Part I of our Washington Road Trip

So on Tuesday we returned from an 8 day road trip around our gorgeous home state of Washington.  I actually had a hard time trying to figure out where to go on a WA trip when we were planning this.  It seemed much easier last year when we planned an Oregon road trip, and of course, there are always tons of things in other states that you want to see.  But when it's so close to you, you take it for granted.  Anyway, we ended up coming up with some fabulous places to visit and our first stop was Lake Chelan.  It was a long but gorgeous drive to Chelan, WA, and we stayed at a fabulous place called Darnell's right on the lake.  Other than spend part of a day at a water park, we did a whole lot of nothing, which was fabulous.  The kids just had a great time going from the lake, to the pool, to the hot tub and back.  Dale and I had a fabulous time hanging out by the pool, watching the kids and reading.  Hannah was quite the waterbug and would close the pool down about every night.  Even though we had more exciting things planned for our road trip, we were actually quite sad to have to leave Chelan.  We plan to go back there next year for an extended stay and hopefully can convince some friends and/or family to join us.

Here are some other highlighted photos from Lake Chelan.  I will be back tomorrow to post about Part II of our road trip.

Happy Belated Birthday Owen + Birth of a New Cousin

Unbelievably, my baby turned 5 July 27th while we were gone on vacation.  At the time, we were in Lake Chelan and we spent part of his birthday at a water park.  Initially, Owen was not thrilled to be at the water park and not having a good time, but eventually he warmed up to it and had a great time playing in the splash area and going down some of the smaller slides.  This is how Owen spent his birthday. 

 Here's the big birthday boy on his full hand birthday. 

So since we were gone, we had his birthday party today.  Owen has been very into dinosaurs lately, so I came up with a prehistoric volcano cake complete with smoke. 

The photo below shows the true essence of Owen.  His uncle said tonight at his party that he thinks he'll be a comedian on stage someday.  He even performed a little song for us that had us all in laughing tears.  He definitely does keep us all entertained, and it has been such a fun and fabulous 5 years with this "not so little anymore" man around.

Speaking of birthdays and little men, I was honored to be able to witness the birth of my newest nephew and the 9th cousin in the McDonald family.  Bryson James was born just after midnight on August 5th.  He actually isn't such a little man either.  He was a whopping 9-1/2 lbs. and such an adorable little chunky monkey.  Look at all that hair too--one day old and he already has a faux hawk.  Owen was so inspired that he wanted a faux hawk hairstyle for his party as you can see in the photos above. 

Happy birthday Owen and "birth" day Bryson.  We love you both so much.

U2 Concert & Seattle Visit

Last weekend, Dale and I finally got to enjoy the gift that I gave Dale for Christmas, the U2 concert.  We actually totally lucked out on even getting to go.  We've always talked about seeing U2 and discussed it when they were supposed to be in Seattle a year ago, but never actually got tickets.  Then Bono had to have surgery and the tour was put on hold for a year, and at Christmas, I thought, "Hey, I'll just see if there are tickets," and there were.  We've had to wait 6 months, but we finally got to go, and it was so worth the wait--even for those who did originally buy tickets a year and a half ago.  It worked out perfectly that we were able to bring the kids up to Seattle and stay and Grandpa Robert and Grandma Pom's new house just south of Seattle and leave the kids with them while we went to the concert.  We also couldn't have asked for better weather.  It was the perfect night for the semi-outdoor concert in Qwest Field.  Lenny Kravitz opened, and he was very good, although had sound issues and I don't think was very happy, but U2 was AMAZING!!!!  The 360 stage was incredible and apparently takes 20 semis to haul from place to place.  It looked like a big space ship landed in the middle of the field, especially when it got dark and had lights coming out from all over it.  The 360 degree screen was amazing and allowed you to see the guys "up close" from all sides even though we were pretty far up.  I do kinda wish I would've bought better seats--maybe next time.  It was definitely a concert of a lifetime.  Here was one of my favorite songs of the night, and it definitely was fitting for the evening.





Seattle skyline with hazy Rainier to the right

After getting home late Saturday night from the concert, we managed to get up and get going to downtown Seattle with G'ma, G'pa and the kids to show them downtown.  We went up in the Space Needle, and it was a gorgeous sunny day and you could see the mountains all around.  Unfortunately it wasn't quite as clear as it had been the day before, so Rainier was pretty hazy, but the Olympics were gorgeous.  It isn't often, that you get this view from Seattle.  The kids weren't quite as impressed, and were pretty much ready to go back down as soon as we got up.  We did go down and ride the monorail more downtown to walk down to Pike's Place Market.  Again, the kids weren't extremely thrilled.  We should've thought out better what they would enjoy doing.  Anyway, it was still a great trip and great to see G'ma and G'pa's new house and hang out with them.  Unfortunately we had bad news upon coming home when we learned from the neighbor that was taking care of the animals, that Hannah's guinea pig, Fudgey had died.  That put a little damper on the weekend, but Hannah has seemed to recover and is just looking forward to school getting out and summer vacation.





