Stamping with Hannah

I had the pleasure of stamping with my friend Hannah last weekend... aren't she and her card beautiful?

(Supplies for the card are all from TAC)

Again?

I know, I know, some of you are saying, but Trudy, you showed us this card yesterday. Well, if you look close enough you will realize that it is a little bit different. Just a tad. I reversed the colors on the alien's clothes, made the strip smaller, and that is about it. Okay, okay, you're right..., it is pretty much the same.

Stamps: High Hopes

And here is a picture of my precious little girl, who has decided that she loves trains. I am so glad we saved the boys Thomas the Tank stuff, because she is having a blast with it...and her brothers are joining her.

Julia's Entertainment

So, what does Julia do to entertain herself while the boys and I are busy doing schoolwork? Here are a few pictures to give you a sneak peak into her busy little world.

When she is good, she is very, very good....(here she is taking one of her brother Anthony's math tests)



And when she is bad, well, as you can see, she is horrid!


Thankfully the pen she used for this was erasable, and it cleaned up very easily


This lovely pale purple is the new color on both the walls of my stamp room and my daughter. I had just a tiny amount of paint left at the bottom of the bucket when I was finished, and I obviously didn't get the lid on very well. This one wasn't quite so easy to clean up. She ruined both our pants and shirts in the process of taking pics and cleaning her up. Believe it or not, the crying is not from being in trouble (which she was), but because she was upset I wouldn't let her look at my side of the camera while I took the pictures. She loves that she can see herself when I am done...she just hasn't figured out that she can't both be in the picture and watch it being taken.

Really she is loads of fun right now, although some days I could pull my hair out =o). I would love advice from any of you more experienced homeschool parents on how to keep Julia "gainfully employed" while the rest of us are doing our lessons. I try to make her a part of things, but at times, with her attention span, that is just not possible.

That Husband of Mine

When I married this husband of mine,
There were some things I knew from the start.
I knew he was gentle and thoughtful and wise,
I knew he had a big heart.

But I didn't know all the things I know now,
All the tricks he had up his sleeve,
All the toys he could fix, all the swings he could push,
All the ways he could make believe.

Now the more we're together, the more I can see
The wonderful fortune I've had,
For when I married that dear husband of mine,
I sure married a wonderful dad.

I found this on line and thought it said, very well, the way I feel about Wayne. He has surpassed my wildest dreams as both a husband and a father. I am truly blessed of God.

This picture is of Wayne and Julia working in the garden together. We had a two pretty windy storms in a row, and Wayne was trying to salvage what he could of the garden.

Chicken Pox

No stamping going on around my house. The school year is coming to an end, baseball has started up, and I have spent a week pretty much house bound due to the chicken pox. It ended up being a full blown break out, not the light dose I thought we were going to get when it started, but it is almost over, YEAH!!! This was her belly on Tuesday night, they are starting to scab over and disappear now.

We had a strange visitor at our house this morning. Brandon wasn't up to doing school work, and thought he needed a little extra super power to get him through to the end....isn 't he cute?

My Firstborn

I love this boy! He is such a blessing to my life. He is loving, caring, bright, and intellegent.
Sometimes wise beyond his year, sometimes so young and refreshing, both sides of him can take my breathe away in amazement. Amazement that God would entrust me with such a gift!!! I am so completely unworthy, yet strive to show my son the One in my life who is.

He turns 9 this summer, and I can barely believe that I have had him for that long, and yet at times it feels like a lifetime. My friend Tony said, when his twin girls turned 9 a couple of days ago, that they were now half grown, and it made me want to cry. It is so true. All things being equal we have now used up half the time he will be in our home, under our care. Hopefully, we will continue to build and maintain a relationship and friendship that will go on into eternity.
I have been tremendously blessed to have a mother that, throughout my WHOLE life, I have been able to call one of my best friends...I want that with my children...now I am off, to work on that very thing. It won't happen with me sitting in front of the computer.

