2015 Week Two | January 5-11

We returned to school this week from winter break on Tuesday, only to have Wednesday off for a too-cold day.  The kids and I celebrated by having smoothies with breakfast- the perfect breakfast when it's negative twenty-something with windchill outside. 

Annaliese and I spent part of the cold day working on one of the activities in her Kiwi Crate. We made a winterscape luminary with some tissue paper, glue, stickers, and an LED candle.  

Our kitchen table is in a nook with windows on all sides so not the warmest place when the wind blows.  So picnic by the fireplace, inspired by picnic by the Christmas tree, was born.  

By the time the weekend had rolled around, then temps had gone up and the wind had died down. The kids took to playing on the steep hill in our backyard, climbing to the top...

and then slide back down.  

We stopped by HyVee after church on Sunday. So miss living more than five minutes from that store.  They were super helpful and my ankle only got run over once...

And of course we made sure to get home in time to watch the Packers fight off the Cowboys to play in the NFC Championship game next week.  

Layout | Wonder

Darrin snapped this picture of Annaliese during our Advent activity of sleeping by the Christmas tree, and I knew instantly it would be a photo I would treasure forever. It also became the photo I scrapped first in the new year.

I was inspired by this layout, printed the picture 5x7, and had some fun with white paint and glitter. And looking through all my patterned paper for shades that were similar enough to each other to use.

2015 Week One | December 29 - January 4

Wow. October 19.  Really?! I knew it had been awhile since I posted, but really?! Ten days shy of three months. Crazy.  My sister asked  me when home for Christmas if I ever planned on blogging again.  Always start the year with the best of intentions, so here we go.

In my paper version of project life, I'm using these digital files from Paislee Press for the title card of each spread.  This week's contains a picture of the winners of our first-ever Yahtzee game.  Annaliese rolled and Darrin played the strategy for their team.  

They won even with Ian praying against them as they rolled.  the second picture is his yell of "NO!" as Annaliese had the winning  roll.  

This week was the second week of winter break, and because of that, we were all home all week.  That meant some time to play with presents.  Ian, with some help from Darrin, put together his first project from Tinker Crate.  It was a small motor that used batteries and a magnet to keep a medallion spinning.  

Ian and I tackled a big project over break- sorting  his Legos.  He had them all in one big bucket. I figured he only played with the figures instead of built things because he couldn't find the pieces he needed. So we fixed that and got them all sorted by type of block.  

And when we weren't sorting Legos, he was building one of the seven different sets he got for Christmas.  The good guys and bad guys are preparing for an "epic battle" (his words) on his dresser.  

New Years Eve we spent having dinner with others at our church in support of Table Grace Cafe. They are a restaurant in Omaha that has no set prices or a cash register.  If you walk in the door and want to eat, they will feed you.  You donate as  payment- either with money or by volunteering your time in the restaurant.  This is the second year they've done a dinner for us on New Years and I've loved it both years. We learned from last year to bring things for the kids to do while we're there. Next year we may need to bring PBJ as Annaliese was not a big fan of most of the meal.  

This guy celebrated a birthday this week, and as always, didn't want anything.  So I made him chocolate cinnamon rolls because that's what I wanted to make.  

We met friends at the children's museum this week, though didn't get many pictures of the kids actually together.  Ian and Annaliese had the run of the play grocery store while  we were there.  

The  special exhibit was about farming.  Annaliese is moving the corn (ball) in to the corn bin. Ian took a turn at being a meteorologist and forecasting the weather for the week.    

There was also a new part of the museum that had an interactive projection floor.  Annaliese and Ian both had a blast playing on it.  There was a game where you destroyed bubbles, and then it morphed in to a piano.  I typed my journaling for this week's project life spread on the photo (which I just noticed a typo in...).  

2014 Week Forty-Two | October 13-19

Try not to faint, but today is actually October 19, and I'm posting the same day as the actual week. It's pretty amazing.  I'm no where near caught up in my physical album, but this week is scrapped, so it gives the feeling that I'm caught up...

It was easy to pull together this week as I took a ton of pictures this weekend with my family in town. Annaliese helped out a bit in the picture taking department, too.  I had the camera on the tripod from late last week when I was taking pictures of the moon rising at night.  Darrin showed her how to work the time delay and she would set the camera and frame the shot, the press the shutter release and run to get in front of the camera.  Unfortunately, I had it on manual focus from my moon shots, so some of hers were completely out of focus, but her composition of the pictures was awesome, and her adorableness showed through in every photo.

