Been in a Tail Spin

I feel like I have been in a tail spin the last month or two.  Seems like I can't catch my tail!  ;-)  

We headed to my hometown for the County Fair.  We went with my mom, nephew and niece.  

 This kids had a blast on the pony rides.

 They also enjoyed the animals (even on the second round through the animal barns) and the carnival.

The following week there were the swim lessons.  It was a 4 days a week, two week program.  Peyton refused to participate.  Up to the point of walking in the aquatic center.  So I opted to enroll them in swim lessons in my home town, 45 min. away where I know he was comfortable.

 Odd enough, he did GREAT the first week and it was Miss Maddy who struggled a bit.  I heard Maddy tell her instructor 'no'!  Yes, my little spit fire wasn't about to do something she didn't want to do.

 I have to say, that I was extremely impressed with both instructors.   They were fantastic and worked so well with the kids.  Since it was a good little drive, I stayed at my parents house, just up the street from the pool, a few nights each week.

One weekend we took off to Peyton's teacher's, who became my friend, wedding.  It was in a itty bitty town way out in the middle of no-where.  The COOLEST place!  Seriously, would love to live there.

The next weekend Chris wanted to camp at one of our favorite places, Walton Lake, for his birthday.  We went with some of our friends that have kids our age.  SO much fun!  The kids had a blast and so did us adults.

 Peyton has his bug replant bracelet around his head like a headband.  haha!

 Not sure why Maddy has no clothes on or what she is doing.  But the picture cracks me up.

 Doesn't he look sexy with a little pink pole?  Haha...such a good Daddy helping miss Maddy untangle her line.

 While out camping, Chris all of a sudden said 'check out those sheep'.  We all turned to see hundreds of sheep being herded by.  The kids were pretty impressed.  Me on the other hand, was having a panic attack for the sheep herder.  What if he lost a sheep?  What if a animal came in after them at night....what if?  haha!

We took a little drive to Allen Creek Reservoir one day.  SO much fun ! LOVE this place!  It is a bit rough to drive in too.  I wouldn't do it in anything but something with 4WD.  But man is it nice.  I even took a swim!

The following weekend there was the Willamette Country Music Festival.  We have such a BLAST.  We already reserved our spots for next year.

 Unfortunately Chris's cousin wasn't able to make it this year.  But my brother and sister in law were.  :)  I love spending time with them and was so glad to hear they had so much fun that they want to go back again next year!

 Below is a view of the stage behind the huge crowd.  That stage was HUGE too!  Way too many people for me.  I didn't get anywhere near the stage.  I get crowd-phobia.  So I hang out in the back!

 Directly following the music festival was Chris's family reunion.  Oh how we look  forward to these family reunions.  I love his family to pieces.

 Chris's cousin was in charge of adult games.  One game she planned was similar to the Newlyweds game.  Chris wrote this sign when I was gone answering questions.  Haha!  It says 'My contract with John ******** already expired'.  It is a joke between Chris and I that my dad payed him to marry me.  The sign brought quite a few chuckles.

 We came back home and luckily Chris had a few days vacation left.  I took off Friday morning garage saling and hit a jack pot.  The gal at this garage sale used to be a Mary Kay Rep.  She isn't one any longer and wanted to liquidate her product.  She was selling everything for 25 cents a piece!  :-0  Say what?  Yes...brand new product, for 25 cents a piece.  I spent $10.50 on all of this.  That is 2 powders, 10 pressed powder foundations, 3 foundations, 2 compacts for the foundations, 22 eye shadow compacts, 3 brushes, one liquid eye shadow, 2 sets of suntan lotion and after suntan lotion and a TON of free samples!  I added it up to over $380 worth of product!  Now...I am not a make up fan, don't hardly wear foundations, but couldn't resist this opportunity!

That is somewhat of a recap of my last week or two.  I have a handful of layouts to share so check back!  My biggest apologies for not posting more frequently.  But what can I say, life happens!  :-)

Peyton turns 5!

Wow...I don't even know where to start!  I started this post a month ago!  :-0  Yikes...time goes by quickly!  My life went into a tail spin a month or two back.  But it is a good tail spin!

A quick scrapbook share:

I wish I could tell you what sketch I used.  But I am at a loss.  It has been WWWAAAYYYY to long.  I have had this pack of 8x8 papers from Pretty Little Studio for a while, just itching to be used.  

I am still on a banner kick.  Is that out of scrapbook fashion now?  It has been son long, I'm not sure whats 'in' and whats not.

The banner pieces were printed on a piece of cardstock, I just had to cut them out.  So nice to not have to free hand them.