Julia Does School

Julia likes to pretend she is doing school work while the boys do. Here she is sitting on the futon "reading" one of the boys history books from last year-notice it is upside down and backwards.

She also likes to write...how do you convince a child, who sees her brothers writing in workbooks all day, that writing in books is a "no no?"

This next picture is a little bit older...from Thanksgiving, but I love her bright and smiling eyes.

Look Who is ONE!

Happy first birthday to my darling Daughter, Julia!!! Here she is helping me make her birthday cake, or should I say, eat part of what I cut off the top. She loved it.

I will post other pics later, once we have actually celebrated her special day...a couple of days late. Her cake is almost done, but I have so add the finishing touches.

Just a Little Julia

I can't believe how old my daughter is! In a little over 2 weeks she will be a year old! Where does the time go?

Julia LOVES books, thanks to her Auntie Rose and her brother Anthony. Rose is a librarian, and she send my kids boxes of books every year. When I was expecting, one of those books was on babies. Anthony read it and found out that you should read to a baby from a newborn. So he started reading to her the day she came home. He put the book about 6 inches from her face (the book on babies had told him that is how far away babies can see) and started reading it to her. At that time she could care less, but as time went on, she came to love books-and her big brother.

She was being a little stinker the day I took these pics. I had a really hard time getting her to look at the camera. The first picture here is the only okay one that I DID get. I kept trying to cajole her into looking at the camera until she finally had enough. She looked at me with a mutinous expression, and then spun around on her little hiney, and gave me her backside to take pictures of. LOL! I gave up at that point...score one for Julia. I will save my wins for days that really matter...and I was sooo hoping she would LIKE to have her picture taken

Julia and Daddy

Daddy is Julia's favorite person, no doubt about it. She is constantly "da-da"ing at him, trying to get his attention.



On Sunday mornings Wayne will often go out on the front porch to study in quiet, and Julia likes to hang out with him. I thought I would capture this "Daddy time". As you can see she loves it.

I just took this pic yesterday...it is hard to believe she is over 10 months old already.

Nana Time

I was so excited to be able to see my mother for a short time this week. I usually am only able to see her about once a year, and I have now seen her THREE times in 9 months!!! I have been so blessed. I did have to travel a few hours to Missouri, but that was okay, SOOO worth it.

Here is my mom showing her true personality














On the way down to my aunt's house (where my mother was staying) I shortened the trip by stopping the night with my friends Del and Courtney. It was so nice to spend time with them and their 5 children. They are such wonderful friends and I wish we lived closer. 6 of the combined 8 children spent the night on the living room floor as a big slumber party. They loved it. They were also up early the next day and outside playing, in their pajamas, quicker than you would think possible. It is a good thing they live in the country, LOL

My Cowboys

This is what my little cowboys looked like Sunday morning before church. They had been able to get ready for church early and so decided to play cowboys (Anth received old Roy Rogers movies from Grandma for his bday). They were so cute I made them stop so I could get pictures. They loved it, and believe it or not, on both of these they posed themselves...Anthony just HAD to have one of him going for his guns (can you see them tucked into his belt?), since he insists he is a really FAST draw. Brandon was shooting behind him, whether he was shooting at a chasing posse, or is being chased by bad guys, who knows.

New Camera But NO Stamping

My husband is on a forced "vacation" this week, as his work closed down for the week to save some money. Because of that I am not getting much done around the house. We did have a fun day yesterday. We went to the Nature Center which is near the Tulsa Zoo and went on a short hike, were able to look inside a honey bee hive, and a few other neat things while there. We will definitely be going back for some of the "classes" they hold for kids. While there I was able to play around a little with my new camera. Here are 3 of the pics that I took. Julia was my subject because the boys wouldn't sit still. Of course, she wouldn't have either if she had a choice, but she isn't that mobile yet.

"Bad" Haircut...

