Tangie's Blog

My Sissy's baby has arrived!!!!!!!!!!!

Merrill Frances joined us in time for the festive holidays (right on her due date December 18th)! Coming in at whopping 9 lbs 1 oz and 21 inches long! She is Sooo cute!!!!!!!! And I've even forgiven her that she came so early in the morning I couldn't make in time to see her born. *wink*

These pictures are as good as I've got right now from my camera phone.

 

Mom's Birthday Weekend

 

This weekend was so great! Another trip to Mesa...I think I've been there the last 4 weekends out of 5! Saturday we had a great day! First of all it was my mom's birthday. She is an amazing woman my mom, so beautiful and courageous!

We started the day out by going to Costco! WHOA. I haven't been there in a long time. Scare me with how much I had in my cart just from the movie and books section! I got a hold of myself and put most of it back before I *actually* checked out though! I got Dave the most fabulous present but I can't say until after the holidays...he's around the blog too much! :)

Then we met my sister and her hubby Tim to see a movie called Noelle...none of us knew anything about it. Turns out it was about 2 catholic priests, we were wondering where it was going at first but it turned out to be absolutely fabulous IMHO. It has a very personal meaning for me so I think I enjoyed it more than anyone else in my family. Still...I think it's worth seeing. Plus I think we should support all the "good" wholesome movies as much as we can.

Then we said good-bye to Molly and Tim and headed over to Bath and Body Works. HOLYMOLYSHOMLY they were having the STEAL of the century 5 for $25! Plus I had a coupon for $10 off any $30 purchase. HELLO! That hour of shopping made me smile from one ear to the next!

Then it was off to Target. Oh be still my pounding heart. I love my Target. Oh how I miss my Target! We were there for...umm...2.5 hours??? LOL It was fabulous! We found all sorts of perfect treasures for this and that.

Then we went and visited my Aunt Sharon. She's not been doing very well, it was so good to see her, I have so many great memories of her and love her so much. I promised I'd send pictures of my house! She loves to decorate and collect antiques and she's always been so sweet to me about my house...so I got those off in the mail today!

Then we went to Matta's! It was so not good but was still more delicious than any mexican food where I am now. Plus even a bad day at Matta's is hardly a bad day! hee hee. Molly and Tim and the kids met us there. Her kids were absolute angels, it was SO fun to play with them and chat while we ate Province was flirting with all the old people, she had them wrapped around her little finger). Then they headed home to put the kids to bed and me and mom headed to Staples to get gifts for the agents at the office. Then we went to Chili's to pick up a gift card for her last present she needed and then.............are you ready for this....we head to Target AGAIN! Can you believe I forgot stuff I needed? Things like oh...batteries? You know the stuff you run to Walgreen's for on Christmas morning? LOL I'm trying to avoid that at all costs this year.

Then we went to Molly's and visited awhile. We kept trying to talk Molly into all kinds of crazy ideas and contraptions to put her in labor, she wasn't having any of that talk. She insists the baby is easier to take care of inside her tummy even if she can't walk ;). She was having a few contractions though...so MAYBE soon!!! I'm all packed and ready to leave at a moments notice. I BETTER NOT MISS IT!!!!!!!!!!

Then mom and I and Samantha went home, Sam fell asleep straight away and me and my mom tried to stay up and watch Harry Potter OotP. We couldn't do it though...to tired from our long day! So we finally went to bed about midnight....I left early the next morning to arrive in Thatcher just in time for church...and the good news is....this week....NO TICKET!

I so love my family and miss them so much! But I treasure them all the more now when I do get to see them. I don't know how my sissy Ali has done it all these years, she must be one strong lady (love you sis!)! Someday we'll all be in the same city again....right!? Of  course right!

Only in Arizona...

Arizona really is a fabulous place to live at times. Standing in the middle of the desert my husband snaps this post card worthy shot! It was a BEAUTIFUL day yesterday!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Happy Birthday to Dave! We've had a great day...this morning we went to Gabi's for breakfast (the best breakfast in town! which isn't saying much but I'm not complaining it was tasty!). Then after work we made dinner as a family--MMmmm steak, grilled onions and bake potatoes! Delish! Dave already got his present so we didn't really open anything and we were all to full to have dessert! But we were going to have hostess cherry pies with a candle! We'll save it for family night on Monday instead.