One big blooper in the above photo....Peyton was turning 5 not 3!  *gasp*  I have fixed the layout, but didn't retake photos.  Not sure what made me put 3 on there.  It couldn't have been the gazillion and one interruptions I got while working on the layout could it?

Other things that went on during the time I originally started this layout...

We listed our house for sale.  I like our house and LOVE our neighborhood and neighbors.  BUT...our lot is tiny.  It is just not big enough us and all our 'stuff' and toys.  We aren't able to park our camp trailer on our lot which is a HUGE thing to us.  So, I have been spending a TON more time keeping the house as clean as I possibly can.  We have also been doing a little driving, checking out possible new houses.

Check out the views of this one:

Alas...it is not in the running.  But the views were killer!

We took a day drive out to a nearby reservoir.  The kids LOVED it!  Thank goodness Chris is a good Daddy and got in the water with them.  It was murky the first few feet and there was lots of seaweed and I just couldn't bring myself to get in.  Please tell me there are other people out there like me?  That don't like to step on seaweed and get creeped out by murky water.

I was shocked that on numerous days Maddy took a nap.  Sometimes I caught her like this:

Sometimes she took a nap in her bed.

Before heading to the reservoir we had to finish up touch up painting on one side of the house.  I had to go back inside after I walked out and saw both kids with cups of paint and paint brushes!  :-0  I have to admit though, they didn't do too bad!

Thanks for stopping by!  Hopefully I can get another post up soon of more recent pictures and more layouts!  I have both, just need to upload and edit them!

T-Ball Layout

After many weeks of not scrapping I was able to sit down and play with paper and pictures a little bit this week.  It has been a while since I have completed a challenge at Birds of a Feather, so I decided to start there.  I chose to do the color challenge.  I got the inspiration for this layout from a sketch I had pinned here on Pinterest.  

The pictures are from last years t-ball, his first year of playing.

Thanks for stopping by!

Echo Park Layout and Vacation Layout

Hello there!  Back again to share some layouts I have made quite a while back.  I had two pictures sitting on my desk FOREVER waiting for just the right paper.  I finally got tired of looking at them and figured I'd make whatever I had on hand work.  I chose to go with a fun summer line from Echo Park.  I used a sketch, but for the life of me cannot remember where from.  

I wanted to get a picture of these meals that I crave.  I LIVE for these meals!  Wilted lettuce salad, green beans, taters and corn on the cob all from the garden (either my parents or ours) and a good ole' steak bbq'd up by the grillin' king, my hubby, Chris.  Saying these meals are delicious does NOT do them justice.  So I grabbed a pick and by the end of the meal it was obvious that Maddy loved it too as she had food all over her face.  

And a close up of the titling, journaling and stitching.  

 A while back my friend Karen was purging her scrappy items.  She came across this layout she had completed but hadn't put pictures on it yet.  I jumped at the offer as it was stinkin' cute and perfect for some vacation photos I had waiting to be scrapped.

I loved how there was a smaller page on top of a larger page.  I want to try this myself sometime!  So fun!  

Thanks for stopping by!

Coast Vacation

Hello all!  It has been a while!  I have been peeking in at others blogs, but don't always have time to comment on your posts.  Life has been quite busy lately.  A week ago yesterday we took off for the Oregon Coast with our camper in tow for a family vacation.  My parents stayed in a hotel nearby for the first half of the trip, and we met up with Chris's Grandparents, parents and brother and sister in law the other half.  We had so much fun and did so many fun things.  

We hit the Oregon Coast Aquarium.  

 The kids really enjoyed it.

 After that we stopped by Mo's.  You can't hit the coast without going to Mo's for a shrimp cocktail and clam chowder (well, I take that back...I could..but Chris can't).  Notice Maddy's hair.  Between time in the car and all the wind and moisture there was no taming it.  

My mom found out that the tide was going to be at its lowest point on 4th of July morning.  So we took off for a specific beach (can't remember the name of it now) to do walk and search for 'treasures'.  There were TONS of starfish and anemones.

 We attempted a family picture and the usual happened.....

 I'm not sure if you can see it, but there are a tone of starfish....

 The kids thought these little Hermit Crabs were really cool.  Heck, Chris and I were entertained watching them too.  We watched them climb out of their shells, flip the shell over and take off.   

 It was so pretty and fun.  It was quit slippery and I think almost everyone took a tumble as did many other beach goers that morning.  Below...you can see how far out the tide was, it is usually up where the kids are.

 We camped at Beverly Beach our first half and it was nice as we could drive to the opposite end of the  campground and walk under the highway to get to the beach.  We could have walked, but it was a tad far for the kids.

