♥Sherri's Paradise♥

My family met at Bluestone Camp & Retreat to spend a much needed long weekend together.  My Mom and Dad drove up from SC and we drove down from Charleston, to meet in the mountains.  Bluestone Camp & Retreat is owned by the Presbytery of WV, which I work for and is a marvelous place to be.  We hiked and fished and just relaxed and soaked up the fresh air and sunshine.  Joshua loved it and has decided that he wants to live there.   There are tons of hiking trails and we spent Sunday wondering around on them.   We enjoyed the company of Basil and Fritz the dogs and Louise the horse.  We went up to the lodge on Saturday night and played “Apples to Apples” and had a funny and scary (for the girls, mom and Amanda) experience with a terrified mole. It ran around blindly for an hour before Joshua caught it with a box and Ev put it outside.  It was so scared it pooped it’s pants!!  Joshua did some kind of a tribal dance of capture!  LOL  Joshua and Ev played a lot and almost caught a fish, unfortunately there are no pictures of the “one that got away!”  On Sunday night we went down to “The Point,” which overlooks the lake and built a fire, roasted marshmallows and had a wonderful time.  Amanda and Ev played a really dirty trick on me on Monday.   We were in charge of putting out the fire and we did a good job, but were all really leery of leaving it, just in case.  Well, on Monday morning we started to see smoke coming from the area where we had had our fire, so Amanda, Ev, Joshua and dad went down to investigate.   I was so upset, thinking that somehow our “extinguished” fire had somehow been reborn in the night and caught the place on fire. Amanda comes running back up and says “It looks like we left an ember and it reignited and set the hillside on fire!!”  I almost died, I got really upset and almost started to cry, when Amanda says just joking some guys down by the river are burning debris!  I wanted to choke her!!  Not funny, well it is funny now, but not then.  I have attached the entire album and hope that you enjoy the pictures as much as we enjoyed the weekend.

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Easter morning Amanda had to come wake Joshua up, but you can bet Jenna was up bright and early. They had very beautiful Easter baskets (the Easter Bunny sure knows how to fix a basket at our house). The only problem we had was that Jenna wanted everything in Joshua's basket she did not want hers, she wanted his. Amanda would give her something out of her basket and she would weasel her way around to Joshua's basket. She was too cute and Joshua was very gracious and patient with his little sister. He was so excited to give her the books he got her for Easter and to read them to her. It was a very wonderful Easter!

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Joshua’s Gramma asked him if he would like to go to open mike night at her Church.  They offer one night a month where kids can perform onstage in front of an audience.  Joshua was very tentative, but with some encouragement from his Gramma and Nana, he decided to go for it.  He and his Gramma worked hard on writing and practicing a ton of jokes.  Joshua did a great job and there were a couple of little boys in the audience that really enjoyed his performance.  It was a fun night and Joshua is going to perform again.  Maybe he has been bitten by the performance bug.  Thank you Gramma!!

Commonly referred to as a “mustache”. There are many types of staches….some staches are BIG, some are small…some are young, some are old.

Joshua’s daddy got him a pack of “staches” for his birthday. And being a funny boy….he LOVED them. We had the “papa stache” (which Nana was wearing) the “stern general” the “friendly barber” and the “Ev”. Jenna loved her new stache, until she discovered that with little effort she could actually lick it. What fun!

Other interesting staches….

Courtesy of Manda's Munchkins

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on.
At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated,

'If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.'

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part ):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash........

Twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single 'This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation' warning light.

I love the next one!!!

7. The airbag system would ask 'Are you sure?' before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again be cause none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You'd have to press the 'Start' button to turn the engine off

PS - I'd like to add that when all else fails, you could call 'customer service' in some foreign country and be instructed in some foreign language how to fix your car yourself!!!!

Joshua and his friend Tanner had a great time decorating and eating the Valentine cookies that Amanda made for them.  She even tinted the icing red.  They put sprinkles and sugar on them, like cookies with icing don’t have enough sugar, lol.  We all enjoyed the cookies, but Jenna liked the bottles of decorative sugar and sprinkles much better.

