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June Already?

amy@amyrene.com — 2010-06-07T23:11:53-04:00

Wow! Okay, so I didn't update once in May. Sorry about that. Guess I was a little pre-occupied. Well, JT has been out of school for about two weeks now and we're already bored. I can't believe it's summer already. It kind of snuck up on me this year. Seems like the year is flying by. The good news is that means the next couple weeks should fly by too and then Melinda will be here! Yea Minda! My niece is finally coming to visit me and she's going to be here for long enough that I can abuse her and make her babysit while I run errands and maybe, just maybe... have a date night with my hubby. Who by the way I met 13 years ago tonight. :-)

In other news... Jon was gone for two weeks in May. He went back to Iowa for a week when he picked up his new car and then he was in Chicago on business for a week following that. Two weeks is a long time! Luckily Mom came to visit for a few days while he was gone so that broke things up and distracted JT a little. He really missed his daddy! Plus he was really excited to see the new "daddy car" because it's a convertible. I've got pictures of his first ride in it. The dealership gave JT a BMW cap and he already had some sunglasses so he was one pretty cool dude driving around with the top down. At least for the first 10 minutes or so before he fell asleep. I'll see if I can add the pictures to the Pictures & Videos page for you. If you can't find them let me know and I'll email them to you instead. I may have better pictures on my camera, I just haven't downloaded them yet.

I don't think I know much else. I'll try to do better about updating and uploading pictures.

Love you!

Cute Bear Story

amy@amyrene.com — 2010-04-28T22:50:45-04:00

Okay, one quick Bear story before I go to bed. I shouldn't do this. Every time I say something positive about JT he acts the opposite and has a bad day the next day. But today he was so sweet I thought I'd share.

JT brought home a cold last Thursday. Other than not liking his nose running all the time it really didn't phase him. Of course he was kind enough to share his germs with me. Despite my constant hand-washing I still got sick. This morning I was coughing a lot and I was having a hard time. He looked at me very sweetly and said "Are you okay Mommy?". I was honest and said no that I didn't feel well and that it hurt when I coughed. I told him I may try to go to the doctor while he was at school and asked him if it would be okay if I was late picking him up from school. He was fine with that and fine with the idea of taking a nap at school with his friends. Well, I didn't make it to the doctor so I picked him on time and he was very happy to see me. He was very sweet all afternoon and wasn't bossy or anything. He even let me rest. Normally he wants someone to play with so I usually try to play with him or pay attention to him. Today I kept falling asleep and he just let me nap while he played very quietly and watched TV. I was hoping he'd nap too, but he never did. After dinner I talked him into going up and getting ready for bed early and he fully cooperated. Here's the best part.... before getting in the shower he had to pee so I put him on the potty. He's decided he doesn't need the potty seat any more so he was on the regular toilet. He wiped jumped down. The very quickly cried out that he needed to go again. I went to lift him back up, but he had jumped back on by himself. Then he sat there until he pooped! And it was a good poop! I was ecstatic that he went poopy on the potty all by himself and made a very big deal of it. Hopefully it will encourage future acts to go just as smoothly. Then we got cleaned up, put our pjs on and came back downstairs to play for a while. When the timer went off he picked up his toys, took his vitamins, grabbed his water and we went up to read. We read three stories and turned out the light. He didn't argue with me, he didn't fight for one more story, he just cuddled with me and fell asleep.

Okay, so maybe it's not a traditional cute Bear story, but it was very sweet the way he took care of me all day. I thanked him for being so caring and sympathetic. And at one point while we were playing he called me "mother dear". It was cute. He was very grown up and loving today and it was probably the best medicine any mother could ask for!

That being said... I'm off to sleep the rest of this cold off. Good-night!

Record Sales!

amy@amyrene.com — 2010-04-27T17:43:07-04:00

Yea me! This April goes down as my personal best so far! At least, as far as Creative Memories goes! I made record sales this month, more than doubling my past "best sales" month! I'm very excited that it went so well and I'm hoping it continues as the summer approaches! Wish me luck!

