I love it so much it hurts

I always knew my competitive streak was going to cause problems for me. Most of the time I come home from softball with funny stories and what I call war wounds. Like this, for example:

 I say that you know you're having fun when you come home dirty and this is no exception.

On the same dive, I got these and a couple more scrapes on my legs. But I was so proud of myself because I really should have been out. My at bat started out nice with a great line drive up the middle, earning me a base hit. Then, while on first, the catcher dropped the ball, so I took off for second. After a couple steps, I looked back to see how far the ball had gotten and realized the catcher came up with it quickly and I was toast. She just looked at me like, where are you going to go? I quickly made up my mind, took one fast step back toward first and then dove. It was a good enough play that I was able to get under the tag and I was safe back on first. I ran into bigger problems, though when I was going on a short base hit trying to make it to third. I have been taught, and really do know, that you either slide or you don't. If you do something in between, you get hurt. Well, I decided way too late to slide and rolled my ankle into third. I was able to get back up after a minute and finished playing the game (and then played a second game after), but by the time I got home, I knew I was in trouble. I was really having trouble walking, but I was kind of hoping that some ice, elevation, and some rest that I might be ok today. I think halfway through the night that wasn't going to happen, though because it was aching all night long and as soon as I woke up, I knew I wasn't going to be able to walk on it. Unfortunately, I chose the worst day possible to be injured because today is AAA's annual take your child to work day. Two years ago, J took Bailey, and then last year Cole got to go. So Lindsay has been waiting anxiously for this day to come, so I had to let him go to work and leave me to take care of myself. As soon as I dropped the kids off at school, I headed over to urgent care for some x-rays. The good news is that I didn't break it. The bad news is that I severely sprained it, so I can't bear weight for a week and am stuck in a splint and ace bandage. So here's my new fashion accessories:

I'm already discovering how difficult this is going to be at my age. I don't know how my mom did it last summer with her knee. As much as I'd love to be forced to just sit and take it easy, I don't think this is how I wanted to do it. I shudder to think what my house will look like with a week of me not cleaning up, and for now the discomfort is really getting to me. Maybe now would be a good time to teach Charlie to fetch whatever I need for me.

Back on a schedule

For awhile I was doing really good on a schedule where I would clean the house a little every day so that it never got too dirty and then I would have time to be crafty. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans...I guess I can just say that spring happened to me. We've been dealing with the normal weeds because we got some rain, which would be fine except that the house we're living in was vacant for over a year before we moved in. And so the weeds and grass have had their run of the yard as much as they've liked for over a year and no one has tried to do anything about it. So my last two months have been spent waging war on the yard, trying to get it back in shape. I absolutely love my yard because it's so big. But over the last two months I've been cursing the fact that it's so big, and, in true Arizona fashion, is mostly rock (can I just say how much I despise desert landscaping?). As if that wasn't bad enough, there is a tree bed around the edges of the yard that line up with the grass. And with a year of no one keeping the grass out of the tree beds, the grass has decided it wants to go all the way to the wall. And, as if that wasn't enough, there are a bunch of dead bougainvillea in the yard, and when I saw all the fruit trees at the home improvement store, I decided to replace it myself. My original intentions were good...Jason had wanted to remove all the weeds, and I should have just had to replace the plants. But there's something about my poor husband who is already working three or four jobs trying to spend about 15 minutes a day pulling weeds, and I took pity on him and have pretty much done all the work myself (except for the one weekend when I got sick of the kids playing video games while I was working and made them "help"--I don't think I got much actual help out of them, but at least they learned something...I hope).

At this point, I'm declaring victory over the yard. There's still some grass in the tree beds (which I've told J, after all the spider bites I've endured in those tree beds, it's now up to him and the kids to get rid of the rest of the grass), and today's chore time was taken up with pulling weeds in the front yard before it gets bad enough to get a notice from the hoa. So now my time this week is going to be spent taking back the cleanliness in my house, It's amazing how quickly it all falls by the wayside when you've spent hours in the yard and are too tired to do more than dishes or clean something that is obviously dirty. The nice thing about attempting to get back on a cleaning schedule is that it means that I've had time to do what I want to do again. I think with how long it takes me to get one page done that I'll never be caught up scrapping, but at least these are a few more memories preserved.

 I was happy with this one when Jason said that it's one of the best I've done. I love it when I'm able to top my best. It was also a lot of fun to scrap these pictures because this really shows Lindsay's personality.

 I wanted to really emphasize the big, so I added some Crystal Effects on the word to give it dimension and shine.

