TGIF!!!!!!

I've probably had that exact same title before because by the time Friday rolls around, I am always exhausted and very glad that the weekend is near and I will have constant reinforcements for a couple days with Dale being home. This week has been very long and somewhat difficult for me. First off, Owen came down with a pretty bad cold on Saturday, which is still lingering. His runny nose was so bad for a few days that he ended up getting what Dale referred to as a red Hitler 'stache because the area between his nose and top lip was just raw and bright red--poor little guy. As a result of his cold, he has been extra clingy and cranky this week. He still wakes up happy, but as the day goes on, if things do not go just his way, he gets very irritated and nothing that I do seems to help. Happily right now, he is napping, but there were a couple days, he didn't nap, and he was EXTREMELY cranky by evening.

Next up, on Tuesday, we woke up to surprise snow--at least it was a surprise to me since I never watch the news or check weather forecasts. It actually snowed quite a bit. Of course, the kids instantly hope there's no school. Given our school district's propensity to cancel classes even without very much snow, I thought that might be the case, but there was school. I actually wished they had been 2 hours late and we could have a little more leisurely morning, but I got them off to school in a hurried rush as usual.

Wednesday, Hannah woke up complaining of her head and throat hurting. She had no fever and I couldn't see anything unusual in her throat, so I figured it was just the start of a cold, but I was not going to be able to get her to school, so I let her have a sick day. I always love it when the kids stay home sick and then after a couple hours of lazing around, they're up and running around like normal. I think I said, "You should be in a school." at least a half dozen times. My worry was that she was either on the verge of getting strep throat since she continued to complain about her throat or that she would milk this and try to get Thursday and Friday off too. Thankfully, she felt better the next day and neither of those happened. Having her home along with a grumpy Owen made for a long day.

On top of various illnesses, our house has been inundated with flies. I know, Ewwww, gross!!! It's the middle of winter. Why do we have flies? Shouldn't they all be dead? You will be sitting there trying to watch tv and there will be half dozen (2nd time I've used that term this post) swarming in front of it making it difficult to focus on the show. Then you go to the kitchen, and they seem to follow youand swarm all around in there. Now mind you, my house is usually messy with toys everywhere and papers piled all over the counters, but it is not that dirty. All these flies though makes me feel like my house is very dirty. I've even resorted to hanging one of the sticky fly tape things like you usually see in barns. Here is where people would use that term. "What, do you live in a barn?" It's "caught" about 3 but for the most part they just fly all around it. I was even trying to vacuum them up this morning with the vacuum hose. I think I may have even got a few although I'm probably just dillusional. I don't know if they would even die in there or just crawl back out. Here's hoping our uninvited house guests are gone soon.

Well I guess that's all for now. It's almost 5:00, and I need to figure out what's going on for dinner and such. Hope you all have a great weekend.

TTFN - Ta Ta For Now

Hannah's 8!!!!!

Wow, how did that happen? How did our little girl--our first child--get to be 8 years old? I would love to post a photo of what she looked like when she was still in the hospital like I did with Justin, but unfortunately we did not have digital camera capabilities back then. Heaven forbid I should have to go find an actual real life printed from film photo and scan it so I can upload it on this blog. I am currently sitting in a recliner with a heating pad on my back while typing this, and I am not going anywhere. Anyway, I digress. I can't show you a photo of young Hannah, but I can show you a photo of beautiful, 8-year old Hannah.

Her hair is especially pretty because her party was a spa/makeover party. We painted finger and toenails and each girl had their hair done complete with sparkly glitter spray. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my dear friends Heather (also our family hairdresser) and Annaliese for doing all the hair because that is something I definitely am not good at. My sister, Sara, also helped me do the nails. The girls had fun, although time between each girl having their hair done was not well planned and there was a lot of sitting around, which turned into running around acting like crazy girls. I thought Justin's party with 8, 5-6 year old boys was bad. These girls were hyperactive.

After all the makeover activities, we just did the usual presents and cake. I made a purse cake, although I have to say this is my least favorite cake of all the ones I've made over the years for the kids' birthdays. Hannah wanted a purple purse but the color turned out all wrong--way too dark and the purse looks much too grown up. I did liven it up a bit by adding the lipstick and makeup bottles that I made by molding softened Now n' Later candies.

