Does anyone blog anymore? Is it just Vlogging, InstaStory-ing and TikTok-ing? I know I am guilty of it too.
Today is just a short hello with plans to start writing again soon. I worked on some video editing today and documented Nicholas turning 12 (last year). He just turned 13 a week ago, maybe that video will make an appearance before he is 14. Then again, maybe not. LOL!
Until next time!
16 years ago today I married the love of my life…
We have lived in 2 states
Built 2 homes
Adopted 2 puppies
And had 2 amazing boys
And we did it all together
Happy Anniversary Mike! Thank you for making my life perfect! I love you!
I guess for me intention and reality have not quite aligned. I spent time transitioning my blog and getting it updated posted once and let life take over. What is up with that?
I love this song…I think it is going to be big this year
….I digress
I guess since I was last here we did a few things. We took the boys to Schnepf Farms to pick peaches, Jackson really got into it this year. He was much more cooperative than his big bro! 
I spent my Mother’s Day with my 2 best boys. we were working on our backyard so it wasn’t really relaxing.
I 
But the results made me happy, even if I had to spend a lot of time at my 2 favorite big box hardware stores.
We were able to get in the pool by the middle of the month. With the life vest, Jackson now acts like he owns the pool and is giving Nicholas a run for his money. I will be surprised if they aren’t swimming without them by the end of the summer.
We spent Memorial Day Weekend with Mike’s brother’s family. In between pool time there was lots of Apple friendly fun.
Nicholas had a couple of friends birthday party’s over the weekend so we had fun with the 5 year old friends at gymnastics and Peter Piper.
Jackson took over my iPad. The only way to get him to eat was to let him have it at the table. He looked like he was at Starbuck’s.
I took the last day of school off and took the boys to school. They had a fun last day with Miss Jacci.
We now have a kindergartner. So proud of this dude!
To celebrate we headed to Coldstone for ice cream before cooling off in the pool.
It’s officially summer in the Carr House!
Lot’s of time in the air conditioned house playing the Wii.
Jackson drew this yesterday, it looks like one of the characters in his favorite Nickelodeon show and iPad App from Team Umi Zoomi. Pretty good for a kiddo that needs a little therapy for fine motor skills.
He is so fun.
I finally finished the family room drapes. Love that Jackson was admiring them.
That is our past month. Looking forward to seeing my family and going to an Angels game this month, and hopefully I will very soon paint my bedroom. The boys are in summer camp in the mornings and for the first time since Nicholas was born, Mike has a few hours alone every morning.
Have a great week!
I have just not been into blogging lately, I mean like for a really long time. But it's almost a new year, so why not make a bit more of an effort? Yesterday I gave the blog a remodel and refresh so we are ready to go. It will be a short one tonight, kiddos need to get to bed. We are having a nice Christmas recovery week off. I have been off since Friday and it has been great. I was worried at first, when Nicholas came down with pink eye last Thursday and we thought that Jackson was getting it too, but since N won't do eyedrops, the doctor gave them antibiotics and it cleared up before Christmas and J never completely got it.
Mike is sick as is our usual after Christmas tradition. The upside is we have stayed close to home and relaxed a lot.
Since you can't blog without a picture here is my first collage I created at Picasa today (how did I not know about this). This would have taken me 30 minutes in Photoshop and it was whipped out in 5 minutes on Picassa after a bit of fixing on the cropping.
We stayed inside for most of the long weekend. With temperatures like this….
It was not pleasant outside. And we had some humidity thrown in for fun too. 
Jackson started eating with a fork this weekend, and picked it up like he had been doing it forever.
I definitely have kiddos that do things when they are good and ready and not when I want them to.
Since we stayed inside Jackson spent a lot of time dragging every toy he cold find in his room to every other part of the hosue.
Mike beat Bowser in Super Mario Galaxy with Nicholas cheering him along the way.
Nicholas hi-jacked my iPad and iPhone and played Angry Birds and ended up figuring out how to look for more games. After we paid for 2 or 3 games I told him he could not have any more that cost money. He figured out which ones were free and would bring me the iPad or phone and say “ Can I play this one? this one “don’t” cost money”. Kids.
After a hard afternoon of playing, Jackson crawled in Mike’s lap and fell asleep. He doesn’t look very comfortable to me.
On Sunday we did leave the house to go to the church in the morning. We also went out to a late lunch at the new Coach and Willie’s in downtown Chandler. The food was good, but expensive. It seemed like we were the only one’s brave enough to leave the air conditioning. The restaurant and the streets were pretty empty.
When Nicholas wasn’t playing the iPad, he took over the Wii. It is funny that something that he didn’t pay a lot of attention to a couple of months ago is now a complete obsession.
Last night we got a really bad dust storm that knocked the power out. The Wii wouldn't power back on and we thought it was a gonner. Mike was not looking forward to Nicholas's reaction, but thanks to Google we figured out how to reset the power supply.
I don’t even know what this shirt style is all about. LOL!
On the 4th, we stayed inside and Mike grilled slider burgers for dinner. We headed over to our church for fireworks.
We met up with friends, Michelle and Barry, that we hadn’t seen in forever. Nicholas and their little girl hit it off immediately.
And we ended the night with a bang!
Have a great week!
Happy Independence Day! May your day be filled with....
This evening we are going to watch Fireworks in the Sky at our church while roasting in the evening heat. Enjoy your day.
