Morning with Keira

Keira's big brother is running a fever and she has come to spend the morning with Pappa and me while he goes to the doctor. We've been having fun singing and dancing. Here is Keira showing off her moves.

My girls

This is based on a sketch fromVicki Shepherd's class "A Little Goes a Long Way" I took at CK Des Moines. I used Tracy Reed's "Little Miss" papers and embellishments.

Quiet night at home catching up on scrapbooking

I enrolled in a class at ReneePearson.com called 25 days of templates (Summer). I just started working on the class and got this layout done. In this layout I used the template as is without changing anything at all.

Supplies used: CVA_SSTools_Scripts_SupplyTracker (ScrapGirls) TNT_25DaysSUM10_1 (Class material) Paislee Press kit -- Adorned (flower2-ds, frame1, glitterstamp, papers, rhinestones, ribbon, tag)

Bubbles

The older grand kids received bubble guns in their Easter Baskets at our house. I guess the Easter Bunny thought Jaren was too young (but that has now been fixed). Here's a layout of Luke I did called Fun With Bubbles.

Supplies used:
Scrap Girls:
Christy VanderWall -- CVA_SSTools_Scripts_SupplyTracker
Digital Artisan Guild:
Mask6a_MH_DCozzi
Mask6bTexture_MH_DCozzi
P_WatercolorWonder3_SJSDBDesigns
Dunia Designs Upside Down Kit:
dunia-upsidedown-paper-05
dunia-upsidedown-paper-06
dunia-upsidedown-paper-07
One Little Bird Scrapbook Designs (Oscraps):
onelittlebird_bubbletemplate

Font: Century Gothic
Font: Champignon

Fun with the grands

Had everyone over tonight for the Easter egg hunt. This was Jaren's first year and he had a blast. Had to re-hide eggs for him to find. We use a combination of foil-wrapped Nestle Crunch, Butterfinger, and Hershey's eggs along with the plastic eggs that are filled with either (1) jelly beans, (2) M&M's, and (3) money. Miss Mia focused her attention on the large plastic eggs bypassing the foil wrapped ones. We even got Keira in the game with her own bag and a plastic egg. The older grands got battery-powered bubble guns that were a big hit.

Easter egg hunts have always been a tradition in our family, and we continued to have them for our two kids well into their teens. They may have been embarrassed to be seen hunting them, but the competition was still very much present.

We held it tonight instead of Easter Sunday because part of the family will be traveling out-of-town for the weekend. I think this worked out better as the night was warm and beautiful. Actually it was HOT! Sunday sounds like it might be rainy.

Happy 8th Birthday Girls

Happy Birthday girls. Hard to believe you will be turning 8. I love you so much.

Go Hawks

A couple weeks ago the Iowa Hawkeyes played in the Orange Bowl--and WON!. We watched the game at Jeremy and Sarah's house and Jaren was all decked out in his gold and black.

Supplies used: Papers from Let's Go, a collaboration between Amanda R. Designs and Dunia Designs; layout based on template from Dani Alencar's Multipix Templates set 4.

Scrapping those Christmas photos

Des Moines is getting socked with another winter storm. I started feeling crummy again yesterday and decided to stay home today inside where it is warm and the humidifier is running. Took advantage of being home and scrapped my Christmas morning pictures.

Supplies:

25 Days No. 25 Template by Simply Tiffany Design

Papers: Paisley Press "Adorned"

Title: Karla Dudley Designs "25 Days: Titles"

Happy Birthday G.G. and Happy New Year

Happy new year to everyone. Hope everyone had a happy and safe New Years Eve. We went out to dinner and then stopped by our son's house and spent a couple hours with their family. We were home and I was in bed by 10:45, where I watched the ball drop in New York at midnight (11 p.m. for me). Does that count for seeing the new year in?

My mother is a New Years baby and we visited her yesterday to help celebrate her 83 birthday. She is called G.G. by her great grandkids. Here's a picture of her with six of her eight great grandkids. We sure wished we could have gotten the two older boys in it but they live in another state. Maybe soon!


