We survived the weekend!! It was long and buys and tiring. But good. Mostly.

Saturday, Isaac had a football orientation at 9:30, Meagan had dance at 10:00, and Sebastian had practice fro0m 10:30-2:30. Then, I had to meet for a car pool at 12:30 to drive downtown to a Kenny Chesney / Tim McGraw concert that I worked. This is all manageable with Lucas' help... too bad Lucas also had plans for the day... He got to go to the Brickyard race with a vendor from work. So, no help from him. Which means, I had no way to have Isaac one place and Meagan another with only a half-hour in between. And I had no way to get Sebastian home from practice once I got him there, so he had to miss it altogether. Thank God for car pools because a friend of mine took Meagan to dance. Which left me to take Isaac to his football meeting. But then in the push to get Meagan ready in time to catch her ride to dance, I FORGOT about the football meeting until it was almost too late. So we got there at the VERY end, and found out nothing except which team he's on. This year, his team is Penn State... he was a little worried because he knows Penn State just got in a lot of trouble.  I reassured him that has nothing to do with his football team, so he felt a little better.

The concert... we got there at 1:00. We got HOME at 1:00. It was a LOOOOOONG day. My legs hurt, and my feet had blisters long before we ever left there. Because of the location we were at inside the stadium, we were busy pretty much from start to finish, with maybe only 2 lulls in the action. Better than being bored, right?

Yesterday, we got caught up on the Olympics. We watched men's gymnastics in the morning... Sebastian was so happy they televised so much of it! After that, Lucas painted the rest of the dining room wall (usually when we paint, I trim and he rolls because he does a much better job at it than I do)! It looks SO much better than the purple-gray color! Yea!

Yesterday for dinner, friends of our came over and cooked out. They have 3 boys, all the same age as our kids, and they play really well together. Plus, soon they will be building a house directly across the street from ours, so that will be great to have the kids' friends so close!

After our friends went home, and the kids got cleaned up from their long day of running around like crazies outside, we settled down and got caught up on the Olympics once again... women's gymnastics this time. The girls did awesome!! The officials of the sport did less awesome. As the night went on, the judging became very skewed and out of line. I was really struggling to watch comparable quality / difficulty routines score so differently between sessions. I finally got up and walked away... never even finished watching because it was making me feel so angry.  Besides the questionable scoring, I'm super disgusted with the all-around rule that only lets 2 gymnasts from each country compete. It's not right!!!!! If any country, I don't care if it's not ours, has 3 or 4 gymnasts who have earned the right to be a part of the top 24, then those athletes SHOULD be a part of the top 24. Period. That's all I have to say about that.

So, today both of my gymnasts have practice. And Isaac starts football practice tonight. Other than that, I'm not sure what else we'll end up doing today. Maybe some laundry....I have plenty to fold!

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Go Team USA!

This is what's happening at our house today... we RE-watched the Olympic trials for women's gymnastics, because watching it twice just isn't enough... *ha*

And then, before getting ready for her own gymnastics practice, Meagan made this...

She is SUPER excited to see whether Jordyn wins a medal. And now, her obsession is no longer limited to Jordyn alone. She can now tell me the names of every girl on the Olympic team, as well as Elizabeth Price (one of the alternates). She knows that Kyla Ross is 15 and Ally Raisman is 18, and SHE (as in Meagan) will be 19 when SHE goes to the Olympics. She has it all figured out.

And not only did we watch the trials, but we had to pause and rewind several times. Release moves on bars... "Let me see that again!"  Back flips on beam... "I think I can do that." Tumbling passes on floor... "I don't have that one quite memorized yet. Can we rewatch it?" I'm not kidding you. And it's funny because sometimes she shows no interest at all in sitting still to watch it on TV, but when she's in the mood to focus on it, watch out!

Tonight we're going to pop some popcorn, and I got American Oreos (gold Oreos with red & blue filling). And we're going to plop down and watch opening ceremonies for as long as it holds the kids' attention... and then Lucas and I will keep watching it anyway, even if the kids ditch us! Sebastian is waiting somewhat patiently for the guys, which I THINK is tomorrow. And the girls are on Sunday. So it will be one gymnastics-packed weekend for us. Thank goodness for DVR's!

Good luck Team USA! We're rooting for you!!

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Right Now

It's been a while, but I'm hosting this week's Digi Dare. This week, the dare is to scrap about things that are part of everyday life right now. Here's my take on the dare....

I used Little Butterfly Wings' new collaboration with Amy Wolff - Strike a Pose - for the base of this layout, and then added a few extras for details.  (Click here to view full credits)

Come play along with our dare this week! This month is another one full of great sponsors, and great prizes!!!

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I'm Not Antisocial

For those of you who know my husband, don't you think this fits him perfectly?
"I'm not antisocial. I'm just not user-friendly."
HA!!

