It's Friday

Wow. What a week this has been.

The biggest stresser for me this week has been the fact that I have two events on the weekend that I am in charge of organizing.

The first: a baby shower for someone at our church. So I've had to coordinate the food, collect money, make a card (not to self: finish card!), find a speaker, organize a game, get the room set up and decorated...

And the second: our first Take-It-Home event for our church. We want to start equipping parents to be the spirirtual leaders of their homes, so we're starting to have Take-It-Home Events, where the kids and parents are learning together and can hopefully "take it home" and implement what they're learning at home to impact their kids for Jesus. So for this I've had to redo a booklet we'll be working through, organize the supplies & make 21 felt Bible covers for the kids to decorate for their craft-time, write my talk and meet with another volunteer to plan who's going to say and do what. (Okay, the volunteer is my good friend, Val, so that wasn't stressful or anything, but it still takes up time.)

But, as always, God is faithful and gives me good things to balance out stress in my life. Some of the good things have included:

Connecting with Anita-- always a favourite for me!

Coffee with Val this morning.

My Scenic Route prize arrived on Wednesday:

I got 12 sheets of patterned paper, a sheet of die cuts, some alphabet stickers, word stickers and chipboard words. Nice!

We started skating last night. Austin, Jonah & Sage are all taking lessons this year.

They were all pretty excited, especially Sage.

I was a little worried because she fell down a lot, but she was smiling when she came off the ice and said she loved it! :)

I had a children's ministry meeting last night at Marlo's and she invited me to scrapbook with her afterward and I got these two layouts done:

Tinkertown mini-book

I took so many pictures when Mary & I went to Tinkertown with our kids in August that I filled my memory card! (Not the 2G one-- but my 256MB one!) Anyway with so many pictures, I decided to make a mini-book with them. Here it is:

I used Bazzill cardstock, Scenic Route patterned paper and alphabet stickers, a Bohemia transparency for the title page, some 7 gypsies tags, Basic Grey rub-ons, my Heidi Swapp acrylic stamps and my new label punch.

Thanks for looking!

Thankful

So many things to be thankful for, big & small.

Here's are some of mine:

1. that Jesus died for me & rose from the dead

2. my husband

3. my kids

4. my friends

5. my extended family

6. my church family

7. our home

8. scrapbooking

9. music

10. books

11. that we are healthy and food-allergy-free

12. our town

13. hugs

14. phonecalls

15. emails & pms

16. My Scrap Shoppe

17. sudoku

18. vehicles that run

19. warm clothes

20. R.O.X. and all the kids that come

For these things, and infinitely more, I'm so thankful to God.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Two months in a row

I'm so excited!!

I got an email from Scenic Route telling me that I won their September contest. The challenge was to submit a layout using their Ashville line. This is the layout I submitted (it's one of my favourites):

Anita took the picture-- I think it's my favourite one of me ever.

The journaling reads: "On September 1, 2007, Sage & I were sitting on her bed when she said: “I love Grandma Davies because she gave me this [Dora] hook. And I love Abbie because she shares her dollhouse with me.”

“And why do you love me?” I asked.

She threw her arms around my neck in a big hug and replied: “I love you because you are so beautiful!”"

For my prize, they'll be sending me out some goodies from their Salem line.

Some recent layouts

Thought I'd share the layouts that I created using the MSS Red Star October kit:











This last layout also doubles as the October DT challenge-- "lists." I made a list in my journaling-- five things that I love about Jonah at age five.

Thanks for looking!

Resourceful

I'm sitting at the computer this afternoon and Sage came and found me. She spotted the can of diet root beer that I had on my desk and asked:

"Mom, can I have some root beer in a cup?"

"No, you can just have some from the can."

"But I want it in a cup."

"You can just have some from the can, Sage."

"Why? I want it in a cup."

"Because I don't feel like going and getting you a cup."

"But I want it in a cup."

"Then go and get your own cup."

"Okay." Minutes later, she returns with a little plastic cup from her toy kitchen and does this:

Gotta love her resourcefulness!

Pumpkin Patch Pictures

Well, after a wild goose chase around southern Manitoba yesterday evening, we finally found my nephew, Luke's pumpkin patch.

He and his parents, Sally & Dale, were so great! They picked a bunch of pumpkins and piled them up so we could use them as a backdrop for our photos. The sun was a little bright from the side, but I'm really happy with the photos, nonetheless.


(I bribed Austin with a GameCube game rental to smile nicely for the photos!)



This guy was making lots of silly faces, but I managed to get a nice one!


Love this one of the three of them!

We went to the patch with Anita & two of her kids (I still feel badly for all the driving around we did to find it.) Sage and Jorja are friends and I was really happy to get this picture of the two of them:



Thanks for looking!

Friday stuff

Sage & I went to volunteer in Jonah's kindergarten class this morning and had a great time! I stuffed folders, helped them with their craft (apple stamping-- messy, but fun), cut out some stuff for the teacher and really enjoyed being in the classroom and seeing what they do. It was really great to see how much Jonah enjoyed having Sage there, too.





And Sage fit right in-- sitting on the rug for songs and the calendar stuff, playing with the kids during center time, making the craft, and participating during show & tell (in her own three year old way ;) ). Hmmm, will definitely have to consider pre-school for next year...