Then after visiting her Jaren and Keira came over for us to watch while their parents went to a movie. I called and asked Carrie to bring Cailey, Mia, and Luke over too. Grandpa brought out a train and sat it up on the kitchen table for the kids to watch/play with. Jaren and Luke played with Hot Wheel cars and toys and Keira played in the bouncy saucer or was held by Uncle Dave, Aunt Carrie, Mia, or Grandma. Had a great day. I unfortunately forget to get my camera out when everyone is here. Perhaps Carrie will post a picture or two she took with her new camera? Here is a shot of my empty beverage containers after they left:

All done

Saturday I had the two little J grandchildren over and realized I do not have a picture of the two of them and Keira is now 4 months old. Jaren was sitting next to me on the love seat while I held Keira. I grabbed my camera, got the settings set, and placed Keira next to Jaren. He immediately let out a distressed cry, leaned as far away from her as he could and signed "all done." This isn't the best photo, but you get the idea:
Get her away from me!
Okay, this is a little better but I'm still a little uncomfortable. Perhaps move her across the room?

Traveling back in time -- Beauty and the Beast

I'm trying to free up some room on my hard drive and ran across some videos. The place was Mercy Hospital, two days after Luke was born. This was about the same time that Jeremy was in the leading role of Beauty and the Beast at the Playhouse.

My weekend

I had a very busy weekend. Started the weekend out with the grands spending the night Friday night and took them to a birthday party for a great nephew who turned one. Saturday night Roger and I saw Wicked at the Civic Center, which was Wicked*ly good.

Today we did our fall tradition of visiting Howell Tree Farm. Jaren and Keira are still a little small to fully enjoy it, but I think they had a good time. The boys did, however, crash for awhile and got a power nap in.There was hay to climb on.
Pumpkins to pick. Luke picked out a 70 cent gourd. Mia selected a five pound pumpkin and Cailey's was 55 pounds. Pumpkins were selling for 39 cents per pound, which translates to Cailey's pumpkin costing almost $20.
Flowers to enjoy.
and swings to swing on.


More pictures are available on my photostream at Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/queenshakenbake/.

I've finally got caught up on my assignments for the class I'm taking at JessicaSprague.com.

Happy Birthday Luke

Mr. Luke turned four last months and celebrated with a Transformer birthday party.

The layout was based on Template Pack 7 by Kaye Winiecki (The Lilypad.com). Supplies used included Scrap Simple Paper Template Shapes Pinked Edge Stars by Ursula Schneider (Scrapgirls.com); Paper and embellishments from Party Boy Mini Kit by Megan Turnidge (ScrapOrchard.com). Fonts used were Howie's Stamps Lowfat and Latha.

Little Rail Cheerleaders

Yesterday Cailey and Mia participated in an ALHS Rails Cheerleading camp after school where they learned cheers, ate dinner with other little Rails and the ALHS cheerleaders and then cheered at the start of the varsity game. Lincoln was playing Dowling and unfortunately lost. It was a good game, though, and then we went to Dairy Queen for ice cream afterwards.

More pictures from the game last night:

A Wonderful Labor Day

Today we visited Living History Farms with Carrie's family. The grandkids helped bring in wood at the store owners house in Walnut.

When we got to the 1850s farm, the lady was cleaning up from their noon meal. She asked Luke if he'd like to help, to which he said yes. She had some milk remaining in the milk can that needed to be taken out to the pigs. She poured it into a pitcher and handed it to Luke. He was very careful carrying it out to the pigs so as to not spill any (or get any on himself since it might have smelled a bit). I was trying to shoot a video with my new camera but accidentally hit the stop button so didn't get it all, but this small section of video shows the proud and happy little guy after completing this very important chore.




Here are some pictures of him carrying the milk to the pigs:






After the day at the Farms, we headed over to the Machine Shed for a farm-style dinner. Fantastic day.

Sorry for the orange photo...didn't take time to clean any of these up.

Grandchildren

Yesterday I managed to see and spend some time with all five grandchildren. It was the first day of school for the twins. Grandpa and I, along with Grandma Okland, took them to school. Cailey seemed a little apprehensive and I felt awful leaving her.


Then I went over to Jeremy and Sarah's to watch my newest grandchild and her brother yesterday for the first time (Keira, not Jaren) while Jeremy and Sarah went to radio station 106.3 for an in-studio performance by John Ondrasik from FIVE FOR FIGHTING. Jeremy of course wore one of his many Superman shirts and was in seventh heaven when he dedicated 'superman" to the guy in the superman shirt during his live in-studio concert. It was a fun morning.


Keira's Superman outfit is a Build a Bear outfit.

After that I went in to work for the afternoon.