Sunburns and Waterslides

Belly doesn’t like water.
Belly doesn’t like playing in pools, or sprinklers.

Belly does like rain.
Belly’s mom is ok with turning on the sprinkler, squishing Belly in bathing suit, then taking Belly outside to “play in the rain.”
(Belly’s mom is OK with the occasional lie to her child)

Belly loves to slide. Belly now loves to slide in the “rain.”

Belly loves to swing. Belly now loves to swing in the “rain” also.

Belly loves to drive her car… well, yeah I think you can get it on your own now. lol

Belly has also decided she loves her Mommy in the rain as well.

(Yup… Mommy is in a bathing suit too. Necessary when playing with a 2 year old in the “rain.”)

Mostly, Belly just loved and going and playing in the “rain” today. She was begging me all of the rest of today to put her swimsuit on and go back out. I told her we will tomorrow.

Sunday Scrapbooking (5/29)

I have a ton of pages again this week! lol About half of them are because this weekend on the Digital Scrapbooking board over at Justmommies we are doing a Scrap-A-Thon. We do one of these ever 3-4 months. They run from Friday morning to Monday night, and it’s basically to have a weekend of scrapbooking. We run challenges, speed scraps, and at the very end we award points and we give out prizes. We’re right in the middle of it right now, so expect a lot of pages next week too. lol

On another note, I’ve been offered a guest spot on the store creative team for The Lilypad in September! I’m very excited and honored, and can not wait.

Now… for the pages!

made with Krystal Hartley's The World is My Oyster, Dani Mogstad's Vintage Garden Fairies (retired), and Scrap Kitchen Designs and Krystal Hartley's The Very Thought of You Collab (retired)

made using Dani Mogstad and Shawna Clingerman's It's A Guy Thing; outline alpha - Shawna Clingerman Kickstart alpha; tiny alpha - Zoe Pearn's Teeny Tiny Type; mat/stitches - Libby Pritchett Border Basics - Rounded Corners; font - DJB Coffeeshop Espresso by Darcy Baldwin

made with Zoe Pearn's You Rock!; fonts: DJB With a Little Help from My Friends and DJB Skritch Scratch both by Darcy Baldwin

made with Kristen Cronin-Barrow's Over the Rainbow; alpha from Dani Mogstad's I Like Love You'

Here are the rest of this week’s pages, just click to see them larger and to see the credits on them.

Saturday Snapshots (5/28)

linking this up to: The Paper Mama “Self Portrait” Challenge

What I’ve been up to knit-wise ((PLUS other stuff lol))

adding in a few hours later – technically we should call this the never ending blog posts since I seem to keep coming and adding this, that, and a pool table to it. I promise I will try to remember to add every single little teensy tiny bit this time. lol (but I can make no real guarantees)

Part I:
So, other than a baby hat I made for my cousin’s wife in the beginning of April I have not made anything new. (Note to self – message cousin’s wife to find out if she can send me a picture of said hat) After I finished the hat I got it stuck in my head that I wanted to try my hand at lace… and I was having no luck on it… at all. Then one night I had a light bulb moment. I’ve been using the chart version of the patterns, because, as everyone told me, once I learned to read them they were soooo much easier than reading the actual word patterns. But I noticed something the other night, all the patterns, the row numbers, were odd. When I finally realized this I re-read through the notes before the pattern and realized I wasn’t adding a plain knit row between the ones the pattern showed. God I felt stupid when I saw that. lol
Now that I figured out my stupid mistake I’m working on a new hat. (Shocker I know. lol) I’m not sure if it’ll be for Belly or not yet. I’ve combined two patterns on this hat. One is from a toddler/baby knit hat book. It’s for a plain rolled edge hat. The other one I’m using is for a fern lace wash cloth. (It’s pattern #2) It’s combining beautifully, but I just couldn’t get a good picture were the design shows up well, but here’s the best one I got:

I’ve got the fern pattern repeating twice on each needle, and the stitches are spread over 3 needles, so it repeats 6 times on the hat. I’m half-way through the first set of the repeat.
If you want to check out other people’s craft endeavors check out this Crafty Friday post on Home Sweet Farm’s blog. (Click the icon below to get directly to the post.)

Part II:

I am joining in on the Flashback Friday fun this week over on the blog Christopher & Tia: The Documentary of Us.

 

We went to Disney World for a week in June of 2007. It was a tradition that when a grandchild turned 7 my mom’s parents would take the whole entire family to Disney World. Well, in 2007 my cousin Danielle turned 7 and so off we all went. (And by all I mean all 15 of us)

 

Florida in June is so flipping hot. *panting from memory of heat*

 

It was the first time John, the boys, and I ever went and did vacation stuff as a family. Zach was turning three on the trip and Ryan was about 18 months. These are not the most ideal age to take little ones to Disney World… in the middle of the freaking summer. (or at any other time to be honest) There just isn’t much they can do at that age, and taking turns waiting in line while the other adult waits with the kids isn’t much fun either. But the boys enjoyed some of it.

