Random Post

I really can't think of anything to write about at this moment. So I'll simply post a couple pictures of the girls I took yesterday:



I love these kiddos so much it hurts!
I don't know how my heart can handle a 3rd. But I'm sure looking forward to it.

Scrappy Monday

I have a bit of catching up to do, in sharing some of my latest pages. You've already seen one of my February Sussie pages HERE. But I haven't posted the rest of them yet! So here are the other pages I created with the February Kit.




This 3rd one also doubled as my page for Scrap Whispers this week. The challenge this week is "Novel Concept". Create a layout using your favorite childrens book. One of my all time favorites is the book I'll Love You Forever" By Robert Munsch. As many times as I've read that book to one or both of the girls, I don't think I've yet made it all the way through without welling up with tears. Such a sweet book.

We also just wrapped up a fun weekend online crop over at Dixie Pieces. My layout challenge was to use a border punch, and this was my example using the Feb. Dixie Pieces kit.

You actually have until the 18th of this month to get your projects uploaded into the DP Gallery, so even if you missed out this weekend, you can still participate. Just head on over to the forums to see all the great challenges.
Happy Monday!

Pregnancy Update

Disclaimer: The following post is for my own personal documentation. I don't want to come across like I'm complaining because I KNOW I could be feeling a lot worse, and we are more than thrilled to be pregnant. I just want to keep up with some of the details of this pregnancy and this seems the best place. So if you don't want to hear me ramble for a bit about symptoms, etc, you might want to skip this post!

So at this point I am about 9 weeks. I remember the tiredness and exhaustion that comes with the 1st trimester, but it seems to be much worse this time around. I just have no energy and stay tired pretty much all day. Now there are breaks, where I have a burst of energy and feel ok, but overall I am just zapped.
The nausea this time around is constant. I haven't actually thrown up, but I feel like I'm going to all day long. A lot of times I wish I would just puke, so I would at least temporarily lose the nausea. It's a lot worse when I'm hungry and there's a bit of irony there because I'm hungry most of the day but yet not much of anything sounds good. I end up forcing down food, followed by a few dry heaves, but still nothing comes up. (I told you, you might want to skip it..)
The most appealing things to me right now are fruit (very cold or fruit popsicles) and Yoplait smoothies. As of today, the Dr. called me in some Zofran (nausea medication) and I can already tell that it's helping. (Yea!)

One other side effect, which is a little odd, is that I have a bit of an aversion to scrapbooking. A lot of times, just simply thinking about it makes me feel sick. The same thing happened when I was pregnant with Abby. And if you're reading this, and familiar with my blog at all, you know this is a problem for me because it's such a big hobby of mine. I spend most of my evenings, after the kids go to bed, at my scrap table.
Now I do have Design Team obligations to meet, so I am pushing through it, but I am really looking forward to this odd side effect to pass. If it does the same as when I was pregnant with Abby, it was pass when I enter the 2nd trimester.

That's pretty much it as far as how I've been feeling. Natalie is so very excited about this baby. She's even "reminded" me about taking my "medicine" for the baby (my prenatal vitamin!).
And even today, she's offered me some of her goldfish crackers to "help my stomach feel better".
Abigail is just going with the flow. She's not quite old enough to understand what's going on. We do need to start thinking about transitioning her to a toddler bed. I want to have any issues with that worked out and her sleeping in one for several months before the baby gets here. The girls will also be sharing a room before too long. Lots to do in the next 6-7 months!

Conversations with a 3YO.

At Bedtime:
Natalie: Mommy, I want to sing the song about the 12 sons.
Me: You mean the one about the 12 tribes of Israel?
Nat: Yes!
(So we sing song..which is simply listing all 12 names, set to music)
Me: Do you remember who their Daddy was?
Nat: Jacob!
Me: Very good, and who was the son that he gave the coat of many colors to?
Nat: Joseph! (brief pause) And mommy, his brothers threw him in that thing.
Me: Yes, they threw him in a pit because they were jealous.
Nat: But that wasn't very nice..
Me: No, it wasn't. They ended up selling him as a slave. But it was ok, because God was watching over him.
Nat: What's that word mommy? What does slave mean? Is that like the thing that Santa rides in??

All Things Dixie Pieces

This was my first month designing with the Dixie Pieces kit. And it's such a fun and colorful one!
So without further ado, here are my pages and a card.

Journaling on this first one says: Taking a family photo is usually always an adventure. I'm glad my brother kept clicking in between posed shots. It tells a more complete story. Like how John just really wanted to show off Abby's baby belly!

(My cute nephew Wyatt features in the page above.)


