P52 #4

This first page is one that I am not completely satisfied, but nevertheless, it's done and it will have to do for now until I can conjure up something better. That's the downside to scrapping so late at night...crappy pages. Anyway, a few Sunday's ago we were at my parent's house and the guys all had on their Chicago Bears shirts. Nathan, of course, never leaves the house without his on! I love this picture! I found a football frame at Target for a buck and this picture is in it ready to go in Nathan's room. So here's: The Bears Boys

The next few pages are from my nephew Macin's birthday party. We went bowling and this was actually the first time that the girls have ever gone "real" bowling. When we told the kids we were going bowling, Emma thought it meant that we were going to bowl on the Wii. They were so excited! Maddie did a pretty good job and even beat Grandma Newby! You can make all the excuses you want mom...you were beat by a 6 year old who's never been bowling before! Emma just loved hitting the pins down. Both girls would send the ball down granny style and it would go so slow down the lane that sometimes I wondered if it would even make it all the way to the end. But they were enjoying it and so that made me happy. Jason was great and helped the girls. He even sacrificed his score and let Nathan bowl one. Nate was just going crazy. He wanted so badly to get down and go bowling. He'd go over to where they kept the balls and try to get one out. So the first two pages are of their bowling shoes, you can't miss out on a photo-op like that. And Jason bowling. I couldn't bowl of course so I tried to occupy Nathan. I took him down to the arcade and we found a racing game. He just loved sitting and pretending to drive the car. I put in a few quarters and let him play a game. A few of the teenage boys that were working there gave him a few balloons and that occupied him the rest of the time...that and the chocolate birthday cake. The last two pages are of the girls bowling. Maddie's pictures were all perfectly in succession that I decided to do a "steps to bowling" page. I like how it turned out. Em, was just cute. So, may I present to you: "bowling"

3 weeks and counting...

Well, after an eventful day of contraction after contraction, I finally got everything resolved. I had an appointment today and they assured me that I'm good for at least one more week. The baby is head down and very low. I'm only at a 1 (which is not surprising considering I don't dilate very quickly) and 60% effaced. But the midwife said that she really couldn't tell how dilated I am because the baby's head was right in front of my cervix. Those of you who have had babies know that this could mean several weeks before the baby actually comes, but with the activity that I've been having, they think I could go really fast this time. The baby is a little sideways, but Maddie was like that too, so I'm not worried. They are very concerned because of all the contractions and infections I've had in the last few weeks, so they told me that if I don't want this baby coming this week then I have to pretty much be off my feet doing nothing. She measured the baby and said that she is not very big which was a sigh of relief from me because I thought for sure she'd be 10 pounds with all the sugar and fatty foods I've had lately! They are hoping that I'll go for at least one more appointment before I have the baby. Some of you have asked why on earth I'd want to wait one more week. Well, this week we already have two birthdays, one of which is Jason's, and I'd rather have her in February. So, if I can just hang on until Monday that would be great! After that, she can come whenever she wants. However, this has made anxious to get things done that I was waiting to do until next week. Which means that if I'm not supposed to be doing too much this week, how am I going to get things done? Have my husband and kids help? HAHAHAHAHAHAH-stop, all this laughing will put me into labor! Ya, that is not going to happen. Not even in a blue moon or snow in August or when Hell freezes over, because all this has already happened! Anyway, mom's always figure out a way to get things done don't we?!?! Sp. there you have it. I'm still here but being careful which is weird for me. Normally I'm doing everything I can to get the baby out, but this time I'd rather the baby take her sweet time...just not any longer than my due date!

P52 #3

Another week has gone by. I finally downloaded my Christmas pics and so I've started scrapping those. The first one is from Christmas Morning at Grandma Liz's house. We had quite the morning! I'll just explain it a little so you don't have to try and read the journaling. I don't know if Liz had had enough of our family or what, but she was trying to pick my children off one by one! First, Nathan pulled the Christmas tree down on top of him while trying to get an ornament off. This tree is tall and huge! About 10 minutes after that he smacked his head on her fireplace and got a big ol' purple goose egg on his forehead. THEN about 10-20 minutes after that Emma was drinking her juice from one of those miniature Coke glasses. You know the ones I'm talking about right? The old fashioned green ones? Anyway, as she's drinking it breaks right in her mouth cutting her inside her mouth and on her lip. You can't get stitches in those places but she sure could have used one or two! It cut her pretty badly. Maddie didn't want to be left out so she had this "mysterious gimpy leg" that seemed to switch from one leg to the other and then both. She was hobbling around one minute, but then running and jumping the next. Not sure what happened there. Suffice it to say we left that afternoon for my Grandma's house...safer ground. Normally I don't go to my Grandma's house because we spend so much time with my family over the Christmas holidays...but in this case I felt it was the only way to keep my children alive! Of course, this isn't really how it happened. The accidents did occur, but I know that it wasn't my mother in-law trying to kill us! My kids just find trouble wherever they are and if there isn't any to be found-they make it! So, the first page I did is called "ouch" in my scrapbook.

