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.