I also just purchased the Slice die cutting machine with some Christmas Money, and I put it to use cutting the title and some flowers for "Outtakes" and I also used it to cut those big letters in "RICE KRISPY"The kit is on sale HERE. And you can see what the other gals did with it, HERE.

In other Dixie Pieces news, we have the 3rd annual Beat the Winter Blues Crop coming up this weekend. Feb 5th-7th. The crop will get underway on Friday, February 5th in the morning. Challenges and games will be posted all weekend. Can't scrap that weekend? No worries! The deadline for posting your creations is not until February 18th! That's right, you will have almost 2 weeks to qualify for the Grand Prize Drawing! Prize? Yep, you heard me right! The Grand Prize is a brand new March Kit and a goodie bag of fun stuff that Brenna & Sherry(the owners) picked up at CHA!
Put next weekend on your calendars and come on over and join us for some fun! The Design Team also used the Feb. kit for the challenge examples, so you'll see even more stuff created with the kit.

Whispers Challenge and a Peek.

This week's challenge over at Scrap Whispers. Is simply "Flower Power". Use those flowers. Big ones, little ones, whatever you have. I used the February kit at Scrap Sussies for this layout, which goes on sale tomorrow (the 1st).
Here is my Layout:
This is the most journaling I've ever done on a page. And here's what it says:
*Jan 10th, 2010
It was a Sunday, and it was John's weekend to work. The girls and I had been to church and then out to lunch with my parents and my brother. I had been feeling just not quite right and even had some nausea in the mornings and evenings for the past few days. I really thought it was just in my head though, because afterall, getting pregnant didn't come easy to John and I. It had taken medical help and fertility medication to get pregnant with both of the girls. A 3rd child wasn't out of the question, but we had just assumed when we made that decision, we'd have to go down the same route. And we hadn't planned on that route any time soon.

I had a test on hand and figured, why not? So I took it, and pretty much instantly the first window showed a blue line. I immediately thought, "wait. isn't the first window the RESULT window?" I hadn't even given the test enough time to complete as I was frantically flipping through the leaflet to confirm my thought. And yes. The first window WAS the result window. By this time enough time had passed that BOTH windows had that bright blue line. I can not even explain the range of emotions I went through at that point. Just to say that I was shocked and surprised is SUCH an understatement. As I stood there my heart beginning to race and hyperventilating, so much was running through my head. I was pregnant. I was actually PREGNANT. And I really needed to calm down before I passed out! Then I realized that I had to wait 5 hours before John got home. I couldn't call him at work with this kind of news. When John did get home I couldn't help thinking how he had no idea at all what was coming. I hadn't even told him I'd been feeling bad the past few days. I told him I had gotten him a present and I couldn't return it. Then I asked him to try not freak out when he saw how expensive it was. And then I showed him the stick. He was silent for what seemed like forever, but was probably only 5 or 6 seconds. The he began to repeat "you're joking", over and over again. All I could say was, "Look at the stick John. Does it LOOK like I'm joking?!" And then I left him alone for a bit so he could process the news. Now granted this took up completely by surprise and wasn't in the plan. At least not now. But one thing I do know is that sometimes, and often most of the time, our plans are not God's plans. And that's completely ok. In fact, it's more than ok. It's wonderful. It's awesome. We could not be more happy, and we're really looking forward to welcoming this new baby into our lives later on this year.

So yes. most of my readers probably already knew about this, but if not, this serves as my official announcement! :) We are expecting a new bundle at the end of August.

Have a great week everyone!

@ 19 Months

I want to start doing more "status" posts on what's going on with the kids. I found myself trying to scrap some pictures from last summer and not being able to really journal much because I couldn't remember exactly what was going on with them at the time. I looked back on my blog to see if I could take something from here, but there just wasn't much.

So here we go:
Abigail @ 19 months.
*A great nick name for her right now would be Miss Vocabulary. She is talking up a storm. I actually tried writing down everything she was saying in a day and after just a few hours I quit. But here's what I captured on January 14th:
Where's Daddy, Where's Nah-ee (natalie), My plate, my spoon, Scuse' me, I burp, Can I?, Where's the pincess (princess), I want Stawby (strawberry) cake, more, I take Nah-ees (to me, about giving Natalie her sippy cup), I pooped, change the diaper, put pants on, put sock on, (I then asked her where the other sock was), I dunno, Nah-ee take it?, sit daddy's chair, uphere, nakin (napkin), where's baby, what?, wha happen mommy, brush, wash hands, I cold, where banket (blanket)..

at this point I quit writing them down but there are so many more.. she started this at about 17 or 18 months.

*Has quite a temper. When she doesn't get her way, she gets really upset and cries and throws things. We are attempting to nip this one in the bud quickly. Throwing things is just not acceptable.

