Playing Guitar

So, I don't know if you knew, but I am a musician at heart. I love to play any musical instrment I can get my hands on, no matter how poorly. So about a year and a half ago my hubby bought me a guitar. And I fell in love with it. Shortly after he purchased the guitar, I bought the "Learn and Master Guitar" series. It has been an awesome help in learning to play this wonderful instrument.
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The problem is, I can never seem to carve out much time to practice. As a mother I find it hard to pull myself away from my kids! So I guess in the grand scheme of things, I will never be a rock star. (Not that that was ever my goal...) The reason I am writing about this is because even now I feel guilty for taking the time to blog instead of practicing. So if I don't write here regularly, just know that I'm am trying to balance all of the things that I have going on in my life right now. If you have any suggestions on how to juggle all of the little things a mom has to do, let me know! Don't keep those tips to yourself

NIN!!!

I saw the most awesome concert - EVER - last night! Mike took me to see NIN at the Metra last night as a late b-day/ anniversary gift. It was absolutely AMAZING. Hands down the best concert I have ever been to. And I have to say, having bought tickets through NIN.com, I didn't have to wait in line for anything - we were totally treated like VIP's. I love the way everything was handled.





The only complaint I have is that a LOT of the people who attended this concert were complete jerks. The opening act was "The Bug," and the singer happened to be a Jamaican immigrant to London, singing in America. So, being the closed minded retards we are up here, they pulled out the total white supremacist attitudes and booed The Bug. Yeah. REALLY grown up, right? And when Trent tried to play some of the songs off of his "Ghost's" album, they started yelling, "We want our money back!" I thought it was common sense to see what the content of a concert is before buying tickets, but apparently some idiots don't use that thought process.... Oh well! It still rocked HARD! Even being stuck in a mosh pit was worth it to see Trent 20 feet away...




These are a few pics from someones cell phone - he happened to be right behind me taking pics, so you can see the back of my and Mike's heads... and one from another fan. This was after we stepped away from the pot smoking retard in the mosh pit, so we were a little further back in these - but still amazing! (If you have never been to a NIN show, you should check it out on youtube - it is an awesome experience, and the light show alone was worth the money...)

Also, It was Adrian's birthday, so we went to "The Reef," a water park in Billings. It to was amazing! Adrian got to bring Robby along with him, and Abby came to. We let them play and swim for 4 hours before we took them to Toys R Us to pick out Adrian's B-day gift. Man did we all have a fun and busy day!

The car works again!

Stupid car anyway... But Mike fixed it for me! I can't wait to have my heated seats back for the ride to work! Other than the car drama, there hasn't been much going on here at all. Abby is just getting into hair and stuff, so we've spent the last few days figuring out what kinds of "hairdo's" we can give her. She's really pretty good with a curling iron and a straightening iron, so that's awesome! Makes it easier if they're good to start out with! So if you've got any ideas for hairstyles, or beauty websites that she would be interested in, let us know!


Jason and Christina were married on the 19'th of this month... guess they couldn't wait for December! I am happy for them, and wish them the best. I just hope they can be as happy as Mike and I are in our relationship!

Well, it sounds like I'm going to be in Glendive for Thanksgiving, so if ya live there, maybe I'll see ya! (And yes, I'll bring yarn...) Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Mawwage...

I am so excited! Jason and Christina are getting married in December! I won't be the only daughter in law anymore, but I'm willing to share my title as long as it's with someone cool... lol! But really, It hasn't been an awesome week - the car died (again), my furnace is broken (again) and I am nervous about my "employee review." But getting the news about the marriage just made my YEAR! I am very happy for both of them, and for little Mackenzie.

I really hope it all goes well for them! Meanwhile, back at the farm (ha,ha) I am baking up a storm to try to keep the house warm. And I am venting the dryer into the house. All showers are to be taken with the door open and anything else I can think of to keep it nice and liveable in here... It's not really as bad as it sounds - the really nice MDU guy came and brought me two space heaters for us to use over the weekend... Thank goodness for the power guy!

Keeping Us In Stitches

We spent a wonderful weekend in Glendive visiting family and friends. Jason came down to Glendive to help his girlfriend, Christina and her daughter Makenzie move into his mom's house, so we planned an impromptu trip. We all spent the night at mom's, and everything went very well... Until we went home.

About 3 hours after we got home, Adrian cut his foot open. The cut wasn't long, but it was DEEP. Like bones and muscles deep. EEEWWW. So, I had to call Mike at work to come and give us the car so we could go BACK to Glendive to the ER. IN THE MEAN TIME, there was all sorts of drama at work with the kids, so the night just never got any better. Since I had the car, I had to go out to pick up Mike and Gno. Needless to say, there was much talking and general carousing going on at work, so I didn't get home and into bed until midnight. And then got up at four to get ready for work... The girls thought I was going to pass out during the breakfast prayer... Al because of a couple of stitches... (ONE, actually.)

WOW!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! We had a great time at a friend's Halloween party - for preschoolers, of course! Kali got to play with her friends Ki and Jackson for a while, along with several others from nursery at church. (She sure made a pretty princess!) Now it's off to trick-or-treat! Have a safe Halloween!

