My husband has taken the children on the Tuesday Morning outing. Most Tuesdays he does this, and it allows me to get a little scrapbooking done for work, a little tidying around the house (In silence! With two hands!), and gives me a small respite from the constant chatter and demands of our family. Today, however, although there is work to be done (work that really ought to be headed to the post office tomorrow) I’d rather take a nap than do what I’m supposed to do. I am really tired, even though I have been keeping very good hours and sleeping adequately.

Jonas had his birthday party on Saturday. He will be 7 on the 18th and very much enjoyed having his buddies over for some slip-and-slide, water slide, cake and presents birthday action. He is now loaded up with Bakugan, Transformers and Legos and is very much pleased with his collection of plastic rubble, that I will admit to having added to. (I know! I try so hard to buy non-plastic- but if the kid’s true love (thanks to school) is little plastic creatures- well, what am I to do?)

Jonas started summer school yesterday. We are very grateful that summer school for the district just happens to be in his old classroom with his first grade teacher. He is so transitionally challenged that those two consistencies will truly make all of the difference. He is just a smidge behind in reading, so summer school will be good for him. Plus, his class has only eleven students, so his time there is well spent. I am concerned for next year. About 1/3rd of our teachers were pink slipped this year, and there is very serious talk about raising class sizes to thirty children per class. They have closed down a few schools as well, so the children at those schools will have to go somewhere. We shall see how he handles whatever ends up coming.

I am currently homeschooling Maggie for Kindergarten/preschool. She misses the K cut off here by a matter of days, and preschools have outrageous waiting lists and cost more than my college education. Seriously. If you are raising children, might I recommend NOT moving to beautiful California, where the budget is slashed and preschools present more challenges than college? Maggie and I are working on her penmanship, and she is making progress. She knows her letters, is learning letter sounds and is working on writing them. The funny thing is, she has very, very well developed fine motor control, and she is more than able to print, but she is very much a study, watch and wait kid, so practicing when it isn’t going to come out as she likes it is so frustrating for her(gee. . .wonder who she got that from?)! She is learning. I am learning. I could have just waiting until Kindergarten, but she is taking off so quickly on her own that I expect she’ll be doing simple reading before she is “old enough” to attend. I enjoy watching her progress.

Gabriel is adorable. He is laughing big, belly laughs now. He will be four months old this week. We are well into the baby groove. He usually gives me one solid hour and a half or more nap per day, and then I can get something done. He is learning patience, and learning that flirting with us is sure to make it so no one can put him down. He does this stinking adorable maneuver where he shrugs his shoulders, cocks his head to the side, raises his eye brows at you and then gives a little grin. How in the world does he know to do that? Flirting must be innate.

He was just days old in this picture. When it was shot I saw it and all I could think was ugh- my hair is a mess, My chin has chins and I’m retaining a ton of water from the pregnancy and I look just awful. A few short months later, and it is such a perfect moment in that quiet, tender time. I think I need to judge myself a little less, and live a little more. Hard to do.

Ok- The winner of the Chicobags is

#6

I would love to win this!

Comment by Jane — June 8, 2009 @ 2:45 pm | Edit This

Jane, you have e-mail (if it turns out that you don’t, e-mail me).

Thanks for entering guys!

It has been a wild few days- Jonas’ birthday among many, many obligations and outings and things to do. I just haven’t had a second to post!

So- today, rather than read me. . .go check out this poem. I adore it. It’s so me right now, and so beautifully expressed.

This little galvanized tin got a good sprucing up with the Cosmo Cricket Early Bird Line! It was so easy to make! I wrapped the tin with black cardstock and then red polka dots. Then I added chipboard flowers, layering extra blossoms above and below the main stem for a little extra depth. I also added some very small pen marks to add a little extra detail. Then I tied this pretty ribbon around the bottom, and added some ribbon scraps to the handle as well, and some letters.

It opens like so and holds a little note, a gift card or some small photos depending on what you want to put inside. It was a great little end of school year teacher appreciation gift for us. Cute containers with a little plastic inside are always well received!

A few weeks back, I asked you guys if you would like me to answer any questions. So here goes:

From Nicole:

Do you have any other past times other than scrapbooking and reading that you like to do?

