The Day After

We did it! We survived Halloween - and the sleet and snow and reeeeeaallly strong winds! As promised, I have a few pictures to share with you...

Let's start with this little miracle: I actually managed to get the house decorated and CLEANED yesterday in time for all the festivities!! We had no pumpkins, did no carvings, but these things are not the end of the world. We still had fun. Here's how the house turned out...

I was even done in time to do up my crazy spider web face for Meagan's school party. This year I busted out some super glittery fake eye lashes to go along with the web. They took a bit of getting used to, but it was fun. One of the kids in Meagan's class said I looked like Lady GaGa. Oh.my.word.

Again this year, Meagan was our only kid to dress up and trick-or-treat. A good friend of hers (in the middle) is moving out of state (today actually), so we invited her over to hang out with us for her last night in town! May as well go out with a bang, right?! Well, the one friend grew to two, and pretty soon, I had a house with three girls and all the silliness (and loud singing Frozen songs) that goes with it. 

 The girls had a blast together, although they gave up on trick-or-treating pretty early...it was COLD!

(see, when I was forced to bust out the winter coat and hat and gloves, it's COLD!)

The boys hung out and handed out candy. Eventually Isaac migrated across the street to hang out with our neighbors, and Sebastian wandered down the road a few houses to hang out with his best friend. And then later the boys walked around the block to a "haunted house" that someone had set up in their garage. Fun times!

 So, the night wrapped up with one extra girl spending the night at our house, Isaac spending the night at the neighbors', and Sebastian home late to watch Halloween movies until we all crashed. Gone are the days of costumes and candy trading, of The Great Pumpkin and Scared Shrekless. Still, it was a great Halloween! Hope you enjoyed yours as much as we did!

Layout Dump

There are tons of layouts I haven't shared on here... let's be honest, there are tons of everything I haven't shared on here. I won't drown you in them by posting every one I've skipped.... but I WILL share the recent ones. I have done a few in the past few weeks. Plus, today is a HUGE new release day at The Lilypad, and I actually had time to get some pages done. So here goes... 

I'm still working on my Project Life for 2014, although I've fallen WAY behind! I currently do not have a strategy for catching up, but we'll see what I can pull off... I've been trying to do an intro page for the start of each month, showing our current fave's and habits and activities. It's been fun to look back at them as time passes. This is one thing I'm definitely glad I started and stuck with!

And to get in the Halloween mood, here's a page from last year's festivities! Meagan was the only one to dress up last year (as she will be this year... the boys are going to hang out and pass out candy with our neighbors). Since it was just her, I took the liberty of girlying up the page a wee bit. :)

Here's a page I did with a Halloween kit that has nothing to do with the holiday. I had these pics of Dubby from last fall... He would just lay in front of the open door and soak up the sunshine. Sadly, now he is a bit too neurotic to enjoy this activity, as he feels he needs to bark at everything that moves outside. *sigh*

Part of my falling behind this year has meant that I have failed to do much of anything with our birthday pics... until now. This week a perfect birthday kit is being released at TLP, so I took advantage of the chance to get at least a few pics into the album.

Also from Meg's birthday this year... a 1-on-1 back yard lacrosse game.

And finally, last Sunday Meagan and I took a bike ride to the park nearby. We stopped and played on the playground for a bit before riding home. It was perfect weather, with bright blue skies and falling leaves. And Mommy-Meagan time... it doesn't get much better!

It's a 2-page spread. Here's the left:

And the right:

and the spread:

Okay, that's it for now. Have a great day!!! 

Spooktacular!

Happy Halloween!!  I have big plans for the day! Other than going into the office to grab my open house flyers and talk with my manager for a few minutes, today is going to be a day "off" (if there really is such a thing?). I have to finish our Halloween decorations, since I still have them half done and in boxes... but I promised Meagan we would decorate, and I'm going to keep my promise.
Tonight is trick-or-treat. Meg's good friend from school is coming over to go out with us. Then tomorrow, she and her family pack up and move to Cleveland. I know Meagan is going to miss her like CRAZY!! But the girls are so looking forward to getting to be together this evening! I'm so thankful they're going to have that time to play and have fun and make memories. Guarantee I will be taking pictures! :)

Also in the plans today, get my house clean! It has been sadly neglected, and I can't take it anymore! I'm not aiming for perfection, but sanity would be nice.