Now, I don't want you thinking that mother in-law is all bad. So I did another page of the day before when life was good. Christmas Eve has always been spent at Grandma and Grandpa Newbold's since I was born. When Jason and I got married I told him that I wanted to keep it that way. So we spend Christmas Eve with my parents and Christmas Day with his. Well, unfortunately the rest of his family spends Christmas Eve with his parents and some of them spend Christmas day with their in-laws. This year, Liz invited just our family over for a wonderful Christmas Brunch. She went all out and had omelets (of course that's what Jason asked for) and had nice plates and glasses and menus for everyone to custom order what they wanted. The girls thought it was so fun to fill out their own little menu. It was delicious. After breakfast, of course, came the presents. She always spoils the kids and wanted them to have a few things to open on Christmas eve, not to mention the stacks she sent home with us to open on Christmas morning. This year she did books and puzzles for the kids and they loved them! Maddie loves to do puzzles and she is quite good at them. Em has started to get into them as well and loves to sit and try to figure them out. Grandma Liz also has these wooden paper dolls that are kind of magnetic with all of the little clothes and shoes and what not and the girls love to play with them when we go over. So, grandma gave them each their own doll and they have played with those every day since. Emma and her little friend Avery love to make a mess with them! Nathan also got a puzzle...but he was way to preoccupied with the THREE little Chicago Bears footballs that he got. He was just so overwhelmed trying to figure out how to carry all three of them around. He calls them "buballs" and he was in 7th heaven! He'd throw them each at a time and then try and gather them all up and do it again. Now that he's home he plays with his puzzle every morning and squeals in delight when he sees it. He sleeps with his "buballs!" So, in order to redeem my mother in-law's honor I present to you: Puzzles and Buball

P52 #2

Well, so far so good. I've got two weeks completed on my Project 52. This week I scrapped Nathan sitting on his potty reading Sports Illustrated. He loves that magazine. It's so odd to me that a little boy that young can be totally interested in something like that...and understand what it is. He doesn't like to sit on his potty unless he has something to read--just like his dad! So, I put this in the journaling on the page but I'll just elaborate a little more. At about 14 or 15 mos. Nathan was really interested in the potty every time I would go. He had to be in there with me watching what I was doing. So, I decided to just get the potty out and see what he did with it. I really had no intentions of potty training him yet. He is after all a boy, and not even two yet. Both of my girls were trained at 18 months and were fully trained before they were two...but that's girls. I've heard that boys are even harder to train and take longer. So, this was really just for fun and to see what he would do. Well, he loves it and he knew exactly what to do. He sat on that thing forever thinking he was the Shiz! It didn't take him long to start asking for his "buball" and pointing to where the Sports Illustrated were kept. He'd make me hold it for him and turn all the pages. He'd point out all the balls and make little comments on each page. He even likes to smell the cologne samples and look at the ads with the cars. Such a funny little guy. He has gone potty several times, but I know that he is no where near to being trained. But we do it every day three or four times and just have fun with it. I'm just glad he'll at least sit on it and not be afraid to try.

And so, I present to you my little guy in all his glory in my P52 #2 page:

Makeover Monday

This week is still from the girls' room. Way back when, I made a rag quilt for Maddie when we put up her new bed. I don't have any pictures of it but it's a princess quilt. I love making rag quilts because then it doesn't matter if my edges look good. So, I have the fabric for Emma's quilt, but I can't remember how I did Maddie's. I need my friend to help me again that helped me with the first one. I did, however, have enough fabric to make pillows for their beds and had cut those way back when I did Maddie's. I had my Aunt Vickie embroider their names on them. At Ikea they had these little blue pillows for 99 cents that I bought. Then I stitched the fabric together. But, on the bottom, instead of hand stitching the seam closed I left it open and put velcro there so that when I wanted to wash them all I had to do was undo the velcro and slip off the cover. Voila!

