Water Fun

This past week was all about water.  Not taking into account the pool time Annaliese had with Walter that I mentioned in the last post, the kids also spent time in our pool, with the water table, and at the spray park. 

Ian said he was watering himself so he'd grow, which is the last thing I want him to do.

As soon as we got to the park, Ian took off and never stopped running between all the water features.

This was as close as Annaliese got for the longest time. And when she got closer, it had to be holding my hand.
If she felt any of the spray of water, her arms immediately went up to her face.

We tried getting Ian to take Annaliese through the water, but she steered clear of the rainbow after this.

The geysers, as Ian called them, were his favorites.  Here he's trying to run between the streams and not get hit.

In the shower.

Eventually she got close to the geysers, though the spray of these caught her of guard and she wasn't happy.
She preferred to step on them or stick her hands in the stream.

Fun with Walter

We've been able to spend two mornings with Walter and Marlena this past week, and how different the weather has been.  Thursday morning we met them at the library, and then headed to the park.  The weather was in the low 60s, and we needed long sleeves or jackets.   Today (Tuesday) Annaliese and I hung out at their house while Ian was at Jedi camp and spent the whole morning outside with the kids in swim suits.  I think you'll be able to tell what day was which based on their clothing :)

Moving the cushion chairs around a the library.

These two rocking chairs were connected and so very cool to rock in.

Bad to the bone... and holding on for dear life!

Double slide time... these were about the only slides that were dry.

My princess

Annaliese decided she was going to push me, but she ended up doing more of a scooping thing, which didn't work very well. In the end, she had figured out how to push with her arms and not move her legs and scoop/walk with me.

Annaliese's favorite way to swing on the big swings.

Kisses for Walter. She chased him down to give them, and after she kissed him on the cheek, she just kept moving to find his lips.

Pool buddies

Stomp!

Splash!

Slide!

Ladybug!  There was a bug walking on the top, and then got down in the crack.  She calls every bug she sees a lady bug, even though they're usually flies or ants...

A Week with Grandma and Grandpa

The kids spent last week with their grandparents, having  lots of picnics; feeding, catching, and eating fish; going to parks; and just being spoiled by their grandparents. 

At Grandpa Dave and Grandma Sandy's, Ian got a kick out of playing with my old Maple Village bear house. I LOVED that thing when I was little, and it was his go-to toy there.



They had a picnic with Aunt Cara, Uncle Shawn, and Oliver.


Ian gave Annaliese a ride with his H.
  

They went and visited the trout hatchery near my parent's house. They were lucky enough to arrive at feeding time, and an employee handed Ian a bucket of food. When he was telling me about it, he said in a super excited voice, "And we didn't even have to pay for the food!" because we always buy food for the fish at that zoo.
 
With Grandpa Dan and Grandma Diane, they got to go fishing twice at a friend's pond (it was both their first time ever fishing). They caught a lot of blue gill and got to eat them for supper one night.


They went to the park and helped out at the garden. The weather was kinda gloomy towards the end of the week, and they spent more time hanging out inside. Ian discovered a multi-colored "light saber" that got lots of use, and Annaliese couldn't get enough of playing with Play-Doh.

My First "Thoughtful" Layout

This morning a new "thought" went live over at Thinking*Through*Design: handstitching. This was my first opportunity to be a Thoughtful Girl (TG) over there and I loved it.  I couldn't have asked for a better thought to start with.




This layout took a lot more time than it should have, but I love the end result. The photos are from a photo shoot Noah did for us for our Christmas card in 2008.  Ian was such a ham that day; just wanting to play and play.  Getting a shot where we're all looking at the camera took some trickery on Marlena's part.  I started this layout on National Scrapbook Day (May 5) at a scrapbook store, where I found the ornament paper (fancy pants) and cut it into a die cut.  I loved it on the green cardstock, but I only had one sheet and the store didn't have one that matched, so I had to do some piecing to have it spread across both pages.

Once the ADORABLE photos were down, I wanted a way to replicate the red strip that's on the right page on the left, so after I free handed a border in pencil and punched my holes, I used some of the DMC floss from my cross-stitch days and added a border to the die cut.  One of my favorite ways to add a little something is to hand stitch on lines already on the paper. It's hard to tell in the photo, but the 'string' hanging the ornaments I stitched with a combo of metallic and cream sewing machine thread (and also added a bit of sparkle to the ornaments with some stickles). The pages felt unbalanced to me with all the stitching on the left, so instead of using journaling strips like I usually do, I stitched my journaling lines. Another thing I love about hand-stitching is the ability to vary the boldness of the look by adjusting how many strands used. For each stitching I did, different amounts of strands were used.

