In Words:
Day: Sunday, July 31, 2011
In Words:
Day: Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30 In Photos:
In Words:
Friday, July 29 In Photos:
Thursday, July 28 In Photos:
In Words:
I wasn't going to join the Week in the Life project this week. I decided Monday morning to go for it and just approach it differently than last year. It ends up being the same week I documented last year when I took tons of pictures every day and wrote tons of details. This year, I am taking a cue from Kelly Purkey's class at Big Picture Classes and doing a quick summary of my day, mostly from my perspective with just a few photos.
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.
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
a beaten wife? Edited - to correct to 3 year old & 3rd birthday...
This picture is just wrong on so many levels....
But it still makes me laugh. This was me on my 3rd birthday. I don't remember the full story, but the way I remember the story as told to me was that a few days before my birthday my mom and dad were washing down the driveway and washing my Dad's truck. I think they told me not to do it, but I climbed up in the bed of the truck, and very obviously fell and gave myself a black eye.
It required a trip to the emergency room. My mom said they were questioned about it to make sure they didn't do this to me (they didn't). If I remember right I may have had a concussion. Now I know what's wrong with me. LOL!
I do remember later that evening, being on the couch with a big ice bag on my face. Then a few days later I got to celebrate turning 3 looking like this.
The iron, just add's to the image. Even more so, since I can't remember the last time I ironed anything.
Over the past 8 months, I have been working through the 23,000+ pictures stored on my computer and cataloged in Adobe Lightroom. Last year I scanned all of my pre-digital pictures, as well as those I had from my mom. I have spent tons of hours organizing these pictures by date, tagging them with who, what and a bit of where. Rating the best to cull them down, deleting bad pictures that just are not worth keeping.
Why did I do this? Well for a few reasons...
I am establishing a process that I can maintain. And while I was already well on my way, I am loving the class that Kayla Lamoreaux is offering on her site for Lightroom organization. She started with digital scrapbooking supplies, but has just moved into the photo organization module. And amazingly she is giving this class for FREE. If you have any desire to improve your photo organization, I strongly suggest you check it out. Even if you use a different organization program she has a lot of really great methods for organizing your photos.
Today’s challenge at ScrapTiffany is about Beauty.
It’s weird really. Today’s post was going to be about how we celebrated Mike’s 45th birthday this weekend. I will have to save that for another day. Because, I can’t stop thinking about my Mom right now, and that she will never again experience a beautiful Arizona sunset with us.
I guess it is because I worked on the design for her headstone this weekend. We had been putting it off, but it needed to be done. I sometimes wonder if I am putting the flowers in the right spot when I visit the cemetary. So I guess we need to have that to make sure, right?
I have been disconnecting from my online world a lot lately on purpose. I have been spending time doing a few things I want to do; rather than a little of everything. I am purposefully choosing to do less online.
Last year I finally scanned all the pictures I had and those that my mom had given to me as well. I am now organizing and tagging them in Lightroom. It is forcing me to spend a lot of time with my family and my childhood. That is a good thing. It is interesting the observations I make from this exercise.
I have a category called Who’s That? I don’t know who these people are. and with my mom gone, I am not sure if I will ever find out. I am happy that there aren’t many. I hope to give my children the gift of knowing who the people in the old photos are when I am not here to tell them anymore. I meant to ask my mom, but I didn’t.
One thing that really struck me…the last picture I had with my mom and me was from Thanksgiving 2009. Really? A year before she passed. I should be able to do better than that. I have a camera around at all times, how did that happen.
The other thing that struck me is the last pictures I have of my mom were from early October 2010. She looked really good. It was just a couple of weeks before we found out the cancer had spread...That our days with her were numbered and we didn’t even know it.
I zoomed in on this picture yesterday to see that the light still sparkled in her eyes. It made me realize that I watched it dim the last 2 weeks of her life. The last couple of days they were dark. The light was gone.
Thanks for letting me remember her today. I miss her.