Saturday, March 31, 2012

Where did the nice weather go?

I let more than a week go buy without taking pictures off my camera. What a shock to see Cassidy wearing shorts! Was that awesome warm weather only last week? 
I'm gonna sit him in the dirt

then check out his dirty butt

She loves her playhouse and was very excited to be able to play in it.

She spends lots of time laying out her school nap mat
 and Jake says to himself "looks like a nice place to nap"


She likes to read books by herself now.

There's a lot of counting and crazy pointing when she reads.

Friday, March 30, 2012

5 years of marriage

Bill and I have been married 5 years. We've experienced the good times with Cassidy and the bad times with a heart attack and breast cancer. We know we can find laughter and love through it all. I hope we have 50 more years together.


Friday, March 23, 2012

I love Digital Scrapbooking

I love digital scrapbooking. I take a lot of pictures. I rarely have prints made and love the hard bound photo books (I made one back with our wedding and honeymoon pictures). Then I found digital scrapbooking which is just like regular scrapbooking but all on the computer.  I use Photo shop Elements as my software which has also helped me learn valuable photo editing tools. Such as, last years Christmas card picture had a big booger under Cassidy's nose that I edited out!

I've made a photo book each year from 2009 on and each year you can see how I get better and better at this. I follow one web-site for products perhaps a little too religiously (Thank you Shabby Shoppe) but they have a frequently updated blog and because I stick to their products I can mix & match sets easily.

Every year they have Project Scrap on their blog. They provide 24 layouts each year - 2 pages for each month. You fill the layouts with your own elements (photos, flowers, paper etc). So at the end of the year you have a book. I'll end up adding extra pages (last year I think my book was 80 pages). One of the layouts for January looks like:


Last year I used some of the layouts but didn't really know what I was doing until late in the year. I can tell when I look at my book. This year I decided to do all 24 (I was swayed by the awesome covers they had last year). So far I've done January & February and then already an additional 2 pages.







Digital Scrapbooking makes me excited to take more pictures. It's my #1 hobby and I love the time I spend sitting at the computer scrapbooking!

Monday, March 19, 2012

Great spring weekend

We had a great weekend!  My birthday was good. I went for a run in the morning, then did some shopping by myself!  In the evening Bill took me to see Blue Man Group and out to dinner. Very fun!
Sunday the weather was beautiful so I took Jake & Cassidy for a long walk in the morning (50 lbs of stroller is a lot to push!). We played outside in the evening and grilled for the first time this year.  So nice and relaxing.



Saturday, March 17, 2012

Wholly Crap I'm 40

Today I am 40 years old.

Suddenly 40 seems pretty damn young to me. I’m sure when I was 20 I thought 40 was old. Even 60 doesn’t seem all that old to me anymore.
I am itching for change. Not sure if that’s mid-life crisis related or spring fever.   My life is boringly settled. Every week is pretty much the same. Hell every day is just about the same. I need to shake things up but my life is SO good so there’s nothing that needs a change. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
It must be time for a new tattoo :-)

Monday, March 12, 2012

Weekends are too short

It's been 21 months since I started working four ten hour days. I've really gotten used to every weekend being a 3 day weekend. This past weekend I had a big project at work so I worked most of Friday. With a toddler around. I was a bad mommy. In my eyes at least for letting her watch TV all day so I could work. In her eyes I was probably the best mommy in the world.
I worked a few hours on Saturday also and Sunday night I just couldn't believe it was Sunday night. The short weekend flew by :-(

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Ant turns ten!

My nephew is ten years old! He's a great kid who loves to draw. He very rarely smiles though but I got one on camera!

The elusive smile. Lots of badgering went into getting this photo!


My sister made 3 ice cream cakes!  They'll be eating ice cream all week long :-)

My sister is younger than me but because her kids are 10 and 13 and I have a toddler I feel younger than her. She's a great auntie to Cassidy (as I hope I am to her boys) and we love spending time with them.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Weekend of relaxation

We had a nice low-key weekend. Friday Cassidy and I visited my sister. We brought the kids to an indoor play place. We all had fun climbing things and going down big slides. Someone did tell their little girl to "let the little boy pass you" and the little boy was Cassidy! My fault for not dressing her girlie enough.


Cassidy doesn't know what to make of my sisters cat Louie. He's still a baby and full of energy!

The rest of the weekend we read books and did goofy things. Bill and I went to dinner and the movies (This Means War was very funny).

I asked Cassidy to sit next to Jake so I could take their picture together and this is what I got. Those two have a different relationship. They still basically ignore each other.