Sunday Scrapping

I didn't get much scrapping done this week because I threw my back out last weekend and our regular church craft nights, where I usually get a lot of stuff done, have been "Prep for VBS" nights instead. :-)

I finished the layout of my brother coming home from his deployment last September:

as well as a 3 page Christmas LO.

Although I didn't do this week's Sunday Scrappin' challenge, working chronologically keeps me inspired and these were the next pictures on my list! If you want to talk about challenges though, my sil, Leah, has commented a couple of times about how she likes that I usually use non-traditional colors for Christmas layouts. So I've begun challenging myself to do so whenever I can. The 3 page Christmas LO I did this week was aqua blue, neon green and bright yellow with a touch hot pink and orange.

Anyway, there is a group of five of us ladies that like to scrapbook at our church. (Wani, my sis-in-law Lehi, Kara, Toni and myself) We've started informally calling ourselves the Scrappin' Sistahs and have been getting together on a semi-regular basis for over a year now. Last month, Lehi issued a challenge which Toni won. This month, I've decided to come up with a challenge for the group too. It's fun and gives us a personal goal, you know? Here's the challenge sketch and Wani's entry. (she's always the first one to complete a challenge):

Check out her whole post...!

And here's my page, which I completed this week. I turned in on it's side, which is why it looks different from Wani's. I hand-drew the white title on the black cardstock. The whole title reads, "Pictures of joy prove life isn't a dream":

I want to invite all of my readers to participate. If you like to scrapbook and are interested (to more people we have, the more fun it'll be!) use the sketch in the picture as an inspiration for your own page. You have about two weeks to complete it...it's due on Monday, July 20th. I'm also adding a twist. The title must be at least 50% hand-done and I will also be taking into account the words themselves. Is it an especially creative or poignant title, like Toni's was in the last challenge? Or is it poetic? Especially meaningful? A clever play on words? Send a pic to my email or blog. arshuman@sbcglobal.net and feel free to invite others to participate---the more the merrier!

Sunday Scrappin', a day late!

I know this Sunday Scrappin' post is late, but I threw my back out Sunday morning and couldn't even sit up yesterday, let alone get on the computer. That same day, our router bit the dust, so until Wednesday, we can only get online occasionally. Are those good enough excuses? :-)

Anyway, I did get four pages done last week. I finished the layout of my brother coming home from his deployment last September, (sorry it's dark)

as well as a 3 page Christmas LO.

This wasn't this week's Sunday Scrappin' challenge, but working chronologically keeps me inspired and these were the next pictures on my list! If you want to talk about challenges though, my sil, Leah, has commented a couple of times about how she likes that I usually use non-traditional colors for Christmas layouts. So I've begun challenging myself to do so whenever I can. The 3 page Christmas LO I did this week was aqua blue, neon green and bright yellow with a touch hot pink and orange.

Anyway, there is a group of five of us ladies that like to scrapbook at our church. (Wani, my sis-in-law Lehi, Kara, Toni and myself) We've started informally calling ourselves the Scrappin' Sistahs and have been getting together on a semi-regular basis for over a year now. Last month, Lehi issued a challenge which Toni won. This month, I've decided to come up with a challenge for the group too. It's fun and gives us a personal goal, you know? Here's the challenge sketch and Wani's entry. (she's always the first one to complete a challenge):
Here, check out her whole post...!

I want to invite all of my readers to participate. If you like to scrapbook and are interested (to more people we have, the more fun it'll be!) use the sketch in the picture as an inspiration for your own page. You have about two weeks to complete it...it's due on Monday, July 20th. I'm also adding a twist. The title must be at least 50% hand-done and I will also be taking into account the words themselves. Is it an especially creative or poignant title, like Toni's was in the last challenge? Or is it poetic? Especially meaningful? A clever play on words? Send a pic to my email or blog. arshuman@sbcglobal.net and feel free to invite others to participate---the more the merrier!

If you've read this far, thanks for bearing with me! I don't know when I'll actually be able to post this, but in the meantime, have a great week!

Remember the hat lady

As my husband would tell you, I have a problem.

I buy clothing and forget to take the tags off. Now before you have visions of the woman from Hee Haw with the price tag dangling from her hat, I DO eventually take them off. Just not until I wear them for the first time. And the problem is that by that time, if they are not in my line of sight, I often forget. Many is the day that BD grabs a tag on my shirt, yanks hard, and a price tag falls to the floor. He thinks it's pretty funny but it's quirks like that that make us unique, right?