Make a wish, my sweet girl.

Here are the girls all made up and rarin' to go.

Now, I am officially done with birthday parties for quite awhile. Whew! It's fun, but a lot of work.

Get "Crowned" at Scrapdango

Wanna meet some new friends, get lots of scrapping done, win prizes and have fun? If so, join us at Scrapdango for our Crowned competition starting February 1st. Here are some details:

Scrapdango is celebrating 3 years, and we are doing it in style again with our very own “Crowned Pageant” contest.Okay, have you heard of the CW’s new show “Crowned?”…..Well if you haven’t you can come check out our version of “Crowned” ScrapDango style! Come join us for 4 weeks of Crowned Competition ScrapDango style! There will be weekly pageant competition challenges that will challenge your creativity. Each week someone will be SASHED Princess of Scrapdango. (Prizes involved too!)Is there a catch….well of course…it wouldn’t be fun if there wasn’t a catch. NO ONE gets sent home. You all have to live/scrap and experience PAGEANT LIFE with each other for the 4 weeks for the month of February. You will be competing for points. Each week the DT will award points 1-10 for each contestant’s creation. The contestant with the most points at the end of the competition goes home with an awesome prize package! (Including a Guest Design Spot that includes a full kit)

You can sign in here at the official sign in thread. We'd love to see you over there.

Scrapdango January Reveal

We just recently did our mid-month reveal for the January kit for Scrapdango. Here is the photo of the kit, which you can see has already sold out.

It was a great kit to work with. I loved the bright, fun colors. Here are the creations that I came up with this month.

Justin's 6th Birthday

It's already Jan. 16th, and so far the month seems like a blur. I have been very remiss, as usual, in blogging. One week ago was Justin's 6th birthday. I can't believe that six years ago, this was the photo of him in the hospital:


and now, this is the photo we have of him.

Justin had a Star Wars party complete with an R2D2 cake made by yours truly. I was going to attempt a 3D upright version with about 4 round cake layers and a dome layer on top, but I just did not have time to make all the cake layers required. Plus we would've had tons of cake left over. Please don't comment that R2's arms/legs were not correct and need to go all the way up the side. Hannah already let me know full well that R2 did not look like he should. We had 8, 5-6 year old boys, including Justin, which is always crazy. It was fun, but I was glad when it was over. Now, we will be doing it all over again next weekend with a bunch of 7-8 year old girls for Hannah's birthday.

And here is clone trooper, Justin, on his big day.

Happy New Year and some Scrappy Stuff

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

It's already January 2nd, but I wanted to wish everyone a Happy 2009. I hope you had a safe, fun and festive end to your holiday season, and I pray you all have a blessed new year. It will be an interesting one with a new president and to see where things go with the financial mess.

We rang in the New Year with a very small, casual party at our house with our friends, the Goves. They have 3 kids almost the exact ages as our 3, and they all played so well together and had a great time. Their youngest, Evie, and Owen were so cute together. The two oldest, Hannah and Gabby, weren't to be seen almost the entire night, up in Hannah's room drawing pictures, and Justin and Ian played the Wii and other boy things. Amazingly, all the kids made it until midnight and couldn't have been happier. I thought for sure, Owen would've melted down by then, but he was happy as could be. It's funny, because had we been in our respective houses alone, the guys wouldn't have even made it to midnight, nonetheless the kids. We watched the ball drop and did some poppers, and then the Goves headed home to get their kiddos to bed while we did the same.

My friend, Annaliese, and I

New Year's Day and today have both been pretty lazy. Now begins the dreaded teardown of all the Christmas decorations. Everytime I have to do it, I claim that I have way too much Christmas stuff, but I love it all and enjoy it while it's up. I just don't enjoy packing it all back away. Although, starting from a nice clean slate again is refreshing as I put the old decor back out. Over the past few years, I have definitely gained more of a minimalist approach to decorating and seems like I get rid of more stuff each year. In fact, my goal (not resolution because I don't do well at those) for this year is to purge of all the unnecessary stuff and get organized. I'm going to do it by taking it in small chunks. Hopefully by the end of this year, I will feel like we only have those things we really want or need, although I know the kids will always have too many toys--a lot of those will be going soon.

