Last Make a List Monday

Today I am looking out at...construction, there is a house across the street, a house next door, three houses around the corner and an entire elementary school being built in our back yard. (a cornfield away on the school but we look right out at it)
Today I might cook...salmon and chicken on the grill.
Today I am reading... lots of fun blogs.
Today my biggest priority is...balancing my check book, blahh. Why do I do this on Mondays? starts the week so blah!
Today I hope to talk to... my Mom.
Today I have already seen/talked to...ladies at the YMCA, I love that group of gals!
Today I am watching...my girls grow up too fast!
Today I am dreaming that...Sara starts to love first grade.
Today I am wearing... a fleece jacket over my t-shirt and slippers. We are having such odd cool weather for August.
Today my mood is... peaceful.
Today I am going to...start working on my classes.

Friday

OK so a little behind on the August challenges and probably not catching up. This week there were several projects involved, make a card, make a page and sadly I did not have the time. however I did have the time to make this!

Sorry I had to remove the image here it is going to be published in the June issue of Scrapbook.com.

and this



And celebrate my Sara's B-day like this!


So it has been a most amazing week. I also played around with a playlist so you can listen to music while you are here but that is a work in progress. So check that out a little later!

Happy weekend all!

Make a list Monday

Here is my list for today -

Today I have completed;
Getting up and making 3 beds, getting myself and 2 girls fed, dressed and out the door, dropped one off to school, taught two aerobic classes, showered and dressed for the rest of the day, back home with one girl, prepared lunch for three of us (dad is post call), two loads of laundry and a 20 minute cat nap.

Today I still need to;
Balance the check book and pay the bills, two more loads of laundry, pick up Sara, fold all the laundry, put away the laundry, cook dinner, bike ride with the girls, sprinkler for fun if the wind dies down, bath, brush , read to two girls and tuck them in, get an hour of down time before bed if possible.

Have a great Monday all!

A Snapshot from Sunday (for Saturday)

So our assignment for Saturday was to fill the frame. Use our camera and fill the lens to the edges, in other words get close! I knew what I wanted to take but couldn't get the shot until Sunday. We shared a Birthday cake with friends from our church and sang Sara Happy Birthday 3 days early. I got the shot too!

10 Random notes about me for Friday

So my assignment for Friday is to note 10 random not well known things about me. Silly or not just ten random details that are me.

1-I still have my Winnie the Pooh. He sleeps with me when John is on call, yes, I will admit it. And in all honesty it was a gift that was given to my youngest brother at his birth and I adopted and never gave back!

2-I love having my toes done. Pedicures are the best and crazy colors during the winter are a must. My toes are hiding all winter so I go for colors that make me smile in the shower, blue and purple are among my favorites.

3-I drive way too fast! Yep!

4-I have a sever fear of heights! I always feel like I am going to slide right off ski lifts and right through open stairways.

5-I can watch a good movie a thousand times over and still find it completely entertaining, and laugh at all the punch lines. And my version of a good movie is just about anything.

6-I adore the smell of coffee but can not stand the taste of it! How do you acquire the taste for something if you can not stand it? I do not get that one!

7-I could eat pizza and ice cream each and every day and have a smile on my face.

8-I am know as a heads down scrapbooker to my friends who scrap with me. They say I don't come up for air.

9-My Mom is my very best girlfriend! MY VERY BEST! And I am so blessed to have her.

10-I have been told more times then I can count that I am silly.

Hmm... yep sounds like me.

Toothless Wonder!

Well here they are! Sara the toothless wonder and her side-kick "I am NEVER going to loose a tooth" Lori. I can't scrap every time she looses another one but she is just too darn cute with her gaps getting bigger and bigger. Sara lost tooth number 6 and now has the big open gap of two front teeth missing to start off her first grade year.

The Thursday challenge was to post silly doings of our young kiddos and like most parents I have a few. I have to say though that one of my favorite sayings from the two girls came in similar situations two years a part.

When Sara was about 3 years old we were walking through the YMCA locker room after swimming. The older ladies who had just finished water aerobics were also in the locker room and in process of getting clothed. Sara in a louder voice asks "Why are their bottoms so big?" I am not sure how many of them heard but you can imagine I was a wee bit embarrassed at the time. Laughable now but mortified then.

Lori in a similar situation just this past year as a 4 year old asked why the lone older woman in the locker room was so fat. Again mortification on my part but they do point out the obvious don't they? Lori also says my chest is jiggly so the observations are not just saved for strangers.