Project 52

Another new feature for my blog. There are lots of different scrapbooking challenges out there right now. The latest craze is project 52. I'm adapting it to fit my needs. I love to take pictures, but then I never get them scrapped. The last page in Maddie's baby book that is scrapped is Memorial Day the year she was born. She was born on Easter, so that tells you how behind I am. I haven't scrapped hardly anything of Emma and Nathan has one page printed and a few done on the computer. I'm horrible at this!! It's funny because, for the last two years I've done a calendar for my mom, mother in-law and husband that I've created myself with scrap pages and I do those in about a month. 24 pages for each calendar that get done in a fury and I can't even get my family's memories scrapped! So, my Project 52 is to scrap at least one "event" a week. Not just a page, but an entire event. And, to spice it up a bit for myself, I'm also challenging myself to use one whole kit that I've downloaded. I've downloaded a ton of stuff and then don't use it. I told myself that I can't download anymore stuff until I've used what I already have at least once. I'm making it my goal to post these pages on Fridays so that I have the whole week to do them. And I'm starting now and working my way back. Christmas being the last major event I decided to start with that. Then I realized that I haven't transfered all of my christmas pictures yet. Another thing I need to work on-transfering my pictures. But I did have a few transfered and so I started with that. Christmas Ornaments, is a tradition that my parents started back when they were first married. Their first Christmas they were so poor that they had to borrow an aluminum tree and ornaments. My father decided then and there that every year they would buy an ornament for each of their children so that when we got married and were poor, we may have to borrow a tree, but at least we'll have ornaments to put on it. And so, the tradition was born with me. It's silly, I know, to look forward to getting married and receiving your box of ornaments. Growing up we all looked forward to the FHE when we would go out and pick the ornament we wanted. When we got older my parents let us choose every other year and then they would surprise us with their pick on the other years. As you look through my ornaments you see different "themes" of my life. There's of course a music period that lasted quite a few years where every ornament had something to do with music. There's a Winnie the Pooh period where I had a few of those. A snowman period where there are a few years of snowmen and so on and so forth. Then, when we would put up the tree and decorate it, we had a sort of ritual. Oldest to youngest in chronological order, went up the ornaments. Such great memories! So, now that I'm married and I have my beloved and treasured box of ornaments, the tradition still lives strong. My kids get their own ornaments each year and we put them up oldest to youngest in chronological order. This means, of course, that mom goes first! Yep, I still put up my ornaments and the girls love to help me and see all the different ones I have. Needless to say, our tree is getting a little crowded. I mean, just myself alone there is about 25 or so ornaments, and now the girls have collected quite a few as well. I have to admit that I do miss me selecting my own ornament each year...but I'm slowly getting over it. It brings me such joy to watch my own children get excited about choosing their ornaments and we walk through each one to make sure that we pick out the perfect ornament. Poor Jason doesn't have a single ornament on the tree that belongs to him. Every year I think I'm going to surprise him with one and every year goes by and he still doesn't have one. So, we let him put the tree topper on. That's his special job. And now, without further Ado, I present to you the first pages of my Project 52 goal- Christmas Ornaments:

Makeover Monday

Ok, well today is not Monday, but this is the start of something I hope to keep up. Not every monday mind you, but most. I've caught this bug that I've rather enjoyed. I love to go to yard sales and buy things for really cheap and then fix them up the way I want. I save a ton of money and feel that satisfied feeling to know that you created that! So, I've wanted to get the girls room all put together before the baby comes. We're kind of doing a princess flowery theme. When we first moved here we bought white bunkbeds for the girls. We set up Maddies and left it as a twin because Em was just barely moving into the toddler bed. Now that Emma is 4 we decided we should put her in the other bed. She still looks small in her bed, but that's ok. We were going to leave them apart because I'm a paranoid mom and worried about them falling off the top bunk or the two beds collapsing together or them jumping off...you know, the sort of things moms worry about. But, in the end we liked the idea of space in their room for them to play. So we put them together and the girls were so excited. Jason said, "what do we need to buy toys for Christmas for? They think this is just as exciting." It's true. So, one thing down, now to organize and clean their room. Not my favorite. Their dresser we bought last summer and painted it white and let them paint their own knobs. When we were first married I also bought an ugly brown bookshelf at a yard sale for like 5 bucks that we painted white when we moved here. I modge podged princess papers on the shelves and we decorated it with princess stickers. I wanted a lamp for their room or a night light so that when Maddie needed to get up in the night she didn't fall down the ladder. At Hobby Lobby (which is one of my favorite stores) they had a really fun lamp that had a dark pink shade with sparkles on it and jewels hanging from the rim. It was $15 on sale. Not a bad price, but looking at it I thought "I can probably make that." So, whenever we went to yard sales I looked for lamps. I found one that was absolutely perfect for only $2! It was already white so I didn't have to paint it and the shade was just the right size. We went to the fabric store and I let the girls pick out fabric and ribbons (everything was on sale or I had a coupon for) and this is what we came up with.

