It's Fiesta time!

Texas 24... Ohio State 21. Our beloved Buckeyes lost with only 16 seconds left in the game. Total heartbreak. Even the homemade BBQ chicken sandwiches doesn't make up for it. :(

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An Egg Sandwich Made Me Cry

Got up, made a toast & egg sandwich and had that with hot chocolate. Took a Project 365 photo of said sandwich. It reminded me of how much mom loved a good fried egg sandwich for breakfast. Then while I was watching church and singing along, I just suddenly started tearing up. I was reminded of how much my mom loved to sing and praise her Lord & Savior. She had such a joy when she sang. No matter how she felt or how sick she was, she always perked up when she sang. It's one of my favorite memories of her. She had unbridled joy when she sang. I'm sure she's in heaven now, singing with the angels in the biggest and most unimaginably majestic choir. The thought made me full of joy for her, but full of sorrow for me missing her. I ended up sobbing on the floor, where Todd found me and held me for a long time. It's been a while since I've had such a strong memory and emotional reaction to missing my mom. I was reading Lauren's (mlpieters) blog and found some Bible reading RSS feeds there. I subscribed. What a great way to keep up with Bible reading, which is one of my spiritual goals this year. I spend a lot of my time online everyday, so why not have an RSS feed of daily Bible reading? A plan the someone feeds me and all I have to do is go into my Google Reader and read it. Just like someone's blog. It's not tedious. It's not heavy to carry around. My study Bible is so big and heavy, that when I fall asleep reading it in bed and it falls to the floor with a big loud thump, I get startled! So here's some links, maybe you can do it too if you want. http://entirebibleinayear.wordpress.com/ http://www.esv.org/biblereadingplans http://www.biblegateway.com/blog/?p=106 Todd and I had Indian food buffet for lunch at Delhi Kitchen. It was packed! So yummy. Then Trader Joe's. Then Target, where we got a bunch of Christmas ornaments and garlands for 90% off. It was practically free! I got 8 packs of light blue and silver ornaments for a color-themed tree for next year. I bought some desk organizing stuff so I can start anew and try to keep my desk clean. I'm so bad with my desk. It's messy all the time. Then we went to Starbucks for a Vanilla Rooibos tea latte, it's new! Came home and tried to organize all my stuff, esp the stuff on my desk. I found a bill that came in November that was due on Jan 1st. Oops! :(

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It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood...

It started out raining and gray, but it got better later on. After I got up in the morning, I got on the internet. I went from one thing to another, and before I knew it, a couple of hours had passed. The interwebs sure can be a serious time suck! In order to do what I set out to do for this year, which was to spend less time on the computer and more time running and doing social things, I peeled myself away from the computer and put on my running clothes. Then we looked outside and noticed it was gray and wet. Oh well, at least it wasn't hot, right? So off we drove to the coast of Encinitas to run our usual route. The roads were wet but I liked the smell of the fresh rain. I ran relaxed and felt very good. Of course, I brought my camera with me. :) I took so many good photos that could represent TODAY for my Project 365, but I chose this one because *I* stuck to my goals and went out running today, and I'm proud of that. The photo is at Swamis, where we usually stop to take in the breathtaking views and run the stairs to the beach. I stopped to take a photo of this scene, because how could I not? I know I'm blessed to live here and run here. I ran all the way up right past the Self Realization Center. Their usual sign was replaced by this: At Swamis, I love to look at the tile design on this very cool memorial: A long-armed self portrait: We have a lot of long-arm photos from when we don't bring our tripod. I should make some layouts about long-armed photos, with a bunch of them splattered on the page. :) The skies were still kind of gray, depending on which direction you looked. But the way the sun was peeking out and hitting the water was just right. After our run, we drove to Bongiornos to enjoy our first pizza lunch of the new year. I was good and had a salad first: then only ONE slice of pizza: Todd and I made a new dish tonight, a recipe from Cooking Light called Smoky Meatballs in Serrano Ham-Tomato Sauce. We made it in our new red dutch oven. It was a lot of work (about 2 hours worth, including simmering time) but the flavor wasn't as rich as we had hoped it would be. Perhaps it will be better tomorrow as a leftover. I took a couple of pics but that was after I had uploaded the previous pics from today already, so I'll add the photo next time I blog. Here's the photo:

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Project 365

A lot of photographers and digi-scrappers are doing Project 365 this year. I wasn't planning on doing it, because I need LESS projects/commitments, not more. But I have my camera with me in my purse every day already. And it seems easy enough. So I'm going to try it. And if I miss a few days, I'm not going to get discouraged or feel guilty. It's a great way to document the everyday moments of life. And I think it'll help my goal this year of making my scrapbook pages more meaningful. What? You like seeing page after page of photos of me and Todd? Well, no worries, there will be plenty of those still. :p My Project 365 photos will have the date and a little bit of summary journaling on them. Here's today's photo:

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Starting out the year right.

I woke up around 7:30 am and watched College Gameday in bed with Todd. It's my favorite fall Saturday morning ritual, and it was the last one of the year! Totally fun and luxurious. Then we went downstairs and started watching the bowl games. I made some cherry almond scones from the scone mix that Todd gave me for Christmas from World Market. It was awesome! I love that it's not too sweet. Todd cleaned the house, took down the Christmas tree, and generally did a LOT of cleaning. I was on the treadmill for 30 minutes, which I really wanted to do to start out the year. I watched a bowl game while running. What could be better? I also did sit-ups and push-ups. Around 2:00 pm we went to AJ & Meera's house to watch the Rose Bowl. Meera made Mexican food: taco soup, taco meat, salad, spanish rice, guacamole, and enchiladas. All was yummy! We got to meet a bunch of AJ's cousins. And WOW, Andon is running now! Todd watching the Rose Bowl: AJ smiling for the camera: Meera emailed me a couple of hours before we left to ask me to bring my video of my 2008 scrapbook pages so that she could see it. I was just excited that SOMEONE wanted to see it, LOL! So even though Meera subscribes to the RSS feed to my gallery at My Scrapbook Art so she's seen almost all my layouts already, she still liked my video. She also told me that she read my blog this morning. Based on her comments, I know she really read my blog and didn't just skim it. I'm so proud, sniff. So we left AJ & Meera's house around 5:00 pm with our tummies and our hearts full. A great way to start the year.

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