 This one gave me a lot of trouble. Sometimes you have a layout that just comes together really easily and works out great (like the one above), but this was not one of those. I had it in my mind some of the elements I wanted, like the circle, and the sequential pics on the bottom, but I had to rearrange a dozen times until I was finally satisfied with how it came out. I can't say I really love this page, but it worked out well enough.

 This sequence of pics is one of my favorite, although for some reason I forgot to capture her actually landing in the pool with a splash!

I've been trying to stop being such a hoarder, and this new metal flower worked perfectly for the page and I got to use something that would otherwise still be hanging on my wall.

Happy Easter

For once, I'm going to do something on time if you can believe it! We've had a really nice weekend, although it's been seriously exhausting with all the travel and festivities. The biggest reason that we were so busy this weekend is that my cousin got married yesterday, so we drove to Blythe, Ca (about 2 hours from here), so watch her get married and then hung out at the house for awhile with the kids swimming and visiting with family before heading home. This is the second time in two months that we've done this trip for one of my cousins getting married, so we were really happy to be able to be there for her on her special day.

A couple of our traditions were changed or dropped this year, one of which was dying our Easter eggs. We knew Saturday was going to be crazy, and the kids have become experts at finding the eggs inside the house, so we convinced them that we should get plastic eggs so the bunny could hide them outside and make it harder for them to find. So when we got home Saturday night, we had to get ready for the bunny. I got out my Sharpie markers and let the kids decorate their plastic eggs and then put their initials on them so that they would all be able to hunt their own eggs and not throw fits over another kid getting more than the others, or the older kids finding all the easy ones and leaving the younger one with the harder eggs.

When that was done, Lindsay put out a huge plate of carrots for the bunny and then we got the kids off to bed. Another of our traditions that we did without this year, I have a love/hate relationship with. When they were little, the Easter bunny used to leave footprints around the house as he came to check on if they were sleeping. It was getting harder as they got older, to make sure that the tracks made sense, but it was always fun for J and I to get it ready, and the wonderment in their voices as little babies was so much fun. But, it's always been a pain to clean up (and especially the last few years with wood floors), and there's no awe in their voices about it anymore. So, while I'm sad to see that one pass us, I'm not sad to not have to clean baby powder off my floors today.

This morning, the kids had to wake us up before being allowed to go downstairs (and while I'm usually lucky with my kids not waking us before seven, they started in on us at six today). My parents will laugh, but when I figured out what time it was, I told them not to come back before seven. Of course, once it was seven, that meant I really had to get up, not something I really enjoy doing--I know, I'm lazy, but I'm such a night owl that seven is really early to me. So as we were getting ready to go downstairs, I went into Bailey's room to see if she was going to come down. That was greeted by grunts and moans. I swear she has turned into a teenager overnight. While walking downstairs, the two younger kids decided to strike poses for me:

 And then they had fun checking out their loot.

 Bailey finally made her was downstairs a few minutes later. I think the thought of an unopened gift is what got her out of bed.

After chatting with them and making sure they got some breakfast, J and I went back upstairs to lay down before getting ready for church. Unfortunately, I think the travel the day before on top of the two early mornings in a row had its way with us and it was really late before either of us woke up again. So we dragged ourselves out of bed to let the kids hunt down their eggs in the backyard:

 Cole wasn't too thrilled to find that the bunny decided to put one on the table in the pool.

 All smiles fishing it out though.

 I have to say I was pleased that she wasn't able to find all of hers, I had to give her hints. You're never too smart for your mom. :D

 No matter how she tried, she just couldn't reach.

 A little help from big sister got it out.

 I caught Bailey and J goofing around on the patio.

 And then loving his little girl.

While we all had a good time, Charlie decided that he needed a treat too. A wounded bird landed in our yard, and our hunter was in heaven. We've found bird bones before, but this was the first time the kids had to witness it, which was a little traumatic for some of them. Cole, of course, thought it was fascinating that Charlie actually wanted to eat the bird. He even got aggressive with J when J was stopping him from burying his treat, so that was the end of it for Charlie. Little doggie forgot his place in the family for a minute, but at least J got rid of the poor bird.

 I think one of the nicest things about the Easter bunny bringing presents is that the kids have all played really nicely together today, no bickering or fighting. It makes for a much more pleasant day that what we've been experiencing normally which is made even better by the holiday we're celebrating. I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter day!

