Happy Inter-National Scrapbooking Day! :D

Why hello world!!! Dust off those PayPal accounts, because today is a day most important to those of us digiscrappin' fools of the world. It's International Scrapbooking Day! It started off as a "national holiday", but has obviously gone global!

So that's where I'll start......Haynay Designs has a grab bag she's releasing in honor of iNSD....although being totally honest, she's in Italy at the moment and probably couldn't care less! (lucky duck!) But anyhoo......Here's what I scrapped with her grab bag......and you can get it here....for a measly 4 bucks! totally worth it!
This is of my girl scout troop nature hike we went on a couple weeks ago....I'm so glad Heather made a kit to match my girls' sit-upons....wasn't that brilliant of her? :D


And that's really the only plug I have....so for the other scrapping I've done lately.....

There's some pictures from our trip to World Conference....of the Temple....I never get tired of taking pictures there:



And the kids at the Children's Peace Pavillion....they had SO much fun:



Two more from the cubscout campout a couple weeks ago.....most importantly, Zach's first fish:


And just some random pics from the campout overall.....and why YES, I DID take a picture of my youngest's nekkid arse peeing on a tree. He's 3....it's still considered cute and funny. :D


Now, for these next 2 layouts.....i hope you'll see the humor in this. Remember that game "telephone"?? Where someone would start off saying something usually lame like 'i like school', and by the end of the line, someone had murdered someone else or something similarly ridiculous. it was always good for a laugh. WELL....in digiscrap land, we have what are called "telephone challenges".......same concept. someone starts off with a layout...and they pass it on to someone else to 'scraplift' (ie, 'copy' per se).....and then by the end of the line, the first and last layouts look NOTHING alike. It's pretty funny.

So anyways....I've been participating in some telephone challenges over at MouseScrappers.com.

Here's one of them it was pretty funny.....
we somehow went from this (layout#1, out of 10)
here's the layout I was to scraplift (layout#8 in the line)
my contribution....of the HSM3 street party at Disney's Hollywood Studios:

It's just too funny to me how different these things get. Apparently we haven't changed since childhood! :D

Here's another telephone challenge I was involved in...
My layout for it:


And the last one
my contribution:


So in other news........This past week was Alaina's first softball game:


They were tied after 4 innings....it was freezing cold, getting dark (no lights on the field) and raining, so thankfully the coaches agreed to a tie. fine by us!

There was also a 3rd grade nature hike: 3 1/2 miles of it!


And the 1st grade trip to the zoo:



Then Wed afternoon, karl and i jetted down to Atlanta for a couple days. He went to a teacher's conference on Thursday and Friday.....I got a LOT of quality "ME TIME"....you know.....having more than 30 seconds to myself to do things I enjoy: I slept late....I scrapped....I read a book....I took a walk....I went for a jog....I had long lunches....I took lots of pictures.....it was a blast!

I hung out here most of the afternoon on Thursday....the centennial Olympic Park:


We went to a really nice dinner Thursday night with the other teachers and the one other wife (the other guys left their wives at home):


Then the instant we got off the plane yesterday, we rushed back home to go to the school sock hop with the kids.......we looked darned cool, huh?


We actually won the award (and $10!) for being the 'best dressed family'....woohoo us!

So that catches you up on us.....busy week has passed.....and another busy week coming up: more softball games, another field trip, and who knows what else will get thrown our way...but that's our crazy life! :D

oh where have I been??

Where have I been? Right here, basically. sort of. well, not really! :P

Last weekend, the 5 of us, plus Nanny and PawPaw....set off for Independence, Missouri for our church's World Conference. It was a great weekend out there. Perfect weather! We left here early Saturday morning and got into the Kansas city area around lunchtime. Ate at one of our fave BBQ places, then headed down to the Temple complex.

We took the kids to the Children's Peace Pavillion. It's such a fun little place for kids to play and learn a lot of good principles like sharing, caring, peace, etc....I highly recommend it! We played there for over an hour and then my friend Kerri picked up Alaina to take her to her daughter Tatum's pool party. We were going to meet them all there later....