Anyway, today, I put on a new shirt and noticed the tag protruding from the shoulder. So I grabbed it and pulled. And pulled. It didn't come loose. My brow wrinkled in consternation. After all, BD makes it look so effortless. I know he has those big, strong muscles in his arms and all, but surely I'm strong enough to break a little plastic tag. So I tried again. I pulled harder. I yanked so hard that my fist snapped back and...and...and I gave myself a bloody lip.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm just that kool.

love and flabby arms

My ten year old loves to squeeze my upper arms. Even though it's the part of my body I dislike the most, I grit my teeth and let her because she does it out of love. But all that squeezing must have left her with some nagging questions.

Mama, when I grow up, will my arms look like yours?

What do you mean, honey?

I mean do all grown ups have those flaps on their arms?

(I once again grit my teeth and smile.) Your arms don't have to have them. If I did special exercises, they wouldn't be that way.

(She tilts her head and looks confused.) Why don't you do those exercises?

(By this time, I'm getting a little defensive.) Do you think I look bad, Izabella?

No! (She runs to me and hugs me close.) I love you, Mommy. (She pulls away and pats my arm and I can tell she's just genuinely curious about the changes a person goes through to get an adult body. To her ten year old mind, people don't look good or bad, they just either love her or they don't.)

But I've been doing my special "upper body" exercise tape ever since!

Sunday Scrapping

Like I said last Sunday, I participated in a challenge two weeks ago. Here is the challenge sketch:



And here is the page I did:


I didn't win, but you can go here to see all the contenders...

Anyway, the challenge this week was to use contrasting colors from opposite sides of the color wheel. I choose blue and red-orange:


I also scrapped four other pages. This was an ice skating trip from last December:


I love these pictures! My sis-in-law snizzle-sis took them at her house last fall and they have always reminded me of how JOY feels.


This page is four misc. photos from last year:


This is the second page of a two-page layout of my brother's homecoming to his base in Germany last September after a 15 month deployment in Iraq. I started the first page, but the electricity went out at our church during craft night Friday just as I was starting it. I'll get it done this week.

A post about nothing

I'm starting to exercise again. Yay! I won't be running for a while, but I still manage to get a 45 minute walk in most days. And I didn't gain any weight while I was down, something I was worried about. In fact, I lost 2-3 pounds. And despite my harrowing doctor's checkup a couple of weeks ago, I am healing really well. I feel almost back to normal.

I just gotta say how wonderful I feel to have a family like mine. Everyone is healthy and God has allowed me to stay home with my kids as well as have a wonderful, supportive husband. I am so blessed. And my kids are the sweetest!

OK, that's all for now. Maybe I'll come up with something witty or at least interesting later, but for now, Sniz out!

Sunday Scrapping

I used to have a Sunday Scrapping post regularly, but have gotten out of the habit, so I have a lot of catching up to do. My daughter, Baylee, has become a scrapper too, and that is fun to share my hobby with her! This week, I entered a challenge put forth by my scrappin sistah, (and sister-in-law) which my BFF Toni won - rightly. :-)

At our church craft night Friday, I scrapped this page of our 16th anniversary dinner last October.

This is a three-page layout of a a weekend at my parent's timeshare in French Lick, Indiana last November.

This is my fortieth birthday breakfast last October.

This is my birthday trip to downtown Indianapolis.

A homeschooling trip to the Indiana State Museum, plus some misc. stuff.

An old picture that didn't belong anywhere, so I had fun just putting one picture on this page.

Same with this one.

Christmas at my Grandma's house. Baylee was in rare form!

My computer's power cord gave up the ghost today, so if I don't have time to visit any blogs today, I promise I will when the new cord comes in! Until then, I have to finish this before the battery dies! Hope you all have a good week!

June 13, 2009

I know all of you are on pins and needles wanting to know how our chore system is working. Well, we started out strong and our house looked better than it had in a while. I started just giving them one misc. chore each morning that consisted of anything I saw around the house that needed done...like straighten the books on the kids' bookshelf, or wash the wall where there were water-marks that had been bugging me (but that I hadn't done myself :-)) or go through the shoe basket and find any socks and put them in the dirty clothes or empty out the vacuum cleaner. Slowly but surely things were getting done and I was checking their work regularly. It's now a week into it and the kids are starting to complain. So they still do their chores, just more reluctantly. That's human nature, I guess.

