1st Day of Kindergarten!!!

It is finally here!  A day that I both looked forward to and dreaded!  For the past several weeks, I would burst into tears as I was filling out the mounds of paperwork or as I was reading Kindergarten books to Annie before bed.  (I would at least wait until I was out of the room!!)  My little girl is growing up and it is so bittersweet!  

I knew she would be fine.  I knew she would love it.  This morning, she ran into our room while we were getting ready shouting a la Finding Nemo, "First day of school!  First day of school!!"  It was so cute!  She was ready!  But was I???

On her way...

Kindergarteners at the bus stop...

We headed down early to the bus stop which is only a few houses away.  14 kids are at that bus stop!  It was a crowd this morning, with moms, dads, siblings, and the kids who actually had to get on the bus!  The bus arrived and the kids crowded on - three to a seat!  Annie was on, no looking back!  That's when the tears started for me!

Getting on the bus...

I followed the bus to school to make sure she got to her class.  (This will not be a normal thing for me, believe me!)  She got in just fine.  More tears for me!

Annie's two best friends...

The girls getting ready to go in...

How cute is this?  Can't you see them in 10 years???

Then the rest of the day was fine.  It did seem awfully long for me.  I'm so used to picking her up at 1:30, that 4:15 (when she gets home on the bus) seemed to take forever to arrive!  But it did, and she had a blast.  And I survived!  And I am now hoping that the rest of the days seem as long as today.  Because I know it won't take long for me to get busy busy busy again and have those moments when I am wishing for one more hour!

But tonight I just hugged her and tucked her in - as she was telling me she couldn't wait to get on the bus tomorrow!

Camping!

We finally did it! We've been talking for the past two summers about taking the kids up to the mountains for their first real tent camping trip. We've been to the mountains before with them, but always stayed in a nice cabin or condo. So they've experienced the mountains, but never full-on camping!

This summer has been so busy that I wasn't sure if we were going to be able to swing it. Last year, we ran out of time and had to tell the kids we would take them the next summer. I didn't want to do that again. So I spent Friday pulling together all of our old camping stuff, running to REI, Target, and the grocery store. I packed the car and was ready to go when Dave got home from work. We left around 2:30 to go up there.

We arrived at an old campsite that we used to camp at to find it closed. They were doing a lot of removal of the pine beetle destroyed trees. The next campsite - closed, too. The next one looked like it was only a camper site. Fortunately, it had five tent sites, one of which was open for us and PERFECT! We had to make several runs of equipment since the site was several hundred yards from the car, but that was OK. We were right next to the lake, secluded, and had enough trees for me to hang up the camping hammock (a must-have tradition from camping with Dad).







After setting up, and playing around a bit, we made dinner.
(This pic is for Kristen - see how intent I am on the corn?!?)



We roasted marshmallows and had a few beers. Then the rain started, so we got ready for bed. Then, the RAIN & WIND started. Dave had just gotten us a new HUGE tent with a big front screen room - which promptly pulled itself out of the ground in the wind. After Dave fixed it, we had to pull all gear into the screen room. It was a little bit chaotic.


Once in the tent for the night, we listened to the rain and wind. The kids fell asleep. Dave and I did not - until about 4 a.m. We were keyed up from the storm, a little bit worried that the kids would get cold, and quite uncomfortable. Apparently, we're not as young as we used to be when we would easily sleep on inch thick air 'mattresses'!



The next morning was fine - a bit chilly, but the lake was beautiful - smooth as glass. We were a bit tired, having only 2 hours of solid sleep in our system. We took the kids for a hike where Annie got to feed some chipmunks. We checked the weather and it was supposed to rain again. So, we had lunch, packed up the car, and went home. A day early, but we had a fabulous time! We made it up to the kids by having pizza and game night that night instead!





I kept checking the weather. It turns out it was 43 degrees and rainy from about 3:00 pm until 9:00 pm. Then, it was rainy and cold the next day, too! So we definitely made the right choice to come home early!

It's time to be back...

So...... long time, no update. Very long time.

I look at the date of my last post and it's very hard to believe. My last post was made right before I heard the news about the terrible car accident that my brother's family was in. If you're reading this and you know me, you know all about what happened. There's no need for me to recount it now. Maybe someday I will, but for now, I'll leave it.