I like to take very long baths and I enjoy doing genealogy. I also bake a lot of cookies and pies. Every so often I get a wild hair and make a quilt or a dress; I’m a good enough seamstress to make something, but not good enough to do it without a lot of aggravation and cursing under my breath. So that’s not very often. I suppose blogging would count, as well, but that is probably kind of obvious. I would say my primary non-scrapping activity is housekeeping, but I don’t think that’s really a past time, even if it sure passes my time.

From Susana O:

How do you get such great pictures? Do you use an DSLR? If so how did you learn to use it to get such wonderful photos? I love all the pictures you post and your children are so cute in every way.

First off, thank you! Honestly, I’m not that good. I get lucky and my biggest photo tip is just keep shooting frames. Most of the photos you see on this blog have about 100 pictures where everyone looks awful or the lighting is terrible or I’ve stuck my finger in front of the lens.

I use a Canon Digital rebel XT, and I’m quite happy with it. I started with a 110 mm PHD (Push Here, Dummy) when I was about eight years old. I went through a couple different 35 mm point and shoots before I purchased a film rebel in high school. When I got the chance to upgrade to the digital version of that I learned a lot very quickly.

I’ve always had an eye for composition, and I am good at seeing light, but having the SLR gave me a lot of artistic control and having the digital allowed me to see my mistakes and successes immediately so the learning curve was faster. It is easier to correct yourself when you find out you’re messing something up at the moment rather than finding out two weeks later when your film gets developed and you can’t remember what modes you were shooting in. All that being said, I’m still a total hack with a lot to learn!

I would love a nice, fancy photoshop program for my computer, but the versions I’m interested in are pretty expensive, so I use the very basic Microsoft picture it 7.1 that came with my computer. It allows me to crop, mess with tone and contrast, and convert to black and white. I can also remove a zit, which usually makes me feel really good until I walk by a mirror a few minutes later and wonder why it is still there.

My photo tips:

A) Always use natural light. Unless you can afford a great lighting system, natural light is your best friend.
B) Use the rule of 3rds when composing or cropping a shot. It adds visual interest.
C) Just keep on shooting. I figure if I get 12 really wonderful shots in a year, I’m doing a good job.

I also very much recommend reading Designing With Photos. It is photography for creatively-minded people. More art, less f-stops and numbers. It is also awesome because the entire book is so gorgeous you want to read it over and over just to see the incredible photography.

From Chandler:

Okay, here’s one: do you have a secret (or not secret, even) ambition, something you’d like to achieve one day after your kids are all grown up? (Like, I dunno, climb Mt. Everest or start a llama farm or something!)

I think I have pretty simple secret ambitions. I have always wanted to write a book. That’s on my someday list. My biggest recurring “fantasy” these days is living in the country, in a beautiful home of my own with a wonderful garden (I love the Mittleider growing system), a chicken coop, homeschooling my brood of children (which includes more children than I presently have) and having them be truly free range, organic kids growing at their own pace and feeling the wonder of the world without the immense amount of pressure we put on them these days. I’d like to accomplish this while canning my own vegetables, cooking lovely meals from scratch, sewing lots of useful things, enjoying the natural order of the seasons and being as self sustaining as possible. I’d want really good high speed internet and online shopping as well. Even in my fantasies, I ask a lot of myself!

This all requires more patience and energy than I currently posses, and leading a military life in frequent upheaval doesn’t lend itself to a lot of putting down roots and planting gardens that expect years of cultivation; we seem to bounce from one “crisis” to the next at warp speed, and spend a lot of time in survival mode. Moving! Being pregnant and really sick! Husband deployed again! Kid trouble! Family Crisis! Have a baby! Lather, rinse and repeat! Surviving all of this requires having a lot of inner peace, because there isn’t much to be found on the outside. This reminds me of very good counsel from James E. Faust,

“You are learning that sometimes the Savior calms the storm. Sometimes He lets the storm rage and calms you.”

I think that is why I dream of this secluded, self-sustaining home. Outer peace to help along the inner. A haven from all of the storms.