Karl and I had received an invitation in the mail to attend a 'young professionals' reception with the First Presidency of our church. VERY exciting for us....so of COURSE we accepted said invitation! :D We were totally psyched to be asked to attend.....it's not every day you get the opportunity to meet the church President/Prophet.....and we made sure to get a picture with President Veazey before we had to duck out early:


Then we changed back into some more casual clothes, went and picked up the boys (who were with my parents at the hotel) and headed to the pool party:

and for the record....I promised Sarah that I wouldn't post any pictures of her on Facebook....and I didn't! So I'll post them here.....here's my fave....of her thoughts on me taking such pictures:


but it was a super-fun party for the kids...they all had a BLAST! Happy Birthday, Tatum!!! After the party we went over to their house for some good ol' catching up with my friend Kerri, her hubby Dan, and a houseful of 3rd-grade girls having a sleepover! :D we had a glow-in-the-dark easter egg hunt, which was a huge hit with all the kids, and then they just ran around and played while we talked.

The next day, Sunday, we went to Communion services at the Auditorium. It always amazes me how they serve communion to thousands of people in like 15 minutes. It's orchestrated like a dance. one picture hardly does it justice. And to give credit to these people that chose to serve.......we walked through their practice on Saturday afternoon.....they put in the hours for this "routine"....well done ladies and gents! It was a great service....the kids were well-behaved and we even got compliments on how good they were during the service from the people sitting behind us. That's saying a lot! :D

I NEVER get tired of staring at the ceiling of the Temple sanctuary....it's just mesmerizing....

and here we all are....all dressed up at the Temple:


Sunday afternoon, after a yummy lunch at Cracker Barrel (a family fave), everybody but me and Zach ended up taking naps. I read a magazine and finished a book I was reading on my ereader (for those of you that haven't joined the e-book revolution....you'll become an addict if you do, i swear it! so cool!). Then we went for a quick fast-food dinner and back to the Auditorium for the main evening service.

It's always awesome to hear the prophet/president of the church give a sermon. This night was no exception. He said what needed to be said to those of us that were willing to hear it. I can only hope that those that may NOT have wanted to hear it, heard the message anyway! :D (cryptic enough for ya?) I'll just say that there are 'certain issues' our church (and every church really) is facing......and we're struggling as a group to come to terms with how we should proceed....there are those who think one way.....and those that think the opposite way. And we've been butting heads over said issues for YEARS.....it was nice to hear (however implied and cryptically) our president/prophet give his thoughts on the issues. He received a standing ovation for his words.....and I would've gladly stood and applauded as well, had Zach not dumped a bottle of water down my back! (didn't want that many people seeing my wet arse, kwim? LOL so i stayed seated!!!!)

We left for home early Monday morning....and back to work/school the rest of this week. We're DYING with allergies here......poor me and Alaina seem to have it worse than the guys.......I'm constantly popping allergy meds....she's up there with bloodshot eyes, sneezing/etc constantly.....I'm about ready to give her adult doses of stuff to see if it helps. I'll be glad when whatever is in the air has settled down!!! bah!!!! I love spring, but HATE all this junk in the air!

oooooh, exciting breaking news....hubby won an ebay auction for a remote control! yes, this is as pathetic as it sounds. Apparently, we (I suppose as the woman I share the brunt of this blame????? but since it's 2010 and all, I refuse to carry such burden solely) have lost the remote control to our TiVo satellite receiver in our family room. We've been looking for the darned thing for WEEKS now, and it never has turned up in the usual places that we usually find remote controls (toybox, couch cushions, etc)...... So finally.....we admitted defeat.....the kids have done SOMETHING to it (I will assume that it ended up in a trashcan somewhere and is now in the nearby landfill unbeknownst to us)....and caved in and decided to get a new one. ah well....such is life....we've had to spend way more than 10 bucks for dumber things than that before.....

so anyways...the rest of this week was just the usual....ball practice for alaina.....matthew's should be starting soon, then i'll REALLY be meeting myself coming/going to ballfields!

