New LO and ::happy dance!::

The other night I was putting the kids to sleep and this layout popped into my head. So as soon as they were down, I got on the computer and put it together. I like the way it came out - very bright and sunny, just like that day was. Here are credits for Field Day.

And, today I got myself a little prize from my bonus money. I was going to get a laptop, but the Deac thinks he has a laptop around that we can refurbish pretty cheaply just to run Linux and the Gimp and the things I want a laptop for... so I didn't need to buy that. A tandem kayak would be nice, but chances are we aren't going to have a chance to get it in the water this year anyway... so - and this was the Deac's idea - he totally reminded me that I have been wanting a digital SLR camera for eons. Sure, I already have 2 film cameras and a point-and-shoot digital camera. Sigh. What's that question I've heard? How many *insert item of interest here* are enough? Answer: Just One More. That's why a brand new Nikon D40x with 2 lenses and a case (nice package deal) is on it's way to me even as we speak! I'm a bit intimidated by the learning curve, but also really excited!

Have a great weekend!

Hula Girl

I wasn't really planning on scrapping today... but then I got an e-mail about a kit being given away as a freebie today only at OScraps (here's the link - be sure to read the description, as it has a coupon code) and got inspired. So, I made this layout over my lunch hour. I think it came out pretty cute (of course, it's hard to go wrong when you have such cute material to work with - and I mean both the kit AND the photos). Credits are here.

I only scratched the surface of the fun goodies in this kit! I'm sure I'll use it over and over again. Well, off to pick up Emmelia from karate and take the kids to swimming lessons. Have a wonderful evening!

Campin' and Scrappin'

We had a great time camping this weekend. We drove up the Poudre canyon just west of Fort Collins until we got to State Forest State Park near Gould. I've lived in Colorado all my life and never been to this part of the state. It was so beautiful, I'm sure we'll go back again sometime. Our campsite was near North Michigan reservoir and we couldn't tell from the website if it would be a smallish reservoir or a big concrete/rock monstrosity. So, we were REALLY kicking ourselves when we got up there after deciding to leave the kayak home for this trip. It would've been *perfect* for kayaking. Sigh. Here's a photo I took from the shore. Those mountains in the back are actually in Rocky Mountain National Park.
In general, we enjoyed camping with the kids, but found it to be a much different experience than camping without them. For one thing, everytime we would start to sit down and enjoy the scenery, *someone* would be needing a potty break or having some other sort of kid-typical crisis. But that's okay. The kids enjoyed themselves, did GREAT the entire time (even on the long drive home - we decided to take the scenic route through Wyoming) and no one got hurt or eaten by bears. I was happy to have a chance this week to scrap our experience (credits here):
We were only out for one night and came home pretty exhausted. For our next trip, we *must* remember pillows and extra blankets or sleeping bags. It got pretty cold up there at 10,000 feet overnight.

On Sunday after liturgy we decided to stop by the Orthodox Food Festival at Holy Transfiguration Cathedral in Denver. We all had a wonderful time catching up with old friends and eating delicious Romanian food while watching ethnic dancers and musicians. The girls got their face painted, played games to win prizes, had balloon animals made and in general had a terrific time. I bought myself a hand-painted enamel pendant from Russia - sort of like this one (only prettier). Then we had friends over for dinner. All-in-all, a fun weekend.

I also completed two other layouts this week, deciding to get my CT duties out of the way at the beginning since I've been itching to scrap for so long. There is this one about an evening spent with a good friend of ours and his girlfriend:
And this one of Emmelia's adventures at soccer camp last week. I didn't feel that either of these layouts really required a lot of journaling, so I just stuck with the basic photos and elements. I spent some time playing with blending modes for the backgrounds of each of them. Click on the links to see credits for Dancing and Soccer Camp.

Big news!