I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween, however you choose to spend it! Stay safe! Have fun! Love and enjoy the people you're with! I'll be back with pictures. (Really. I really need / want to get back into the habit of blogging... it's been REALLY pitiful for way too long!)

Water bugs

It seems my creative time comes in spurts lately. There will be a big empty space full of nothing but stuff that strongly resembles responsibility. And then all of a sudden, I'll snag a blip of free time to create and play. This week, free time came late Thursday evening, just in time to play around with this week's new TLP releases. I managed to get 3 layouts done rather quickly. Love it when that happens! I had a group of pictures from the pool last summer that I wanted to get done. Rather than shove them all on one page, I split them up... each kid gets their own page this time around! You can click on each layout, and it will take you to a post that shows the list of products I used for each page. 

These pictures sorta kinda make me want to go swimming every day.

Puppies

My sweet friend Valeria (who happens to be the designer behind Little Butterfly Wings) recently lost her sweet poochie. As she was sharing with a small group of us all that her little guy had been through, I was heartbroken for her. It was a nice reminder that, even though my dogs can be MAJOR pains in the neck at times, I'm super glad they're here with me.

To honor her sweet baby, she created an adorable kit. I'm not usually one for theme-y kits and whatnot, but I rather love this one!!  Here's the page I made with it.

And I don't usually do this, but here's a look at the kit she made. If you feel so inclined, go check it out. It's on sale for the weekend, I do believe.

Love my knucklehead puppies! My house is never clean, and they're always into stuff, but I wouldn't trade them for the world!

friends

This week has been a quiet week around here. Sebastian is at gymnastics camp, and Meagan is at horse camp all week. Isaac has had music camp in the mornings to learn to play his violin. And even when he IS home after his music camp, he's the quiet kid of the family anyway. So it is rather peaceful around here.

I've been trying to take this week to get caught up on a few things that have been pushed aside for way too long. And I've been trying to get back into the groove with things I enjoy doing but haven't had much time for lately. Making layouts is high up on that list. Last week I managed to finish my first quarter of 2014 and get my album printed. Having it in hand gives that extra boost of motivation to keep at it. I do find that with less time, but not less photos, my style has shifted more and more towards 'keep it simple and get it done.'

Here's a layout I did for today's Something Old Something New sale at TLP. This is me with my co-workers at the school. We all have our quirks, but I love these ladies. It's great to work with people you can call friends.

14

I love this guy. Fourteen years ago today, I met him at the end of the isle and said yes. And while he'll probably kill me for posting this goofy picture of us, I love that we are goofy together. He makes me smile, when he doesn't make me want to scream. Happy anniversary, Lucas!  Love, Me

I swear something is missing

As I checked in on my long lost, very neglected blog, I noticed that I have only ONE post in 2014. Can that be right? Certainly I've posted something else, haven't I? Maybe not.

I think what has happened over time is that facebook has taken over. Sadly. It's just, quite frankly, SO much faster than blogging as a means of communication. And perhaps, far less meaningful. Free time just doesn't seem to be something I have in spades, and when I do have it, blogging almost NEVER comes to mind as a method of using said free time. 

Today, however, is the first day of Spring Break!! And I have nothing but free time!! True, I do have a list of things to do, but no particular time frame. And I was kind of thinking I would love to get my first quarter of Project Life completely caught up and ready to print! I'm actually close enough that I think I could pull it off in the next few days! 

Guess what else we'll be doing in the next few days?..... Getting a new car! Right after Sebastian was born, we went and got Lucas's truck. Since then, I've gotten an Impala, an Equinox, a piece of poop van, and a Sienna. I'd say this time it's his turn! His truck is showing signs of wear. And it guzzles gas like a champ. So, it's new car time! Hopefully we'll have that taken care of by Wednesday or so.

