Blog Catch-up

Well with my normal crazy homelife and then adding to that a new business, blogging has slipped even further down the list if that's possible. I know I promised photos of our Spring Break beach trip and wanted to post Easter pics.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, our Spring Break trip to Cannon Beach was quite stormy. The first day we took a little walk along the beach in the rain and WIND!!!! That didn't deter the kids at all. We were in a nice little cabin very close to the beach and had a relaxing evening on Sunday night and then woke up Monday morning to NO power. Not sure whether it was just us or what was going on, we walked downtown to try to go to the Pig N' Pancake where the kids had been talking about going for days. All we saw was a sign on the door saying CLOSED-NO POWER. Obviously the power outage was more widespread. So we drove to the nearby town of Seaside to see what was going on there. We found the Pig N' Pancake there and it had power. We got our breakfast, but the power did go off and on the whole time we were in Seaside. We did head back to Cannon Beach to see if power was back and it wasn't. Thankfully, it wasn't pouring rain the whole time, and we could spend time out on the beach. We managed to get dinner at a pizza place that had a generator. Finally, at 5:30 pm, the power returned. I was getting worried that we were going to go into the evening with no light, and even worse, no movie. Agghhh!!! It was a fun trip. Here is a slideshow of some photos.

And, finally, even with all the storminess, here is a photo that sums up what the coast, and more specifically Cannon Beach, means to me.

PEACE and SERENITY

Okay, I still need to get to Easter, but it's past 11:00, and I teach cycling at 5:30 am, so I need to go to bed. :)

TTFN - Ta Ta For Now

He Is Risen!!!

He Is Risen Indeed!!!!

Hope you all have a blessed Easter holiday with your family and friends. Thank you Lord for sacrificing yourself for all of us sinners.

Scrapdango New Beginnings Crop

I hope that you will all join us for this crop celebrating my new ownership at Scrapdango. You can get all the details HERE. In conjunction with the crop, I am having a Get the Word Out Contest to spread the word about Scrapdango. I am giving away a separate prize of a full kit to be drawn randomly from those that earn draws by doing the following:

All you have to do is tell all your friends (online and otherwise) about Scrapdango to earn draws. Here is exactly how you can earn draws.

1 Draw - Post the New Beginnings crop poster (shown above) on your blog and/or Facebook (2 draws if you do both).

1 Draw - Become a fan of Scrapdango on Facebook (or if you already are)

1 Draw - Become a follower of Scrapdango's Blog (or if you already are)

1 Draw for every 5 Facebook friends that you suggest become fans of Scrapdango on Facebook.

1 Draw for every 5 people you recommend to become a follower of the Scrapdango blog. If they leave a comment on the blog saying you sent them, you will get 1 extra draw.

1 Draw for every person that you invite to the Scrapdango forums and that posts saying you sent them. You will get an extra draw if they participate in the New Beginnings Crop

5 Draws for any new customer you refer to the store that places an order and lets me know you referred them either through email or letting me know on the forums. You can also earn this if you place the order.

10 Draws for any new customer you refer that signs up for a new 6 or 12 month subscription and lets me know you referred them either through email or letting me know on the forums. You can also earn this if you sign up for a new 6/12 month subscription.

Keep track of these draws on the forum here, and I will draw a winner at the end of the crop. Start spreading the news now. Thanks everyone for making Scrapdango such a great place.

Goings on at Scrapdango

I have been so crazy busy with kit ordering and shipping and everything with Scrapdango that I haven't even taken the time to blog about the kits or anything in my usual family life at all. We are currently at the tail end of our Spring Break (much to Hannah and Justin's chagrin). At the beginning of the week, we did take a quick (and stormy) trip to the Oregon coast. I will blog about that in another post once I get the photos downloaded. The rest of this week has been spent with the kids going here and there and everywhere for numerous sleepovers with friends, cousins and grandparents. Tonight Hannah, Justin and Owen are having their own sleepover downstairs watching a movie, or two.

But back to Scrapdango...

My first month of ownership has gone well. I have had lots of fun shopping for all the things to go in the kits. I just shipped March kits out and already have most of April's stuff here. I thought I had it all here until I just realized that some items had not been shipped due to being on backorder--Grrrr!!! Why don't they tell you these things before they ship your order? Anyway, I'm learning a lot as I go. Some things are frustrating, but for the most part, it's been fun.

I really like the March kits I put together. I do have a just a couple of each of the kits left. You can order them in the store here.

March Spice Kit ~ Featuring Jillibean Soup Old World Cabbage Stew

March Sugar Kit ~ Featuring Pink Paislee Bayberry Cottage

Also, here are sneak peeks of what is to come in April.

