sad things, transition, good things

Mom; March 4, 1936 – March 3, 2013
One day shy of her 77th birthday, the esophageal cancer won.

Mom wanted a gathering at her house as a memorial. I’m so thankful for my sisters who made it so beautiful. I was touched by everyone who came and there were people I  hadn’t seen in years that brought back such sweet memories.

 

Transition…

Ron lost his job in October. Except for a job that lasted about 6 weeks that brought in less income than unemployment (oy!) he was, well, unemployed. BUT he got a job as an Account Executive… back in the mortgage industry! A real job with full benefits and everything! Obviously the previous 5 months were hard. But really, it’s been a hard five years since the mortgage industry crashed and we lost our house, savings, etc.  It will take awhile for things to get rolling and for the income to be what we need to get by, but at least there’s a good chance to make beyond the minimum necessary and it feels like a long time since that was even possible. I’m so happy that at least he loves what he’s doing now. And he’s working with and for such nice people. So thankful. And medical, dental, vision, life, and 401K? Yes please, and thank you.

Bennett is weaning. He is my last baby. And he’s gone the longest of any of my babies. Now that I know first hand how shockingly fast the kids grow (um… Drew is getting his DRIVER’S PERMIT!) it’s so hard to let this stage go. Nursing my babies has been hands-down one of my most treasured joys in this life. I will miss it. I will miss him being completely out of baby-stage and full-on into toddler-stage. Didn’t I just give birth to him? What is happening? Trying to look on the bright side… I am looking ahead to getting my body back. I have plans to get back in shape. I’m tired of being weak and flabby. I want to be strong and fit again! More on that later.

Good things:

Well, my kids are all healthy and amazing. No lie, they make me smile every day. Tonight Jaimee and Bennett were playing and doing this funny yelling/screaming thing. Bennett’s face is so cute when he does this and he and Jaimee go back and forth. It’s really so cute (even though it did get pretty LOUD, lol). I do love how Bennett is big enough that now he and Jaimee can be playmates:

And while it continues to shock me how fast this is happening, we did have a great day celebrating Jaimee’s 5th birthday:

(this was just the “cake” part of the day; the present-opening and Chuck E. Cheese parts were awesome too!)

And other holiday events since my last post:

Jaimee making Valentines for her pre-school classmates. SO CUTE.

And Easter:

My older sister did a truly beautiful job with everything from the decorating, baskets and toys for all the kids, the dinner… she really does have a gift. And it was a good day.

Looks like I need more photos of Drew & Holly. *mental note*

Just hangin’ in there, folks.

my favorite recent scrapbook pages

I haven’t shared many scrapbook pages lately. These are some of my faves!

I just made this tonight. It’s from March of last year and Bennett is 4 months old and Jaimee just turned 4 years old. Love this page which is a total scraplift of a paper page by mini m le scrap:

I joined a photo swap challenge and got photos from a girl in Germany. I wasn’t sure how I was going to scrap sunset photos, but I’m pleased with how it turned out.

Just some cute pics of Jaimee playing with her dolls. Totally love this page!

I used this layout for the cover of my December Daily hardcover photo book. I also used these photos for our Christmas cards.

I love this kit of Mindy Terasawa’s and have used it several times.

Playing with Holly & Jaimee at the park:

Bennett’s darling little curls!

Thanks for looking!

Hello January 2013

It’s the new year, and we all know what this means:

and great football . . . (have the NFL playoff games this weekend not been AWESOME?!)

and . . . Season 3 of Downton Abbey airs in the U.S.!!

the happiest place on earth

It was May. Since we had shut down the business and Ron had gotten a great job a few months prior, we were excited to think about planning our first family vacation in years.  And of course, we thought of Disneyland! A place where all ages could have fun! And then we heard about Disneyland ticket and annual passholder prices going up. So we jumped before the price increase. We wanted to be able to go for the year (we’d done annual passes in the past and loved it) and not have any block-out days so bought Premium Annual Passes and we knew we’d have until Dec. 31st to activate them and start our “year of Disney”.

We were all set. I made reservations for a trip for the first week of January (we would activate them just before the deadline) and were so excited about our first family vacation in over three years. And Christmas at Disneyland!

(Disneyland will be dressed up for Christmas through January 6)

Well, in October, Ron lost his job. We of course still had hope we could pull it off… maybe just go down there for a short trip to activate them and plan a big trip a little later and still have most of the year to enjoy them. But we finally had to let the dream die. It was so hard after months of planning and Jaimee talking about going to Disneyland. But it just makes more sense to try and liquidate these so we can pay some bills and buy some Christmas gifts and wait to do the Disneyland thing when we would have the money to really enjoy it.

We have vouchers we bought from Disney online. They are PDFs that you print out and bring with you to the ticket booth at Disneyland. There are no names on these, just a bar code and activation code on each one. Once you get there, you give them all your info and then they become annual passes with an identity attached to them. Vouchers are how people can buy these as gifts, and then the recipients have no problems using them. So, no worries on that front. Once they are activated, they are good for one year. And as long as they are activated by Dec. 31st, the difference in what we paid and what they now cost won’t be charged.

Premium Annual Passes for Disneyland now sell for $649 each (regardless of age… price is all the same for APs and ages 3 and up need some kind of ticket to get in). We would like to sell ours for $600 each. Still a deal for you (you’re saving  $49 per ticket) and a help to us as you can understand.

If you’re interested, please email me at scrapkat(at)gmail. We could also discuss the reservations for a hotel we have within walking distance… a two room suite for less than half of what the Disneyland Hotel charges! We could probably figure out how to get you that reservation too!