Friday night was the big cubscout family campout at Beaver Dam state park. Great park...beautiful lake and all....i just do NOT. LIKE. CAMPING. period. end of story. BAH! it's SOOOOOO much work, it just sucks the fun right out of it for me! you have to pack along soooo much crap.....what fun is that? and if you DON'T take along all that crap....then you're roughing it far beyond what is acceptable to persons like myself (yes, i like something to sleep on something besides the grass and i prefer something to cover myself with besides dried leaves.....shoot me for not being a true scout-type person!) I know there are people that spend every weekend in the semi-fair-weather months going camping, and kudos to them and all.....it's just not my idea of a good time for the most part. once a year, and i'm good. i've had my camping experience for 2010. moving on! so our car was completely loaded down with all that camping crap: the tent, the sleeping bags, the lawn chairs, the cooler, the lantern, the flashlights, the clothing, the food.....blah blah blah blah......oh yeah, and the kids and the 2 dogs. happy camping! :D

But compared to past camping experiences, this one was probably the best. We've had everything from emergency room visits (long story!) to flash floods (another long story) to loud drunken campers keeping us up ALL night (yep, another LONG story) on our camping trips....they've just always ended SOOOOOOO badly, i'd completely lost faith in the camping experience ever being anything but a disaster in the making. but this time it was pretty fun actually. my only complaint was that it got WAY colder than any of us thought it would. BAH on that! the boys has a blast though...we grilled burgers/dogs for dinner, made smores...they recieved some patches from their Cubmaster (karl), and had a pretty fun time.



Saturday, we got up and went to breakfast at the park restaurant (now THAT'S what i'm talking about! none of this eggs over an open fire crap!) and then went out on some rented boats fishing. fishing. yeah. my joy for fishing ranks right up there with camping in general. thank GOD for my iPod or i'd have gone completely insane those 2 1/2 hours watching karl trying to maneuver our boat around that lake. (for the record.....I took caneoing class like 10 years in a row....heck, i even TAUGHT caneoing class at camp.....and karl....doesn't know DIDDLY about how to maneuver a small boat. sorry dear.....hate to chip away at your manhood there, but you don't.) i kept all comments to myself though, as it was just easier that way. :D

we DID however, catch a fish....a teeny tiny little thing...but i'm glad we caught it, as Zach had never been fishing before, so this was his first experience....and since nobody believed us (since nobody else caught anything), I have the pictures (of course, did you expect anything less?) to prove it:


ate lunch at the restaurant again....and then packed up camp and dispersed to home. end o' camping experience. fine by me......

i spent the rest of saturday night in a fog.....I'll attribute it to taking too many allergy and pain pills too close together. I was just OUT of it. oops. Sunday, woke up with a serious headache (probably from the combination of the zyrtec/benedryl/sudafed/vicodin cocktail i had the night before?) and i basically slept right through what should've been our church services. oops. the rest of today has just been getting stuff back in order here after being gone last weekend and being gone and taking half the house with us for ONE NIGHT out in the wilderness. did LOTS of laundry....cleaned some stuff....exciting day really.

then this afternoon was the girls' turn. Nature hike for my girl scout troop at a different state park. Now THIS is how it's done....no camping.....no pitching tents and junk! we hiked up the cliffs for about an hour....made some smores and headed home. good enough for a hiking/nature badge for my troop!! :P bravo ladies! we did a nature scavenger hunt along the way, so it wasn't completely idle time....and I made the mistake of letting the oldest girl lead the way.....so instead of the lazy, out-of-shape-person's 1/2 mile hike I'd planned.......she picked the 1 1/2 mile jaunt straight up the side of the cliff! :D hahahahahahaha....you should've heard the parents griping (Karl the loudest of them all i might add!)....it was great. i love that trail personally, so i didn't object to her picking that one at all........it was a good workout at least!

and now here we are, ending another weekend....ready to start another week of work. oh yay fun.

and so now......what few scrapbook pages i have to post....

The kids dyeing Easter eggs:


Zach and Darcy....he insisted on taking Darcy for multiple rides in the back of his dump truck:


Easter Sunday.....I went through all the effort to orchestrate a big group photo at church, and then when it was all over, I found Matthew asleep on the playroom floor! How brilliant to not notice my own kid missing from a group photo? :P



And my only plug for this post...."Happy Birthday To You" by Haynay Designs....I also used her Chronicling Life Photo Clusters for this....Alaina's birthday dinner last year at one of our favorite Disney restaurants: Liberty Tree Tavern......can't believe that's been over a year ago now!

And another week goes by.....

first up, CT plugs! Cuz that's just how I roll!

Haynay's new release today is a template pack, called 'the basics template 1'. I love templates....it helps me get stuff done SO much faster!