Back from Spring Break!

amy@amyrene.com — 2010-04-19T11:55:37-04:00

Well, we went to Iowa for Easter and ended up being gone for nine whole days. Now that we have been back for a week I finally feel like I'm getting back into the groove of things. But tomorrow is my birthday and that means the month of April has flown by way too fast. Every three months I have to make a sales quota to stay in business with Creative Memories. My three months is up this month. That means I have ten days left to meet my quota and I still have a ways to go. I really need to focus on getting some more orders. I've been working the business hard this month and I have a lot of people "thinking" about this or that and checking out my website, but so far only two orders. I guess getting my website and pictures updated is going to have to wait until May. Right now I'm going to concentrate all my efforts on staying in business. If you're interested in helping me out please click on the Creative Memories link to go to my website and place an order. So until May... TTFN!

Busy Week

amy@amyrene.com — 2010-03-29T23:41:09-04:00

I'm going to try and be better about keeping at least the blog up to date. I don't know if the rest of the site will be as lucky, but I'll try and do this much. I have a busy week this week. It's pretty normal routine for Jon and JT, but we are thinking of going to Iowa next week for Spring Break and I have a bunch of stuff I want to try and get caught up on before we leave. So far today I'm off to a good start. I got some laundry done and some cleaning done. I got my other blog current and online finally. I have a plan of action for the rest of the week. Now I just need to go make my bed and sleep in it! (I washed the sheets today).

But if we go to Iowa for Spring Break I might not get this site updated the first week of April like I usually try to do. So I'm being proactive and posting before April 1st instead so say hello and Happy Spring! The weather is suppose to warm up this week and this afternoon the sun finally came out so things are starting to look a little brighter here in Michigan!

Good Parenting!

amy@amyrene.com — 2010-03-19T16:14:43-04:00

I'm going to take a moment to pat myself on the back. I won't do it on my other blog or on FB because I don't want to offend anyone. But I am very proud of my son and myself. We just spent about three hours with a couple other children that were just wild! Normally kids fall under the "monkey see, monkey do" spell, but JT remained true to himself and was well mannered and calm. He was still goofy and still played. He is after all still a little boy, but he was also a very good listener and did as he was asked. When the other boys were invading his space he politely asked them to please stop. They didn't listen and continued to be wild and loud, but I was very proud of JT. I don't know if it's the lack of vaccines, if it's the homeopathy, if it's the school he goes to (he kept repeating "1-2-3- eyes on me" which is what his teacher says when the kids get wild and she needs them to listen), or if it's just good parenting. Right now, even though I know it's a combo of all of the above, I'm going with good parenting. I love my little boy and I think he's pretty cool! He's not a jock. He's not an outdoors-man. But he's smart and funny and very lovable! Best of all he's MINE! Sorry Jon, but saying he's OURS just isn't the same, but I'll share him with you. :-)

Happy Tuesday!

amy@amyrene.com — 2010-03-09T15:58:31-05:00

I love Tuesdays! Preschool, then Kindermusik, then naptime! Yea for Mommy! I spend my morning working my Creative Memories business and I spend my afternoon getting caught up on everything else! Today I've been very busy, but still feel like I have a hundred things to do! It's crazy!!! But the sun is out and it's almost 60 degrees so I'm not complaining!!!
JT just woke up so I'm going to get off the computer. I just added a few new videos so check those out. I'll update everything else at a later date!
Love ya!

A Great Day!

