Love Story

He's got a twinkle in his eyes, a bounce in his step, and merriment in his voice.

Guess what we found? Yay!!! I actually need to give credit to Morgan who found it outside absolutely soaked. It's rained for the last two days, but he must have followed me when I took some garbage out and left it there.
So those four hours I spent turning the house upside down-waste!
Those couple hours I spent on eBay and various other sites looking for a replacement-waste!
The moment I pulled the blanket out of the dryer-priceless!!

Thanks for all the positive thoughts!

Missing :(

Aww, this makes me so sad. My blanket loving little boy lost his blanket. These pictures were taken two days ago (little did I know :( ).

All of my kids have been blanket babies. I have never been able to predict which blanket would become the favorite. Garrett had a woven blanket, we still have remnants of it. Morgan's Gymboree blanket fared better in terms of condition, but it still lost part of its binding. And Jack's was just getting to that point of being worn in. See that last photo with his finger around the tag? That's was the spot.

The frustrating part is he woke up with it yesterday and we went one place...to the grocery store, but didn't take it with us and when he came home we could not find it for his nap. We have looked in every closet, every drawer, under beds, behind doors, in the pantry (found it there before), dryer, etc... It has vanished. I'll ask him where it is and he says, "I no know" in the saddest voice you ever heard.

Several times I thought I should buy a back up blanket. Those have come in handy before. It's just a simple fleece Carters blanket, but I can't find the exact one, they all have emblems on them. So putting out a plea, if you have seen this blanket, please let me know!!! It will make one little boy very happy.

Remember When

I know this doesn't seem like an odd series of pictures. I'm sure we all grew up riding our bikes to school, but here Morgan is in the last few months of elementary school riding her bike to/from school for the very first time.

We live just about a mile from school, but for most of that mile it is along a very busy street. Add to that the hills along the way and the fact that almost every kid at her school is dropped off by a parent in a car and quite honestly I never considered it an option.

But Morgan has been begging to ride her bike. She and a couple neighborhood kids put together a plan, bought bike locks, pumped up tires and continued to beg until we realized how silly we were being.

Kid + riding bikes=childhood passage

Cayucos

Home and unpacking. We were treated to two of these gorgeous sunsets. Could we have picked a better weekend? More to share later.

April 12 and a few scrapbook pages (photo heavy)

These are a bit out of order this month, but here's a look at our day.
1. Filling out the final paperwork for Jack's preschool next year.
2. Last photo of the day, picking up Morgan at 8:30. The one thing I love about her gym is they work hard, but they give the girls time for socialization and play (probably the biggest factor Morgan stays with the sport).
3. Already thinking about growing her hair long again.
4. Yet another rainy day. Morgan I'm sure would share, but it would so uncool to be under an umbrella with your sister.
5. Jack heard Chris' car pull up and ran out to say hi.
6. A glare...smiling for pictures is another uncool thing to do. Do you see a pattern here?
7. Used Jack's naptime to finish up some scrapbook layouts. I really never am able to work for more than 2 hours at a time and never can finish an entire layout, but I'd say I'm doing about 8 to 10 layouts a month. I'm pretty current on my pictures.
8. I wish I had photographed the inside of that bowl, it was filled to the brim with cereal. That's just the after school snack.
9. Just a few books to be read around here. Morgan loves the Princess Diaries series. The other two were recommended to me, hopefully they draw me in fast, I don't have interest in slow books.
10. Morgan doing her homework. I think I can officially say "fifth-graditis" has hit and it's been such a struggle to keep her focused.
11. Ahh, the Thomas trains. Such a daily part of Jack's life. He plays at the train table or over on the ottoman. He recently has gotten a few new ones, so the trains become longer and longer, but everyday he asks about getting a new one, pounding his chest and saying "for me, for me".
12. Sick little boy with a cold that turned into a pretty bad cough. After playing for a bit, he'd just run over to me and snuggle.

Sometimes, the pictures/stories that I share here become scrapbook pages. Here's a couple recent ones.
Locks of Love


and here's one that uses the picture that I turned into a canvas print:



Other times, I mean to, but don't get around to sharing some favorite moments.
Like our visit to Daffodil Hill, which has become an annual tradition.


or Chris and Morgan's last Indian Princess Father Daughter Dance:


or one of the layouts with some of the gazillion soccer pictures:


and this one was a bit different for me, but it's all about Morgan missing Outdoor Ed this past fall.



Anyway, there's a sampling of some of my latest pages. I've got several that I'm working on, but you can expect a few pink layouts in the not so distant future. Afterall, 300 pictures of one baby girl is a very inspiring prospect.

Jack, You've Been Duly Served

After three kids, I have finally mastered the art of buying diapers for a bargain price. And as you can see from the picture, I tend to be an overachiever. But I do have a bit of a dilemma.

As much as I'm enjoying Jack and going through all these stages and phases one last time, I'm not going to be sorry to say goodbye to diapers. He's 2 1/2, shows not the slightest interest in potty training, and cannot be coaxed by the Cars underpants I've bought. So I continue to stockpile.

Today I came home with two more packs and I realized that Jack might not be the only one who is ambivalent toward potty training. So being the older and wiser of the two, I'm making it known that when this stack runs out, we will begin. By my calculations I have approximately 496 diapers left and if we use about 5 per day, it looks like we've got about 99 days before Pee-day commences.

(Of course, if any really great deals come up....)

Slippery Slope

I started scrapbooking about 14 years ago this month. I happened upon a friend's Creative Memories album, signed up for my first class and never looked back. I had a new baby, so pictures aplenty and loads and loads of stickers and brightly colored markers. And when I look back through Garrett's first album, I cringe. I know I should be looking at the cute baby pictures, but I notice the ugly papers, the odd shape the photos were cut in and loads of other scrap disasters.

I've read several well known scrappers' opinion on this matter and all say that your scrapping style will evolve and it's best to leave those pages as they are to represent where your skills were at that particular time.

But. I. can't.

I have made a deal with myself. When I finally get a handle on my current projects, I'm going to go back and redo his first album.

Morgan's album is another story. While it won't be winning any blue ribbons at the scrapbooking fair, it's good. It's nice. It isn't painful to look through. I can leave it be.

But I bought this scrapbooking paper and I kept thinking about how perfect it would have been for this one layout in Morgan's book. I pushed that thought aside as I looked at the stacks of pictures in my to-do pile. But oh how it nagged at me. Like a dieter just walking by the bakery shop, I decided just to look at that layout, put my urge to rest by looking at a satisfactory layout. And so I looked.

There before my eyes were those god-awful Mrs. Grossman stickers.

Have I mentioned that I have no willpower when dieting? None.

Used a Page Maps sketch for this one.

Positively Perfect

A week ago, I met the most perfect little girl. She's just a tiny little thing, but instantly had hold of my heart.




I also spent time with two wonderful parents. Ummm, can you tell they don't like her one bit? (kidding)




I feel so fortunate that I was able to spend time with this new family just a week after she was born. It was a great feeling seeing my sister experience motherhood for the first time, to see two parents work in sync so well, and to play the role of big sister and just be there to help out a bit. I know the whole family can't wait to meet Arianna, but as you can tell, she's positively perfect.