Tuesday's Techie (hmm I am not sur I am!)

OK so here is the challenge. I am going to attempt to show you a photo that can be clicked on and take you some where else! Pretty cool if it works huh?! So I am going to share one of my latest layouts and hopefully if you click on the layout it will whisk you away to the wonderful site where I bought the kit I used to make it! Tami here's lookin' at you girl!





and just for good measure since I have umpteen sites open I might as well do a second one. (this one takes you to Scrap This Kit also, I am just playing here he he)





Well give it a try! Let's see if she floats!

Mid Month Check Up

Or maybe check in is a better way to phrase it. Tami at GIS asked us each to do a little mid-month check in on our day to day lives for our Sunday blogging. I was playing catchup on Sunday and did not see this request until this morning, but then I think she posted it in the wee hours of the morning so that might explain it.

I am getting back into the groove so to speak. I am home from a long and much needed trip, and my things are put away and tided. Last week I caught up on the general cleaning of the house, you know the never ending bathrooms, laundry, floors, groceries etc... We got through our last week of swim lessons, got new dance shoes fitted and tonight we go by Sara's school to meet her teacher. Sara starts Wednesday, my big first grader! Then we just fall into our pattern one piece at a time. Dance and Lori's open house are the following week on the 25th, Lori starts September 1st and swim lessons start back up the 10th. Then it is full swing. A little less chaos this year with me not teaching dance but that could be a good thing.

In the mean time I am still loving my scrapping and I am reformatting my doodling class to be added to the GIS store front. I am going to go back and do an art journaling class with a very dear on line friend, Gab, and in general am doing quite well. I tend to do better on a more predictable schedule and I am looking forward to it. All sorts of other little projects going on but that is me in a nutshell for now.

Weaver"isms"

Our family has things we say that just make us giggle. OK so Dad doesn't giggle but he gets a good chuckle going. But no one else gets the joke because they do not know the original context. So this morning I am making a list of a few choice Weaverisms and sharing the "rest of the story". You might not think they are all that funny but at least you have all the information.

"speedy quick" This is a new one for this summer. Have you ever read a Junie B. Jones book? You will get this if you have. My Mom and I drove with the girls from Des Moines to Denver this summer and we listened to a couple Junie B. books and then read a couple more on our trip. Junie B. cracks us up more then the kids, so we decided we would adopt one of her favorite sayings! "Mighty Fine" is another that we like from Junie B.

"I like ice cream!" OK so obvious right, so why the laughter? When anyone asks "who would like some ice cream?" in my family my father will quietly raise his hand and respond "I like ice cream" OK Dad this is one of the bigger understatements of the century! My father loves ice cream in fact he is one of the lucky few that can eat it every night and not seem to gain weight. And just the fact that it really is not the correct response to the question, we didn't ask if you liked it, that is a given we asked if you wanted some. But he never fails and it always makes us laugh.

"strap on the ol' feed bag" So many of these are from my Dad! This is one that popped out of his mouth at some point and stuck. We use it frequently when gathering to eat. I am sure he picked it up from an old western movie or T.V. show.

Or how about this one? "If it was a snake it would have bit ya!" This is for when you are looking for something and it is right in front of you, get it, close enough to bite you ha ha. OK just another one from my Dad. Another one for this very situation you might hear at our house is "it is tall and red" This one surrounds a specific indecent that my Dad was looking for a bottle of ketchup. He was staring straight at it and my Mother was getting a little tiered of waiting said "have you moved everything around?" "yes" is the response. Mom gets up and guess what it is right in front. So standing beside him now she says "Strode it is the tall and red one" and sits back down.

"Let's try this again" This is straight from me. I have this habit of getting out the door without one or two items and realizing it about a block away. The poor girls are always in the car with me and we circle back and have to start over. I didn't realize how often I had said it until they started chiming in "let's try this again!" Now we say it just because it makes us laugh.

"Ginormous" Meaning VERY large. Do not know where it is from but we use it often.

I added "Grandpa are you packin'?" to a layout that is shown in the entry below. Poor Dad again this time he forgot his wallet when we went out, so others were paying all day/evening. So now when we leave the house for a shopping eating event we always ask "Grandpa, are you packin'" as in packin' heat or packin' his wallet in this case. He he.

Well there are a few, I am sure there are more but a fun start for this Monday.
Happy week all!