 

I think our (as in my little family – not the whole) favorite part was when John and I took Zach out to do Character dining for dinner a few nights before his birthday. He had a blast. All the characters were from Winnie the Pooh, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was one of his favorite movies at the time. Then to make it even better all the people sang happy birthday to him. He was in three year old heaven.

 

After the dinner was over we hung out at the park for a long time and stayed and watched the parade. I have to think that will be his hand’s down best birthday party ever.

If I don’t get sleep soon…

If I don’t get sleep soon I may do something crazy like set my house on fire.

You do not consider being up on and off all night as part of life with a 2 year old. At two the boys let me sleep all night. Belly… yeah not so much. We’re up and down with her at night trying to get her to sleep, because she’s constantly waking up, the past few nights we’ve broken down and put her in bed with us. That doesn’t actually help any, it just keeps both John and I from getting any sort of real sleep.

And now… now, she is not napping, and she is in a foul, foul mood.

This picture just ain’t great.

So it’s at moment’s like earlier this evening while I was trying to take pictures of my darling Miss Pudding looking out our backdoors at the raging storm that I wished I could find my freaking battery charger to my camera. I’m not quite at the desperate point of just buying a new one yet. And honestly, since we got a smaller family friendly point and shoot camera now too, I’m nowhere near as freaked as I would have been. But as much as I’ve been enjoying this newer smaller one, it just didn’t do me true tonight. I’m not a snobby camera snob. I use a point and shoot camera…. a very nice fancy one albeit… but still, it’s just a regular old point and shoot. I’m no snobby photographer, or hell, even a plain old regular one, just a mom who takes a gazillion pictures of her kids daily and likes to have the nicest pictures I can get.

I took this picture with my camera 2 years ago:

And I took this one tonight with the family camera:

Seeing as how I’m not a professional photographer I feel no guilt or shame in saying thank God I know my way around Photoshop so I can edit it to this:

(and before anyone asks… yes I’m a sucker for high contrast photos. lol)

Being grounded sucks

There’s one thing I’ve learned as a stay-at-home mom, when your child is grounded, so are you. This means groundings at my house are the very last resort. And I do mean very last.

It’s so boring.

We can’t go anywhere, or do anything fun. I have to be mean and keep up with the stipulations of the grounding. I don’t want to make Ryan stay in his room. I don’t want to tell him we can’t watch movies together, or play games. I don’t want to be stuck in the house with him while Belly and Zach go out and play.

But I have to.

See, here’s why Ryan has to be grounded. In the last two weeks at school Ryan moved his clip NINE times. Yes, nine. One day he was really ambitious and moved it three times. Remembering to follow certain school rules has been pretty hit and miss for him. Things such as staying in his seat, not talking in the halls, not playing in the bathroom, those are things he’s struggled with all year. Apparently he has decided now that he’s just not even going to try. Thus, the grounding.

What does his grounding entail? Well, let’s see he’s been grounded from TV for the past two weeks. Grounded from playing outside most of last week. Grounded from the Game Boy for a week. Having to clean their room by himself. Has to help do laundry (as in wash, fold, and put away clothes with me). And finally, being grounded to his room, with only 2 toys, coloring supplies, and books, since last Wednesday.

Being grounded sucks.

Sunday Scrapbooking (5/22)

I’ve got SEVEN pages I could share this week. But, I don’t think I will share all seven, maybe just four or five. I’ll link the rest of them at the bottom so, if you want to, you can see them also.

Before I share my pages this week I have some sad news (dealing with scrapbooking) to share. I decided that it was time for me to step down from the Shabby Princess Pre-Team. It wasn’t an easy decision at all, I love working with SP and the other ladies on the team. But after a year I felt I was ready to try my hand at applying to other teams again. I actually started missing the energy and pace needed to keep up with multiple designers at once. SP was lovely about all of it, and as I told her, she is hands-down the nicest designer I’ve worked with.

Now… this week’s pages!

made with this week's Product Spotlight on the Shabby Shoppe blog, CLEMENTINE

made with Kristen Cronin-Barrow's Here Comes Trouble (lift – loose copy – of my friend Kellie’s layout Stay Little)

made with Gina Marie Huff's Every{DAY} Life the Kit

made with Sahlin Studio's This Moment elements, and Grunge and Valorie Wibbens So I Never Forget Page Protectors

The other pages from this week are 32 Songs, My Belly Pie, and So Beautiful.

Saturday Snapshots (5/21)

Can’t you tell he’s so impressed by his uncle’s high school graduation ceremony?
lol

Despite what my mom always said…

A neat bed does not make for a neat room.