Trunk - Or - Treating!

We had so much fun at the church last night trunk or treating! And the kids had a GREAT time eating (and sharing!) all of their candy! I really love this time of year - when people seem to be getting together more for parties and just plain get togethers.

Mike and I talked about our favorite church gatherings / parties that we have been to in the last few years. He decided that his favorite is the New Years Eve party where we all get together and play games, dance snack and ring in the new year with breakfast at midnight. I really love all the time we share together with our ward family. It's hard being out in the middle of nowhere without a church building in our town.

So, back to the kids - Kali was a fairy, all dressed in beautiful pink. Abby was a witch - good thing she's not every day! Adrian wore a black gown and had cuts, scratches and scars on his face. I was the lunch lady. (I figured it was fitting...) Mike wasn't able to go this year, but we took a couple of friends in his stead. It all reminded me of how comercial things have gotten, and I can honestly say that it was great to let that go for this party.

I Forgot To Tell You!

Sorry to post twice in one day, but I forgot to tell you about this really cool idea I got from a friends blog! I made a mosaic of pictures using the answers to the twelve questions below. I had a lot of fun, and when I was done we did my kid's mosaics. It makes me smile just to look at it! Thanks for the idea, Ashley! (http://blessedbarnharts.blogspot.com/)

To make your own:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.

b. Using only the first page, pick an image.

c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php.

The questions:

1. What is your first name? Erika

2. What is your favorite food? vegetables

3. What high school did you go to? ccdhs

4. What is your favorite color? purple

5. Who is your celebrity crush? billy corgan

6. Favorite drink? soda

7. Dream vacation? ireland

8. Favorite dessert? cream puff

9. What you want to be when you grow up? old

10. What do you love most in life? family

11. One Word to describe you. LDS

12. Your flickr name (or your blog name or handle or whatever) better-than-ewe

I'm Back

Wow! It's been a long week! I can't beleive all of the car business and family "stuff" that has gone on!

My aunt Cindy in OR got ahold of me yesterday and we were able to visit for a little while. It was awesome to hear from her, since we don't get to see eachother very much. (It's been a couple years...)


I've been trying to work with my guitar a little more - progress stalled a couple months back, and I have since decided that I need to get back on the band wagon. I bought the "Learn and Master Guitar" series from Legacy Learining. VERY worth the money. Steve Krenz is AWESOME to learn guitar from. My falling off the band wagon was NO fault of his, or of the instructional material. I just got lazy...

Tommorow is "Trunk-Or-Treating" at church, and I'm really looking forward to taking the kids. I have to get their costumes ready tonight, so I guess that means it's time to commit to something.

Work, family and friends.

Well, on my way to work this morning, the car overheated. This was of course due to the loose radiator hose which I had assumed my hubby fixed yesterday. (He did spend half an hour with the hood up on the car, after all...) Guess I was wrong! So, after I finally made it to work, the day went very well. I finished the things that needed to get done, with time to spare! I spent an extra hour there to make up for the time I missed yesterday when I was at home, sick. So overall, things went very well!

Fast forward to after school, my daughter got a ride home from her friend and her parents, which left Adrian alone at the afterschool program. On the ay home, he stopped at a friends house to see if he could come over. The friends older brother and the older brother's friend proceded to repeatedly hit my son. Then then convinced two other boys, including my sons friend, to hit him also. We had a problem last year with one of these boys, but now it seems to have progresed. So now I have to call the school and make them aware of the bullying that has been going on. I am not writting this to proffess his inocence, but rather to ask, what would you do if it was your kid? I know that my son is different than the other kids. I know that he is one of the "newer" kids here, even though we have been here two years. But is that enough reason for the parents of these children to turn their heads while their children bully others?

(This goes as far as the parents of one of these children telling my kids that she was going to call the cops on them for walking on her sidewalk.) What kind of world are we living in?

MY CAR IS FIXED!!!

So, I was driving to work on Tuesday when my car died. When I got into the car, I knew something was wrong. When I started the car, the low charge light came on. I didn't think anything of it since it was only in the thirties that night. Maybe the battery didn't have much of a charge since it was cold kinda thing. So SURELY I could still drive to work, right? The alternator would just charge the battery while I drove, right? Except, I had lost my belt that makes the whole alternator business work.

Long story short - it's 8 miles from my house to my job. I made it 5 miles. So, at 5 in the morning I got to walk 2.5 miles before someone stopped for me. Luckily it wasn't to cold - a nice balmy 36 out that morning. Since we had our big snow storm the Sunday before, I was feeling lucky that the skies were clear. And it was very peaceful.

Back to the car, it only cost about $45 to fix it. Considering I thought it was going to cost about $200 for a new alternator and installation, I feel very blessed that it was something so small.

On another note, I am now certified in the state of ND to distribute meds! I was walking to work that morning to do the first half of my med certification - finished the second half yesterday! (I do have to do clinicals, but that is going to happen in the morning, and is a technicality since we did do clinicals during class... So my new title is.... "Erika Billedeaux, CMA." Hooray for me!