April Spice Kit

April Sugar Kit

We have lots of exciting things going on at Scrapdango as well. I am putting lots of other new products in the store and am in the process of upgrading my store and giving the site a new look. Hopefully that will all be revealed in the next 2 or 3 months. Also, on the forums, we always have lots of challenges and contests going on to get your scrappy inspiration going and to win prizes including full kits. Our next big thing is a crop coming up from April 12th-18th to celebrate my new ownership and Spring. It's called the New Beginnings crop, and it's going to be tons of fun, so I hope you join us. I will be posting a poster giving the details on that soon.

So much to blog...

So little time. Well at least little time before I should be getting to bed. It's after 11:30, and I just finished watching Olympics coverage. It's really not very late for me, but I should be getting to bed and getting some rest, but I don't want to go another day without blogging because there is so much that has gone on. I did want to get pics up from our trip up to the Downs' cabin in Snoqualmie Pass already 2 weekends ago almost, but I realized I haven't downloaded the majority of the pictures that are on our smaller camera. I'll have to get to those later.

It was a great trip. I was a worried that there was going to be a huge lack of snow. We hardly saw any most of the drive up there, but there was plenty to play in. It rained quite a bit but always stopped long enough to go out and play, and we actually saw quite a bit of sun the last couple days. The kids had a great time, especially Owen who 2 years ago was NOT happy to be out in the snow. This year, we couldn't keep him out of it nor could we keep a hat on him. He was quite content to just have a sled and be pointed downhill with no fear. I think I may have to worry about the future. Justin actually got a chance to try out snowboarding on a little plastic snowboard, and I'm not sure how much longer we are going to be able to avoid taking him up to the mt. to try it for real. He has been telling us he wants to snowboard for almost 2 years now.

Now, I have two other big pieces of family news that drastically effect all of us.

First of all, I just recently became the proud new owner of

SCRAPDANGO!

You've heard me talk about it and share layouts for it for about a year and a half now while I've been on the design team but now I have taken the huge step into website and scrapbook kit club ownership. The previous owner has started a new business doing wedding photography and is busy with many other things and just couldn't do it all anymore and actually approached me about purchasing it 3-4 months ago. I wasn't really so sure about it at the time, but after thinking on it for awhile (it takes me a LONG time to make decisions), I decided to go for it. So if you are into scrapbooking, check it out. We have a terrific online community with tons of inspiration and we put together 2 great kits every month, so you can get your scrapbooking supply fix. I'm still figuring everything out and getting my feet under me, but I will be shipping my first kits out in the next day or two. Very exciting.

Secondly, and even more importantly, Hannah and Justin were baptized on Tuesday!!! It was kind of a last minute thing but they were both ready. They actually did it with their friends Gabby and Ian, and it was neat for them to have a chance to do it all together. I was overwhelmed and overjoyed to see my children take this step in their faith, and I pray that God does great work in both of their hearts as they continue to mature.

Praise the Lord!!!

Get ready!

Get set!

Go God!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day

to all our family and friends.

I realize I'm even early on this, but we are leaving as soon as I can get myself off this computer to go enjoy a weekend in the snow in Snoqualmie Pass with our friends the Downs at their cabin. I am so looking forward to getting away and not having to worry about anything--that is as long as none of the kids get hit in the head with a snow shovel this year like Hannah did two years ago. I'll have plenty of photos to share when we return but for now, I wanted to share these photos of the kids with their giant Valentine lollipops.

January Wrap-Up

Well since it's the last day of January (seriously already?!?) I figured I better get up some photos of Hannah and Justin's birthdays. Justin turned 7 on the 9th. We had a small family party for him that day with cake and ice cream.

Make a Wish my sweet boy!

His friend party didn't come until later when on Hannah's 9th birthday on the 23rd, we had a combined pool party. We rented out a local community center party room and pool. We had cake and presents in the room and then got the pool all to ourselves for an hour. We had cousins and family friends and then Hannah and Justin each invited some friends from school. All together, there were about 21 kids swimming. It was quite the crowd but tons of fun.

The pool cake

Blowing out candles together

Owen being his silly self.

Cousins enjoying the pool.

Going down the small boat slide.

Hannah going down the big slide!

And Justin

That was fun!

It was an amazing party and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves, especially the birthday boy and girl. Best of all, I didn't have to have all those kids in my house and clean up anything. We just might do the same thing next year.

Well onto month 2 of 2010. In a couple weeks over President's Day weekend, we will be making our annual trek up to our friends' cabin in Snoqualmie Pass for a weekend in the snow. Last year, the trip was cancelled due a flood in the cabin, so the kids have been waiting a LONG time for this trip. Here's hoping we have some good snow.

TTFN--Ta Ta for Now.