 Thank goodness for Mema (my mom) who walked in the ocean with the kids.  I thought it was too cold.  Chris and my mom didn't mind wading in the water with the kids though.

 I came across this on one of my walks and thought it was really neat.

 We weren't in camp but 10 mins. and the kids already had the Park Ranger stopping by to talk to them.  Haha!  We had just unhooked the trailer and unloaded bikes.  I was in the trailer grabbing their helmets and the Ranger stopped by and informed them that they are required to wear helmets! I just wasn't quite quick enough I guess.

 We went to Newport on the bay front to watch fireworks.  I ended up in the car for an hour and a half and it went like this:

 We went on our first family bike ride!  Many many more to come in the future!  It was my first time in over 10 years riding my bike!  *gasp*  I was a tad nervous too.  haha!  Maddy did great, although she dawdles and stops to look at all sorts of stuff.

 This is at Lincoln City on our last half of the trip! The day was beautiful and sunny.  BUT, it was DANG cold!  I mean, I had jeans, a sweatshirt AND my heavy winter jacket on and was still cold!  There was a guy there that set up at least 8 of these huge kites.  It was fun to watch him get them up in the sky.

 We had to make one last trip to the beach the night before we left.  Miss Maddy chose here striped capris, ladybug rainboots and heavy carhart jacket.  lol....she was crackin' me up and drew all sorts of looks!

It was a very fun fill trip.  Like usual, it wasn't long enough.

Thanks for stopping by!  I have a few layouts to share.  I just need to get pictures of them.  No, I haven't been scrapping.  They are from a month ago, I have just been busy and sidetracked with life!

Jillibean Soup Double Page Layout

Hello there!  I hope you all have beautiful weather like we do here!  

I had a few minutes this morning and thought I'd share a layout I created a while back.  

Another simple two pager.  I used a sketch, but for the life of me can't find it!  I just live this Jillibean Soup line.  I will be quite sad when it is all gone.  

 These pictures were taken over a year ago.  We had been couped up inside for so long when the sun finally came out we headed outside for a walk to the creak and to play in the yard.

 I love Jillibean's sticker and die cut pages.  It makes it so easy to embellish a layout.

Thank you for stopping!  I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

More layouts and Photos

As I mentioned in a previous post, I discovered some layouts I hadn't taken pictures of and shared and also found a few on my little netbook I don't use very often anymore.  

This is another quick and simple layout.  Lately I have been creating layouts with many photos and two pages layouts.  The pictures in the layout are from when both brothers and sisters in laws came over to work on wedding invitations and party favors for one of the brother in laws wedding.  Confused yet?  Maybe I should just toss out the in-law part.  :-)  Maddy was quite attached to her Uncle Adam.  Ad one point I caught her sitting in his lap as he was trying to work on the wedding invitations.  So cute!  :-)  I am so blessed with fantastic brother and sisters that the kids love!  :-)  

The line above is super old.  But I loved it so much I couldn't get rid of it and knew I could create a layout with a few small scraps!  

Next up is my March Project 12 layout.  Project 12 is important to me.  Even if I don't have time to be scrappy, I try my best to at least get my Project 12 done.  I think years down the road I will enjoy reading the recaps of every month.  March was full of the kiddos being sick.  :-(  They got better just in time for Spring Break which we spent camping.  

I am so excited to be seeing more and more garage sales pop up.  :-)  This was my haul from last weekend. 4 games for the kids, a camping folding chair (like new), a little purse for me, a book for Maddy, a few craft kits for the kids, a few pieces of clothing and two little clipboard things I plan to use for a road trip.  They open up and have a compartment perfect for a coloring book and some markers.  No more 'uh oh Mommy, the bag of markers fell' the kids getting frustrated with not having a hard surface to color on.  All this for $12.  I was pretty happy about that!  Especially considering we have played most of the games many times now as well as the book has helped Miss Maddy not have accidents.  

I also found this purse Maddy is holding at a garage sale.  It looked new.  I got it for my sister in law who mentioned she was wanting a purple purse.  Maddy would NOT let it out of her site!  She even went to bed with it and took it to the grocery store and carnival with her!  Haha!  

 We had a few nice days last week.  The kids were able to get outside and play. While on their play structure, they found a frog!  I was shocked to see both of them picking up the frog!

 Even Maddy caught it and held it!

Crazy kids!  It is pretty darn cute to watch Maddy try though as she is usually just an inch short of grabbing it before it hops away.  haha!  I sure hope warm weather is on its way back again.  I'd like to get back outside and not freeze!

Thanks for stopping by!