*Looks out for her big Sister. Not matter what we give her, usually with food or drink, she always makes sure she gets one for Natalie too.. whether it be a cracker, a cookie, or cup of milk

* Loves to dance in her diaper. The last week or so when we go to put pajamas on, we have to take a few minutes for her to get this out of her system. I have this one on video, which will be priceless material for future boyfriends.

*LOVES baby dolls. She got so many for Christmas and plays with them all the time. There's a baby doll that "lives" in her bible class room and she goes straight for it as soon as she gets to class. As far as I know it sits with her the entire class time and then we put it back to bed when class is over.

*Has just now developed an affection for her pop (pacifier). She's usually always taken one at bedtime and nap time, but now she likes to have it more.. I don't look forward to breaking her of this, but we need to do it soon. I hope to just do it on the sly.. like she's not gonna notice.. (yeah right!)

*Is such an affectionate kid. She loves giving us "sqeeze" (squeeze) hugs, and loves giving kisses. Sometimes this affection is just reserved for mommy, daddy and sister, but not always.

Overall she can be a force to be reckoned with, but is also such a sweet sweet girl.
We love you Abigail! Attitude and all!

Scrap Whispers Challenge

The challenge over at Scrap Whispers this week is to use the watermelon as inspiration. I used the colors of the water melon for my page.

I've been using a .01 fine point pen to journal lately which is making the journaling hard to read on the computer.
Journaling: Your sweet little smile steals my heart, but you also have so many other faces with personality. You raise the one eyebrow at me and I wonder what I'm in for when you get older, but for now it's just cute.

Hope you week is off to a great start!

I Made the Team!

About 2 years ago I stumbled upon a little scrapbooking community called Dixie Pieces. They were having an online crop that I decided to participate in. I've enjoyed every minute there and the Owners put together some great monthly kits. They recently had a Design Team call, so I sent in my application, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best. Well, earlier this week I found out I made the team!! So for the next 6 months I get to play with their monthly kits and you'll be seeing the results of that here on the blog.

I've purchased a handful of their kits over the last couple of years, so in celebration of making the team here are a couple of layouts from their Nov 2008 kit.


Right now they are having a HUGE sale on all their previous kits that they still have in stock. The pickings are getting slim but there are still some great ones left. The kit I used for these layouts is on sale for $14! We also have our 3rd Annual Beat the Winter Blues Crop coming up the first weekend in February. If you are a scrapbooker we'd love to have you join us! (if you're family just enjoy the pics of the kiddos and try to ignore my scrapbook obsession :)

What We've Been Up To

I can't believe it's been a week since I posted anything! So first up is the scrapping I've done this week. Scrap-Friendzy is having a sketch fest (they post a new sketch every day) and while I haven't been able to do as many of them as I'd like, I have gotten a few done.

Journaling for "BrokenHearted":
I remember this day and moment so well because it was Natalie's first day of preschool. We had gone just outside the door to take some pictures of her with her backpack. I looked back and saw you standing at the door like this. I knew you were upset because we had left you inside, but I also knew you'd feel this same way about Natalie leaving for a few hours a week. But don't worry sweet girl, taking Nat to school was hard on both of us. What are we gonna do when she goes to kindergarten? What am I gonna do when you both are old enough for school? I'll be just a little bit brokenhearted.

Journaling for "Playground":
We just happened to get the cabin in the State Park right next to the playground. Natalie was constantly asking to go play. She would have stayed for hours if we let her.

And then this last one is for this week's challenge over at Scrap Whispers. Our challenge was to make a layout or card using purple and turquoise. Come on over to the blog and play along!
So what's been going on this week? Well, it has been extremely cold here. We got a little bit of snow (less than an inch, but that's a lot for us!) on Thursday and it is still on the ground in places.
Here are the girls trying to catch snowflakes.



We also had a very exciting game to watch this past week. The Alabama Crimson Tide won the National Championship!! I haven't missed a game all season and can you believe I fell asleep during the 4th quarter!!! I missed the most exciting quarter of the whole game! But I'm glad they won it and I did wake up in time to see them accept the trophy. ROLL TIDE!

And last of all, I'm gonna have a proud momma moment here.
A couple of days ago Natalie showed interest in writing her name. So we've been working on it with a lot of help to get it right. Yesterday, Abigail was napping, I was playing on the computer and she was playing in the living room. She exclaims to me that she's written her name all by herself. When she brought me the board and I saw what she'd actually done....

I couldn't believe it! And you know my first thought was to grab the camera! :)
Have a good week everyone!

January Sussies and Scrap Whispers

I've got a lot of scrappy stuff for today, so here we go..
The January kit at Scrapbook Sussies was a lot of fun to work with. I especially loved the extremely girly stuff that was in this month's. I had an idea for making a door sign for Natalie's room, and with the embellishments that came with this kit it worked out perfectly.