As for the scrappy stuff, I never did get around to posting the Dec. kit for Srapdango. Due to manufacturer shipping delays, we were late in getting it, but it was a great one and sold out pretty quickly, so unfortunately you can't even order one. The January kit is up now. I don't have it yet, but I can't wait to work with it. Here is a photo of the January kit (which I think they are almost sold out of already) and photos of the layouts I did with the Dec. kit.

Scrapdango January kit

Celebrate Each Day with Coffee

Little Cowgirls

Read

In other scrappy news, over at the blog for Leah Killian, you can enter to win $150 worth of Cosmo Cricket products, which I always love their stuff. Who wouldn't want to win that? Well, all you need to do is post a comment on the blog to be entered. Unfortunately, that comment needs to be posted by Jan 2nd (today). In fact, I need to go post my comment. Good luck if you enter.

And finally, I have a layout in the January issue of the Pagemaps newsletter. This is a site done by Becky Fleck who does awesome sketches (or Pagemaps as she calls them) each month and has people do samples for each map. I got an email last month, asking if I would like to contribute, to which I of course, said "Yes!" I even have a book of the same name (Pagemaps) that is one of my favorites. She gave me a 2-page sketch to work with, and I came up with this layout. I was extra excited when I saw the newsletter and saw that she pointed my layout out as one that caught her eye this month. You can see the newsletter here.

Christmas Letter 2008

After much anticipation, I'm sure, I am finally getting to our Christmas letter. My sincerest apologies if you came here numerous times in hopes to find the Christmas letter only to see it wasn't here. I hope that some of my other recent posts have provided entertainment and been informative to you on our lives over the past couple weeks. This past week has been especialy exciting with Christmas, of course, but then the snow adding an extra bit of excitement. Before I get into the letter, I want to share a family photo we took on Christmas at my sister's while the snow was really coming down.

So on with the letter. I hope that this letter finds you all well. It has been a crazy year with all the financial issues and the presidential election, but I pray that you are all healthy, happy and hopeful for the coming year. At least gas prices have come down significantly. =)

We have been so blessed that Dale has a very good job and has actually been extremely busy at work. The commute is still a pain, and unfortunately, the project that kept him closer to home one or two days a week is wrapping up, so some of those quick trips home won't be an option anymore. For the most part, though, he enjoys it. He is still playing indoor soccer and also was an assistant coach for Justin's soccer team this fall. Fortunately, I wasn't teaching an aerobics class Saturday mornings anymore, so he wasn't solely responsible for getting all the kids to soccer every Saturday.

I am still teaching fitness classes during the week and also started the year with a new fitness venture. In March, I started training for the Portland Marathon with my friend, Heather, who had already had one marathon under her belt. I'm not sure why I did this because I've never particularly liked running, but completing a marathon has always been a goal of mine. I was progressing pretty well starting from 3 miles and adding about a mile each week, and was actually starting to enjoy running, but after reaching about 8 miles, I started having knee problems that despite many trips to the chiropractor and physical therapist, did not resolve. I stuck it out though for a few months and did complete the Helvetia Half Marathon in June running 13.1 miles in just over 2 hours. It was actually an awesome run, and I'm glad that I at least had that accomplishment. I tried a few times after that to run again, but my knee pretty much bothers me all the time now, so I don't know that anymore running is in my future. I am still scrapbooking and actually made it on a design team this year for Scrapdango. What this basically means for those of you who have know idea about scrapbook design teams is that I get a kit each month that I get to work with and upload my creations to the site and help promote them. It's been great fun, and I work with an awesome bunch of women that I only know online, but it's amazing the friendships you can develop in cyberspace. I have been published in many online magazines this year and still hope to be published in a major print magazine sometime soon.