Sad part, that’s actually pretty clean for their room.

See, it’s gotten to the point where I refuse to clean up the boys’ room. They’re big enough to do it themselves. They spent all of last Thursday cleaning their room (as they do every Thursday or they can’t do sleepovers on the weekend) and then since Ryan was grounded Friday I made him clean it up some more by himself. They both did sleepover last weekend, but came home a few hours on Saturday while my parents went out somewhere and in those few hours they destroyed their room again.

Yesterday I washed their bedding and remade their beds, thinking, hey even if the room is slightly on the messy side, having neat beds will make it look a little better. Or at least that’s what my mom always told us growing up.

Yeah… it still looks messy.

Sunday Scrapbooking (5/15)

Got four pages to share this week! And surprisingly pages for the boys outnumber the pages for Ms. Pudding.

First up is a page for my girl from when we were gardening Monday.

made with Jenn Barrette's Grow Something Good

Next up are all pages on the boys, and all from a set of pictures I took Tuesday.

made with Lauren Grier's Not What I Expected, Darcy Baldwin's Story Telling Accents, and Jenn Barrette's Journal Bling

made using Shawna Clingerman's Carefree and Traci Reed's Slip-Ins Vol. 2
 
made with Jenn Barrette's Boyish Charm, Grow Something Good, Adventures in My Backyard and Traci Reed's Slip-Ins (bubble wand, bubbles, and chalk from Shawna Clingerman's Carefree) This page is actually a lift (loose copy) of my friend Kellie's layout Slip and Slide

Saturday Snapshots (5/14)

Today we…

Drew with chalk.

Threw a fit.

Went to the park.

Played in the tunnels.

Learned to climb up to the slide alone.

Got stuck on the slide because we went to high up.

Played with a bubble wand.

And chased said bubbles.

Jumped off things we shouldn’t.

Drew with some more chalk.

Raced in the backyard.

Swung too high on the swings while standing on the swing.

And we did other important non-fun stuff too.

OK… I lied. We didn’t.
But I did cook dinner.

Mother’s Day, Surprises, Shots, and Flooding

(The title isn’t in order. lol It just sounds better that way.)

I hate surprises.

Because of that, when John called me Friday and told me that all three kiddos would be doing sleepover – whether they wanted to or not – at my mom’s I was on the suspicious side. John doesn’t make plans for the kids to do sleepover; he makes plans for the kids not to do sleepover. I tried calling my mom to find out what was up and she had no clue.

Saturday John woke me up at 8 am. He said we needed to get up eat, and get ready for an early day. I’ve mentioned this several times before, but I doubt anyone appreciates the depths of what I’m about to say. I. Am. NOT. A. Morning. Person. Expecting me to get up and do anything is, well, stupid. lol Despite what John and my mom kept telling me about cheering up, that I was in for a surprise, I remained in a bad mood. I kept that bad mood up when the first part of the plan got cancelled due to rain, then in a worse mood when I first spent an hour in Taco Bell then an hour in Walgreen’s as John tried to kill time.

We eventually arrived downtown and that is when John sprang his surprise. For Mother’s Day he got us tickets to go see Spamalot. (He knows I’ve wanted to see it since it came out) I felt so bad for being angry at him a good chunk of the day, especially since I know there is no way in hell he would have ever gone to see it just because he wanted to.

We figured while we were downtown we might as well go see history as it’s happening. We walked over to the walking bridge thingy that runs next to Riverside to see the Mississippi flooding. It was just astounding seeing it then, even though – hello – I live here, but the fact that it’s even higher now after just a few rain-free days blows my mind.

I’m far enough from rivers (which is not that far lol) that the main thing I see near my house is flooded crops, but even so this picture was about a 10 minute drive from my house. (It’s supposed to be a cotton field)

Told you I was getting a lot of rain.

We did Mother’s Day at my mom’s. We cooked out, had lots of dessert (seriously, my mom made strawberry shortcake AND banana pudding just for our family, her and my step-dad, and my two younger siblings), and just hung out. I got some pictures of the three kiddos together while we were there.

And lastly… Monday.

My poor boy had to go and get his last shot before his kindergarten registration could be completed.

I think it’s so silly that I have to go and register him at a school he already goes to, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. I’m not worried about him getting in since they do the kindergarten test every 9 weeks as their 9 week testing. (To see how much they’ve learned each quarter) And technically Ryan has had passing grades on it since the first test. Last time he took it he only missed one thing, recognizing the lower-case letter m.

He was sooo big during his shot. He didn’t even whimper, though he did give the nurse a glare that should have evaporated her to dust when she stuck him with the needle. She made up for it by giving him a band-aid covered in piranhas and a new red toothbrush. He is very happy to know that he isn’t due anymore shots for the next 6 – 7 years.