Simon, Deborah, and Rocky

It was great to meet you, Simon. You are a sweetie. Many memories came flooding back when I held you for a short time. It was a long time ago when my boys were babies.
We were very jealous of your vibrating chair...

Watching your Mommy very closely...

Rocky-named for Rocky Balboa. I took it as a challenge to try to get good photos of Rocky. She preferred to run away from us, so I had to wait for her to walk near me.

Taking a photo as Rocky looks on...

Thanks so much for dinner, you guys! We had a great time and i am looking forward to taking more photos in the future. I'm really picky about light and I hate to use the flash unless I absolutely have to. What happens then is that many of my photos turn out blurry or grainy, but occasionally I get that perfect photo. And that is my favorite part. Thanks again-happy Tuesday!

Mom's Vacation

Love these photos of Paul and Micah and the boogie board. I don't even need to know what really happened...the photos tell the story. Note: Most photos taken by my Mom.

So here is how it started...simple enough, I was going to upload the photos from Mom's VK photo CD and copy them so that I could later put them on a CD. My Mom took some fabulous photos during her vacation. I couldn't help myself. I had to digi-scrap them. So here is the result. Mom-if you want copies of these-I may be able to accommodate you...Hope you don't mind...
This photo is gorgeous! I think it is Pauly and Micah, but I'm not positive.

Love that photo of Uncle Tom as "Grandpa" and Paul as "Daddy" and the scary 50-something guys...And that is an awesome brother-sister shot of Mom and Uncle Tom.

Love the great photos of Kate! This was actually the first layout that I did. I knew immediately what I wanted to do.

These are VERY important women in our family. Debbie, Lula, and Grandma B. Instrumental in who we all are today, I have no doubt.

I am so jealous. I wish I was the one who took these photos. Mom-I hope you don't mind, but I'm probably going to make other things out of these photos. I love them...

Again...this is a beautiful photo and ALMOST makes me wish we had gone to Florida...but I had WAY too much fun in Colorado...so it's okay. It looks like you guys had a fantastic vacation. I'm glad I could scrapbook it for you. Love you, Mom. Maybe I'll finish my own VK photos pretty soon. Happy Weekend!

Creativity Challenge Post

I created this for a challenge for a class that I'm taking at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I found these egg beaters at a garage sale in town. (The woman said, "That's an antique! Do you want to buy this too? It's an antique." She was trying to get me to purchase an old meat grinder. Of course I have NO place to put an antique meat grinder. So I passed.) But I love this and decided to add some antique photos and some antique seam binding.

I used copper tape to solder around a pair of glass microscope slides and filled them with antique photos of my family. This photo is my great grandma, Viola. I was touched that my kids saw the resemblance between her and I. I can see it too. I also think that my sister Kate looks like her.

This photo is of my grandpa (he's the little one in the back), Aunt Mazie, Uncle Joe, Uncle Stub (Adelbert). I think it is so great that grandma and grandpa had all of these awesome photos of their families. And I think they look great in the soldered frames!

Also-Sarah-I'm planning on taking Yesterday and Today which begins in October. The class is taught by Ali Edwards (for 3 months) and I'm really excited about it. She has some info on her blog about it too. (Just in case you miss out on those Master's classes and need something to do...ha!)

Have a great weekend! I'm hoping to fit in some creativity somewhere over the weekend!

First Day of School-2009

So cute! Everyone was really easy to wake up the first day.
William wouldn't let me take his photo the night before. He said it was a tradition that I take the photo on the first day of school. In fact-I got 3 with him in it!

How tall this Fall? Wow!

Elizabeth is trying to be tall...sorry sweetie!

Organizing the binder.

Eating Breakfast-Crunchetize me Captain!!

First day of school! Good fun. I love how everyone gets up early on the first day, then stays up too late that night and is crabby getting up the second day. Let the fun begin!

Peoria Farmer's Market

Shopping at Kroger in Peoria-had to pick up some stuff!
Mom is picking out some tasty corn. Boy was it good too!

The peppers were just too pretty to pass up on a photo!