Getting caught up

This week I settled down to scrap and was getting organized with my layout when I had to go looking for a picture. Since we went digital six years ago, all of the pictures we take are on my computer, and I take the time to organize them so that I can always find the time frame I'm looking for (I'm very meticulous about scrapping in chronological order). I also take each of the kids to get their pictures taken at a studio once a year and randomly do group shots every couple years or so as well. The problem is that, since those photos aren't digital, I'm seriously disorganized with them. And I also realized that I hadn't scanned most of these photos, so the one photo I have is the only one--very dangerous when you allow it to become a disorganized mess as I had. So this week, instead of scrapping, I've spent hours scanning old photos of my kids. It's so fun to look back on them when they were little munchkins, and checking out each photo brings back so many memories. Of course there were moments of great frustration when I couldn't figure out the year the picture was taken (as a scrapper, I've always been taught not to write on photos--that changes now; each now has the year on the back and I'm dedicating myself to dating each as soon as I get it from now on). There are some years where the kids look so similar from one year to the next, or maybe I just slacked on getting the pictures taken on time so they're only a few months apart instead of a whole year. In the end, with help from Jason, and even the kids from some of the older pictures, I think I was able to get them in the right order. They're all scanned onto my computer, and my files are backed up automatically thanks to my husband's subscription to a backup service, so I'll never lose these pictures. Now if I can only get the pictures scrapped and in the appropriate book, that might be something. ;) Here are a few pics that have been my favorites over the years:

Bailey

 18 months

 6 years

 10 years (I love this one of Bailey because she's just so beautiful. She had just got her hair cut in a really fun, edgy style and it suited her so well. The photographer even got her to smile all the way although she tries to hide her teeth when she smiles because she's self-conscious. I think it gives her character and makes her shine even more)

Cole

 7 months (first Halloween, Bailey was Pooh)

 5 years (this one is my favorite of him. The guy taking his pictures really just let him do whatever he wanted, and he was such a goof. It was hard to choose which pictures to buy this time because they had all been so great. He has such a great sense of humor, I love hanging out with this kid)

 9 years

Lindsay

 6 months

 5 years

6 years (this one is so representative of Linds, it's perfect. Yellow was her favorite color, so she's got the yellow shirt and yellow bracelets--and she's always wearing bracelets, only took them off to bathe. And her monkeys...this girl has loved monkeys since she was a baby, we call her monkey too. So I should have chosen one from when she's older, but I love this one too much).

Party time!

When planning his party, Cole decided early on that he wanted to have a pool party. I think he wanted to be the first of our kids to be able to throw a pool party at our house, so he jumped at his opportunity to one-up his sisters. The only problem with that is that, although it's typically hot in Arizona, the pool is still way too cold to swim in early March. So we decided to postpone the party for a month, and threw it the first weekend in April. I've talked about the drama behind his birthday invitations here, so we already knew it wasn't going to be a big party so we focused instead on making sure our boy had fun. At party time, our neighbor's kids came over (they have an 8 year old girl and 10 year old boy, so they've been a main staple in our lives since moving in here), and another neighbor family showed up as well. The weather cooperated really well, and it was nice and sunny, almost even hot, and the pool, while cold, was warm enough for the kids.
 

Jason and I focused on the food, and there was a ton. We barbecued hot dogs and hamburgers along with a ton of fruit and other goodies. We sat and ate and visited with the neighbors and had a good time.

 Cole and I drove all over looking for a Harry Potter cake. You would think with the movies that it would have been easy to find. We finally went to Walmart looking for some toys that I could put on top of the cake and just make it myself when I decided to look at the bakery there.

 When it came time to sing before blowing out candles, I counted to three for us to sing, and Cole blew out his candles. Silly boy. We had to relight before singing and letting him go again.

 Poor Charlie wasn't too thrilled with the cake part of the party because we had to lock him up. I have to say, though, he was really good for the most part. It's hard to throw a party at your house when you have a crazy Beagle.

The goodie bags matched the cards, and Cole really liked them. I got to use a free Harry Potter font I had found online, and found out that it is pretty cute.

Eventually the neighbor family left, but then some other family friends showed up after their son's baseball game, and not long after that, my family that lives in Blythe came as well (talk about coincidence; they needed to go to a store here in Phoenix and wanted to stop by since they were out this way anyway so we were really excited they came the day of his party--and even nicer that they were able to eat up some of the food we had prepared since we had way too much).

 Poor Linds. I had to include this picture because she had the bluest lips! She kept wanting to jump back in the pool all day long.


At the end of the day, Cole said it was his best birthday party ever, so although he didn't have a lot of friends here, it was a good time, and we were happy to be able to celebrate our favorite boy.