And for those of you interested in the winner of the scrap challenge, my BFF Toni won! Not only was her page beautiful, but we all agreed that the title and the journaling was so creative and cool, not-withstanding that someone in her family that shall remain nameless thought the half-circles on the bottom of the page represented a certain part of the female anatomy. Save us from male scrapbookers! Although BD DID scrap a very cool page once and he loves to put little captions coming from the mouths of the people in the photos. He's cool that way.

scrapbook challenge

Recently my snizzle-sis, Lehi, issued forth a scrapbook challenge unto us. Those of us with courage to face said challenge, used the following sketch as a guideline:



Baylee (my 12 year old daughter) came up with this:



Here's Lehi's page:


Here's Wani's two pages:




Here's mine:


And here's Toni's:

Kid Scrap

Here is Baylee's most recent scrap book page. It was created today using pictures from a few years ago.

Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy

I am such a wimp. I went to the surgeon yesterday for my first check-up post-surgery, and he removed all the steristrips and some gauze that had gotten accidentally glued to my incision. When he was done, it looked AWFUL and it hurt like heck. The incision looked open again and was bleeding, but he said it looked pretty good. Wha??? I guess that's just my wimpiness talking when I say it do NOT look good! In fact, I had to sit down and cry a little bit after I left his office. Like I said, WIMP.

15 year old

One of the things I love about our son is that he's always happy. (Well almost all the time.) I guess I've learned to appreciate that quality more and more as one of our other children becomes moodier and moodier by the day (actually, by the hour). But one of the side affects of being always happy seems to be that he has the ability (as most males do) to turn a switch and stop thinking about something unpleasant whenever he wants to. Therefore, he seems to be able to listen to us talk for an hour about how he needs to be more responsible with his things and how he needs to be more trustworthy to do his chores, and he can walk away, bouncing around, singing, and cheerfully forgetting that he ever had anything he forgot to do or there might still be things he needs to do. He has to write lots of sentences today (that's one of the consequences we came up with) and he wasn't happy at first, but like I said, he has the ability to distract himself from thinking about anything he doesn't want to. So the fact that he wouldn't have to write them if he did what he was supposed to the first time doesn't trouble him anymore and now he's happy again. When I called BD this morning to discuss this with him, he said we just have to accept that he may never see the importance of what we are saying while he's at home, but we just have to love him. We both hope and pray this stuff will make sense to him when he's an adult. But I have to admit, it scares me to think this boy will be driving in less than a year.

June 3, 2009

Baylee's last gymnastics lesson is today and Izzi finished up ballet with her yearly performance on Saturday. Will is spending the night at Zac's. I had surgery last Wednesday and have been pretty useless these last few days, although BD asked me to come up with a workable chore system that I can easily enforce over the summer. (We've tried them before, but hey, never give up, right?) So I started that yesterday and am continuing today. The kids seem reluctantly on board, although William seems to not take it very seriously and his room and the bathroom need some major attention. I was able to take a long walk yesterday. My incision was sore, but it wasn't too bad. I won't be able to run again for a while, though. Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, I have overdue library books, as I was just informed by email today. I can't drive until tomorrow, so I'll just have to pay the fine. Sigh. My life is so exciting.

My amazing toe!

While reading the post my hubby (BD) wrote on his little earwax problem and laughing my head off (while trying to ignore the grossness of it all), I had the idea that posting something funny/weird/unusual about myself might be fun. Or at least entertaining. OK, it would give me something to write about. Anyway, it would be fun if my few readers did the same! So if you post something unique/funny/weird about yourself, let me know in a comment so I can come check yours out!

This post is about my feet. Or more specifically, the second toe on my right foot. It is nearly the same length as my big toe and when I stub my toes, that is always the "forerunner" that bears the brunt of the injury. Plus I'm a jogger and that toe seems to hit the end of my shoe a lot, resulting in something pretty bizarre. The toenail on that foot is only attached at the base...it lifts up like the lid of a box and has been that way for a long time. The weirdest thing of all is that it doesn't hurt at all and it still grows. I share this fact with very few people because for some reason, most who know seem to find it disgusting. But my kids think it's fascinating so I'm gonna go with that.

It's a big-un!

OK, I promised a story about the trip. Here goes...

