What's up with the winning?

Cropper Hopper Grand Prize
Originally uploaded by CreativeExile.

I'm not really in a mood to write, but I figured I'd post this picture and see what happens.

This is what I won from Cropper Hopper (their $500 Grand Prize) at CKU during the Campus Crop Thursday night, after they called two other names and those ladies weren't present. After my extremely emotional day, I could not help but let out a rebel yell when they called my name.

The silver cart is one thing I really wanted. Also their paper holders; I already have two and was considering buying more.

I did not expect their photo cases to be of much use, but I've spent the last week emptying out old video/photo boxes and filling one case with 1990 photos, the other with my "ought" photos (so far).

Their 7"x10" storage box came in handy for the task of emptying out 3 ancient "magnetic" (GASP) albums from my high school years. I spent most of Thursday and Friday (when I could grasp a moment from Benjamin's crawling attempts and attendant grumpiness) and one box is now full of memorabilia from 1979 to 1984. I was fond of newspaper clippings back then. Amazingly, some of them made it out of the magnetic albums, most poignantly, articles on John Lennon's shooting.

Now I'm just looking for a moment here and there when I can sort out the mess of paper I have. I can easily do this craft budget "diet" just by stepping into my scrap room and re-organizing the crap that is in there.

Well, Ben is up from another 45-minute nap. Of COURSE when E had him yesterday (while I was at Mega Meet), Ben took one of his glorious 3 hour napfests, but today, Mother's Day, when I could REALLY use a break, alas. Back to work.

Oh, and Friday I went to the Zone's Mega Meet crop and won the new Simple Scrapbooks Album Shortcuts "book" (that looks like a magazine, but they feel perfectly at ease charging us $15 for...a post for another day). So another event "paid" for itself in my winning. Kinda spooky.

Loss

My father-in-law passed away Thursday morning after a long battle with prostate cancer. Right now I am too exhausted from CKU to write with any sense about it. I'm hoping a picture truly is worth a thousand words.

And yes, I checked with E and there was nothing for me to do to help, so he said Please Go and I went to CKU.

I have a CKU set at Flickr for anyone who stops by and wants to check them out. To any CKU gals stopping by here, THANK YOU so much for the kind words, hugs, tissues, and all the support that got me through this difficult, weird, and exhausting weekend.

Grrrrr CKU

Grrrrr CKU
Originally uploaded by CreativeExile.

Friday the 13th, right? Well, my strange bad luck with CKU has been going on for a week now...none of my emails have been going to any of the Yahoo lists I'm on (I'm on 3; the main one, my "dorm" list, and my album track list).A message I sent before I left for Florida, showed up after I got back! It seems to have itself for now, though.

My Handbook CD came in the mail and it's in a million pieces. Okay, not a million, but enough that there's no hope of reading anything off of it.

I can't even speak about my FIL; the news is too horrible to mention, E is over there every other day helping his mom move him and wash him. She starts every phone call to E with "he's still breathing," which I guess is her way of calming him down from the start (I'm sure E dreads seeing their phone number pop up on his cell screen...)

On the bright side, Tess has my camera (yup, the Canon. I know, E holds his breath whenever he comes home and sees her handling it. She's very responsible with it...so far).

She has captured some very sweet images of Ben, and Ben with me, then she becomes her usual silly self.

Family Dinners

Family Dinners
Originally uploaded by CreativeExile.

This is the first photo I thought of when I signed up for Tracy White's Fondest Memories album track at CKU. You have to come up with 19 (why 19?) black and white photos or combination of photos to fit a 6"x8" space on each page of your memory album.

There's my handsome Dad on the left. His sister (whose basement this is) is standing in the background behind him.

Many of our holiday dinners (Christmas and Easter) were spent at my Aunt's house. She had six kids and lived in a small bungalow in Wyandotte. We always had to eat at various tables set up in the basement.

I so looked forward to going over there; I was her godchild and with her family of six and our family of four kids, I was the only one of my siblings to get a Christmas gift. Ooo, my sister was always so jealous. As baby of the family she always got special attention, so I was especially happy for the extra notice.

One down, 18 to go...and it will depend on the photos I can muster up.

My old site

Since I'm sending everyone from CKU over here, if you want to know more about me, I've been blogging as Creative Exile (thus my Yahoo name) here at Blogger for a while, but can't blog photos from Flickr to that site anymore. Feel free to check out my old site, since I can't seem to find the time to update this one just yet...soon!!

I'm in...

ALBUM TRACK
-----------------------
Friday 8:30 am - 5:00 pm, My Fondest Memories Album Workshop,
Instructor: Tracy White, Editor, Creating Keepsakes

SATURDAY
-----------------------
8:30 am - 10:00 am One day, One week, One month, One year
10:30 am - 12:00 pm The Star of My Life
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Memories Under Glass
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm The Main Event
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm Chip Off the Block!

Congratulations, and welcome as the newest member of the Creating Keepsakes University student body! You are now officially registered to attend CKU-Detroit, April 19-21, 2007. We can't wait to greet you on campus.

Whether I stay in remains to be seen. But I decided to register for CKU and see what happens. My dad has more tests to go through and their Florida trip has been bumped out to March-April instead of February-March. If all goes well they'll actually be back in town April 15th, which gives me time to get the kids up to them so I have those days clear.

If I have to cancel, I'm only out $50 and bragging rights.