The winner of my drawing from last weeks ScrapTiffany blog hop is posted below. I got back from the best CKC scrapbook convention ever Saturday night. The rest of the weekend was super busy too....
Sunday we took the boys to the Garden Railroad Train Tour and came home to have my computer crash on me, Mike had to take it to Best Buy to get it fixed for me.
I had Monday off of work, so after Nicholas got out school we went to see the Easter Bunny (Jackson would not go near him)
Here's a quick recap of the convention. I will have a full review of my classes after I finish up my projects in the next couple of weeks.
This year's convention was....
Having 2 fun filled days with 2 fabulous friends (and another in spirit, who was home with her sick baby)....
Taking 8 awesome classes with 5 fabulous teachers, making 16 fun layouts, a mini book and 2 cards that I love....
Some new Basic Grey. A cute Easter altered project
And some Glitz Design goodies those brown woodgrain mini letters that I had been coveting, circle stamps I was drooling over, and my favorite Glitz line ever....
And finally, I have drawn a winner from last week's ScrapTiffany blog hop.
Mary Ellyn said...
Cute idea
I unexplainably woke up at 4:00 am this morning and could not go back to sleep. I figured I may as well get up and be productive with the time. I am sure I will be loving it about 2:00 this afternoon when the lack of sleep hits. It will be even more fabulous because my entire afternoon is filled with back to back meetings. At least I have a 4 day weekend to look forward to. Last weekend was Mike’s big 45th.
His choice of celebrating was to stay at home most of the weekend and cook for us. He started off the day with his Bobby Flay inspired Bloody Mary’s and brunch on the grill. Those breakfast sandwiches are too die for.
We just hung around the house all day and he grilled us fabulous burgers for dinner. I told him I would make him anything he wanted for his birthday cake. He picked Oreo Cheesecake. I found a few recipe ideas and made a Cheesecake Factory inspired Oreo Cheesecake for our dessert. It was probably my best cheesecake effort to date.
Nicholas loves birthdays, singing and helping blow out candles.
Nicholas has decided he likes to stamp and made his Daddy a birthday card.
The great thing for me is all weekend he wanted to go down to my scrap room to stamp and do crafts. He is pretty self sufficient down there, I set him up with his own drawer full of old stamps and stamp pads, paper, stickers, and other items I didn’t want anymore. It let me get some scrap time in too, I just have to let him have control of the TV while we are down there. But that’s okay.
This was my simple card for Mike. And since I have a ton of layouts I haven’t shared, here are a few….
Jackson’s first Christmas….
At the pumpkin patch, I scrapped the enlarged photo I had in our entry way during the fall season.
ZooLights at the Phoenix Zoo in 2009 in a rare 2 pager…
Have a great weekend….
(Photo heavy post ahead) 2011 is already zipping on by. We have been keeping busy with long work days, home organization projects and trying to fit in some creative/hobby time (usually late at night after the boys go to sleep.
Today’s challenge at ScrapTiffany was to use metal or wire. I ended up making 3 layouts using this challenge. This is the one I submitted to Tiffany for the design team layouts.
This layout was rolling around my brain since a few days after my mom passed away in December. The Orianthi song Courage came on the radio and I knew this was something I needed to make….
For this one I used some old metal flowers mixed with new.
and this one I embossed a thin sheet of metal with the cuttlebug for the heart in the title and the photo corner. Pictures were from our photo shoot with Maggie Holmes.
We have been on a clean out, get rid of and organize mission lately. Two weekends ago we attacked the pantry and the linen closet.
This is what the pantry looked like when we started.
And now, although I am not happy with a few things, so I have ordered some more of the larger baskets and will move some of the smaller ones to the laundry room cabinets. But it is nice to have a place for everything,.
This is the start of the new backsplash, behind the stove. I have one more piece on backorder that will fit below the shelf area down to the counter top. But this is making me very happy.
Superbowl Sunday was spent hanging around the house. Or climbing if you are Jackson…
Making some yummy treats…
Nicholas liked watching half time and the commercials more than the football game (just like his mommy)….
I was home early from a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday. Jackson was playing and then suddenly it was quiet….
Nicholas now knows how to play Daddy’s train game on the computer….
This past Saturday, Mike’s mom came to watch the boys so Mike and I could attack this disaster. Our house has a 2 car and 1 car garage set up. The 1 car garage has become a dumping ground for everything….
We took out everything opened all the bins and boxes. Moved all the shelves, swept, and wiped down everything. Then we added new shelving and a file cabinet. And we actually have a garage again.
In January I also did the larger garage. It wasn’t as crammed with stuff. This side just needed a better set up and a good clean out. I guess I didn’t take a before shot, but here is how it looks now….
my favorite area is this one. We do most of our grocery shopping at Costco, saving money is great, but storing the bulk stuff is a pain. Now it is all in one place, convenient to grab when we need it and easy to unload after the Costco trip each week.
Nicholas in daddy’s shoes (showing off the closet that is coming up on the list of things to clean out).
Mike has been busy working on his radio project.
We celebrated Valentine’s with a few goodies for the kiddos.
my Valentine’s present will be shipping from Verizon soon….
After the kiddos went to bed, my Valentine and I spent the rest of the evening enjoying
Dinner….Greek Salad
Wild Mushroom Lasagna and Meatballs….
and a movie…
Have a great week!