Thought Provoking Thursday (again on Sunday)

So another little challenge to catch up on was Doris' Thought Provoking Thursday. She asked us to look at where our scrappy inspiration comes form and post a few things we have scrapped lately. so here are two of my most recent layouts both done this past week.

This first one is directly linked to a challenge to use punches. I love a good challenge to get the juices flowing. It gives me a place to start when I am staring at all my gear and wondering where to start.

The second layout has two inspiration pieces to it. The first is the wonderful kit I just got from Scrap This Kit run by my friend Tami. I love getting kits that have all the goods put together for you. Fun letters, papers and embellishments all ready to go. The second half of the inspiration was in the story. Turties is what Lori wanted most to see at Sea World! Turties you ask? Why turtles of course! I wanted to make sure we remember how excited to see them she was and what she has been calling them all summer.
And one more for good measure. This is a hint at tomorrows list making! This is all about the fun kit again but also the title and journaling. It centers around a Weaverism.

Snapshot Saturday (on Sunday)

Well the Saturday challenge was to take a few shots of the same thing, from different angles. These little flowers are right in our front patch. The girls and I went big and planted wild flowers in the front and side just to say we at least attempted some planting this year. They have done very well and are really just starting to bloom. Besides we promised Grandma we would take a picture when they started to bloom so she could see. Here they are Grandma!

Blue Tounge

I do not know what my assignment is from GIS for Snapshot Saturday yet, but I just had to share this shot! The girls got to feed the giraffes at our Des Moines zoo last Monday and I got this really good one. I wish you could hear the squeal of delight that went along with the lick!

Fun for Friday!

I do love a fun Friday and Jane has asked us to post a silly picture and title it with a well known "line" so let me see what I can come up with. How about this...














and instead of "Isn't she lovely?" "Aren't they lovely"

I posted the partner to this shot a few days back and they really are lovely but they can also be goofballs. I know... they come by it rightly!
Happy Friday all!

Wednesday - catch up

Favorite piece of furniture is what Torm asked for on our blogging challenges for Wednesday this week. She asked us to imagine starting over with just one peice and what would it be. The only one I can think of that would just rip me up if we lost would be the cradle my Grandfather made for me when I was born. We have it now and it will go to Sara when she has children. (A few years down the road.) It is currently housing an enormous pile of stuffed friends in Lori's room so I will have to post a photo later as she is currently catching a nap.

I have updated with the photos. This is a pared down stuffed friend view. usually it is overflowing :-)

Techie (ha ha)Tuesday

OK so a computer whiz I am not!

Our challenges on Tuesdays at Get It Scrapped are about Technical tricks or "skills" to jazz up our blog. So look at the neat scrolling do dad that I added! Yep all by myself! OK so it was really simple but I am feeling very grown up. We are also supposed to blog a little on something that we would like to do or might even say we will do but never in a million years would go for/attempt.

I am one of those who suffer from coming up with the great come backs AFTER the situation has passed. I tend to be a very sarcastic person so whit is by nature built in but when someone is hard on me or jumps all over me the sarcasm disappears and I tend to cower. Only to be followed about 5 minutes too late by the perfect retort. I wish on occasion that reply would come right to mind and just pop right on out there.
BUT on the same note I'll bet I have a few less enemy's because of it and a few more friends too. I don't really need the smart comeback I just wish they showed up a little more timely on occasion.

Make a list Monday - Wishes

We are back to Monday and I am sharing another list today, a list of wishes. I wrote a poem in the fourth grade titled if I could have three wishes and it has always stuck in my head, one of those ah ha moments in life I think. I wished for a best friend who cares how I feel inside, a pet that would not give away secrets and, somebody who would always be there. Fairly deep for a fourth grade wish list, while others were reading lists of money, cars, and more wishes. Today's list is probably a little on the lighter side but it is my wishes just for today.

my 3 wishes for today

1) I wish for a happy healthy school year for my two girls as they start school in the next couple weeks.

2) I wish for peace for my husband as he prepares for his next round of boards.

3) I wish for time to complete not only the things I need to do but a few minutes to do the things I want to do.