Didn't have time to upload my first day of school photos, but I promise to do it later this week. In the meantime, I love these photos from shopping while we were in town for Jake's Birthday. Happy Wednesday!

First Day of School

I love crayons! Especially that magical time of year when Walmart marks down the $1.99/box 24 count crayons to $0.25. I had a very productive weekend too! I made 7 jars of salsa plus a 2-quart freezer jar. More on that later. I have to get my turn in the shower before the other 3 kiddos wake up for the first day of school. More on that too!! Happy Tuesday!

Blast from the Past

I found the photo of Grandma and Sarah and I in the box of photos that I brought home from Mom's that I am supposed to be scanning onto my computer to create a CD for. {So far I have scanned 2 photos and organized about 1/4 of the box.} Anyway-I loved that I was holding Sarah and of course the bandana is very interesting and the bow says a lot. As you can see Sarah and I still love hanging out together. And I still like to wear brown stuff on my head....Have a great Monday!

Happy Birthday Jake!

I'm a day late, but Happy "ACTUAL" Birthday, Jakey! Hope it was a fun one!

Love,
Chrissy {And if anyone not related to me calls me this...}

Jake's Birthday!

Checking out the scenery.....

Enjoying the Zinnias

Checking out the impatiens

Celebrating this guy's 26th Birthday

Giggling at Mom with her hood on.

Visiting with all of these ladies.

Good times over the weekend. It was great fun-except for the rain. I am finding this raincloud that follows us around to be a bit of a pain. But we are making the most of it. Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

Dog Love

Love this photo of William and Tigger together!

Hope you have a very happy and creative day! Since it's not my night to hang out at Football practice for 2 hours (yay...) I'm going to try to do something creative tonight.

My Backyard

Check out what I had on my beefsteak tomato plant today! I also had quite a few Roma tomatoes. There will be some salsa makin' this weekend!!! {Funny story about the beefsteak tomatoes-I grabbed them by mistake-I don't like tomatoes by themselves and I actually thought the plant was a "grape" tomato plant. The salsa was awesome though! Hurray for happy accidents!}
This is the second heart shape that I have seen in this particular morning glory. Not sure if it's because I look at it everyday out my kitchen window, or if it just likes me :)
But I sure love it! It's beautiful this year!
This Monarch has been hanging out in my yard lately. I decided to head outside with my camera to see if I could catch some photos of it. Sure enough, he came over and hung out on the zinnias for me and let me take some pictures. He even switched flowers so I could take pictures from a different angle.

"This is my best side..."

Beautiful! Have a beautiful Wednesday!

Golf Day!

Every year we golf with my brother and his wife for Jakey's Birthday!
I love the view of the Illinois River from the first tee. I see that Jake wore his "Victory" t-shirt to help him play better...We messed around taking photos for about 20 minutes before we finally teed off.

This year-Sari joined us too! It was great having her with us this year. She didn't make it last year. We were sad :(

My husband could go for 10 years without golfing and I could practice everyday and he would STILL beat me.

We were so glad you could golf with us this year, Sarah! It was great seeing you and just hanging out as a family.

I love you even though you are a better golfer, honey.

This was a great day to go golfing. It was hot, but not too hot, and hardly anyone was out on the course. We let one couple play through, but other than that, no one was behind us until we got to the 8th hole. It was great times golfing this year. I had so much fun seeing Jake and Patricia and Sarah. And I DID have a pitching wedge, honey. HA! See how it helped me....

Surprise!

It was awesome having you home and getting a chance to visit with you, Sari! Love you! More on the weekend coming up later this week...

Marching Band Performance

Here you go, Megan! For not smiling in my photo! I love listening to the Marching Band...yea I'm a geek, so what?

Such a sweetie!

Bry: Where's your mom?

Elizabeth: That's her right there, the one with the giant camera taking our picture:)

Pretending I can't find her and Mego.

I really love hanging out at Marching Band functions even though I was never in marching band. Love you, kiddo. I'm proud of you for sticking with it.

Love,

Mom