Sorry, no stamping today. This is a pic my now 8 year old (his birthday is today) took of the back of my head. Some of my friends from far away had heard of my haircut that ended up WAAAAAY shorter than it was supposed to be and wanted to see it. This is a month and a half later, so you can imagine how short it was then! At the time it was shorter in the back than Wayne's, granted, he needed a haircut badly, but STILL!!! By the time I had realized what she was doing, it was too late, it would have had to be glued back on, lol.

I am not sure how to grow this out and get it back to what I like AND still have it look nice while it does. I wish extensions weren't so stinkin' expensive.

My Little Cutie

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Isn't my Julia growing up way too fast??? I can't believe she is already over 8 months old!!!!
Where does the time go? She was enjoying sitting at the table and eating pieces of steak fries, and our dog was enjoying sitting right underneath her and snatching up the many pieces that she shoved off the table trying to learn to pick them up. LOL! I think she is now the dogs new best friend.

I am playing with my new camera, and these are some of the first pics I took before I had even read any of the instruction manual or anything, so they should get even better. I am hoping to have even nice pics of my card now, especially of the ones with bulky elements. I have hated being without a camera for the last couple of months. I have missed sooo many great pics. If it weren't for my MIL I wouldn't have ANY from that time.

Page Map Scrapbook Page

My scanner messed with this one, so it really is better IRL. I used one of the April Page Maps sketches to create this page.

Supplies:

Stamps: Swirly Bet (TAC), Edge Designs (TAC)

Paper: Reece SWIC paper and tag (TAC), Kraft (TAC), Reece cardstock (TAC)

Ink and Accessories: Grosgrain Ribbon, paper piercer, Luscious Lips ink (retired TAC)

Graphic Blooms Scrapbook Page-Blog Hop

The little cutie on this page is the daughter of a friend on mine...isn't she a cutie? Our families had gone hiking together at a state park in Arkansas, and when the hike was over the kids wanted to go to the playground that was near the camping area...we had so much fun!

The stamp set I used is called "Graphic Blooms" In order to make the leaves around the flowers I cut up the petals of one of the flowers in the set. I thought it worked well.

The flowers are stamped in L'Amore Red and Raw Sienna Palette ink, and the "leaves" are done with Landscape Palette.

The red flowers are up on popdots to give it some dimension. The buttons are from one of the wonderful embellishment jars TAC sells. I used a corner rounder for the scallops, and a gel pen for the white dots. And, last but not least, the paper and ribbon are TACs "Cha Cha" SWIC. The tags are also from this paper pack.

To see how others have used stamps to make scrapbook pages see these great blogs

. Melisa

. Jen

. Barb

. Stacy

. Ellie

. Carol

. LaurieW

. Maria

. Anna

. Bridgett

New Family Pics

Lots of people have been asking for an updated family picture, one that has Julia in it...well here it is. These pics were taken of my family while we were in Maine. I thought my little sister did a pretty good job.

This is a picture of my mother reverting to her second childhood with her grandkids. They were playing Hullaballoo (or however you spell it), and she really got into it. With her are Brandon, David, and Anthony. We were at MY grandmothers house having a great grandchildren's party. What a blast...and a lot of noise.

Vacation to Maine

My boys and I just arrived back from visiting my family in Maine. We were out there to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday and stayed around for an extra week. My parents live on the same road as the oldest covered bridge in Maine, but the town road crews do not plow down to it at all in the winter. A small group, including my husband and sons, decided to walk down and see it anyways. The snow was packed down hard for the snowmobilers so they walked on top of the snow. The kids walked the 3 or so miles in, and then were pulled out on sleds.

Walking

Walking some more

First view of the bridge

Uncle Lance and BJ take a break

Anthony with his cousin David

Bj being pulled

Anthony pulling Brandon

Big Brothers

Julia is blessed to have such wonderful big brothers. The biggest problem I forsee is having to keep them from spoiling her to death. They are already her favorite "toys," besides dad, of course.

Julia thinks she is big stuff being able to stand up in the exer-saucer. She loves being able to see everything that is going on, and thinks she is a part of the games that the boys play near her.