Puget Sound with Olympic Mts. in the background

Happy Birthday Grandma (& More Stuff)

Today is Grandma Sharon's birthday, and we want to wish her a fabulous day. We wish we could be there with her, but we will be seeing her in about 3 weeks, so we can all give her birthday hugs then. Happy Birthday Grandma!!! See you soon.

In other news, last week, Owen graduated preschool. It's always so funny to see those little kids in caps and gowns. As Owen put it before his graduation program, "I'm excited." He did great and even got up at the microphone to sing a little song.

I cannot believe that he will be in Kindergarten next year and up at the "big" school with his brother and sister. It will be nice having them all at the same school--at least for one year before Hannah moves onto middle school. I can't say I'm 100% sure Owen's ready, but the way our weather is shaping up so far, we'll have all summer to stay indoors and practice our alphabet flashcards. He has definitely grown and changed a lot over this year, and we are very proud of our little graduate.

Last week, we also had Pride Night for Hannah and Justin at school. It's pretty much what we always called open house where they show us different projects and things in their class. The 4th and 5th graders also do some performances. The 4th graders every year learn to play recorders in music, and the music teacher said that Hannah's class was the best 4th grade class she's ever had. She said they picked it up so fast and is the first class she's ever gotten to play certain notes like f sharp, that rather than just play a few songs on the recorder, she had them do a little play as well, so they did a little western play and then interspersed their music throughout. We don't have video on this, but they did sound pretty good.

Well that's it for now. Hannah and Justin have about 2-1/2 more weeks of school and then summer vacation begins. Really hoping some summer weather will come along with it. We need some sun!!!

Dango Girls' Blog Hop

Welcome to the Dango Girls' Blog Hop. I'm so glad you hopped on over to my pad. We've got a lot of fun coming your way for the weekend and through the week. If you just happened to hop on over here and didn't know about this blog hop, then hop on over to the Scrapdango Blog where you can get all the info and should start this hopping good time. Okay, enough with all the hopping. Let's get down to scrappiness.

We have a brand new DT over at Scrapdango, and this blog hop is a way to introduce them. You will learn a little about each of them, and they will each post a challenge. You have until next Friday the 20th at midnight EST to post comments on each blog and to complete the DT challenges. There will also be other ways to earn draws, and one lucky person is going to win a fantastic prize of one of Scrapdango's fabulous kits chock full of scrappy goodness. To see a breakdown of how you can earn draws and where you need to post your draw totals, hop back over to the Scrapdango Blog.

So this blog hop is to get to know the new Design Team. I am not part of the Design Team but am the owner of Scrapdango and had the incredibly hard job of just having to choose the new Design Team from so many wonderful applicants. That really is the hardest part of my job, but I think I picked a fabulous team, and I am very excited to be working with them and to see what they do for their first reveal coming up in a couple days.

So I guess I am supposed to share a little bit about myself. I have been saving memorobilia and taking photos and making scrapbooks ever since I was a kid, but I have been scrapping as I know it now for about 11 years. As it seems with a lot of people, my scrappy obsession really began when I was pregnant with my first child. I became even more obsessed with scrapping, though, once I found online sites like Scrapdango where I could share with so many other ladies who understand my obsession. Scrapdango has been my scrappy home since July of 2008 when I was chosen to be on the Design Team and then I ended up purchasing Scrapdango just over a year ago. Besides being a full-time mom and small business owner, I also teach aerobic classes 4 x per week and have just currently been hired as a photographer for a wedding photography company. I am very excited about this because I have always wanted to be a professional photographer but just wasn't sure how to take that step on my own.

So here are a few random things about me that even those who've been on Scrapdango for years may not know about me.

• I have actually had amnesia. In 5th grade, we were sliding on a patch of ice on a concrete floor during recess, and I slipped and knocked myself out. A classmate carried me into the office and they called my mom to come get me, but I was out cold. I remember briefly waking up in the office but have no recollection of what happened other than that and when I woke up at home, I didn't know who my mom was or where I was for awhile. Apparently they weren't too concerned because they didn't even take me to the dr.


• I had a 4.0 GPA all through school and was the high school valedictorian. In college, I almost maintained my 4.0 GPA all the way through getting a Master's in Environmental Engineering. I got one B+, which I still don't think I deserved. ;)


• I cannot stand to eat anything with a slimy or squishy texture so no mushrooms, scallops, oysters, clams, or anything else with a funky texture.


• I love the sk8er look and would so dress like a sk8er if I were younger.

