Some Thoughts...

Twas the night before school started, when all through the town,
the parents were cheering...It was a riotous sound!
By 8, kids were washed and tucked into bed...
Where memories of homework filled them with dread!
New pencils, new folders, new notebooks too!
New teachers, new friends...Their anxiety grew!
The parents just giggled when they learned of this fright-
and shouted upstairs:
Go To Bed! It's A School Night!!
....M.Jordan, Letter to Parents 9/6/11

This year, my littlest one is starting first grade, my middle son is graduating primary school, and my oldest is starting his second year at middle school. And Mommy? Mommy is starting the first day of a new phase in her life. I don't know what it will be like later this morning when I return from drop-off, leaving my little baby to a full day of school. Last year my daughter had half-day kindergarten, and I had her for the other half of the day. But not anymore. It will be the first time all three of my children will be gone all day. Will I be jumping for joy? Probably not. Will I rush out and get a manicure? My hair done? No. Knowing me, I will get some housework done, then sit for a while in their rooms, reminiscing their days as babies, when I enjoyed them and my time as a stay at home Mom. It's been a great 10 and a half years. I was very fortunate to be able to stay home and raise them. I will remember all the great moments of their lives, their first steps, first foods, and their laughter. I will remember them running around, nagging at my knees and accompanying me on errands. I am gonna miss them. And the moment they are in my arms again will be a great one.

Yes, the first day is going to be tough, maybe the next day too. The third? Hmmm.

I will be in my scrap room. Yeah, I think creative endevours will be just the right medicine!

Looking forward to catching up with everyone and scrappin' again,


xoxo
COMMENTS:
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I'm still here!!!

I am super excited for the reveal over at Studio Calico tonight! Still haven't had the time to scrap, when I used to sit down after the kids were in bed and I would play with my paper and adhesive, now, I just want to sleep. But I am staying up til midnight for the reveal, my credit card is on my desk and ready for some serious authorization! Between the sneak peeks from the DT and at Studio Calico, I am soooo getting me some! It all looks REALLY GOOD. I have to scrap! I have to scrap! I also ordered some stuff online and it came this week. It is still on my desk, crying out "come play with me!!!" , I touch, admire, and sigh: "I will play with you later, I promise". Most of what came in are the RAK's for Color Combos Galore, so I will be shipping that out soon. I miss hanging around Two Peas and have only squeezed in a layout once a week. Each one I have done this month has been digital, although, I love the digi, I have to paper scrap!!!! Someone help me!

Haven't scrapped and of course, haven't updated all week. My daughter turned three on Monday. It's incredible how time has flown by. I was truly blessed with her following the boys. I so wanted a girl, and never found out the sex of the baby. I love my boys, but I really needed a little girl. And what an experience that was when she was born. I cried, and cried, and cried. The joy, the emotion, seeing her taken to the warming table and seeing girlie not boy parts. Oh MY!!! It was wonderful! She amazes me. She is funny, beautiful, sweet, and at times, reminds me of me in her actions and personality. I love her to pieces!!! And even though I am a bit saddened that she is growing so fast, I am SO enjoying her grow. She just has to slow down a bit. But YAY! She is three! She got her ears pierced a few weeks ago for it. I have been procrastinating for a long time. It was supposed to be done at 6m period, then I said 1yr, then at 2yrs old, but never went. I was too afraid of the pain for her. We started talking a lot about it for months, and I was 'preparing' her for the pain. Finally one day I was getting her dressed and I said to her, "You look pretty as a princess". She responded, "Yeah, I need my princess crown, my princess shoes and my earrings". Her voice was like making a list and dragging out the last syllable. Like, lah-lah-laahhhhhh, lah-laahhhhhh, lah-lah-laahhhhhh, too cute. Anyway, that was it, I decided to go that day and get them pierced. sigh.

choosing the earrings:


getting ready...she is so excited!


marking the spot:


just making sure it looks good:


here we go!!!!:


ok....


one, two, three!!!


uh, yeah that kinda hurt!


The pain hit her a little when they pierced her other ear. But it wasn't so bad, she is just too cute. You can see the rest of the experience on the video here......



And of course, I created a layout for this momentous occasion. These are the colors for this week's challenge at Color Combos Galore. Kimber McGray is our Guest Designer this week, she is on the Sketch This! design team with me, and she just ROCKS those sketches with her cards!!! Here is her choice of colors:

saddle brown - icebreaker - pink illusion - tomato

I used Pencil Lines sketch #90:




The pink was a little hard to get in there, it's almost invisible, but it's there.