I am a lot more of an introvert than people suspect. I love to talk and be around people on a one on one basis, but really, I could be very, very happy tucked away someplace serene in my own little kingdom and only leave home a few times a month. Most of the things I enjoy I enjoy alone, and I find the older I get, the less I crave the social and the more I want to draw my own little family in and create a wonderful world for us. I am also a person who really enjoys work. I am happiest when I have projects to complete and my hands are busy. It is extremely frustrating for me to spend so much time coming and going and bouncing between activities and people’s many, many needs, when I very much just want an hour to scrub a floor or an afternoon to piece a quilt. I could be content living a very simple life filled with work and tiny accomplishments that served my family.

OK- there are more questions, and I will get to them. If you have another question, leave it in the comments section and I’ll write you back!

(Photos are baby mallards and young Canada geese- shot at Travis AFB, CA).

With the weather here finally presenting a few good days we are trying to get outside a bit more and enjoy some nature. Contrary to popular belief, California isn’t all palm trees and ocean breezes. Northern California boasts a lot of rain and winds that can knock you off your feet. It is also the Allergen Capitol of the World (my source being me) and when you mix those winds with all the pollen and mold and dander. . .ACHOO! Anyway, we went outside!

We have this lovely pond on base with a park and a walking/jogging trail that we like to follow. There are ducks and geese and turtles and fish, all enjoying their mostly peaceable kingdom and glutting themselves on a steady diet of bread delivered by the Air Force base’s children. However, as I’m sure you are all aware, occasionally when you try to enjoy nature you get more than you bargained for.

I was trying to shoot a cute photo of my daughter, so I reached up to brush the hair off of her face when I felt a lump just above her widow’s peak. As soon as my finger landed on it a warning bell began to sound in my brain. Wood tick. WOOD TICK. WOOD TICK! Lyme disease spreading, rocky mountain spotted fever carrying, blood sucking vermin with a serious gag-factor.

I parted her pretty blond hair and to my disgust located a nasty, engorged tick that had burrowed quite comfortably into her scalp. This tick had clearly been hanging out there for awhile, and had not been picked up on this trip. It was fat and distended and had left several little drops of tick-poo on her head.

Now, I had washed her hair that morning. I had also brushed it and put it into pig tails and then taken them out and re-brushed them later on in the day before we went to the park. The trouble is, her hair is so thick and ticks are so small, that without landing directly on the little bugger, you just weren’t going to find him! I wanted to gag. I wanted to knock it off her head as quickly as possible and go retch in the bushes. Ticks gross me out.

That being said, the tick was located on the scalp of a four year old girl who can go absolutely insane at the drop of a hat, and so I remained calm and let the kids know that it was now time to go home as we had a tick removal to attend to.

Jonas thought this was wonderful. “Maggie! You have a tick! And it’s sucking your bloooooood like a VAMPIRE! It’s going to suck out all of your BLOOOOOOOOOD!” What a big brother.

I told him to shut up about the tick and it’s vampire like qualities, so he launched into a discourse on all of the other blood sucking creatures he has learned about. Vampire bats! Head lice! Mosquitoes that suck blood until they explode! Ew. Ew. EW! I expected Maggie to go completely off her nut, but she was as cool as a cucumber throughout the entire conversation.

I speed dialed my husband and told him that I’d be bringing a tick home. He met us at the garage door armed with tweezers, rubbing alcohol and a fire starter. Maggie calmly sat down as we discussed how might be the best method for removing this parasite.

I have always been taught that you need to light a match near the tick’s head so he backs himself out. If I had done that, my daughter would have a quarter sized bald spot right in the front of her head. Vanity won out, so Chris torched the tips of the tweezers and I grabbed the little bug as near to her scalp as I could and yanked him off. It took two tries, as he was holding on tight. Once he was off, we torched him until he made a grotesque popping sound and flipped six inches away from the flame. Then I took my fingernail and, still resisting the urge to gag, dug out the bite area to make darn sure there were no tick bits left in her scalp.

Through all this, Maggie, my moody drama queen, my emo-bomb waiting to happen, my screams-because-she-likes-to-hear-herself-yell child, sat placidly, stoically even, in her seat. She did not cry. She did not fuss. She didn’t even say “ow”. She allowed us to remove bits of her flesh and douse her head with rubbing alcohol with mild interest, and then ran off to play.

Chris, Jonas and I were completely grossed out and concerned, and she didn’t care one whit.