Driving through the mountains of Virginia is beautiful. Winding roads with new, spectacular scenery around each corner, the woods bursting into the new growth of spring...the problem is that when you are traveling with 11 people, 6 of which are kids, bathroom stops become pretty important and the few "buildings" visible from the road would make the Clampitt's cabin look like a palace. Oh, there was the occasional Mom and Pop gas station, but they were few and far between and if they had a "restroom" (I use the term loosely), they were outhouses out back complete with signs written with magic marker on a torn piece of cardboard that read something to the effect of, "Bathroom for paying customers only". For some reason, the females in our party balked at the idea of using the structures complete with a cutout of a crescent moon on the door. So while we were actually willing to become "paying customers" if necessary, some of us would take one look around and high-tail it back to the safety of the minivans.

So it was that while we were transversing said winding, mountain roads, anxiously on the lookout for the neon glow of a modern BP or a Marathon station, that we came up behind an old pick-up truck, circa early 70's, so rusty that the original paint color was a mystery. We followed the pick-up for a few miles before spotting a country store and pulling into the gravel lot eagerly. We poured out of the vans and pushed into the small store, not even noticing that the pickup had pulled into the lot too. It didn't take long to discern that this stop was not going to produce our longed for potty. We went outside to discuss our options. My sister wanted to take the girls to the woods and let them pee there (yes, peeing in the woods was preferable to the outhouses), I was wondering why we didn't bring a "pee-can" like my parents did on long trips when we were young, my dad was voicing his frustrations that a US highway didn't have any rest-stops...and it was in this general hubbub that the man from the pick-up intruded onto my consciousness. He was an African-American man, dressed in worn overalls, holding a huge, smelly carp by it's tail, swinging it back and forth as he strutted around the parking lot calling in a sing-song voice, "It's a big-un! It's a big-un! It's a big-un!" (To whom was he talking to? We were the only ones there.) In my confusion, I thought he must be a local selling it to the store, but he never went in, just stood outside the plate-glass window, lifting the fish high and showing it off by swinging it madly and yelling through the window, "It's a big-un! It's a big-un!" with a huge smile. The fish was indeed a "big-un", about four feet in length and probably weighing 50 pounds. It hung to the man's shins and there were at least four long, bloody strings of unknown origin coming from it's mouth. (I think it was saliva.) After the man showed off his catch to the store keeper, he turned towards me, still swinging and calling out "It's a big-un!" For a moment I was frozen in place, watching those bloody streams of saliva whipping ever closer with each mad swing the man took. "Please don't touch me," my mind screamed as I hurried away. Everything is kinda blurry after that. I do remember that he stopped by my mom's open window to show the carp off to she and my dad before flinging the big fish willy-nilly into the back of his truck and hopping in the cab. By this time I was safely ensconced in our vehicle myself with the door tightly closed. When we pulled back onto the road, the man's pick-up was right in front of us. We noticed that he would slow down each time we would pass a house or a structure and we knew he was just driving down the road looking for places to show off his "big-un".

In hind-sight, we would have done things differently. I would have taken his picture to put on my blog (and make his day), my sister would have responded to his "big-un" comments by saying, "I've seen bigger." Regardless, the phrase, "It's a big-un!" will live in infamy in our family get-togethers from here on out.

And yes, we finally did find a bathroom.

Spring Break

I figured it was time to dust off this ole' blog of mine and write something spectacular as usual. Oh wait, one of the reason I've been avoiding it is because my entries rarely were spectacular and at this point in time, I feel I have nothing of interest to say. So I guess you'll have to bear with me as I try my dardnest to think of something...anything...even remotely worth reading!

OK, well, Spring Break was the week before last. BD was in Las Vegas for the week, so Sunday after church, my kids and I hopped in my parent's mini-van and caravaned with my sister's family for the week. We drove to Lancaster Co, VA to my aunt and uncle's house, a drive of about 10 hours (12 with stops), and got there after midnight. The next day we got up and drove three hours to Gettysburg and then back to Uncle Steve and Aunt Paula's house. The next day we went to New York City where we toured the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the subway sytem (a horrible experience), and the top of the Empire State Building. We rounded out our day by having New York pizza with friends of ours, then back to Aunt and Uncle's. The next day we drove to Washington DC and toured the Capital Building and drove around downtown to see the sights. My wonderful aunt and uncle had turned in some points to get us a time-share condo in Williamsburg, VA, and we went there that night. The next morning we went to Jamestown, VA, the first white settlement in North America. They have a living musuem there...it was so neat!
The next day (Friday) we drove to Amhearst, VA, for my cousin's wedding on Saturday evening. Saturday morning we had the chance to hike up Crabtree Falls, the highest falls west of the Mississippi River. The weather that day was 70 and sunny. The wedding in the chapel at a small exclusive women's college was beautiful; the afternoon sunlight from the tall, arched windows fell on the bride's gown as she said her vows.
Anyway, the next morning we drove all day to get back to Indiana. We arrived home around 9:00 on Sunday night.
OK, being in a closed vehicle stuffed with luggage for six people for seven days with my parents and three children, one of which is a teen-aged boy, was challenging.
And all I have to say is, "It's a big-un!"
I will post that story next time and I promise I won't be gone so long this time!