At lunch, the doorbell rang and there was a delivery man with my Scenic Route prize. Here's what I got:





All from their Sumner line: 15 sheets of double-sided patterned paper, a sheet of alphabet stickers, a sheet of word stickers and a package of chipboard accents. Very exciting! Definitely enough to get me in the mood for scrapbooking.

And tonight, if the weather cooperates, I'm going to take the kids to my nephew's pumpkin patch to take some pictures. Hopefully it'll be a good time.

My best, best girl

turned three today.



We went mini-golfing as a family on Sunday afternoon. And so this morning, I thought we'd invite Anita & Jorja and Susan & Abbie to come over for a little party, complete with pink frosted cupcakes. (Here's a shot that Anita took at snacktime.)



Then, when the boys came home at lunch, they were all upset that they missed her birthday. So we relit the candles at lunch and of course, they all wanted a turn to blow them out.


(Love Sage's expression in this one!)

And then, my favourite picture of the day:


a moment of pure sweetness!

Saturday stuff

First of all, I just wanted to thank you for your kind comments and encouragement from my last post. I must confess, I was stressed when I wrote it and used my blog to vent. But you made me feel very cared for-- so thanks!

We got the church basement done by six o'clock last night. (Our meeting started at 6:30 :) ). It looks great! So much brighter and fun! I had four people come over the past two days and help, which was absolutely fabulous. Such a great way to connect with people when you work on something together.

So, I was tagged by Marcy. The rules...

You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. (If you don't have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.) When you are tagged you need to write your own blog-post and then choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don't' forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

N - nice. Right?

I - initiator. It's often me who'll call friends and suggest getting together, etc.

C - creative. I love being presented with opportunities to be creative, whether it's scrapbooking, painting this week at the church, solving problems or planning stuff (for R.O.X., etc.)

O - organized. I love things neat and orderly and in their place.

L - living life to the full. Or at least trying to.

E - enthusiastic. I like to get excited about people & things. Probably the reason my "c" word isn't "cool." ;)

Okay... so let's see... I tag Anita, Heather M., Heather V., Carrie, Linda, & Cindy.

Well, the goals of my day are to:

Tidy up my house (this is much needed after several days of neglect.)
Make a birthday cake for my best, best girl. (She wants a bunny cake for our gathering with Cam's family tomorrow. Her cousin Luke, who's seventeenth birthday is tomorrow, is being a very good sport about the cake.)
Scrapbook. Yes, this will happen today.
Take Austin for a haircut at 3:30pm. (Picture day is Tuesday.)
Head to Winkler to pick up my pictures at Walmart and check out the new goodies at the Shoppe.

Busy

This week feels crazy busy.

Now I normally like being a little busy, but this week feels a little overloaded.

Jonah is in school every morning and Austin is all day. So it's out of the house before 9am every morning.

This weekend we're having a volunteer orientation for R.O.X. and we're kicking off Sunday School on Sunday morning. So, I've been getting stuff ready for these two things, which are pretty big in themselves.

But...

Add on top of that that we decided to paint the whole Sunday school area and it's just getting done this week. Which wasn't too bad, because I had two people lined up to help me. But now this evening. one of these people said they wouldn't be helping after all (not creative enough for her and the last minute thing didn't sit well with her either.)

So, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, trying to prioritize things.

I talked to Anita this evening at soccer and she said someone said to her: "You think you're busy now, wait til you have teenagers!" Why do people say things like that? Is it helpful or encouraging? Not so much. I felt busy with one baby, I feel busy with three kids. Busyness isn't something that can be measured. And it's felt in different ways.

Anyway, I'll just pray that God will send me wisdom in what needs to get done, strength to do ti and peace.

Back to School

Well, last week the boys started school.

Austin had his staggered entrance Wednesday morning. We took this photo on the front steps before leaving:

He's holding up three fingers for grade three and Jonah's making a "k" in sign language for kindergarten. Sage is just trying to be like her brothers!

I think grade three will be a good year for Austin, even if he has to play on a different playstructure at recess (his only complaint so far!)

Jonah went for his first day on Friday. At home, he gave Sage a big hug in his room and said: "I'm really going to miss you, Sage!"

At the door, he asked: "Mom, are you going to miss me?"

I said: "Oh yes, Jonah. Are you going to miss me?"

"No."

LOL!

We biked to school. Love this shot:

And I took these at the school:

Here's looking forward to a great year!

Bye-bye curls

I took this photo of Sage a few weeks ago. I love how curly her hair looks in this picture!

Well, yesterday afternoon, she decided that she didn't like her curls anymore and chose to do something about it. Using her new pair of scissors.

I was sitting at the dining room table and all of a sudden, I heard her say something about "no more curls." Then I saw all the hair on her lap.

So I made an emergency hair appointment and this morning, we went to get it fixed. Here's what she looks like now:

I won!

Scenic Route has a monthly contest on their website and for the past two months I've submitted some of my scrapbooking layouts for it.

Well, yesterday afternoon, I got an email saying that I was one of the 10 winners for the month of August. They picked this layout:



which is now on their website here. (Just scroll down to "boy" if you'd like to see it.)

And my prize: "some goodies from their Sumner line." :) Sounds good to me!