This kit is by Little Butterfly Wings and is part of the July Daily Digi Files. Click here to view full credits.

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3rd Time's a Charm

Here's an interesting phenomenon that I'm sure many parents have discovered to be true... houses stay cleaner when there are no kids in them.

Since our kids have been home from vacation with Grandma & Grandpa, our house has been torn apart and put back together and torn apart again. Daily. One would think that they would learn this lesson quickly - if I make the mess I have to clean it up. It seems, however, that this concept, no matter how many times we go over it in any given day, is completely lost on them - especially Meagan. So guess what they've been doing since 8:00 this morning?  Yup.  Cleaning.

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Anyway.  I haven't been around much for 2 reasons. 1) Life is busy and it's hard sometimes to find time to sit down and blog. AND 2) I'm not really doing anything interesting enough to blog about. Don't believe me? I'll prove it to you.

This is what I've been doing lately, when not hounding my children to clean, or driving them to/from practice... I've been TRYING to get the house painted. So far, I've only done 2 rooms. Seems I'm STUCK on room #2, which happens to be our dining room, because I just can't get the color right! Before I ever started, I spent a LOT of time hashing out a plan - which colors for which walls... harder than it sounds, trust me. I've painted lots of walls in the past few years thanks to all our moving, but this house is the biggest challenge I've ever faced. It has arch ways ... arch ways that blend from one wall into the next. So literally, there are four or five walls connected that all have to be the same color because of the architecture of the house. Weird. So yeah, I spent a lot of time planning this. Had it all figured out.

And then I painted. Room #1 went as planned. Turned out fine. I like it. Move on.

Room #2: Dining Room... First, I painted, and then decided I wanted to do an accent wall. Pick a new color. Paint again. Once I had painted said accent wall, try as I might, I just couldn't settle on the color. I THOUGHT (based on the way the sample looked in the middle of the room where I stood to make my decisions) it was going to be a brown-gray color. In fact, it turned out (on the wall, where the lighting is very different from the middle of the room where I stood to choose the color) to be purple-gray. Hmmm. I wasn't really going for the purple look.

So now here I am. Painting it for a 3rd time. But this time I really do think I will like the color when it's finished. I trimmed yesterday. Now all I have to do is get it rolled.

I attempted to get a picture so you could see what's up... Can you tell in this picture? The gray-purple vs. the brown? I don't know... it's bad lighting.

Wanna see the chaos that is my dining room right now? It's lovely. You'll be jealous.

I think it's easily been 3 weeks since we've actually been able to sit in there to eat dinner. Hmmm... I need to get this finished up and move to a new room. Unfortunately, I think the kitchen is next, and that just doesn't sound like much fun either!!  *lol*

Okay, so I have about a billion things to get done today, so I should get up and walk away from the computer now. Here I go...

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Layouts...

I can't believe it's been over 2 weeks since I've posted anything! I'm such a slacker!

Well, 2 weeks ago, we went camping. And then we got the kids ready for vacation with Grandpa & Grandma H. Last week, the kids were gone, and Lucas and I took the week to ourselves... which didn't really involve sitting down to blog much apparently. And while I have plenty of pictures, I don't have any resized and ready to share.  Plus, photobucket is being dumb and difficult right now. So, I'm going to skip that. 


Instead, all you're getting from me right now is a few layouts to get me caught up. And then I have to go get ready for the day. I've been a bum all morning, but it's about time for me to clean up my act and go do something. Plus, I'm working at the Bush/Nickleback concert tonight... I don't care one way or the other about Nickleback, but I L.O.V.E. Bush - at least some of their older stuff... hope they play plenty of that tonight. And besides, I get to spend the evening with some of my favorite friends, so that will be fun no matter who is playing on stage! 


Okay, so the layouts... here they are...


The story behind this one... this past weekend we hung out with Shane & Tina, and sometime late in the evening we watched the documentary It Might Get Loud, which is Jimmy Page, The Edge (from U2), and Jack White - 3 generations of guitarists - talking about making music with guitars. Loved it! I've been a Jimmy Page fan for years, so it was just fun to watch him, but I was really struck by Jack White. He's got a crazy creative mind. He's super eccentric and artsy, and fascinating. So on the way home from visiting, we dug out an old White Stripes album we've had since college and rediscovered his music. I gotta say, I'm a fan, as unexpected as that may seem.

(click to view credits)


Second layout... some of the TLP designers are featuring Christmas in July. I used some of Lauren Grier's Christmas goodies for this page of Meagan decorating our wooden Christmas tree last year. 

(click to view credits)

Last layout... on Monday Lucas and I went to St. Elmo's for a dinner date. Before we left, we snapped this picture of us together... seems we have very few photos with both of us, let alone only the 2 of us.