Wow, this turned out to be a really long post!
Thanks for stopping by, hope you're having an awesome day!
Janet COMMENTS:
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Happy 5th Birthday Jabran!!!

I wanna go to Friendly's, yeah yeah....(the kids love that commercial jingle). And great advertising that proved to be because traditionally we get a Carvel cake and celebrate at home, but Jabran wanted to go there for his ice cream instead for his 5th-OMG birthday. Great advertising I tell ya!

For the most part of the day we stayed home, got some birthday wishes from family:



Then I headed out with the kids. First we went shopping at Toys R Us. I had wanted to get him a Ben 10 bicycle, but when he saw the Speed Racer bicycle, YEAH, right in the FRONT of the store, BIG DISPLAY. Reeled him right in, he forgot all about the endless hours, energy and love he had dedicated to Ben. It IS a far more beautiful bike so...we bought him that. Zayn got him some Transformers figures and Rianna got him Bionicles.

Awesome bike, huh?



And we walked around the store like this:



Afterwards we grabbed a quick bite at Wendy's dollar menu. The $80 bicycle killed me. Then went home to pick up Dad for dessert. He had a late lunch so he wasn't worried about dinner tonight, but by the time we picked him up he wanted to eat. So off to Friendly's we went. I have not been there in over 20 years! I was still imagining sandwiches and toothpicks, NOT. Adorable little kids menu and yummy looking foods for us.

SO we ate. AGAIN. We got WAY too much food. The kids got the Royal Razz, a drink that made their teeth and tongues blue, NIHH-CE, and some sliders. We got a bunch of other stuff. Almost didn't have room for dessert, but that is what we went there for, so we HAD to get some. The choices, OMG, colossal! Jabran was THRILLED with his and the employees made it extra special for him when they were singing their special Friendly's birthday song as they brought it out.




He had a good birthday. Next week we will have his party. YAY!!!

Now a tribute to his first FIVE years. All the pages I made of him (some are from 2006, so bear with me). The pages are in the order I created them, starting with pages of him alone then followed by a set of pages of him with others. Hope you enjoy the show!!! (You too, Jabran!)

Also, speaking of food......I forgot to post this last week.

Valerie Salmon asked me to design her sketch this week at Got Sketch?. Her sketches are always so great.

It's about the battle with my weight. I have gone up and down. In my adult life, my highest was 225 and my lowest was 155. Never mind what I weighed after I had my children. I am not counting that because that is swelling. I went on Weight Watchers in 2006, a year after my third child was born. I thought after the third you become skinny as a twig. No, not me of course. Well my daughter was already a year old and I was still at my highest weight. I did WW, loved it, and lost 50lbs. Now, a year later, I am up again, 45lbs. So I am almost back to where I started. I get overconfident, I start to eat a little more thinking it won't hurt, then it catches up, then I give up and say F-it. Just wish I could see my goal number on the scale.



I have to keep up with the blogging so that the entries aren't so long, but thanks for looking! I hope I gave you something to smile about. Hope your weekend is great!

tah-tah for now. COMMENTS:
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I am a Grand-Aunt again!!!!

My darling niece had another baby!!! Her second, a baby girl born on Friday, April 18 at 8:35pm.

And her name is Mikaela Grace. Beautiful.

So this is the crazy that happened.

We had a baby shower already planned. I made the invitations and it was scheduled for the next day. My niece called me on Thursday asking whether I dressed my children in their own clothes or did they wear the what the hospital provided. I told her I always dressed them with their gown, cap, mitts and booties after their first bath and were wrapped in their own blanket as well. Everything matched. She decided to do that and needed to buy that and bottles. She didn't know what she was having or that there was a party planned for her in two days. So I told her to hold off, we would go together the following week. Then we started talking about water breaking and that I never experienced that moment of puddle or leakage. It was always popped for me. She said she hadn't either but would never want her water to break in public and I should be grateful mine never did.

So what happened?

For medical reasons, she was scheduled for a C-section on the 30th.

Well her water broke in her office in the afternoon in NYC.

They had no car.

They borrowed one from a friend, drove from the city to Long Island and admitted her.

She arrived 9cm dilated.

Her husband had a 'Ricky' moment and left the keys in the car.

She pushed for over an hour.

And brought Mikaela Grace into the world.



We still partied the next day, mostly on speaker phone! COMMENTS:
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