I can't believe how busy this week has been. I have often thought that Moms who can work part-time have the best of both worlds - more time with their kids and a steady income. But, having worked part-time this week, I can see that I would never have time to actually get my job done in half the time. It was fun going with Emmelia to soccer camp, though. Yesterday she had a violin lesson at 8 in the morning, and soccer camp didn't start until 9:30, so we went out to breakfast, just the two of us. It was really fun just spending some one-on-one time with her, and I think we need to work on scheduling that sort of thing in with both kids.

Both the Deac and I have big news today. I was chosen for another (fourth!) Creative Team! I'm very excited. This new one is for Mindy Armour and it's pretty relaxed as far as CT requirements go - 3 layouts a month. I can handle that! I think these are all the teams I'm going to apply for for a while, though. Four ought to keep me pretty busy and inspired. Now I can't wait until I have some time to scrap! We are going camping this weekend, so it will have to wait until next week. I just got a bonus at work, and I'm thinking very seriously about using part of it to buy a laptop. If I had that, I could scrap AND camp - hee! Okay, maybe it'll be better that I can just be out enjoying nature with my kids and scrap it later.

So, today the Deac accepted a position with a (computer) storage company in the town we live in. This means a very short commute and a lot more money! We are really excited. A good friend of ours works at the same company and referred him. She loves the work environment and the company seems very stable. The only part we have to work out is dealing with his work schedule, since he will likely be working the late afternoon-evening shift 4 or 5 days a week. But it might work out better because he can take the kids to daycare in the morning (after spending a little time with them) and I can get to work earlier. Then I can leave work earlier in the afternoon and the girls will be spending less time overall in daycare. That will be a bonus, too.

Well, before I get back to finishing up a few things so I can get out of here and get packed for our camping trip, I wanted to share a couple of blogs of friends of ours who are off on great adventures. Our friend Alexandra is off on a round-the-world mission trip and you can read all about her adventures here. Our friend Ben is riding his bicycle from Colorado to Alaska. Read about his trip here. Ah, the things you can do when you are young... ;-)

Better and Busy Week!

Well, we all seem to be recovering from our brush with pertussis. The antibiotics helped enough that I'm even more convinced it really was pertussis. Thank goodness we found out in time to treat it!

This week is incredibly busy. Such that I'm only working part-time and taking the rest off as vacation time. Emmelia is in soccer camp in the morning Monday through Thursday. She is doing an awesome job, even though it's in the 90's out there and these kids are basically running around in the sun for 2 straight hours (the coaches have been good about giving them lots of water breaks). So far, I've hung out and watched camp, but I really don't *need* to - maybe tomorrow I'll go run errands or something. But it's giving me a little time to just relax and catch up on my book club novel, too. Here's a photo of Emmelia dribbling the ball during a scrimmage on Monday morning:
Last night the girls started swimming lessons. Emmelia did great, but was disappointed to not get to play around in the pool afterwards. Since she has a field trip to the pool with her class every Friday, I'm hoping she'll be able to get over her disappointment. Maura didn't participate in her class, but at least she stayed in the water. I don't think she liked her teacher very much, but the director of the program tried to engage her a little last night and said she'd work with her tomorrow night, so I'm hopeful that by the end of the 4-week class Maura will be at least doing some activities with her class. It's all about feeling comfortable in the water at this age, anyway. Here's the girls at the end of their lessons last night. Emmelia's still disappointed at having to go home and eat dinner, so she wasn't that into smiling at the moment:
Other than that, we had Emmelia's occupational therapy appointment this morning, karate tomorrow, violin on Thursday, and are going camping this Friday! It's the first time we've actually been camping since we got married, despite having the desire to do so for all these years. I'm looking forward to it. It's only for one night, so I think it will be the perfect intro for the whole family and hopefully give us the confidence to try a longer trip next time.

My other big news is that I was accepted to be on a third digi-scrap Creative Team - for Chris Beasley (aka Seebee) at Digitals. I'm so excited! Being on a CT means that you get to use a designer's products in your layouts in exchange for doing a little marketing for them in the digiscrap world. This is the first CT I've been on that isn't for a designer I've known since their designing debut (although it is her first CT). I am really looking forward to being a part of this new group and working with her products! Chris makes some awesome freebies and gives them away on her blog - particularly her "Dream Trip" series for Walt Disney World layouts. I encourage you to at least check those out!