BEFORE AFTER CLOSE-UP OF THE SHADE

In case you can't tell, the shade has jewels and "dancing" princesses hanging from it. Now, in real life it's not that good looking. This being my first time at covering a lamp shade, I didn't measure the fabric correctly and so I had to piece it together giving me two seams instead of one. But, it still looks pretty good and it serves it's purpose. At this same yard sale I found a lamp that was perfect for Nathan's room for $2 and a large old fashioned traveling trunk for $3. The trunk I have in the girls room full of their dress-ups. I didn't take a picture of it, but I will if you really want me to. Anyway, we still have a long ways to go, but some things are coming together. Don't you just love the base of that lamp? There are so many different things you can do with a lamp shade. I had no idea! It was fun for me to do it and I have to say that I'm pretty proud of myself because, for those of you who know me, I love the ideas of crafts...I'm just not very good at the execution of those ideas! But this one turned out pretty well, even if I do say so myself!

2010!!

Ok, well, as you can see, I'm not the best blogger in the world anymore. I can't believe how busy life got in the past few months. Having this calling in the Relief Society Presidency, teaching preschool, teaching piano, and getting ready for a new baby seems to have sucked the life out of...well my life. But, here I am and so let's get started. Since I left off with halloween, let's just pick up right where we left off. Thanksgiving was marvelous. We spent it with Jason's family and had good eatin and lots of fun. Christmas was the usual fun and success. I won't go into detail all that occurred that month, but let's just say that it was busy. This month has had a rough start. I'm sick, Jason's been sick, the kids are doing ok but not 100%. Jason and the kids went sledding with his mom and the cousins. They had a blast. I had to stay behind. Not because I'm pregnant, but because I had a RS meeting that lasted four hours!!! We start the early morning church this year. I told the presidency to just expect me to be inactive this year. I'm not a big morning person and to get a newborn, myself and three other children ready will just about do me in. Jason is wonderful at helping me get the kids ready. In fact, he got both of us up at 6:30am this last sunday to get ready. After we had showered and I was exhausted from that and laying on the bed I said, "remind me again why we had to get up at 6:30?" He replied "because I have a meeting at 7." I smiled at him and said, "it's fast sunday. you don't have a meeting this morning." And then I rolled over and went back to bed. No, I got ready and it was a smooth morning for church. It is nice to be done early, it's just starting early that I hate. I've got six weeks left in the pregnancy. I finally have my heartburn under control and all the other infections I had. Now, I've got a blasted cold that I can't take a darn thing for. I am ready for this baby to come! Not because I'm done with being pregnant, but because it sure will be nice to be able to take some drugs when I get sick. Wait...I'll be nursing...so never mind. Oh well, the joys of modern medicine! I hope to be better at blogging and scrapping this year. I am making no promises but I will try to be better at it. I love blogging more than I love facebook so I hope to keep it up. One resolution our family has for the year 2010 is the "10 second rule." If it takes 10 seconds or less to do it, then do it now! Like, hanging up your coat, putting your shoes away, that sort of thing. I'm so sick of my house being a disaster!!! It's gotten way out of hand and I just don't have the energy to stay on top of it. So, for FHE this week we timed each other on little things around the house. I think the girls understand the rule. Except that Emma says "it only takes 10 minutes to do," but then she also refers to yesterday as "last year" so I know she understands what she's supposed to do. Well, hubby is waiting for me to go and eat dinner. We had the most disgusting pizza tonight. It was from Buca di Beppo. They had this promotion going on, order a meatball pizza and get the movie "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" for free. So we decided to do it. Long story short...should have used my $3 off coupon and saved myself the urge to purge after eating the pizza and bought the movie at Walmart. Oh well, live and learn I guess. So, I guess I better go and eat with him and do our nightly routine of watching MASH. Thanks again Justin and Nicole for giving that to us for Christmas! Until next time...whenever that may be!