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My mom sent these to me and me having a moose fetish I have kept it and now want to share it.  I think these animals are incredible and amazing, as their chocolate selves, but in vanilla, wow!!!!  Enjoy!!

Not one, but two!  Truly amazing!  These animals were photographed just north of the Wisconsin border on a highway near Marenisco , MI .

Once in awhile there is an opportunity to take in a piece of nature that you may never see. In these days of unrest and turmoil it is great to see that Mother Nature can still produce some wondrous beauty.

 
The odds of seeing an albino moose are astronomical and to see this in the upper peninsula of Michigan, near Wisconsin , is even greater than astronomical. To see two of them together is nearly impossible.

You will probably never have a chance to see this rare sight again. This is a really special treat, so enjoy the
shot of a life time.

We woke up this morning to around 3 inches of fresh snow.  It was one of those beautiful snows that sticks to all the branches and boughs and just looks like a winter wonderland. 

We ate breakfast and then got to work looking for scarves, hats, gloves that match, boots and extra layers.  Amanda and I got to talking about all the coats and boots and scarves and gloves that we used to have on hand, back when she was little.  We got more snow back then and needed more protective clothing and boots and stuff.  Now we are lucky to get a snow that we can go out in or for that matter have a decent sledding snow.  Well, we did find enough clothing and we wrapped Joshua’s feet in plastic and put his tennis shoes on him.  I was the only one who had boots and they were hiking boots, but they worked just fine.  We finally found our inappropriate gloves and set out to play in the snow.  We tried to build a snowman, but the snow was too fine and there was not enough of it.  So then we decided to do some sledding, well we don’t have a sled so we used a storage container (Amanda called us ghetto, lol) and when that didn’t work we resorted to trash bags, well, the snow wasn’t deep enough, so we spent a lot of time scooting. 

We gave up on sledding and Joshua and I made snow angels. 

Then we decided to just have a snowball battle.  That was a lot of fun and wore us out.  I am glad that we had a snow that we could play in and that Joshua got to enjoy his mom and I by himself for a little bit (Jenna was with her dad).

Joshua’s class had a Valentine’s Day Party at school on Friday.  It was also early dismissal and Joshua’s friend, Tanner was coming home with us.  So, it was a very fun and exciting day.  Joshua had asked me before he went to school if Jenna could come to the party.  I picked her up at daycare and we headed to Joshua’s school.  We played games and had goodies.  The Jello Jigglers were a big hit. 

by Francine Hardaway

“CSR for Dummies” is an Earth911.com series highlighting the different pledges and commitments made by companies in regards to product stewardship and recycling. Companies and services featured do not pay for placement and are not endorsed by Earth911.com.

PepsiCo is an international conglomerate that employs approximately 185,000 people worldwide, and its products are sold in approximately 200 countries. With this clout, PepsiCo has the means and incentive to drive environmentally conscious changes in its industry.

Pepsi released its CSR report, “Performance with Purpose,” at the end of last year. Since it’s almost time for the next one, the company recently released an update to tell investors (and consumers) how it is doing on the goals set in the last report. Keep in mind that PepsiCo’s CSR is written within a “reporting framework” called GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), which larger companies follow so their reports can be measured  “apples to apples.”

Like many companies today, PepsiCo is trying to make the world better a better place, while at the same time helping its bottom line. This dual mission includes meeting consumer needs for convenient foods and beverages, but also reducing the company’s impact on the environment through water, energy and packaging initiatives. It also supports its employees through a diverse and inclusive culture that recruits and retains world-class talent.

Pepsi has made significant progress toward its long-term environmental sustainability goals, which include making the following reductions by 2015, as compared to 2006 levels:

• Water consumption by 20 percent
• Electricity consumption by 20 percent
• Fuel consumption by 25 percent per unit of production

In order to attain these goals PepsiCo has launched a number of initiatives:

Recycling

Among these environmentally conscious programs, the company practices a wide variety of recycling strategies:

• PepsiCo’s beverage cans are made from 40 to 50 percent recycled aluminum.
• At Frito-Lay, cartons used to transport bags of chips to retail stores are reused several times before recycling, reducing the demand for paperboard in the U.S. by 250,000 tons annually.
• Its paperboard recycling  saves more than 4.5 million trees from being harvested and diverts about 500 million pounds of cardboard from landfills annually.