For the door sign, I used a 10x10 canvas. I sprayed glimmer mist all over the base. This was a very easy quick "paint" job. I then cut an 8x8 piece of the poodle paper and then layered my embellishments on top of that.

I need to take a better picture of this next layout. I do see that it has a bad glare on the left side. But here are my other two layouts using the girly side of the kit.


For the boy side of the kit, I was really wondering what I was gonna do because well, I don't have boys. But as I was looking through some of the pictures I've recently printed out, I noticed how well our clothes matched these papers in these family photos. I cut up one of the rubons (a frame with "this boy" in the center) and re-purposed it. Using the frame to house "love" and using only the "this" as part of my title.


Now with this last one. I doubled up. It is my 4th layout for the Sussies kit, but it is also my very first layout for Scrap Whispers. A few months ago, during their down time, I was asked to join their team. What is scrap Whispers? Well I'll get to that in just a minute. The first challenge for the new year is "Stars and Spikes". That's it, no more direction than that. You can interpret it any way you like. I chose to simply include stars and added a spikey banner along the edges. (By the way.. these pics are of my cute nephew!)

Be sure to head over to the blog to see how the other Design Team members took on this challenge. And play along! We have a new challenge every week, and at the end of the month one lucky participant wins a scrappy prize.
Now.. what is Scrap Whispers? Remember that game you played as a kid, where everybody sat in a circle. The first person thought of a phrase or sentence and whispered it into the person's ear next to him and then that person whispered it to the next, and so on and so on. By the time it made it all the way around and the last person said it out loud to the whole group it was usually NOTHING like the original phrase. Well Scrap Whispers is the scrapbooking version of that. It's played by scraplifting a layout and passing it on to someone else in a team. If you'd like to know more, stop by our blog. I believe there are a couple more days to sign up if you'd like to participate in our next round that is beginning soon. In the meantime we also have new challenges every Sunday that are open to everyone, whether you're signed up for the "whisper" round or not.

Have a great week and ROLL TIDE!!!!

2009 Top 12 Pics

As I start this post I realize that picking one picture from every month is an impossible task, but I'm going to attempt it anyway. And it's so hard because I took roughly 9,000 - 10,000 pictures in 2009! Good thing I've resolved to only scrapbook my favorites!! And I'm already predicting that these will mostly be of the girls.
OK, here we go.

*January - This picture is a result of some "practice" for a Valentine shoot I was gonna do of the girls. I didn't get Christmas cards out for Christmas of 2008, so I decided to send a Valentine's Card instead. My cousin let me borrow this vintage quilt of hers. This isn't the one that made it onto the card, but it's a fave.


*February - This is the one that made it onto the card.


*March - Abigail is the spittin' image of her daddy..


*April -Natalie was in my cousin's wedding in April and was an absolute doll in her white dress. This was one I took before the wedding. I just need to learn some better photoshop skills and take my dad's hand out of this pic.


*May - I didn't take many in May for whatever reason, but htis one makes me smile.


*June - My baby turned one!


*July - I have a whole host of favorite from this month because I took a series of pictures of the girls that I totally fell in love with, but since I'm picking just one..


*August - We went to the beach with my family in August, and I never posted any of the pics from that trip. I've printed a bunch of them out, so they will probably show up in scrapbook pages on here over the next few months. But this one stands out to me. I love that I caught this expression on my Dad's face.


*september - Is there really any explanation needed for this one?


*October - This month is impossible to choose. I took two separate fall sets of pics of the girls that I LOVE. Natalie turned 3, we went to the pumpkin patch, carved pumpkins, had a family photo shoot on Grant Mountain, and Halloween. Just in October alone my pic count is 700! But here is my fave from Natalie's birthday.


*November - I love catching the two of them in simple interaction.


*December - Another impossible month because of the sheer quantity of pics I took.
But because of the sheer happiness and fun these two were having, it takes the cake. So there you have it. I VERY quick glimpse of 2009. Happy New Year everyone!
Come back tomorrow for a very scrappy post.. January Sussie Reveal and my first challenge reveal with Scrap Whispers.

Christmas in Pictures

I took over 300 pictures this Christmas and it's hard to pick just a few to share. You can click on these collages to see them larger.

*Christmas with my parents*

*Family Gatherings - and I know you're wondering about that bra.. I ended up with the boobie prize..literally.. and my bro thought he'd model it for us.*

*Christmas Eve before bed and then morning*

*Christmas Eve with the Wrights*

*Natalie's Dinosaur*

*Family Photo*

*Family Photo 2**More Family Christmas*

I hope your Christmas was Merry!