So what else is going on around here, you ask? Meagan is watching FROZEN on a loop! I am currently listening to Let It Go for about the 200th time in 3 days. I told her she could watch it one time today. She chose to watch it right now. :)  I don't mind. I do love Kristen Bell. She's funny.

And with that, I'm off to be productive - or not - for the day. And just maybe I'll have enough free time to come back this way and breathe a bit of life into this dusty old blog of mine. 

Queen City Meet

This past weekend Sebastian had a meet in Cincinnati. It was hosted by Queen City Gymnastics.

He had a great meet! Sadly, we had family members who tried to get there but couldn't due to weather-related traffic issues... they were stuck on the highway for 2 1/2 hours waiting for an accident to be cleared. By the time they got through it, they wouldn't have been able to make it to the meet in time, so they turned around and headed home.

This post is for them... Here's what you missed... the sum total of about 2 minutes of gymnastics that you waited 2 1/2 hours to NOT see. :(

High bar: He actually fell off of this even right at the beginning. His first attempt at casting to handstand didn't work out, and he came back down and let go. This video picks up where he got back up... thankfully the rest of his routine was pretty good. He scored a 9.4 and placed 1st.



P Bars was one of his best!! He scored a 10.8 and placed 1st


Floor... so far this year, this has not been his strong suite. For whatever reason, he just isn't finishing and polishing things on floor like he did last year. Still, a solid routine, if not wowing. He scored a 9.6 and placed 1st.


Pommel horse / Mushroom... his highest score of the day with an 11.2!! He placed 1st.


Rings, he actually took out one of his bonus elements. He said he didn't feel like the transition out of it was smooth enough, and he wanted to keep it clean. Totally respect that. He scored a 9.9 and placed 2nd.


Vault. Better than last week, when he flew forward, took a big step, and put his hands down on the landing. He's still trying to work out the balance between too much power and not enough. He scored a 9.0 and placed 3rd.


All of that adds up to an all-around score of 59.9 and a 1st place all-around trophy! It has been so great to see him progress and advance through the first 3 meets already this season. I love to see his hard work paying off. I've got my Mom Goggles on, for sure, but I think this kid is pretty amazing, and I am beyond proud of him!!

3rd Quarter is in the books!!!

I did it! I did it! I really really did it! (kid history, anyone?)

I've been using every spare moment of free time to work on my 3rd quarter Project Life album, and finally today I finished it!! It is done & ordered. Now I just have to wait for it to get here!!

Wanna see?? You can check it out...

Click here to view this photo book larger

Turn your favorite photos into a photo book at Shutterfly.com.

Now to finish 2nd & 4th quarters (*gasp*cough*sigh*) and TRY my very best to KEEP UP with 2014!! 

almost half way there!!

Here we are, just one week away from the end of the year. And here I am, still 29 weeks away from completing my 2013 Project Life. *siiiiiigh*  I've not given up. Not yet. But I do know myself well enough to know that if I am too far away from DONE too far into 2014, this project will never get done. I've seen it happen - with 2010, and 2011, and 2012... I'm sensing a pattern, no?

So yesterday I sat down and made a list of the weeks that I still need to finish. I'm not sure if you remember, so I'll tell you again, that I am printing (okay, let's assume  I get done) 4 books for the year... one for each quarter. I've actually finished and printed the first quarter. And when I wrote out my list, I only had 6 weeks of the 3rd quarter left to do. So I figured third quarter would be a good place to start up again. At least MAYBE I can get one more book printed before the end of the year. That might actually be doable!!

After I made my list and formulated my plan, I set to work, and actually managed to knock out 2 weeks yesterday evening!! This is looking good folks! If I can get a week an hour done, I might have a shot here!! True, that's still 30 hours of scrapping, but hey! One bite at a time, right?!