Water

Across the world, PepsiCo has saved nearly 1.5 billion gallons of water in 2007 compared to 2006. To do this, the company uses a combination of new technology, information sharing and employee initiatives that reduce water consumption and increase reuse.

In the U.S., the company is using a proprietary air-rinse technology to clean newly manufactured Gatorade and Propel bottles with air instead of water, saving almost 150 million gallons of water per year.

Comprehensive “water mapping” was instituted at manufacturing facilities at the Walkers crisps business in the United Kingdom, reducing the amount of water used per kilogram of crisp by 42 percent between 2001 and 2007. Additionally, its India beverage business conserved over 500 million gallons of water in the last two years.

Electricity

PepsiCo also purchased renewable energy certificates (RECs) to equal 100 percent of purchased electricity used by all of its U.S. facilities. The three-year purchase of more than 1 billion kilowatt-hours annually became the largest purchase to-date.

Additionally, at the Tropicana facility in Bradenton, FL, the orange juice storage system was converted from an ultra low-temperature freezer system to cool refrigeration that preserves the juice’s freshness without freezing it. Ironically, this change improved the taste of the juice, while it saved the equivalent electricity needed to power over 7,000 houses.

At the Quaker facility in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the development of an innovative milling process saves almost three million kilowatt hours of electricity per year - the same amount used by 250 typical American homes.

Fuel

The Frito-Lay manufacturing facility in Modesto, CA, inaugurated a solar concentrator field made up of large curved mirrors that move with the position of the sun, focusing the heat into tubes of glass filled with water. The water is converted into steam, which helps heat the cooking oil used to make SunChips.

In addition, there are two U.S. PepsiCo manufacturing facilities that use landfill gas, thereby reducing their consumption of fossil source fuels. At several facilities in India, PepsiCo uses local biomass material to run plants more efficiently with less impact on the environment. Similarly, Frito-Lay is installing a new biomass boiler in its Topeka, Kan., facility that will use wood waste for fuel. In Mexico, the Sabritas business conserved enough fuel in one year to serve 3,400 homes.

Check out more information at http://earth911.com

Joshua and his uncle, Devon played the day away on Sunday.  They played Star Wars, played in the fort, cut down bamboo, tried to plant said bamboo, played in the sand, built a moat.  We caught Joshua out in shorts, made him change and then we look out again and they are bare footed, decided to just let ‘em play. 

During our Scrapbooking weekend, my daughter, Amanda and I had a chance to see and use the new Cricut Expression.  It is the larger version of the original Cricut.  We already have and love the original Cricut, but were blown away by the features and updates on the Cricut Expression, plus the sizes that you have available are awesome.  There are a few drawbacks with the new Cricut, portability is an issue and if you only want to make a couple of letters you still need to use the 12x12 mat (we tried the smaller mat and it didn’t work, bummer).   We are going to use it to make letters to use as a border around the scrapbook room, like the words, create, inspire, imagine, etc, etc.  They sell vinyl that you can cut with the Cricut that has repositional adhesive on the back so that you adhere it to your walls and then remove it if you want to change the look.  We may even use it to do something in the foyer upstairs and I have a wall in my bedroom that is just screaming for some kind of artwork.   We also got to play with some different cartridges at the crop.  Neither of us had ever made any die cuts or shapes, except for some flowers and both of us fell in love with both Animal Kingdom and Stretch Your Imagination.  I made horses and trees, Amanda made a baby for one of Joshua’s baby pages.  We fell hard.  I started doing some research and found a site that had the Expression for sale with two cartridges and you could pick your other two, so needless to say, we now have four new cartridges for a total of  eight.  George, which came with the original and is very cool, Jasmine, which is a curly cursive font, very pretty and feminine, Tear Drop, has a cute dot on the ends of all the letters, like a tear drop, Animal Kingdom, which has die cuts of all kinds of animals, Base Camp, which is a chunky masculine font, Accent Essentials which came with the new Expression and has a bunch of cute accent shapes, Stretch Your Imagination, has tons of shapes, critters, trees, flowers, etc and also a stretched version of each and Plantin Schoolbook, which also came with the new Expression, has a font you can modify six ways, tags, envelopes, cards, bags, and basic shapes.  There are a few more that I would like to have, Storybook, Graphically Speaking and another one that I don’t have the name for and has not been released yet.  These machines make my scrapbooking so much more fun and interesting.  I have learned many techniques and different ways of scrapbooking, but I have to say that the Cricut way is the best way.   It is easy and fun and now we have added markers.  They replace the blade and you can mark out the shape you want then the machine cuts around the picture for added definition and interest.  We are still learning how to use that feature.   Amanda made Joshua a box for his Valentines at school and she used the Cricut to cut all the shapes and lettering, it is the cutest thing ever.  I hope to get a picture of it to post, it is darling.  I have many scrapbook pages in