Halloween was fabulous!

I’ve always loved Halloween and it’s even more fun with your own little ones.  For a few years there I was a little deprived since Drew and Holly wanted to spend it with their friends and Jaimee was too little. But this year was awesome because it was the first year Jaimee REALLY knew what was up. And she was so excited! For the last two years, she’d been a pirate:

 

And I must say… could she BE any cuter?! At that time, I was ten days away from giving birth to Bennett. I was having some physical issues and could only make it around the block and then Ron had to take over and do the rest of the trick-or-treating with her. Which they did for HOURS. She loved it then.

And she loved it this year too! She was so excited and loved every second of it. This year, she was Alice in Wonderland:

 

I thought she looked completely adorable.

I haven’t made the scrapbook pages about the actual night yet, which will include Bennett in his costume, but I didn’t want to wait any longer to share how fun our night was.

BasicGrey Design Team Blog Hop!

Welcome to the BasicGrey Design Team Blog Hop! If you’ve been following along, you would have arrived here from Jana Eubank‘s blog. And before this post is over, I’m going to tell you how you can win a free digital kit, how you can download right now for free a different digital kit, and how you can enter to win a $10 credit to use in the BasicGrey store!

I’m thrilled to have been asked to join the BasicGrey Design Team for a 2nd term. I first started scrapbooking with paper and BasicGrey was my first paper love. When I started digital scrapping, I was so excited when BasicGrey started putting out their collections in digital form. You can imagine what an honor is was, and still is, to be working with them!

Today I’m going to share a back-to-school layout with you. Have your kids started school yet? Drew started last week on Monday! And Holly started this week on Tuesday. For this page I used a BasicGrey template called So Special 2 Me. You can see how I altered it to accommodate my portrait-oriented photo. It was such a great start to this page and it was so easy to add borders and such to the paper strip area. And this template? Only a buck. Yep! One dollar! For all the paper and goodies, I used BG’s Recess Collection. I adore Recess… the colors, and the use of graphs, numbers, and letters… and you can win the Starter Kit!

I mean seriously… it’s cool, right? Take a closer look at the awesome monograms:

Here’s my page using Recess and the template:

See how I changed the colors of the stitched button border? I just adjusted the Hue slider until the red buttons turned teal (the black things stay black).  I *heart* digi. I also added an outline to the “h” monogram because I wanted it to stand out a bit more. To do this, use the stroke function (in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements). I added a 7px stroke and added the shadow affects after that.

So… to celebrate the new design team, BasicGrey is allowing me to give away the Recess Starter Kit. For your chance to win, just post here on my blog in the comments section and tell me if you’re a paper, hybrid, or digi scrapper and what you love about it! One person will be chosen at random to win this kit!

And right now, you can download the Dasher Starter Kit for free! Just click the image to be taken to the item in BasicGrey’s store. See the price? Yep! $0.00! Gotta love it.

Ok, another giveaway. On the most recent project of mine posted on the BasicGrey blog, if you make a layout using the awesome sketch provided (and here’s my page using it):

and leave a comment there by August 26, 2012 at 11:59p MST (that’s this Sunday, people!) linking to your project, one winner will be chosen at random to win a $10 credit to spend in the BasicGrey store. For paper or digi supplies! Odds are good, people, head on over there! As of the time I’m writing this, there’s only one entry in the comments section!

Ok, my work here is done. It’s time to hop on over to Kim Jeffress‘ blog. Remember, if you find a link that doesn’t work, you can always hop back to the BasicGrey blog for a list of direct links to all of the blogs in the hop. Happy hopping!

trippin’

Drew starts school in two weeks. And this “back-to-school” is going to be a little different. Because… he’s going to be in high school. HIGH SCHOOL?! What is this time warp? It doesn’t seem like so long ago that I was in high school. Or that long ago when Drew was just a little boy.

I created this page to document his graduation cerimony from 8th grade:

(click image for supply details and more info; all supplies Designer Digitals)

and he looks so grown up (and handsome!) to me. Since then he’s gotten his hair cut short (see updated blog header!) and I love it. I think it makes him look even older. You know what’s crazy now? I will be the mother of:

a high schooler

a middle schooler

a pre-schooler

and a nursing baby.

This is wild. But definitely, an awesome wild that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I love my life. I’m living my life’s dream come true. I’m a happily married, stay-at-home mommy to four beautiful wonderful children.

A quickie update on my other babies:

Holly was invited to go to the Europe trip with her school. It’s a big deal to be asked and for a couple weeks we seriously entertained the idea:

(click image for supply details and more info; all supplies Designer Digitals)

Ultimately, we decided it wasn’t the right time and we’d rather spend the money on a family vacation. But I was still very proud of her that she was asked.

Jaimee is such a sweet girl… she’s becoming more “girl” and less “baby” quickly! I took these photos of her at the park a few weeks ago and love how they turned out:

(click image for more info; all supplies Basic Grey)

Bennett of course, makes changes weekly! From this:

 (click image for more info; all supplies Basic Grey)

to this!

(click image for supply details and more info; all supplies Designer Digitals)

He’s 8 months old here and you can see his bottom two teeth are already in. Right now, his top right tooth has come in (I’m calling him “snaggletooth” right now cause it looks pretty funny!) and his top left is just about to break through. So early with this teething! *pout* And yes, I agree. He looks just like his Daddy. Even I can see it. It’s so adorable to me that I have a baby version of my husband!

I hope you’ve been having an awesome summer break. We have! I can’t believe that it’s nearly over!