Hannah will be 8 (going on 18) in just under a month from now, and is in 2nd grade. She had a little bit of a rough start again at school this year, but has settled in well now. I think she just has a hard time transitioning each year, but once she gets used to it, she does great. She has really blossomed with her reading and is above grade level in that. She also does very well in all her other subjects with her highest marks coming in music where she has an "exceptional aptitude to music" according to her music teacher. I think we need to be getting her into piano or guitar lessons soon. She did ballet again at the beginning of the year with a recital in June in which she did great, but after that she was done with ballet. Over the summer we did 2 straight weeks of daily swim lessons and she can swim pretty well now and wanted to be in the water as much as possible, which unfortuanately wasn't very often this summer. This fall, she played soccer again with her friend, Maya, and was with the same coach as last year on an all-girl team in a coed league. Their team didn't fare so well most weeks, but Hannah had fun (or so she says). She also joined a Brownie troop this year and has really been enjoying the friendships and activities that go along with that. Next up, I think we're going to sign up for hip hop dance lessons.

Justin will be 6 in less than 2 weeks and joined his sister at the elementary school in Kindergarten. He is doing extremely well. He has a wonderful teacher and loves spending time with his friends. He is always such a popular little boy. He has started learning the building blocks to reading. He is not quite getting it, and we need to work more at home, but I know he'll be reading before we know it. He also took swimming lessons this summer and really came a long way. He isn't swimming laps across the pool yet, but he definitely enjoys the water much more and doesn't care about getting his face wet like he used to. He also played soccer this fall with our friend, Denton, as his coach and Daddy as assistant coach. He did awesome this season and even scored two goals. He is extremely good at defending the ball and has excellent ball control, and once he gets the aggressiveness, I know he will score many more goals. I have no doubt, that he will be an extremely talented little soccer player in the future. He wants to start doing karate, but also with all this snow we've been having, has gained a big interest in snowboarding. Unfortunately, his mother and father don't ski or snowboard. Someday, we'll have to get him up there on the mountain.

Owen is 2-1/2 and full of boundless energy. I'm surprised that there isn't a permanent rut in the floor between the toyroom and the family room (through the kitchen) where he and his brother contstantly run back and forth. He has such a personality and has become quite the communicator over the past year. He can speak very well and just cracks us up sometimes with the things he says. He is a very sweet, polite, loving little boy who also has an evil side that brings with it 2 year old tantrums. Thankfully they usually don't last too long. He can entertain himself very well by just sitting and playing with his cars and trucks or his latest obsession, animals--he got a whole zoo of plastic ones for Christmas. He often can be found running around with a Power Ranger mask on as well--he even rode the whole way to church with one on the other day. Thankfully he didn't throw one of his tantrums and insist on wearing it in church. Unbelievably, it is almost time for us to sign him up for preschool for the coming fall. I can't imagine him going off to school right now, but I know he'll change dramatically in the next 9 months.

Dale and I celebrated a dozen years of marriage in August. In some ways, it seems like the years have flown by, but other times, I can't remember us even being apart. We celebrated by going to the coast in Newport, OR for a weekend while Grandma Judi stayed with the kids. It was a very peaceful, relaxing and beautiful weekend and a great way to celebrate a dozen years.

As for the family activities over the year, we didn't take any big trips on a plane anywhere. We did our usual trip up to our friends' cabin on Snoqualmie Pass in WA to spend a long weekend in the snow. It was great except for when Hannah got hit in the head with a snow shovel and we had to ride a snowmobile out to the car to then drive her to the emergency room for stitches in the nearest town. We will be going back up there in about 3 weeks, and I think we'll keep the kids away from the snow shovels.

In the summer we went to Sunriver, OR again with our friends, the Davisons, but we extended our trip from a long weekend last summer to a full week. It was just the right amount of time to be able to take in many of the activities they have there and still be able to relax. The kids mainly just wanted to spend everyday at the pool or in the hot tub at the house we rented, but we also got in a float trip down the river (for a large portion of which Owen threw one of those aforementioned tantrums), hiking around the lava fields at Lava Butte (where Owen threw another tantrum when we tried to get a family picture), and horseback riding for the moms and daughters (Owen stayed with dad). It was fun, and the kids are already asking if we're going back there this summer. I think it may become a regular family vacation.

Well it's late, and I want to get this wrapped up before New Year's, so I'm going to leave you all. I pray that you all have a safe and happy New Year's and many blessings for the year to come.

I leave you with a slideshow of some of the highlights of the year.