I miss Michael and Cora so much.

But, now I'm back and intend on updating more often. For those of you who are interested..

Update on that Orlando Trip...

Still waiting on little sis to get those pics to me. Someday I'll be able to tell you all the stories....

Sharing one of those Forever layouts!

I have been trying to scrapbook much more this year. Last year, I only did 1/2 as many layouts as I did in 2006. So I need to set aside time this year for it! I've been doing OK and getting them done. I've been trying to focus on getting them done quickly and not taking FOR-EVAH to do them.

This one, however, took me FOR-EVAH! First, the painting of the arrow / question mark / and word the. For some reason, it took a long time. I changed my mind on what font of letters to use and had to paint the word 'the' twice. But the longest thing was the brads! That's a lot of brads there and it took quite the time to make sure I had a good pattern going and enough brads to keep the pattern up all the way around! (I ended up with four brads left - love it when I use up packages of stuff - makes me feel less guilty about having all that stuff! See! Someday I might use up that gallon jar of blue flowers!!!)

I always ask Ryan, "Who's the best?". And he always shouts out, "RYAN!". If you look closely, you'll see that I raised up the letters R Y A N on the bottom of the page. Good thing his name is what it is or that part might not have worked!

Anyway, thought it was worth sharing! Here it is...

Getting the house together feels sooo good!

I'm loving my living room these days!  After a disaster with a leather couch that didn't fit and has now been put into the basement, Dave and I picked out another couch for the living room.  Our old one was done.  It had tears, spills, stains, you name it.

We looked and looked for the right one.  When we found this one, it had really ugly sage green paisley pillows on it (in addition to the big brown ones).  It looked quite formal and icky.  So....  I used whatever creative instinct I could muster up and found some other decorative pillows to put on it.  Once I did that, we LOVED the look.  (Well, I loved it.  Dave may not have had the same passion that I did.)  Anyway, the look of the pillows matched us and really made the couch.

Dave was a little worried about the size of the ottoman and the size of the coffee table, but I think it works and I absolutely adore it!

We also bought a couple of bookcases for the guest room.  I have now moved the books out of my office and into that room.  

Here are pics...  

Next stop - my office!!!

Christmas Morning

Yes, I know.  It's been ages since I have posted.  I have been insane!  Here is a portion of my to-do list from the past several days...

-Taking down the Christmas tree (if you remember, I take it down ornament by ornament per the lists that I keep!) (400 ornaments!!)
-Taking down the Christmas Village that covers three scrapbooking tables!!!
-Painting Ryan's bathroom. We're starting potty training and thought a new bathroom would help him. He and Annie have always shared the bathroom in Annie's room. 'His' bathroom has always been disgusting. Old wallpaper half torn off the walls. The kitty box in there. Blech! But now it's beautiful.
-Painting the guest room. Same as above. It's always been so blech. I painted it 'Iced Tea' and got rid of some furniture. I'm going to buy some frames and put pretty scrapbooking paper in them to decorate!
-Learning this new Mac and trying to get things transferred over.
-All the usual After-Christmas return shopping
-Getting all the January kits shipped out
-Getting a new battery for my car
-Getting Emissions testing on my car
-Still trying to get the stain out of the carpet from the water leaks that we had
-Taking care of Annie who has strep.
-Actually getting a couple of pages done

And those are just the bigger things!  I have had a little bit of fun playing with the mac (more on that below).  Here's a little 'movie' that I created.

It is from Christmas Morning.  Christmas was soooo nice this year!  We spent the evening of the 23rd with my stepmom.  We usually do this on the 24th, but the kids always end up overtired from all the excitement.  So, this year, we did it early.  Which left us the 24th to just relax.  That evening, we watched the Elmo Christmas Special that was on TV, put out cookies for Santa, and got the kids ready for bed early!

The next morning, we woke up to the most beautiful snow!  I had no idea that it was supposed to snow so the surprise made it even better!  The kids were wide-awake, not a grump in sight!  We enjoyed the morning, had a great dinner at my mom's!  I was especially surprised when my mom (who, mind you, had already given us all of our presents) handed over a brand new mac power book for me when we got to her house!  That (and the new iPhone) are keeping me very busy.  They're the coolest inventions EVER!