Okay. So here's week 29. Just LOOOOOK how tiny she was!! Man, time flies!! This was the week that we went to the lake to go swimming, Jane came to stay for a day or two, and the kids left for vacation with Grandma & Grandpa H. This week the puppies continued getting used to each other, as it had only been a few days of being a 2-dog family at this point. Also this week, our good friend came into town to interview for a position at the plant here. It was exciting to even consider the possibility of living close to our friends and getting to hang out again like we used to!

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Week 30... This week Lucas and I were kidless. He took a few days off of work, and we painted like crazy people. We got both Isaac's and Meagan's rooms totally gutted, repainted, reorganized, and put back together. Also, we got Sebastian's closet cleaned out and organized, which was no small task (he's a pack rat). Lucas and I had a few dates while the kids were gone... Uptown Cafe (see week 29...it's that yuuummy breakfast sandwich), YogoLand (see below....yum as well!), and walks in the park. We stopped at one park in town we had never been to and checked out the covered bridge. We had only ever canoed under it (last year while the kids were on vacation), so we decided to see it from the top side.

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both pages together

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And just a note, here I am half-way (almost) through the year and finally I've worked out a format that works best for me for Project Life. I like the big photo on one page, and blocked photos and cards for the rest. I like simple, not cluttered. Just tell the story and show the pictures...nothing fancy. So I'm planning to carry this format through the rest of 2013, and probably continue with it in 2014.

It's almost Christmas! For as very little decorating as I've done (so far consisting entirely of the Christmas tree and the 2 strings of lights outside), I am excited about Christmas! I love this holiday and all that it really is.
Right now I'm confined to the main floor of the house while Lucas and the kids wrap my gifts that they just hauled in from the store. He's been working LOOOOONG hours and has had zero time to go so far. So, today was the day. I love that all four of them went together. I love that all four of them are wrapping them together. I love that they will remember this kind of stuff when they think back on childhood Christmases.

I figured since I'm confined to quarters, I would take the chance to sit down and share a few photos. These are actually from a few weekends ago, but I haven't had time to post them yet. This year is the first time ever that any of us has ever had a real tree for Christmas. We've always had a beautiful artificial tree (really, it WAS very pretty), but it finally met its match this year, and it is no more. Rest in peace, tree. It was a part of our first 12 years of marriage and Christmases as a family.

So anyway, this year we headed to a farm that is local to us and picked out a tree. To be honest I still really hate the idea of cutting down perfectly good trees for the sake of decorating our living room. And maybe I'll look into planting a beautiful spruce right in the center of our living room windows just outside so we can decorate that each year. But it was still fun to have the experience together. And I have to say, the tree smells wonderful. And it's so soft, and actually not sappy like I thought it would be.

So, how about some pictures? I have a few.

The owners' dogs were roaming the farm while we were there. It only took our kids about 30 seconds to make friends with the dogs. They played with them, running through the trees and snow while Lucas and I took care of paying for the tree. 

Ultimately, this was the tree we chose. It fits perfectly in our living room... after we cut the tip off of the spire at the top.  

We hauled it home in the truck bed, and Sebastian helped Lucas carry it inside, where it sat for at least a week before getting its first light or ornament. Decorating has been minimal and slow-going this year. But to us, it's not at all about the fancy lights and a house that looks like the North Pole exploded in it. Around here, simple is good. I like simple. I'm good with simple.

first meet under his belt

Yesterday was the first meet of the 2013-2014 season. Leading up to it, Sebastian had been rather tired and worn down all week, even missing practice on Friday and sleeping for hours Friday night to Saturday morning. And now today (Monday... the day after) he is home from school with a stomach bug. Not fun. Still, he showed up yesterday in Champaign, IL excited to compete.

As usual, warm ups were a bit rough, but he seems to be able to pull himself together when it's time to impress the judges. Even still, he would be the first to tell you he could have done better. I think his biggest disappointment was on p-bars. Don't get me wrong... WE weren't disappointed in his p-bars. With my mom goggles on, I thought he looked good! But HE told me that he had not done his best, and he could have done more. We watched the videos of his routines this morning, and he immediately started making plans for what he will focus on in practice this week. That's just who he is - an "I can always get better" kind of kid.