Burglary (oh maybe not)

Well today is Fun for Friday over at Get It Scrapped and our assignment is to retell a story from childhood or share a memory that will make us, and others smile. So here is mine! (Family members will all remember this well)

I was in about fourth or fifth grade, living in Flagstaff, Arizona. When weather was permitting I rode my bike to school on my own and sometimes picked up a friend on the way. My friend Shannon Madden was the pick up for the day so off I went to gather her up and head to school. I made it to her home in plenty of time and vaguely remember her not being quite ready so I went inside to wait. Shannon is a dear childhood friend and still is a friend today, we lovingly call her Bug. So I sat waiting for Bug, the rest of the family is already gone so the two of us are on our own to get to school. When she was just about ready to go she headed to the garage to get her bike, and here my memory gets a little fuzzy. I follow her out the laundry door into the garage and as she is trying to open the garage door she turns back and yells "Don't let that door close!" OOPS! Too late, the deed is done. The door has locked behind me, and for some unknown reason the garage door is locked in front of us so we are stuck!
Yep, two young girls around 11ish stuck in a garage trying to make it to school on time. My seance of responsibility kicks in and I am freaking out about not getting to school on time. Bug on the other hand is worried about food and water for the long day ahead. needless to say neither of us are thinking clearly. We try the laundry door. We bang, we shove we even try to pick the lock as I recall. Then we attack the garage door, we pulled up as hard as we could, we kicked and banged some more. Then we both climbed up on the work bench and started yelling with all our might for Bug's neighbor. All of these efforts were futile, nothing worked, we were stuck! Well almost.
We decided we were getting out no matter what. I am not sure who's brilliant idea it was but we decided to go out the window. The only thing stopping us was a screen. We could not figure out how to get it off so we literally shoved on one corner until it started bending. Bug and I made the whole big enough for us to crawl through and we escaped and were on our merry way!
We made it to school and as I recall not even very late. (It had seemed like hours in the garage.) And we went on with our day. I am sure we told the story to our friends and laughed over our adventure even then.
So fast forward to about 7pm that evening and my Mom gets a phone call, I remember hearing the one sided part of the conversation "Oh my" "I can't believe it" "Is everything OK?" you know the kind of call. When she got off I asked what happened and to who? "The Madden's had a burglary" was the response. GULP!
Pat Madden is the chief of police and nothing gets by this guy! He immediately notices the bent screen and calls in the troops. They were currently fingerprinting and looking for missing valuables. What they can not figure out is why the screen is bent outward, like someone escaping and why all the doors on the house were still locked tight. Hmmm... I think I have the answer!
I fess up right away and tell Mom the whole story. She hurridly calls the Maddens back to set the record straight and call off the chase. No one was angry, no harm, no foul. I can not remember where Bug was during all of this and why she was not the one to tell the tail but boy was it a doosy.
We have all laughed more then once over this tale and even when it happened there was much chucling.

Hope this added a smile to our Friday!

Fly Baby

Today's blogging assignment from GIS is to relate a story. One that could go directly from your blog to a scrapbook page so here are some thoughts with a photo taken only last night.

Baby number two is up and flying! Yep Lori is steady on her wheels too! The photo is a blur because I am running behind her trying to take it! John and I better get bikes, and FAST! What an amazing summer my two girls have had both learning to ride their bikes. There have been other adventures for sure this summer, art classes, dance camp, swim lessons, trips to San Diego and Denver, and lots of parks and play time. But learning to ride seems like such a right of passage. A step into independence and freedom. I remember as a young person riding all over our little community of Flagstaff. Of course on our own to get to the pool, or friends houses and then even to school. The freedom to move yourself to a new and distant location. HMMM I don't think I am quite ready to send them off on their own but it sure is a gimps into things to come!

Blogging Challenges

My beloved Get It Scrapped site is doing a wonderful blog challenge this month and I am busy playing a little catch up! Saturday's challenge was a little photo scavenger hunt we were looking for three things, something you love, something yellow and something from above. One of mine turned out horrible so is not included but I bet you can guess which the other two are!

Grocery List

OK so I am a day late in posting this but can I tell you that returning home from vacation is WORK! Ha Ha! We had an amazing couple of weeks in San Diego with the whole Weaver/Houghton clan and then back in Denver with the girls and I at my Mom and Dad's. A much needed break for me so the aftermath is well worth it! But a little catching up on house cleaning, bills and life await.
Here is a typical grocery list for me I thought it would be fun to actually scan it so you can see my mess. Because we have been away it was mostly produce needing replacing (we eat more then a small army in the produce department!) Grapes, peaches, apples, cherries, and blueberries were in there for fruit and then peppers, cucumbers, carrots, broccoli and lettuce for vegis. The circles are all the items I have to go get a different store. Blahhh. I could do all my shopping at one but it is quite a bit more expensive if I do. Any way here it is.