And what I scrapped with it....also using "Chronicling Life bundle" and "Chronicling Life Alpha"



My family is a bunch of storm junkies.....when I was a kid, my brothers and I would set up lawnchairs in the field next to our house and watch the storms roll in. Now that I think about that, sitting in metal chairs in an open field during thunderstorms was probably NOT the smartest thing to be doing, but we loved every second of it. And now that I'm a photo nut, my goal has become getting that perfect lightning shot......I've gotten a few good ones....but I'm still hoping to catch that perfect shot one of these days....

another layout from our Disney trip last year.....our favorite roller coaster, Expedition Everest!


and my only other layout to post is from Zach's preK easter party last week....


and that's all i've scrapped this week!

my parents have been here all week babysitting the kids, so i've had some help with the housework, laundry, and cooking. it's been nice! and tomorrow morning we're all leaving for Independence for World Conference. I can't wait to be at the Temple again....it feels like ages since I've been there! I'll get to see some old friends from camp....it'll be a fun weekend!

Sneaky Peeky!!!

bad, bad blogger......

well....this has been a pretty stinky week. without going into gory details, i'll just say it's been heartbreaking, disappointing, and frustrating. i've been very upset and depressed for most of the week, and it's taking a lot of (alcohol!) inward thinking to pull myself through it. *sigh*.....sometimes when your faith is tested, it's not as dramatic or cut-and-dried as it is in stories. sometimes, it's just one little thing building on another......in what seems to be an endless crapstorm raining down on you. so that you're sitting there thinking, 'okay....now what? a pox on my family? a bird crapping on my head?' it's just been a crummy week and i'm in a really bad mood because of it. 'nuff said.

so, because of all the 'schtuff' going on in reference to the above, i haven't even felt like scrapping much.....most of the stuff i have to post is from me not posting last weekend (hence the bad blogger reference). but i'll post the few pages I do have since I owe it to the designers I CT for and all.....

First up.....the kit i posted the sneak peek of (ages ago!) is Haynay's new Chronicling Life mini....for April. I also used her Primary Dot Alpha and the Chronicling Life Alpha (one of them anyways)..and Sya's new kit, '1,2,3,4, Go (2)'.....Alaina wanted these SO BAD...but she didn't get them! :P


and I don't think i ever posted this one......it's with a freebie of Haynay's called 'good times all around'....she gave out a mini kit and everybody that applied for her CT did a layout with it.....I guess she liked mine since she asked me to stay on her CT! This is of us at Disney (obviously) back in March '09 at the Toontown entrance


Haynay's kit 'playtime petshop', and Sya's '1,2,3,4..Go (2)' templates
....of Darcy's visit to Zach's PreK class...those kids LOVED having that puppy in their class!!


And I finally got around to scrapping Alaina's birthday party:



And Zach's PreK bowling trip last week:



And a couple weeks ago....my girl scout troop meeting the Mayor, where he signed a proclamation declaring that week national girl scout week. They were SO excited to meet our mayor!


another one with sya's new template pack (i think i've almost used them all already!)
of my favorite princess.....


And I did this page at a speed scrap over this past weekend.....thought it turned out pretty cute...and the pictures say it all....she was SO excited:


so that's all the pages i've got to post for now......it's going to be a busy weekend, preparing for easter with the family and such. i doubt i do much scrappin'! today, i went to Zach's preK easter party...they had an egg hunt and played on the playground (in this GORGEOUS weather we've been having all week!), and then had some yummy snacks. It was the cutest thing watching all those PreK kids trying to find their eggs.....they were supposed to only pick up the eggs that had their names on them....and given that most of them can't really read yet....it made it interesting! So I had a good afternoon with Zach! Karl and all the kids are off of school today and Monday.....so they'll be having lots of fun without me! :(

and that's it for now.....I'm taking my bad attitude and heading to bed!

Sneaky Peeky!!!

I survived! (warning: lots of pics!)

*sigh*....yes, it's been awhile since I sat down to write on the ol' blog. We've been BUSY....just not with stuff I'd consider "blogging-worthy" (if that makes any sense?)

This past Monday was Alaina's birthday! Our little girl is definitely not so little anymore! She's 9 now.....where do the years go?? Seriously!!!