For all of that, his meet results weren't too shabby! He made podium 4 times: 3rd on floor, 1st on pommel horse, 3rd on high bar, and 3rd all around! Great job Bas!

I am seriously SO very proud of how hard this kid works and how much dedication he has to this sport. Justin Spring said yesterday at the meet, "It takes a certain kind of person to make it in gymnastics." Every day that goes by, Sebastian shows more and more of those qualities of that 'certain kind of person.'

So, here's video of his mushroom and pommel routines. WARNING: Turn the volume down!! You can hear me yelling at the end, and let's just say I've never been accused of being quiet!

I love these kids

I seriously love these kids I'm raising. Yes, they each have the ability to push that mom button that only a kid can push. And no, they are not perfect... far from it. But they are pretty amazing.

The other day, Isaac & Meagan were out in the snow playing with each other, so, like any photo-addict would do, I grabbed my camera. Snow pictures are always fun, right? But what I got was so much more. I captured them. Really captured them... who they are and how they are together. I am so beyond blessed that these two are such great friends. They have moments (like the other day at Sebastian's orchestra concert when Meagan had had enough of it all and just kidney punched Isaac for no reason... yes, those kind of moments), but all in all they are true friends. They give willingly. They sacrifice on behalf of the other. They find ways to add kindness and love to each others' day. Seriously. Meagan will write a random note or make a gift for Isaac, and Isaac will help her clean her room when not a single bit of it was his mess to begin with. It's pretty awesome.

So I can't begin to tell you how much I loved these photos the second I saw them! Love! These make a mamma's heart happy.  Plus, like I said, snow pictures are always fun anyway, right?!

Ha ha, by the way... notice how they're on the OTHER side of the fence? Yes, well that's because it snowed on our dog poop before we could clean the yard, so now it's 'walk at your own risk' in the back yard. They're like little (or big is probably more accurate) hidden mines just waiting to explode as soon as they're stepped on... We need a melt-down so that we can clean our yard. Otherwise, our kids will have to play all winter on the outside of the fence. ;)

*****

And since I'm TRYING to keep relatively current on my 2013 Document Your December project, these pictures did  make it onto a layout and into my 2013 album. Here's the page...

(Click here to view credits)

Sunday, Lazy Sunday

This is the scene around here today... the kids played Minecraft for a while. Lucas found a movie to watch on Amazon Prime. And I have been knocking out a few weeks in Project Life.  Somewhere in there, I got some Otis Spunkmeyer cookies out of the freezer and baked them up. I pretend like I slaved away to make the delicious cookies, and I bask in the joy of a 2-minute clean-up. Good stuff right there. 

Minecraft world. The kids are playing together, making a village of some sort on our server. They could spend DAYS doing this. Sadly for them, we eventually kicked them off of the computer and sent them outside to play. It's cold, but it's a beautiful day. No reason they can't be running around out there for a bit. 

     

And who doesn't love warm cookies, fresh from the oven??

I think this is Meagan's cookie crazed face.... not sure?

White chocolate macadamia. Apparently, these are Lucas' favorite? How have I been married to this man for this long and not known that?

On Probation

This is Arya's world right now. She's on probation.

At puppy class on Thursday, I told our trainer that she had peed on our bed the night before (yes, on my bed...fun times to wake up to that). He said most of the time, when dogs pee on anything, it's their way of attempting to claim that thing as their own. Well, guess what fellas?! She doesn't get to claim our bed. Not happening!

So, for now, she is on-leash at all times, with her pinch collar for corrections when necessary. She is not allowed on the furniture, and most CERTAINLY not allowed on the bed. Lesson to be learned here - the furniture is OURS, not YOURS.

Dublin, has not, however, lost furniture privileges, as he has NOT peed on anything of the sort. I think he sort of likes being allowed to climb up and sit on a lap or stretch out on the couch, looking down on her while she sprawls out on the only thing available to her at present...the floor. Can dogs gloat? I think he might be. :)