Cruise 2009!

OH. MY. GOODNESS.

Our cruise was SOOO FUN!!!!

I'm not ready to get back into the real world yet (we just got home late last night), so for now I'll just post some pictures and say that our friends Toni and Carl are the best...we were so blessed to take this trip with them! I thank God for this wonderful experience...I don't deserve it, but I am so grateful.

It's here!

Tomorrow morning, BD and I leave for our cruise. For the sixteen and a half years we've been married, we have never taken a vacation for more than a night or two away from the kids and we've always driven, never flown. I find myself gripped by a strange nervousness and the kids are wandering around as sad as can be about us leaving for a week. But once we get on the plane in the morning, I know it all will fade away. I am so looking forward to BD and I just being able to relax and enjoy each other's company and the company of our dear friends, Toni and Carlos, the Narcoleptic Dad.

Fat legs

All of your comments about your own laundry woes made me feel like I'm not the only one and maybe my kids are normal, so thanks!

Anyway, every single time Snip and Snap (10 and 8) are in the back of the mini-van, their conversation is an adventure. Yesterday it was about legs. (Keep in mind that neither of them are the least bit overweight. In fact, Snip might be UNDERweight.)

Snap: The tops of my legs are kinda fat.

Snip: The top of EVERYONE'S legs are fat. I mean big around. Mom, is that mean?

Me: No. (I knew what she meant)

Snip: I used to think something was wrong with my legs 'cause if you stare at them for a long time, the little red lines under the skin start to look funny.

Me (thinking this could be a teaching moment): Those are your veins and capillaries. Remember we studied those?

Snip (totally uninterested): OK.

Snap: Yeah, I used to think I needed to go to the emergency room because my legs would be so skinny, but they got fat when I sat down.

Snip and Snap: HA HA HA HA HA

Me, thinking to myself: Yeah, laugh it up while you can, ladies. Laugh it up.

Laundry Day

Sorting the kids' laundry baskets is always an adventure. I did a laundry post almost two years ago about the time that there was an unknown donor's underwear (toddler size 2) in the laundry. That was kinda spooky but there is usually mystery jackets or shirts in there. Let me share what I found in the girls' basket this morning:

One boot
One strapless dress that hasn't been worn since last summer
One fancy skirt (dry clean only)
One Laura Ingalls costume (that hasn't been worn since Halloween)
A pair of formal satin gloves that I wore in a wedding ten years ago
An empty beach bag
A shirt (still folded neatly from last week's laundry)
One baseball sock
A baby hat that my daughter wore when she was one

And there was more that I didn't even mention. As an added bonus, almost half of the items in their basket were clean. And as I pulled each item out, my daughters would invariably say, "I don't know how that got in there." Hmmm. It seems someone has been sneaking into our home and putting items in the girls' laundry that don't belong there. Should I be worried? Or should I choose to view doing the laundry every week as an adventure? I'm sure it will be boring when the kid's don't live here anymore.

Sometimes boring is a good thing.

Catching up

I got on Facebook a few weeks ago. Since then, I have sorely neglected my little blog. Facebook is so fast and easy...just takes a few minutes here and there to catch up with the latest.

Anyway, to recap around here...my back went out again. It's my stupid tailbone; it get's twisted somehow. But if I rest at the first sign of pain, it will usually heal itself within three days or so. That's what happened this time. It's hard to just lay on the couch when there's housework to be done, but I know from experience that's the only way.

We got over a foot of snow two days ago. Yesterday was a snow day and the kids built an igloo complete with windows. I'm so glad they are old enough to get themselves dressed in their snow gear and to play outside without me so I can stay toasty warm! (Or as warm as a person can be in a 63 degree house.)

But the biggest news around here is that BD and I are going on a cruise next month with our dear friends, Toni and Carl. It happened so fast...I'd never dreamed I'd ever take a vacation like this! It's a dream come true. God is so good to make this happen!

So that's the latest. Hope everyone is staying warm!