To finish it off, I cut the trees out from another Fancy Pants sheet of patterned paper, added the sparkle hearts, and inked over some pinkish/red Thickers to get the color of red I wanted for my title (messy, but I got what I wanted).  The layout is based on a sketch by Allison Davis. 

Make sure you pop on over to TTD and check out all the other wonderful layouts that incorporate hand-stitching.

Recent layouts

Here are some of the recent layouts I've done for issue challenges over at Club CK.

 

This first one was created for a challenge to create a button banner. I had actually done that on the layout I had just finished, so I turned the banner into trim for the tree. I love decorating  for Christmas each year; it's so fun to watch Ian, and now Annaliese, get involved and help. The Santa boots are my favorite part.  I discovered working on this layout that I need more Christmas paper.  Layout inspired by this one. 

Another challenge was to use pink, green, white and black on a layout.  I had just printed these pictures of Annaliese, and knew they were perfect for the challenge. I thought the new This and That line from Echo Park would be great, but the colors were off. I dug through my stash a bit more, and found some paper I thought I would never, ever, use. Of course, it was perfect for this challenge.  I cut the heart out and stitched it. I got to use some of my ribbon stash, too, from making taggie blankets for friends.  

The one I just did for today's challenge was to use a free download from Creating Keepsakes.  I downloaded the ticket and altered it a bit, because I thought it was perfect for a layout about Ian's first time at an amusement park.  He went to Fun Plex with Darrin a few years ago for Darrin's company's summer picnic.  I found this paper online, and was elated when I went to Archiver's and they had it in stock. It worked perfectly for this layout inspired by one by Debbie Sanders.

And this one I made on National Scrapbook Day, not for any challenge, just simply to get the story of Annaliese's first bath told.  I did lots of hand stitching on this to represent the bubbles. I love hand stitching.  I noticed when I finished that it was a rare layout in which I didn't use any patterned paper.











  

Around Here

Around here.. there has been a case of hand, foot, and mouth disease (if you look close, you can see the pimples on her face).  That means two stay-home-days with Mommy. The nice thing is that she doesn't act sick, so we're able to go on wagon rides and play outside. Just can't go back until there are no open blisters (there's a big one on her thigh). 

Around here... the dress-up box is seeing a lot of action. More accurately, the Peter Pan and Spiderman costumes. Sometimes the Spiderman shirt goes with the Peter Pan pants, and then we have Spider Pan. And when Ian changes out of his Spideraman costume, he calls himself Parter Peeker instead of Peter Parker every single time.

Around here... there are lots of "I do it myself." In fact, most of the crying she does comes from when we provide assistance she doesn't want or a toy sharing issue. She pretty much gets herself dressed every day now (though shirts are often backwards and shoes on the wrong feet). She is so Miss Independent, which is so different than Ian at that age. He was, and still is, timid to take chances, and she has no fear.

Around here... we've been trying a new camera lens, and the kids have been very obliging in letting us photograph them.

Around here... there is more building going on. Darrin has promised to make me bed frame for Mother's Day. I'm curious how many will pass before I get it, but I know he at least has a great helper. They're currently working on a cabinet to hide the kitchen trash in.

Around here... our garden is producing. We inherited a plot with strawberries, and it apparently excels at growing deformed ones. 

Around here... Mother's Day was celebrated with frozen yogurt on the deck, and a comparison of tongue colors when we were finished.

Preschool Graduation

Today Ian graduated from preschool in an 11:00 ceremony at a park.  The wind didn't lend itself so well to wearing a graduation cap (that each friend decorated by writing their name and drawing a pictures of himself/herself), but it was still great to watch him and his friends react to the wind and interact with each other.  After the ceremony, Darrin and I were able to eat a picnic lunch with Ian; one of the best workday lunches ever.  The class picture is really hilarious, but I didn't want to take the time to blur out all the faces... guess you'll just have to visit in person when I get it in a scrapbook if you want to see it.

 The graduate before the ceremony.

 Getting called to receive his diploma. 

 Trying to keep his hat on in the wind.  He got to stand next to his best friend.

All set for kindergarten (even though he still hasn't figured out to smile normally and look at the camera...).