obsession with the Twilight Series. Well, I finally lucked out! Two days ago I walked into a store that didn’t know that they were supposed to wait until Saturday to release the Special Edition of ‘Eclipse by Stephenie Meyers. So of course being the good citizen that I am I purchased a copy to keep it out of the hands of some ‘Spoiler’ blogger, out there who would ruin the fun for everyone else.

No I’m not going to spoil it for everyone. However I will give a couple of hints about the upcoming ‘Breaking Dawn’ Release.

Cover Picture: Pompa’s favorite game to play. Only Prince Erik’s family will get this clue.

Chapter 1: Title is another word for betrothed.

Sorry I really don’t want to break any laws so I won’t say any more. But….

Here is a sneak peak from another site...

Oh my honkin heart, ‘Breaking Dawn’s first chapter was such a good read I won’t embarrass you with how many times I had to re-read it. But it’s ubber-funny. The kind where you laugh so hard tears might smart the corners of your eyes. But that’s only if you are super obsessed like myself. I’m sure if you have never read any of the Twilight Series by Stephenie then you won’t understand half of what makes the written scenes so funny.

The book also includes two tee-shirt iron on transfers. One says ‘Team Jacob’ and the other says ‘Team Edward’. I think I’ll just put them both on the same shirt along with a line stating that I suffer from a split personality. O.K. to be honest I suffer from a few other things but we won't go into that for this post.

Needless to say it was an awesome pick-me-up to a rather hard-to-handle two weeks. Seems little breaks like this give me the boost I need to keep me going. I'm really starting to appreciate the little bonuses that I too often take for granted, a beautiful sunrise, sunbeams shooting through the layers of clouds, lilac's in full bloom, and the occasional 'thank you' from my munchkins.

So I'm off to tuck the kiddo's into bed then I'll put on my giddy-girl smile and re-read that chapter again.

Housewife turned Twilight Obsessed

My trip down to meet Stephenie Meyers on Tuesday wasn’t going to happen, and I had come to depressing grips with it. I even went so far as to offer my tickets to some of my friends because I was having a little crisis with one of my kids. Then it turns out that the kid crisis got postponed for another day and I suddenly had a free afternoon in which to go.

My travel partner changed from Prince Erik, to the super willing T-Rev (who’d have thunk he was a vampire/werewolf fan), to kind of but not really interested Evo-man, and finally to Rkimedes.

Erik begged Rkimedes to go with me saying that he needed a vacation. I think she replied to the fact that he had just came back from a vacation in the San Juans.

'Well, yeah, but I need a vacation from my mental wife.' he replied. So Rkimedes agreed to accompany me to Portland.

I went to Prince Erik’s royal work station to drop off Evo-man and pick up Rkimedes to begin a very long adventure. I was a little worried that I would get too tired to drive since I hadn’t gotten more than 4-5 hours of sleep on Monday night. Thankfully Rkimedes was able to provide enough sparkly and thought provoking dialogue to keep me going. It is so weird to actually talk to another adult for any length of time. I’m so used to the babble of princess talk or game system talk, so it was a welcome refresher.

Right as we got to Portland the wires pulled out of my GPS system and left us in the dark as to how to arrive at our destination. Yes we had an address but we were clueless as to which direction to take. Fortunately Rkimedes pulled down the instructions from her cell phone and we were soon back on track. We then noticed that her cell phone batteries wouldn’t last much longer so we verbally read the directions and tried to memorize them before we were left in the technological darkness again. And we were about 3 turns from our final destination the cell phone gave up the ghost. Luckily our fried brains retained enough of the vital information to get us the rest of the way there.

Since my cell phone was blinking a battery warning we ran into Fred Meyer and bought a charger. Nothing like not having an emergency communication device with you when you have a 4 hour drive looming on the distant horizon.

It was about 6:05 p.m. when we noticed that the Marquee with Stephenie’s name on it had the start time of 6:00 p.m. even though our ticket said 7.

So we quickly scooted to the end of a two block long line. I was misinformed into thinking that we had reserved seat numbers. Nope – first come – first serve. I think we were in the mid-400’s out of a little over 500 people allowed into the theater. So much for buying my ticket on day one and arriving 50 minutes early. The wait never seemed too long and my excitement was mounting as we ran into more and more giggly, bouncing middle-aged women. Prince Erik missed out!

As soon as we were in the theater and got our signed copies of ‘The Host’ I immediately spied a familiar face – could that be the actor Solomon Trimble who will be playing Sam Uley in the upcoming ‘Twilight Movie.’ Oh, my Honkin Heart’, No I didn’t scream even though my thoughts were. Poor Rkimedes graciously took our picture. There were about 5 people ahead of us in line and 20 behind.

I told him I was very appreciative for him to go out of his way to deal with a bunch of crazy ladies. He gave me a big smile and (be still my pounding heart) put his arm around me. ‘Sigh, float, look like a stupid idiot, whatever you do when you’re on cloud nine. He was really sweet and I tried super hard not to be the giggly groupie.

We sat next to a Grandmother from SLC, and her daughter and her daughter’s teenage daughter who introduced them all to the twilight books and gave them all a common subject to talk about. It was a sweet trio and I had to fill them in on all my Twilight browsing expertise about the film, books, whatever they asked.

Even though we were in the 400’s we were able to get our books signed in less than 2 hours.
All too soon we were there. Stephenie Meyers’s hand was a beautiful blur. She must have some vampire speed blood in that hand of hers. She was kind enough to make eye contact and thank us by name for coming. Then it was over, well the signing was at least. We had dinner at a nearby café/pub and were pulling out of Portland around 10:00 with my GPS plugged back in.

I found our drive home to be even quicker and easier than our drive down, except for the two exits that I almost missed while being euphorically tired. It would be wise to apologize to Rkimedes about the crazy driving there at the end. And I think she is a Saint for putting up with me and my bouncing kid-like giddiness for the entire afternoon and evening. That and supplying, like I said, wonderful conversation.

So, I’m proud to introduce my complete collection of the Stephenie Meyer’s autographed library. Wahoo!!!

If I would have had the time I would have made this tee-shirt to wear it would have said this – with a cool logo and font

Front of shirt.

I got my
MBA
Mythological Beings Association
Through The Stephenie Meyer Academic Library

Back of shirt

Courses completed...
X Vampires
X Werewolves
X Alien Invaders
__ Obsessed (but still functioning) Housewife

And if Trevor would have gone with me his shirt would have said.

Human
And still worth loving.

Since we were in the balcony section of the theater I was not able to video the question and answer portion with Stephenie so if someone else does I'll link it here.