Wondering what Dave got for his birthday? 19 Books. Yup the man loves to read, so my mom and I went to Bookmans on my surprise trip last weekend and dug through all the bookshelves looking for rare and out of print books for him! Of course he knew what he was getting since he was "there with me by cell phone" trying to help me--that place was OVERWHELMING! :) We found tons and at $2 bucks a piece it was a B-A-R-G-A-I-N!!

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my sweet niece Madison too, who is turning the big 9!

Text Message.

Okay so I just don't have time to make this post cute or even try! LOL So pretend this is a text message to your phone. Although I *refuse* to use text message spelling...we're raising a whole generation of kids that thinks "Are you happy today?" is spelled RU:)2DY?

Halloween! Oh my where do I even start? It was Samantha's "official birthday" my little girl is TEN how is that even possible? I think I better do some bullet points for this day or this post will be 1200 pixels long!

• Dave and I leave work EARLY--we have to get ready for these 400 trick-or-treaters that are coming. We decided to rush home and try to put up some surprise decorations all over the front porch for Samantha (I was just to crazy busy to decorate this year). So we find the boxes in the garage from the move and set to work as fast as we can (it was a BEAUTIFUL day by the way so we had all the windows and doors open! I love the weather in our new little town!)
• The best TREAT EVER! I knew my mom was coming up for a visit and to check on the office, plus you know...to be there for Samantha's birthday. She calls me on her cell phone and tells me she'll go pick up Samantha for me not to worry about it because she's almost in town! I'm thinking oh that is FABULOUS more time to decorate! Well about the time they should be getting home I look down the road and I see a black Tahoe coming--I almost cried because it made me miss my sister SO MUCH (she has one). I was SHOCKED to see that it WAS my sister!!! She surprised me by bringing the kids up with my mom!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• So my mom and sister help us decorate because all these Trick-or-Treaters are supposed to start coming at 4:00. Well...we wait. and we wait. and we wait some more!
• Then about 5:50 it starts getting dusky--here comes a few--hooooray! I'm thinking I guess not all my candy will go to waste! And THEN about 6:05 the masses started pouring in, we stood at the door and gave away candy for TWO HOURS NON STOP! I raided my pantry, found all the fruit snacks and snack packs of chips, everything I could find--we finally just had to close the doors and turn out all the lights! We know we had over 500 at our house!!!!!!!!!! We could hear them out there until 9 pm! So we would have had we're thinking at least 700 or so kids! CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT! They had traffic police on every street! It was insane! (We also found out we better get ready for Christmas! It's non stop drive through traffic in our neighborhood to look at Christmas lights!) LOL I'm going to need a small bank loan every year for candy and lights!!!!!
• Samantha looked adorable in her "Out of this World" glitzy glam orbitz sort of space girl costume, it was so fun that Auntie Molly was here to help her with that she LOVED it! Dave took her trick-or-treating to a few houses with Tank (our Italian Greyhound) I'm sure Samantha is a little old for trick-or-treating but hey we didn't get to do that in Mesa when we lived there!
• The kids looked ADORABLE in their costumes, Province sat in a rocking chair by the front door in her little witch costume for over an HOUR and said "Hweewo" to everyone that walked up. She even said "twik wr twt" a few times I know she did!
• It was an amazing night and I will treasure it FOR A LONG TIME!!!! I now it's going to be ages before my sister gets up here again with the new baby when it comes. I have to admit that after they left the next day I cried for a long time, I miss my mom and sister so much! Sometimes I wonder how in the world I ended up so far away from them--but--I can't think like that, it's not going to help anybody! KEEP MOVING FORWARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy cow if this was a text message I'm SURE I would be over my monthly allotment! But on to the next stuff!!

Samantha's Birthday Party! WOW was that fun--we had 12 girls in our house doing.......what else? SCRAPBOOKING! They all made journals "diaries" to take home! I'll write more about this later I really want to share some pictures! I was so glad that we were able to do the party for her, we invited 12 girls and I was really worried that because Samantha was new, not many would come, all of them came but 1! I am SO GLAD she has found some great friends here! She is so sweet and needs some good friends!

Last but no least! DSD-Better known as Digital Scrapbooking Day (well it lasted the whole weekend!) Can I just say I'm exhausted LOL who knew working on the computer could tire you out?! :) But believe me I'm not complaining IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!!!!! We got a lot of new customers to drop by and check us out--I'm so THRILLED with how everything turned out our first year! I gave away tons of prizes on the boards (with the help of my super star creative team!) and just really enjoyed myself!