amy@amyrene.com — 2010-01-27T23:33:41-05:00

JT and I had a really good day today. It seems like silly stuff, but there were so many firsts today that it seemed worthy of sharing. First of all, when it was time to get dressed for preschool JT decided he didn't want to wear Pull-Ups, he wanted Thomas underwear. He happens to have Thomas The Tank Engine underwear so I decided why not! He's been going to preschool all month and really enjoying it. He's been keeping his Pull-Ups dry since 1/16/10. So today we put the two together and it was his first day of wearing big boy Thomas underwear to school and all day long. And yes, he kept it dry ALL day, even through nap. So I was very proud of him for that! Second, when he got home from school we changed into some clean clothes. He helped me move all his clothes down a drawer or two in his dresser yesterday so that he could start picking out his own clothes. Scary thought I know, but he's been asserting his independence a lot lately! So today was the day, he went up, picked out a new outfit, and he put it on by himself. I told the doctor he could dress himself and I suspect he probably was capable of doing it before today, but today I made him prove that he could do it! I wouldn't have put that shirt with those pants, but we weren't going anywhere so I didn't care. The point was he picked it out and put it on himself! Third trick... we have a baby gate by his bedroom door so that he can't escape in the middle of the night and so I can lock him in during time-outs. Today, he opened the gate by himself and came downstairs. He wasn't being punished or anything, he was just playing in his room because he needed some quiet time. Apparently he was done with quiet time and decided to let himself out. Fourth fun new first... I baked cookies today and I made a big chocolate chip cookie as an experiment. It turned out goofy shaped, but yummy so I let JT use his heart cookie cutters that Grandmom gave us for Christmas and we cut out a bunch of heart cookies for Valentine's Day. It was fun and he enjoyed getting to use the cookie cutters instead of just playing with them on the family room floor. And last, but not least, JT rented his first DVD today. I decided to sign up to Netflix for the remainder of the winter so we could see some new movies. JT has been wanting to see Alvin & The Chipmunks so we rented it and it came in the mail today. It seems like no big deal to most, but he thought it was really cool that he got a movie in the mail and we snuggled on the couch and watched it until he fell asleep. Then we just napped on the couch together for a while. After a day of being such a big boy, it was nice to have my baby bear snuggling with me again. Then we had dinner and took a bath and read stories and went to bed. Now I'm staying up way past my bedtime to get this website a little more caught up. All in all ... it was a GREAT DAY! And now to upload all this and go to bed! Someday I'll try to get some videos posted too. I think I need to update RapidWeaver (my software program) before I get too wild and crazy with this thing. But I'll try to keep posting stories in the blog at the very least. TTFN!

Pictures! Finally!

amy@amyrene.com — 2010-01-27T23:31:01-05:00

I've been trying to update this website for how long now? I thought I had more pictures up and would only have to do the Fall and Winter pictures. Nope! Looking at my site tonight I discovered I only had The Children's Museum and The Henry Ford pictures uploaded and The Henry Ford ones didn't even work (broken link). So I went through all of my 2009 pictures and I have A LOT and I picked some of my favorites. I tried to get at least one from each month. I didn't go over board with birthday pictures or Christmas pictures or anything. Just a little sampling so you can see how he's changed over the last year. Hope you enjoy them, let me know if you have any problems viewing them.

A New Look

amy@amyrene.com — 2009-12-11T22:55:48-05:00

Welcome back to amyrene.com! It's been several months since I've updated my website. I've been wanting to change it around a little bit and make it easier to post pictures and videos of JT since that's what most of you are interested in. I just haven't made the time to totally re-work the site the way I wanted, but tonight I decided I needed to get something done. So keep in mind that it's still under construction, but I'm trying out some new things. Feel free to let me know what you like and don't like about it. Keep in mind as you're reading through some of this that I'm trying to keep it simple for JT's grandparents and my grandparents. So, grandparents of all skill sets, if you can't access anything or have problems pulling up anything please let me know so I can make sure that you're getting to see all that is J.T. Long! :-)

A Little About Me...

amy@amyrene.com — 2009-12-11T22:11:37-05:00

Interests & Hobbies:
Scrapbooking - this is my number one hobby and my current stress-reliever! I love to work on my albums and I love sharing them with others and helping others preserve their most cherished memories too. Living Legacy albums have become a goal for me. I think they are more meaningful than Memorial albums! Feel free to ask me what the difference is if you're not familiar with either one.
Children – I love everything about them from babysitting to charities to just observing them and admiring their innocence and curiosity. J.T. and I are involved in some play groups and it's just fun to watch all the different personalities in these groups. Watching JT grow up has been a lot of fun!
Dolphins - I collect mostly figurines and jewelry. Wyland is by far my favorite artist!
Environment & Wildlife - Please help take care of the dolphins and the pandas! Collectively, as a species, we have to take better care of our environment and do anything we can to prevent global warming. The weather is out of control!
Disney - the store, the movies, Walt Disney World, Walt Disney Land, and I collect the musical water globes, sweatshirts, and stuffed animals. Dopey and Eeyor are my favorites.
Alpha Xi Delta:
I was a sister of the Sigma chapter as was my sister. I met three very special women there who became some of my best friends. If you would like to learn a little more or if you are a sister and haven't found our national web page, you ought to check it out. One of my favorite parts of the sorority was our philanthropy - Choose Children.