So for her actual birthday, since Daddy was home all week on his spring break (lucky duck!), he took cookies and juice boxes to her class at school:

And that night, we told her we'd take her out to dinner wherever she wanted to go......and of course, OUR kid won't pick a McDonald's playland or anything like that. oh no. She picks Red Lobster! And what does she get there? Lobster! sheesh! expensive child!!!!


And while we decided to let her open her gift from us while we were there:
(I love catching that look of surprise in a picture....priceless!) We got her the new American Girl doll, Lanie......kinda close to her name.....or as close as we're ever going to find most likely!


(and FYI, that's a root beer bottle in front of the 9-year old!)

Tuesday and Wednesday, we spent shoveling dirt....oh the fun we had. not. The kids enjoyed themselves, since they got to ride in the empty tractor cart that Karl was using to haul those 3 tons of dirt to the back yard.

And the finished product.....we've never attempted a garden before, so wish us luck! Any good organic gardening tips, send them our way please!


And here's the latest with miss Darcy....she's taken to being more efficient at mealtimes:


on Thursday, Karl went to Zach's PreK class for the afternoon. Since Zach's dad was visiting, Zach got to hold the flag for the pledge.....look how excited he is!


"Now don't crowd the puppy, kids!" uhm, yeah....you can't even SEE the puppy! :P


A kiss for his best friend Darcy:


and then they passed her around the circle....thankfully, Darcy's used to being manhandled and "loved to death" at home, so this was no biggie:


So, Friday night came around, and it was time to create "the cake".....and I'll vent my frustration toward my SIL since this cake was her idea! :P Actually, it didn't turn out THAT BAD.....there was a slight problem with said "pool" LEAKING at one point, where drastic measures had to be taken (ie practically starting over at 10PM with me nearly in tears and frustrated beyond belief with the thing!)

The final product.....not the way I pictured it, but given what I went through with it, this was as good as it was gonna get!


Saturday was the big party day......Alaina wanted a pool party....so we had a luau at the pool for her party.....the kids had SO much fun!

The birthday girl in her "hula girl" glory, with some of her friends:


there's that kickin' cake again....darned thing nearly melted it was so hot in there!


Pool party time!


Zach didn't exactly wait for 'cake time'...

what a FUN BUNCH....sheesh.....look happy, Caudles!

Hula Buddha! This is "little big John"....Dean and Stacy's foster kid:






sing quick, before the cake melts! :P


Presents:
a dress for her new doll:

and a matching dress for her!

she was SOOOO excited for this...she's ALWAYS wanting to scrapbook with me!


So the swimmin' luau pool party was a ton of fun.......and no, i didn't get in the water. no thanks! And I'm not sure if you can see it in the pictures or not, but Alaina's got her first black eye.....she wasn't quite fast enough with the glove at softball practice on Thursday night....she doesn't want to play catcher anymore, btw!

Then after a family cookout at the house for dinner, there was a sleepover here for some of her friends......we had 6 girls sleeping in the basement last night.....or rather....we had 6 girls NOT SLEEPING in the basement last night while mean-ol'-mom continuously shushed them.....'till about 1AM when they all finally passed out! sheesh! And then we had a little brother of one of the girls staying over too for Matthew's company.....

Needless to say, I'm tired today....didn't get a nap.....and now I'm getting ready to make some plans for the week and attempt to reclaim the house from birthday festivities!

so, scrappin......I'm so behind on my plugs....bad Diana! So....this layout uses a bunch of stuff from Haynay: Chronicling Life Alpha, Playtime Petshop, Fancy Pants, and School's out for Summer. It was that disastrous night of rollerskating. I just liked the title.....i thought that was most clever and it makes me laugh every time i see it. :D


Another plug for Haynay.....her latest kit, "Tumble Time".....easy enough to get pictures for this one!


No plugs for this one, i just don't think i ever posted it.....the playground at our church camp, Brush Creek.....when we were home visiting the parentals a couple weeks ago, we took a drive out in the country (my parents love to do that), and to give the kids some time to burn off some energy, we stopped here and let them play:


More layouts from our trip to Disney over a year ago now (*sigh*...doesn't seem that long ago!)



and I haven't gotten a layout done yet, but Sya released a new template pack this week, called "1,2,3,4...Go set 2" Hopefully this week, with no party stuff going on, i'll get more scrappin done than i did this last week:

I guess that's it for now.....take care and have a great week everybody!!!