Hmmmmmmmm your phone bill maxed out yet? CUL8R! *giggles*

Happy Birthday Pachie Guy

Today would have been my Dad's 59th birthday! So happy birthday to the Pachie Guy, sometimes it still seems unreal that he is actually gone, but I'm glad I have my faith to keep me going :) The small blessings in life seem so much more real and important and so many lessons have been learned.

So many people have asked me for the "life sketch" I gave of my Dad's life at his funeral service. I've finally updated it with the things that I added and have uploaded it HERE for any family or friends that would like a copy.

I hope you enjoy your families today and all the blessings life has to offer! Loves!!!

EDIT: I just realized that digifree blog picked this post up as a freebie. I'm sorry ladies, I do have freebies quite often but not today! ;) I do have an older freebie available still in THIS POST!

A little of this a little of that.

Today was a great day, filled with...lot's of...work! Yes is that shocking or what? Hey that's what I do is work. Actually we all work all day it's just different kinds! We're having a big audit at work next week and holy moly is that a lot of pressure on me, I'm sorta starting to hyper-ventilate when I think about it too much, so I try not to think about it! :) It will be fine it just takes quite a bit of preparation on my part so it will go smoothly.

We're loving life here in Safford still, there is a huge hole without my dad here to make it all so fun and exciting, but I don't have any regrets about picking up and moving here to work for him. It's turned out to be such a wonderful experience for our family. Dave LOVES his job and is a totally different person ( he never ever complained about his last job really, but I knew he was unhappy) he is just so happy now and wonderful. Samantha likes school! What a blessing!! I was so worried about it, she has a good teacher and she has made some good friends! Nothing can be better than that.

Nighty Night! I can't keep my eyes open working in photoshop for another minute!

My heart is full.

To say that it has been quite a blur and or whirlwind the last few days would be quite the understatement. Life has been turned upside down as we planned and prepared for my father's funeral. But, as I sit here tonight my heart is so full of life and love. So full of hope. I just have been blessed with such a peaceful feeling. Life will be hard without my dad, he was just one of my greatest friends, but I know that "everything will be okay" because that is what he always told us.

I appreciate ALL the love and support that so many of my friends have been throughout this time. Thank you! My sister brought up an amazing thing yesterday at the luncheon after the funeral, how wonderful and sweet it is that we have no regrets. Really. How wonderful! We have no regrets on how the funeral and services turned out, it was all perfect. We have no regrets in our relationship with our Dad, we loved him and he knew it, he loved us and we knew it. We never missed a chance to tell each other we loved each other. Never missed the chance for a hug, never missed the chance to sincerely ask each other how things were going. How sweet that comfort will be in the years to come. What a great thing to strive for in all of our relationships in every aspect of our lives. No regrets.

I'll be back home soon, and I'm sure I'll be back digi-scrapping thinking about that "American Dream" because after all... I am my Father's daughter :) And loving every minute of it.

See you early this week, with the regulary scheduled craziness as always before. Loves!

The day you think will never happen to you.

Some may say I'm a crazy person for sitting here blogging tonight, and they may be right but, there is no sleep to be had, nothing else I can think of that I can do. For today was the day that you know is coming, but think won't happen to you. It's the day you get a phone call at 11:15 AM and they tell you to drive down to Mesa as fast as you can get here because your dad is having a massive heart attack. It's the day that at 1:00 they call you back while your driving through a small Arizona mining town, telling you it's too late. It's the day that your 58 old father who you idolize, worship and adore has passed on from this life. And what are you left with?

You are left with nothing more than your faith that God is in control of our lives. That he knows best and that his will and not yours will be done. It's the day you realize that there was some great adventure on the other side of the veil that no one could do but your Dad. It's the day you strengthen your resolve to live life more fully everyday. It's the day where you swear you will write all your precious memories of the hero who could never die.

It's the day you find you have courage deep in your soul to conquer the world ahead of you, the day you decide that no matter what you will make him proud, that you will carry on his dream. That you will treasure the moments you had more than you could ever imagine. The day you pray that all the lessons he taught you and the wonderful example he was will always be whispering to you in your mind while you make the hard choices.

Today was that day for me. And by some healing power that I believe comes from heaven as I sit here in his chair,on his computer, in his office, the very place he left us. I feel calm and reassured that he will always be with me and that he loved me more than I could have ever imagined.

One of the dreams my dad had for me was to be able to open my shop, my very own digital scrapbooking shop. Not even more than a few days ago, he looked at my blog with a huge smile on his face, told me how proud he was and he said "What can we do to make this happen for you?" And that statement right there says EVERYTHING I loved about my dad.