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Well, we are getting more snow.  I only made it to work two days this week and had to be picked up one of them, since my driveway is a solid sheet of ice and we couldn’t get our cars out.  Had a bunch of plans to get a load of stuff done today, but mother nature has other plans for me.  She wants me to just slow down and watch the white stuff.  It has already snowed about two inches and if it keeps up like this all day, we will have some nice coverage.  The only problem is that this snow if falling on top of ice.  The snow that is beneath it is crunchy and hard.  It looks soft and beautiful, but there is something nasty underneath. 

We moved into our new home in April of 2008.  We were so excited that we were going to have a scrapbook room.  We had both had dedicated rooms in our old homes.  Fast forward to January 2009, we still do not have our scrapbook room, with the birth of my granddaughter and everything else taking precedence, the scrapbook room was on the back burner.  We would go in there and fumble around trying to find stuff or look for things we needed, but everything was still packed in boxes and bags.

So we went to an overnight scrap on January 16th and decided then and there that when we got back home it would be time to fix our scrapbook room and playroom.  So it began.  Amanda was lucky to get a desk/bench combo thing from work that they were giving away and we already had the basic bones, so I removed the old desk (the two by four and grey counter top thing in the left hand corner) and Amanda’s dad and boyfriend carried the new piece down.  I worked for several hours getting it cleaned up and in place, it was way heavier than it looks and now it is just beautiful in it’s new home. 

I had to cut down the wire shelves with a hacksaw and that took forever, but they are now functional and look much nicer than before.  I am quite the handywoman. 

Amanda had always used a shelf system made of boxes and you put these cloth basket things into them, I think they are called cubes or something.  I had bought one for myself because I liked them so much, so I then put mine together and we decided that they would look and work great if we put them together, so I built mine and stacked it on top of Amanda’s and then bolted them to the wall.  I think they look fabulous.

Amanda and her boyfriend carried all of the tables downstairs and I set them up and somehow by some miracle they fit in the space that we had perfectly.  There are only inches to spare.  It was kinda weird that it worked out so well and that we just happened to have two 6 foot tables, one 5 foot table and a 3 foot table.  My side is the junkie side with my buddy Jodi’s picture and Amanda’s side is the neat as a pin side.  LMBO

I had an old futon that we kept out in the sunroom/playroom and we decided that it would be a good idea to move it into the scrap room so that we could use it as an extra bedroom if needed and it fit perfectly, also.

I also got a small fridge to use downstairs and we thought it would work in there great, so we moved it into the room also.  Now you would think that this room would be overcrowded, but it isn’t.  There feels like a warm and cozy space, Joshua calls it the safe room, he loves being in there.  I guess if we ever needed to shelter in place, we would have the perfect room to do it in. 

Guess I am going to have to install a bathroom in there next.  hmmmmmm……..LOL

Well that is the end and we made good use of our snow day today, arranging and sorting through our stuff.  I can gladly say that we now have an awesome scrapbook room and that we will get hours and hours of enjoyment out of it.  So here it is coming and going.  I hope you enjoy the tour.