(click to view credits)

So there it is. I used lost of new Froggy Friday stuff in all 3 layouts. You can see TLP's Froggy Friday sale (20% off new releases today through the end of the weekend) in the TLP Shop.

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Specs

Miss Meagan got her glasses today, and she looks SO cute! She had been bothered by her eyes when she would read or do computer, so we took her to get checked out about a week & a half ago. Her prescription was just past the threshold of needing glasses, and since she was complaining of headaches, we went ahead and got them for her.

Cute, right? The frames are purple & red (on the ear pieces) and there are little lady bugs on the sides. Adorable! Now if we can just protect them somehow from being Meagan-ated.  She is a little destructo child, and I'm a bit worried for these poor unsuspecting glasses. *eeep*  So far so good... she took them off and put them straight into her case. She knows not to lay them down on the lenses. And I HOPE she knows not to shove them under her bed (which is where pretty much everything lands at some point or another) or toss them into her "treasure bin" (aka junk drawer in her bedroom full of RANDOM treasures that she ca't bare to part with).

And for the record, these will NOT be going camping with us this weekend. *lol*
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Happy 4th of July!! 

I'm up EARLY this morning (thanks to my husband who employs some of the most annoying tactics in the world to wake me up... I am NOT a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, so he has to be spectacularly bothersome or I'll just ignore him and go back to sleep). Anyway, the point is, I'm up early and actually have time to sit at my computer and play for a bit!!  

I thought I'd share some randomness with you. Bits of daily life around here. It's been HOT, just like everywhere else in the mid-west. We've been dealing. I am super grateful for air conditioning. I am super grateful for fresh water to drink whenever we need something cold to cool us. I am super thankful for water to play in (although that has had to go by the wayside a bit, as they began fining people for watering their lawns... I guess that means they would frown upon playing in the sprinklers???  *lol*)

A few pre-sprinkler ban photos: 

I mean, really, besides just staying inside altogether, being in water is about the only way to survive this CRAZY heat! We've been anywhere from 102 to 110 on any given day. 

Last year I did a whole series of "The Kids Were Here" photos... I think 2 straight weeks worth. This year I haven't been quite so intentional or focused, but I have gotten a few shots here and there... such as flip flops abandoned on the back deck...

... and an A&W Root Beer can...

Random tidbit about this summer... the cat has taken to escaping out the back door every chance she gets. At first we yelled at her and chased her... then we decided, she's old and has very few joys in life at this point. If being outside under the deck makes her happy, then who are we to stop her. She doesn't stay out long. Just long enough to feel the freedom and the fresh air on her whiskers (and long enough to eat some grass). 

But she always comes back in of her own accord. She knows it's better inside... inside is where the food and the cuddles are.

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I guess for a while now, Lucas and Shane have been working together to pull our dinosaur jet ski out of storage and see if they can get it running. This past weekend, we made a trip to Ohio (power outage and all) to see if their efforts would pay off.  We got there L.A.T.E. on Friday night. Lucas had stayed at work until 10:30 trying to recover the plant from its own loss of power. So we left our house around 10:45. Which means, we got to Ohio sometime just before 1:00 in the morning. They were operating with a few click lights on a generator. No power, thanks to some crazy huge storm that swept this side of the country. But the kids were thrilled to be at Grandma & Grandpa's house anyway.

First chance they got, the men went to work on the jet ski. We made a trip to the license bureau for new tags, and they put the new battery in and got it all cleaned up.  Then we headed to the lake for a test drive. 

Once we knew it was up and running, Lucas couldn't wait to get the kids out on the water for a ride!! We went out first, and his parents met us at the lake with the kids. Meagan was the first to jump at the chance to hop on!  The boys were a little tentative, but tentative just isn't in that girl's vocabulary. She was ready to go!

And she LOVED it!!!  She smiled and laughed and yelled "faster Daddy" the ENTIRE time!

Since they had used their sister as the guinea pig and she survived, the boys decided it must be safe-ish. They went on together, although still with a bit of nervousness. Soon, though, we could hear them from shore, laughing and having a blast!

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Just one more random tidbit for ya... apparently this is Meagan's new pose.  She's doing the same thing in the lake photo above. I wonder if this is her supermodel pose? *eye roll*

We may be in for trouble one of these days. Even if she stays oblivious to the boys, I doubt the boys will stay oblivious to her. *Eeep*

Okay, that's all I got for ya. It's now all of 7:20am on this lovely holiday day. I think I'm going to take the next hour or so to myself, and then get started on preparing for the 4th. I started painting yesterday (yea for color on the walls!!!) so the house is a bit torn up. I would like to be able to walk through the place without tripping or shimmying past out-of-place furniture. So we'll see what I can get done.

Happy 4th!! Enjoy!!

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