FAQs About Me

Q. Why "The Princess Playground"?
A. Because I'm the Princess...

... and this is my Prince and Castle.

Q. Favorite Shows?
A. Sitcom: I don't watch much TV any more.
Drama: I really don't have the time for drama... of any kind.
Soap Opera: Days Of Our Lives (for the last 20 years)
Reality TV: Dancing With The Stars

Q. Favorite Color? Do you really need to ask?
A. PURPLE

Q. Favorite Animal?
A. Dolphins

What else would people like to know? Send me an email.

Digital Diva

amy@amyrene.com — 2009-03-03T15:11:38-05:00

Hey Everyone! I'm trying to figure out how I can easily host videos, training and entertainment, up on my site. I've got a page called Digital Diva up and so far all it has on it is the CM Digital DVD link. There wasn't a way to explain what it was so I thought I'd just write up a quick blog about it. It's a great introduction to what Creative Memories has to offer right now. I got a lot of stats at convention and I hope to post some of those soon too. Right now I have to switch back into "mommy mode". More later!

As Seen On TV

amy@amyrene.com — 2008-04-03T16:00:31-04:00

I know no one reads this stuff, but I feel like writing it anyway. I bought the Back To Basics Hot Cocoa maker after using my sister's at Christmas time. I really like it. I love hot chocolate and this is really easy to use!
My other As Seen On TV purchases have been a little less exciting. I tried the Pancake Puff Pan. I apparently don't know how to use a cast iron pan, because both times I've tried it I've succeeded in making a big mess, but producing nothing edible! I also bought the Magic Bullet. It's actually a pretty handy little thing. I've used it a few times now. I'm a little worried though. Last time I used it it kind of smelled like smoke. I read on the web if you don't use it exactly as the directions say to then it breaks pretty easy. I think I'm using it right, but then again who knows! The jury is still out on the Magic Bullet.

Creative Memories

amy@amyrene.com — 2007-09-24T23:08:28-04:00

Hello Scrapbookers! I'm considering signing up with CM again. I have a lot of stuff to buy for this little guy's baby book. I was just wondering if there's anyone out there that would like to place an order? I'm thinking I may only sign up if I have enough people interested in placing an order. Email me if you want more details.

Does Anyone Read These?

amy@amyrene.com — 2007-09-24T22:57:34-04:00

I try really hard to make it to Christy's blog and Stephanie's blog once a month. But I never seem to think about updating my own. Does anyone read these messages? Should I be writing more often? It looks like I could do some cool things like enable comments, set up podcasts, and use RSS, but most of that is foreign to me so I don't know how much I'll get into the bloging thing. I may try it for a while though.
Right now there's just not a lot to report about that I haven't written about in other areas. We're focused on moving in and getting settled. To keep us from going crazy and to get us out of the house, JT and I have joined a MOMS Club to meet some new friends. So far we've really enjoyed it! I'm looking forward to a MOMS Night Out Wednesday to go to a crop at someone's house. I really enjoy my scrapbooks, but I never seem to accomplish much here at home. I do better when I go to crops. I'm also looking forward to our field trip with the group on Thursday. We're going to go to a cider mill. I've never been to one before so it will be a first for both JT and me. I hope to buy some cider, donuts, and apple crisp while we're there.
Well, it's getting late. I should get this published and get off to bed. Good-night!

Chain Letters/E-mails

amy@amyrene.com — 2005-08-02T12:44:00-04:00

A friend just sent me another one of those messages that at the end asks you to forward it on to more people. I appreciate these emails because I know that it's the only way some of my friends have time to say hello. But I don't believe in chain letters so if and when I do pass them along they are usually cleaned up and free of forwarding requests. If you think it's a joke or a message I'd really like please send it to me. Otherwise, just a quick email saying "Hello, I'm thinking of you." will work just fine. In kind, I'll try to do the same. :-)