Figures.

This baby didn’t poo for three days. This resulted in a very bad mood on his part. And then we went to church where he made up for lost time by immediately blowing out a cloth diaper all the way up to his shoulders, and after being changed into the spare outfit, pooed a second time, also blowing out and therefore spent the remainder of church in a shirt and diaper. My little barelegged boy needed a bath, but I did the best I could with a washcloth and a running tap. On the up-side, his mood has improved.

You forget certain things when you have babies. Things like keeping a second spare change of clothes in the car just-in-case used to be my normal routine, and I am quickly remembering why I had those old habits.

You also forget just how much laundry one little baby can make.

Good thing those blue eyes are cute.

Many people are choosing to reduce waste by bringing their own grocery bags with them when they shop. I’ve been looking for one that I would like for awhile now. I have a few random canvas bags floating around the house, but I found that I never remembered to bring them into the store with me, even if I gathered them and left them in the car they just sat there and I walked out with a bunch of plastic bags yet again.

I found these ChicobBags online and I love them! They have a unique design where they fold up into themselves into a very small pouch. The pouch has a key fob on it so you can secure your bag to your keys or together. Because of their small size, I can always keep a few in my purse and that way I never forget them in the car (well, except for those really impressive days where I grab the kids (hopefully my keys) and go shopping with my purse still in the car *sigh*).

With reusable bags becoming a growing trend the baggers at our commissary and Costco are used to seeing all sorts of bags coming through the line, however, when I bring these bags in I get a lot of attention and a lot of questions! I have had to give out the website to more than one person in line with me, as the portable design is such a great draw. As soon as the baggers realize just how much they can fit inside them and how strong they are, I end up passing the web address along to them as well!

Here are some pics of my baggers having some fun. They really loved these bags.

Ok, this is cool.

Opening these is fun! Look at how little these are in their pouches! (This particular bagger looked at me like I was crazy when I said I had my own bags and brought these out- she told me she couldn’t figure out what I expected her to bag into those tiny pouches!)

Look! If I hold it up, it looks like a dress! (Seriously, I had some fun baggers that day!)

The full one has 1 and half gallons of milk as well as six frozen orange juices and a family size tub on yogurt.

Ok- enough silly pics of my baggers! Let’s talk about these bags.

Now, Chico has a few different styles, so I’m going to tell you about my favorites.

Vita Bag: I love this one. This is the bag that holds up to 40 pounds of groceries. It can easily fit 2 gallons of milk and a party sized veggie tray. I’m not joking- I’ve done this! My favorite thing about this bag is that the straps are shoulder straps so I can carry the weight on my shoulders and carry more with my hands. This means I unload the car faster. Because of the strength of the material, I don’t worry about the bag tearing and spilling everything everywhere; I just stuff it and go.

Original: This holds up to 25 pounds and is wide enough to fit Costco sized containers of food. It is also super tough and shrinks down to a tiny pouch.

The rePETe Original: This one is great because it is made from 99% recycled materials. It makes sense to make bags out of recycled water bottles, particularly when the goal is to reduce waste in the first place!

If you go to ChicoBag right now they have a great deal where if you buy 4 you get the 5th free. And If you leave me a comment, I’ll enter you in a drawing to win 2 ChicoBags of your very own!

Clearly I need to buy a few more myself. You guys should know, this is a major grocery trip for me, and usually I would have had about 20 plastic bags for this amount of food. Because of how much the Chicobags can carry, 5 Chicobags carried all but 4 plastic bags worth.

Happy Shopping!

No matter what paper line I work with, I always end up in the same situation. One sheet of the paper will become my absolute favorite and will be used over and over and OVER as though there are no other papers in the line at all.

Case in point:

I am currently having a hot love affair with these Cosmo Cricket yellow polka dots. The rest of the Early Bird line is fantastic, but these polka dots had me at hello. I just can’t stop using them.

I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’m hooked.

I’m hooked so badly that when I was making this card, every time I tried to add another patterned paper or color to the card, all I could think was, ‘but it will detract from the loveliness of the cheerful, yellow polka dots!” And we can’t have that.

So I grabbed a few favorite quickutz dies, my nesting labels and this butterfly and played around with some good old fashioned neutrals.

:-)