How to celebrate a new year Ramirez style

I've waited so long to complete this post that I don't want to procrastinate a minute longer even though it lacks captions and stories. So, enjoy the picture (and video) show of our new year's trip to Ruidoso, NM to visit family and ski Apache.

Things I love about Kansas City (the seasons)

Kansas City really is the perfect place to live if you want to experience a change in seasons without being miserably hot in the summer or buried in snow all winter. It's hard for me to say whether I enjoy spring or fall more. Watching the leaves change colors, a slight nip in the air and roasting marshmallows over backyard firepits are something I look forward to each October. This past fall, I took a series of pictures of the same tree in our backyard over a period of two and a half weeks so I could share what we experience here with our friends and family who live in the Southwest.

October 4, 2008

October 6, 2008

October 7, 2008

October 10, 2008

October 11, 2008

October 12, 2008

October 14, 2008

October 18, 2008

October 19, 2008

October 20, 2008

October 21, 2008


Admittedly, when the trees are bare and brown, the grass is dormant and all the flowers are dead, it's not very pretty here...until the first snowfall.

100% Weird

****REVISED to add #8****

I've been tagged by Jennifer. I'm supposed to tell you 7 weird things about myself. That shouldn't be too hard!

1. I LOVE spinach with red wine vinegar. I crave it and will even eat it as a late night snack.
2. Ever since I took typing in Junior High, I mentally "type" in my head. It's an annoying nervous habit of mine. It's probably a symptom of OCD, but I try not to think about it too much. It's probably also the reason I can type obscenely fast.
3. I bite my nails down to the nub. I can quit for short periods of time, but I always start back up again.
4. I love to squeeze people's arms, specifically the bicep area and preferably people I love like Willie and the boys. I've done this since I was a little girl.
5. I hate beer. That may not seem very weird to some of you, but I have been in plenty of social situations where it sure felt weird.
6. I'm a total dork who loves dressing up for Halloween, doing silly jumps off the diving board, making up dumb songs to sing to my kids, etc. Does that make me a fun Mom or an immature weirdo? Wait, don't answer that.
7. I really like to address envelopes. I tried to come up with something better than that, but I'm tired from last night's Halloween festivities and the brain is not up to full speed.
8. I just decided to update this list by copying Jennifer. My closet is organized by category (i.e. short sleeve, long sleeve, sleeveless, t-shirts) AND everything is in color order, something I picked up back in my days of working retail at Ross Dress For Less. And, yes, I hang my t-shirts. I also hang my shorts and all my pants, even jeans. I once organized my friend Terri's closet. How's it looking Terri?

I almost forgot that I'm supposed to tag 7 other bloggers. But you know what? I get stressed out sometimes when people tag me so I'm not going to inflict that potential stress on anybody else. In fact, I am still stressing about Wende's tag to tell my love story. The scanner is now hooked up, but I'm having trouble with the software for it so until I figure that out, no love story. It just wouldn't be complete without some pre-digital pix that I have to scan.

I'm also trying to locate the cord for my camera so I can get lots of photos from Halloween and our trip to Phoenix downloaded, but so far, it's still MIA.

Past Halloweens

2007 - Back View

2008 - Front View

This is me and my Mom in 2007, but it's actually my costume from 2006. When I get the scanner working, I want to post it again because Willie was a tourist Grandpa and we rocked! We even won the neighborhood award, which is a hugely coveted and very competitive contest. By the way, "me and my Mom" is proper grammar, even though it doesn't sound like it. If you are a regular reader, you know I am a freak about good grammar.

Garth & Wayne 2006

I almost didn't post this one because of my double chin, but what the heck...I have no shame!

She's back...

I promised my sister I would blog about our night out on the town during my visit to Phoenix so check back tomorrow evening and I'll try to have the pix downloaded and everything ready. Meanwhile, I thought this cartoon was pretty funny, especially in light of the fact that last year, I dressed up as a large bag of trash (Willie was the garbage man), the year prior, I was Garth (Willie was Wayne - Wayne's World, get it?) and the year before that, I was a tourist Grandma....not very bimbo-ish, huh? If I can ever get my scanner working, I need to post those pix. Oh wait, I think I have a digital copy of the garbage costume. I'll check on that later this evening.

Priorities

I like blogging. I really like blogging. In fact, I like blogging so much that I occasionally, well actually I often read blogs and write my own blog when I should be doing other stuff, important stuff like taking care of my family. So, I am imposing a temporary moratorium on all blogging activity. I don't know how long I'll be gone, as long as it takes to get my priorities back in order, I guess.

I really stink at managing my time. Anybody want to share their tips for success?

On a lighter note, if you look closely, you'll notice that in the picture above, the closed sign is posted on a Taco Bell menu. How appropriate is that for me?!!

Exploding Twinkie

Ever wonder what would happen if you stuck a firecracker in a Twinkie? Adam and I came up with this idea a couple weeks ago, but have been unable to enlist Willie in our twisted plot. So, last night while he was gone, we recruited a young neighbor to help us with this explosive experiment (with his parents' permission, of course).

Pre-explosion

Post-explosion

One more time....let's finish this thing!

It wasn't pretty, but it was fun!

While I was working on this post, Olivia Newton-John appeared on the Early Show and it got me reminiscing about one of my all-time favorite singers, thus the Olivia Newton-John tunes you are being treated to if the volume on your computer isn't turned down.