Picture Day!

This has been the week for pictures I guess! School pictures for Alaina and Matthew were on Wednesday. At least having 2/3 of my children as boys, the "hair" issue is basically moot with as short as Karl insists it stay. And they don't really argue with me (yet) on wardrobe choices. Alaina, however.....a completely different story! She's 7 going on 17 basically. Thankfully, for picture day, although we argued over hairstyle (I'm sure I lost because once we leave her at daycare, she can do whatever she wants with her hair and she knows there's nothing Mom can do about it!), we at least easily agreed on the wardrobe choice. Everybody says we're too much alike, which is why we're already butting heads.....oh the teenage years will be FUN, huh? F.U.N! :) As far as I know, pictures at school went okay.....I guess we'll see when we get them back! I still say it's totally unfair you have to pay up front for pictures you haven't even SEEN yet....you should at least get proofs back, kwim?

Friday night, we decided to try and jumpstart the economy by going to Lowe's. We love Lowe's...and really, Lowe's should totally love us with as much moolah as they've gotten out of us over the last few years! Karl and I decided (well, I've been bugging him about this for at least a year and I think using Christmas is his reason for finally caving) to rip out the carpet on the stairs and in the upstairs hallway and put in laminate wood flooring to match the living room and kitchen. So that's our Christmas present to ourselves (Karl insists that this is MY present....so I'm assuming that means he's thinking he's still entitled to something else? hmm....he might be disappointed!)......we were going to start it this weekend.....but that hasn't happened yet as the boxes are still sitting on the floor in the living room. We'll get to it sometime!

And yesterday was sports picture day! Matthew's game was scheduled for 10:30, so they set up team pictures for 9:30....blah on the early start....here I was thinking I'd get a chance to sleep in! BOO! I invited my SIL Stacy to the game to take pictures since she's in the process of building a portfolio for her photography side business.......my kids show up a lot in that portfolio! :P

So again, we were forced to pay up front for pictures....blah! BUT, in a total shocker to me, the photog there actually LET the parents take pictures of the kids....I'm still confused.....remember how I was yelled at for taking pictures at the T-ball picture day a couple months ago? Different photog of course, but I was still waiting to get yelled at standing there with my camera.....but instead the guy tells the team to "hold still so the parents can take pictures"......YAY! wish i hadn't spent the money, kwim? *sigh*......

So here they are, the Choppers:

And Matthew didn't really want to cooperate for his mom (He DID manage a better smile for the official photog, so I guess my money wasn't COMPLETELY wasted).....My kids are generally used to having a camera stuck in their faces....however, Matthew is the least cooperative of the 3. Darnit!

This is the smile the photog got out of him.....so at least that picture should turn out well......however, for MOM........not cooperating!

Then we had some time to kill before the game actually started, so Stacy and I used the time to take pictures of Alaina in her cheerleading uniform. This was the best shot I got:

Looks official, huh? kinda...

Then it was game time.......Matthew was especially upset at first glance at their opponents....they were playing GIRLS! Oh the HORROR! GIRLS! They have COOTIES and stuff! EWWWWW! Of all the games he's played thus far, I don't think I've ever seen Matthew keep as much of a distance between him and the other players....seriously....he wouldn't hardly go near these girls. I kinda wish those girls had taken full advantage of the boys' prejudice and wiped the grass with them, but the boys did manage to win. Their coach had to keep telling them, "They're JUST ANOTHER TEAM GUYS!" :P not when you're 5.....They were GIRLS! So the Choppers beat the Butterflies (I loved the pink shirts and socks.......I tried to talk Alaina into playing next season 'cuz I love the girls' colors so much....so far she's not going for it....maybe I'll just get a pair of socks for ME...that's almost as good, huh?)

here they are, playing against those GIRLS! Oh the insanity!

After the game, we said goodbye to auntie Stacy and headed off to watch the end of Alaina's swimming lessons that Karl had left to take her to. Then we went to the chinese buffet for lunch 'cuz Daddy was obviously deficient in MSG or something. And he knows I'm a pushover for eating out, so off we went. After we got home, the kids spent the afternoon outside playing (instead of taking naps)...I was scrapping mostly.....and for our evening's entertainment, we watched some TV and I scrapped and read Perez....downloaded some new songs for my iPod....put the boys' laundry away.....did some more laundry....and that was about it.

And now for the scrapbook pages....first, I started scrapping our day at the zoo last weekend here:

And with Vicki's new kit, Sweet Dreams, I scrapped a page of the butterflies we saw at the zoo:

And this is from Matthew's game on Tuesday where it rained THE WHOLE GAME! :(

And then for my blessing this week, I chose music.

Journaling reads: "Music has always been very important to me. I’ve always been a much better singer than pianist, but I still like to play the piano whenever I get the chance. My piano skills aren’t what they could or should be, since I only had a couple years’ worth of lessons, but I play at the level I can. I have a few favorites I never get tired of playing, and those songs are very calming to me. After a very stressfull day, I will sometimes sit at the keys and play something I love. I know I could play much better than I do, but I’m blessed to play as well as I can and to have any musical talent at all...For the blessing of music in my life, I’m very grateful."

For my travel page, it was Seattle....you can't work for Boeing and not end up in Seattle at some point, but until this year, I'd somehow managed to avoid it! I always make sure to have fun on my business trips, and Seattle was no exception.....I took the Travelocity Gnome up in the Space Needle with me.....he goes everywhere we go!

And I guess that's it for now....hope everybody had a great weekend!