Family in towns means lots of..... drum roll...... family time.    Game playing. Book reading. Wrestling. Playing cars.  And secret agents.  And crying because the boys won't let you play with them.

We tried a new pumpkin patch while they were all here this weekend, Camp Fontanelle.  The kids had a blast, and the fact that it was half the price as the other patches around here made me pretty darn happy.  Both my kiddos said the jumping pillow was their favorite thing.  They spent most of their time jumping, between the pillow and the bounce castle.  It was a big enough place we needed maps, and since I did such a wonderful job when we were in the corn maze, someone else needed to take over.   I enjoyed watching the kids in the petting zoo; seeing Ian's reaction to feeding the alpacas and goats was awesome. Annaliese loved to pet the bunnies, but was too scared to hold her hand out and feed the animals.

2014 Week Thirty-Seven and Thirty-Eight | September 8 - 21

As I was going back and working on pictures for September, I had a harsh realization when I only had three pictures for an entire week.  So it's getting combined with another one.  

First Sunday of Sunday School there were big balloons in the courtyard after church.  

The kids loved popping and chasing the big balloons. You could even blow back at them, creating smaller bubbles inside the bigger ones.  

We bought some new furniture for the new house and this has quickly been established as the best seat.  It's called a 1.5 chair, but it seems to hold two very well.  

One of the reasons I couldn't wait for a new house was to have the space to finally buy a piano.  So this picture makes me one very happy momma. She's played on it every day since getting it, and Ian has practically, too.  Now to figure out lessons.  

Annual fall apple picking trip. We tried a new orchard this year because it is close to our new town.  It was their annual apple festival, so the place was packed. Unfortunately, the quality of apples weren't as great as other orchards we've gone to in the past, because it's a lot more convenient to drive 15 minutes than over an hour for apples.  

Fun in the bounce houses at the orchard apple festival. 

She was in heaven at the apple orchard meeting Anna and Elsa. She's wearing shorts, imagine how hot the princess are!

Yep, even got me in a shot at the orchard.

She can pose like no other. She also wanted her toes painted, so she took it upon herself while I was working in the garage to paint her toenails.  She was so proud of herself, and I was happy she was able to do it by myself, because it's not something I enjoy doing.  

It's the last half of September, and it was warm enough for the kids to get in the pool . It probably should have been winterized already, but it's hard when we have warm weekends to cover it up.  

The best helpers a girl can get. I finished the cabinets to my craft table this week, and then we focused on the desk top, which is a hollow core door, topped with wood laminate flooring and trimmed to hold it in place, all purchased from Habitat from Humanity.  

2014 Week Thirty-Six | September 1 - 7

Most of the pictures from this week are at my cousin's wedding on Friday night.  As I've been going back through September's pictures and realizing how few I've taken, I think I need to start taking pictures of the things I take for granted, like our dinners together as a family, the kids working on homework when we get home from school, and the other seemingly mundane, but oh-so-important stuff of the week.

Cousins impatiently waiting for dinner.  Thankfully there were rolls on the table they got to dig in to.  

My dancing queen. Couldn't keep her off the dance floor. She even managed to drag me out and get me to dance with her.  That video will end up in the scrapbook with these pictures (thanks to a QR code), but not here for all to see.  

Silly dancer.  And this was about the only shot I got of Ian that night. He wasn't on the dance floor much. More content to run around with the other boys, and hang out by the food. Did I mention they had ice cream sundaes along with cake- be still my heart (a page out of our wedding reception 10 years earlier).  

My two favorite shots of the night.  The picture on the left just makes me smile and makes my heart happy. That is my girl right there; all innocent and sweet.  And then the picture on the right of her snuggling with my dad; love watching the relationship my parents, and Darrin's parents, have with the kids.    

The day after, the boys playing a game of football in Great Billie's basement.  Ian is the youngest of the group in second, the oldest is in 6th, and the other two in the middle. Poor Annaliese had to just be an onlooker.  

Before we left for the wedding, we took the top off corner hutch and put up a new flat screen.  Needed to take the top off to get to where the cords go.  If I had to place a bet as to what Annaliese would be doing after school, I would say 80% of the time, she has a pad of paper and some type of writing utensil in her hand. She's either interviewing us ("Mom, what does love mean to you? What is your favorite color? Movie? Food?"), or she knows what she wants to write and she's asking us how to spell it, or she's just writing random letters. And usually there's always a picture to go with.