Okay, that's enough about me. Now onto my challenge for you. This challenge came about as part of my mission over this week to get my piles of layouts organized and into scrapbooks. Sadly over my 11 years of scrapping, I've only actually put together one complete album--my oldest child's first year. But I have been piling up layouts for about 4 years now and decided it was time they get put into albums. One album in particular that I started to organize was Christmas. I currently have all the Christmas pages I've done put into the album and I know where I need to fill in. So besides just organizing the layouts, I also started scrapping a lot of old Christmas photos to fill in some of those blank spaces. I actually did 9 pages this week and made a good dent in those photos. One problem that so many of us have with Christmas and other holiday and big event photos is that there are soooooo many of them and we feel like we need to include them all. Over this week, I found that by putting a bunch of photos into a grid collage pattern in Photoshop and then printing them out as one photo made it so much easier. I also found that keeping the layout simple and using minimal embellishments was helpful in getting those photos scrapped. So my challenge to you is:

• Scrap holiday or big event photos


• Use at least 5 photos and put them in a grid collage pattern--they don't have to all be printed out together but even individual photos must be in a grid collage pattern.


• Pick one embellishment and use at least 5 of that embellishment--in my example, I used a lot of tags to make a quick and easy border.

The photo of my example is not great because it's in the album, and with all my work to get it in there, I didn not want to take it out to lay it flat to photograph, but you get the gist.

Heather's Pad <===You Are Here
Laura's Pad <===You Go Here Next
Celeste's Pad
Megan's Pad
Ellen's Pad
Vanessa's Pad

Wedding Photography

I can't believe it. I haven't posted in months, but here I am posting twice in one night. I wanted to update on all the family stuff, but I also am very excited about a new opportunity I've been given. The previous owner of Scrapdango, Carrie Leavitt, and now owner of Camera Art Photography has asked me to help her in her business as a photo journalist photographer at some weddings this summer. As you all know if you follow my blog at all, you know I am passionate about photography and I would love to do it professionally, but taking that leap has always been a scary prospect. Taking photos at weddings seems especially daunting because who wants to be responsible for messing up the photos at an event that cannot be repeated. But this was the perfect opportunity because I would be a 2nd photographer in charge of the "extra" side shots, getting different angles and closeups, while the main photographer is responsible for all the traditional formal shots. I'm getting a couple weddings, including my first this past Saturday, to "train," so I was actually a 3rd photographer, which took a little more of the pressure off. It was a LOOOONNNGG wedding. We were there from 1:30 to 10:30 pm, but it was a great experience, and I am really happy with what I ended up with and learned a lot about what worked and what didn't. It was a great couple and wedding party to shoot, and these were some of my favorite shots I got. I'm going to do another "training" wedding May 14th, and then I will get a chance to be on my own as the photo journalist. I'm really excited about where this may lead. I just may make it as a professional photographer yet someday.

All photos are property of Camera Art Photography

Playing Catch-Up

Wow, how did it get to be Spring Break already and the first week of April. My last post was in January, so I am waaayyyy behind. Dale keeps asking when I'm going to post again, so that he can get caught up with what's going on in the family. Ha! Ha! It is spring, which unfortunately means typical spring wet weather around here. All the cherry trees are beautiful with their pink and white blooms. I just wish we could get a little more blue sky to go with them.

We are heading to the Oregon Coast later this week, so really hoping for a little break in the rain, although even if it is rainy, it doesn't keep us from the beach.

Besides school stuff and all the other normal activities, there hasn't really been a lot going on since our crazy January birthday month. We did make our annual trip to the snow with our friends, the Downs, to their cabin in Snoqualmie pass over Presidents' Day weekend. We were a little worried about there being enough snow but thankfully the week before our trip, they got more snow and then actually the day we left, it started snowing hard and ended up dumping quite a bit. We even got snow here and actually had a snow day.

The kids, as usual, had a great time playing out in the snow. Owen did well last year but really got into it this year and could be outside just as long as the big kids. All the kids are even at the stage where they can get into and out of all their snow gear without any help, so it was nice that they could just go out and play while the adults relaxed in the cabin. We did make a couple treks over to the sledding hill where the thing to do this year for Hannah was making long sledding chains with Jayden and Grace, which usually ended in a pile up. Justin did a little snowboarding and fast sledding while Owen liked to do solo sledding, as well, and even catching a little air.

Hannah did another session of Christian Youth Theater, CYT, with her friend, Maya, and cousin, Katelyn. They did Voice 1 classes and performed songs from the Broadway version of Mary Poppins, which we are going to see this summer, by the way. She of course got chosen to be a jack-in-the-box, so I had the joy of tranforming a regular box into a jack-in-the-box. She ended up looking pretty good if I do say so myself.

Here she is with Maya

Cousin Katelyn was the dalmatian

Next up for the kids' activities is Spring soccer. Justin's first game with the same coach and team from last fall is this Saturday. Not sure if I'm ready for the wetness of Spring soccer. Really hoping things dry up quickly.

While we were going about our lives, Dale's parents spent most of March in Ecuador. They went down there with a group from Purdue and studied Spanish while there and had a chance to see and do some amazing things it sounds like. I know they're probably shocked how quickly it went by, but we are glad that they are home safely. While they were away, Hannah and Owen did this little diddy, which I had hoped to send them while they were down there, but that didn't happen. Here it is now, though--Hannah and Owen's shout out to Grandma and Grandpa while they were in Ecuador.