Speaking of which, we are definitely planning to take the girls back to Disney World this fall. We need to get to making actual plans, I suppose. I put it off until after the exam, but I did order a Disney vacation planning DVD we should watch pretty soon. The thought of arranging everything seems pretty overwhelming to me, but I'm excited to actually go there and know we'll have a blast.

I survived and Pertussis!

Just a quick note to let you know I survived the exam! It was intense, but not as brutal as everyone makes it out to be. I even found myself thinking at one point (God forbid!) - "this is kind of fun!" Heh. The Deac says that's because I failed utterly and I've no doubt he's right. No, really, this exam is VERY HARD TO PASS. People much better at and more enamoured of physics than I take it several times before passing. In general, I found it to be good practice. I won't get the results until the week after Thanksgiving, so I'm putting it out of my head for now.

This week we also found out that the reason Emmelia has had a very bad cold for the past week is that we were exposed to an infant with an active whooping cough (pertussis) infection at a birthday part at the end of June. I've learned a lot about the pertussis vaccine and disease this week. Bottom line is that all of us except Maura are showing symptoms (she's been vaccinated more recently, so she hopefully won't get it) and are on antibiotics for it. Apparently the vaccine is only 59-90% effective anyway, and they are finding that it wears off in 2-5 years. So adults are rarely immune to it. Also, if you don't start treatment in the first 3 weeks of symptoms (BEFORE the tell-tale whoops begin), antibiotics do no good. We were never positively diagnosed, but our doctor thinks it's worth treating as pertussis anyway. I have to say it's weird to get a call from someone at a health department telling you you've been exposed to something.

It took me longer to recover from the exam than I thought, but I did manage to get this LO done today. I wanted to use my friend Amy's awesome new templates and also applied to be on another CT with this layout about the kids' tumbling class (credits are here). I didn't feel like it was my best work. Sometimes it's hard to get the creative juices flowing again when you've taken an extended break.

Tonight we're hanging out with friends enjoying delicious Thai food and playing a new game we've all fallen in love with - Munchkin! I can't wait!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

T-Minus 6 days and counting!

Less than a week until my exam and I will be so glad when it is over! I will be able to have my life and brain back (well, my life, anyway)! I still have 3 lectures from my class to watch and then will be set to just review back through my notes and memorize formulas and equations. Did I mention how glad I will be when this exam is over? I hope I pass at least one of the two parts.

We had a very busy weekend. Too busy, I think. The girls were asleep pretty early Sunday evening. We had 2 liturgies, 2 dinners and a lunch with various friends, 2 birthday parties and helped at a yard sale to raise money for the daycare center. Too much for only 2 days! I did manage to catch this adorable video of Maura at one of the birthday parties on Saturday, though (we'll see if this works):

Sunday was the day of transition between priests at our parish. A good friend of ours brought his nice, expensive camera and photographed the liturgy and took group photos afterwards, which was very fun. I'm still working on processing all of them, but here's one he took of us with Maura's godparents.
And here's a couple of just Maura and her godparents. They are leaving to start a new mission in Denver (so at least they'll still be local and we can get together occasionally). It will be sad to not see them every Sunday, but then again, maybe it will be good, too - hee - we won't get sick of each other.
In other news, we had Emmelia evaluated for sensory processing dysfunction and she scored very low in 4 out of 14 sensory categories. We have noticed these deficits causing a high degree of anxiety and frustration at times. So we are pursuing some occupational therapy in the hopes of helping her learn self-regulation and coping strategies before she starts kindergarten.

July is going to be a busy month with my CHP exam, Arabic class, violin lessons, occupational therapy, Emmelia's class field trips, karate, swimming lessons and soccer camp. Wow. Somewhere in there I'll need to squeeze in work and digiscrapping. ;-)