Spring Cleaning

Well, like my sister wrote on Facebook, "Even if there were 30 hours in a day I would need 38!" (Thanks Rachel) I always seem to be behind on one thing or another. Two of my girls have been gone for a week visiting friends and family so I took the last few days to finally do some serious spring cleaning. You know, shampooing carpets, washing beadspreads, that kind of thing. The bad news is that means I haven't created anything new to show you. The good news is the house will be so clean when the kids go back to school next week I will have time to make some things then. In the meantime, I will be headed to the crop tomorrow night over at A Scrapper and Stampers Delight with my friends Stacy and Michelle. Hopefully we will do some fun things and get some pictures up soon. Michelle is a photographer, so the pics should be far better than my own. A clean house is nice, but not very creative. Remember "Dull women have immaculate houses." (Thanks Harvey, not sure where you found that but I always remember seeing it on your fridge.)

Pretty hair

Back to school means new clothes. For most kids that means jeans and fashionable tops, fun shoes, and great accessories. For my kids that means uniforms and plain colored shoes that match, no crazy socks and minimal "appropriate" jewelry. The one area they haven't taken away yet though is hair clips and headbands. My youngest daughter starts kindergarten this year, a stepping stone, mile stone, whatever you want to call it. I call it freedom with just a little bit of sadness thrown in that she will never be "all mine" again. But she is still little enough to appreciate cute little hair clips, so I made her these to start her first year of full time school with some fun.

Congratulations Emily, you're a big girl and you are sure to have pretty hair for school.

Life is like a cobweb.....

I have been organizing my work area these last couple days. It caused me to question this morning before going downstairs to finish up, what exactly is organization? I ask this because as I realize my "system" makes total sense to me it looks random and confusing to most others. I need to see things. I prefer open shelves to closed cabinets and clear containers to ceramic canisters. I suddenly realized this as I was moving things I didn't really want to put away. One of my daughters is the same. She would prefer everything she owns spread on her bedroom floor to a neat closet and shelves which needless to say gives us, her parents, fits. But as I endeavor to create a space that works for me I think I understand her a little better. How can you design if you can't see? How can you create if you don't visualize the elements available for your design? As I finish up my area, I hope that this experience will help me understand my own process better and maybe, just maybe, I can learn to cut Tessa some slack. I like the way it was stated here...

Life is like a cobweb, not an organization chart.  --Ross Perot

Aria goes to the park

This morning we took our dog Aria to the park. There are dog parks here in Boise, but honestly none of them seem really nice. So, we took her to the fields near our home on a Sunday to let her off leash, the day least likely to get a ticket. She has a yard at home, but it's not nearly big enough for her to get up a lot of speed and let me tell you this dog likes to run. What fun she will be in the snow this year now that she will be old enough to learn to pull a sled! Here she is, full speed ahead...

Aria running at the park

Beach Memories

After a visit to my Mom and Dad's house, the kids always have lots of fun memories of the beach. However, the photos have never been very good or the weather hasn't cooperated or any number of other reasons not to scrapbook it have occurred. This time, the planets aligned and we had great weather, low tides and the pictures turned out great. Here is the book I created for the girls beach memories...

A middle page with sand dollars and Abby holding a crab.

All three girls on the left and the legend of the sand dollar on the right.

The Aftermath...

Well what a wonderful 4th of July it was. The weather in Washington was uncharacteristically beautiful, the kids got to spend a lot of time with grandma and grandpa and auntie and cousins too and Emily had a great 5th birthday. Thanks to aunt Rachel we saw a big fireworks display with "front row seats" on the infield of the racetrack and she even helped me win some money on a race! (O.K. 6 bucks but I'd never been to a horse race before!) I got to see old friends and have a great birthday myself too.

A big, fun part of a trip to Grandma and Grandpa's is always the beach. This time for the first time ever we dug a geoduck. Mom made wonderful chowder that even my pickiest child ate and of course I saved the giant shell for a craft project...a trip to Washington always gives me so many new ideas. I hope I can squeeze some time in to get started on some of them soon. In the mean time, here we are "digging the duck".

"What are they looking at?!?"

"Oh, a Geoduck"

4th of July Preview 2!

Today was the last day of VBS and therefore a celebration picnic. What fun Emily had eating a family lunch on the grass then playing in the water with her friends. She was a very tired girl when we got home so content to watch some Scooby Doo while I finished up page 1 of the July album...here it is.

Inside cover and first page

the "firecrackers" taken out of the pocket...all the kids that will be celebrating with us!