Exciting news and a freebie June 8, 2009

So on a whim last week, I decided to apply to be on Sarah Bennett’s CT (creative team for her digital designs, for my non digital scrapping friends). And lo and behold, she replied back to me and asked me to be on her team!!! I’m so excited.

She just started selling at Funky Playground Designs. You can check out her stuff here.

Below is her newest kit called Forever Beautiful and a LO I did with it and with a template of hers.

 

And in honor of my being chosen to be on her team, I’m participating in a mini blog train and offering up a template for you guys. You can head over to Sarah’s blog to see the other train participants and to get a freebie add-on kit to Forever Beautiful.

Here’s my template. Enjoy! (click to download)

Just some more pages May 6, 2009

I don’t have anything really exciting to say here, so I’ll just post some more scrapbook pages. We did just get a new video camera, so maybe I’ll be posting some fun videos soon!

More pages and some templates April 17, 2009

I haven’t shared pages in a while and I have quite a few to share.

 

Since I love using templates to make my pages so much (um, all of the ones above are from templates and most of the ones below), I decided to figure out how to make my own. So that’s just what I did today. And if anyone reads this blog and wants to download these freebie templates, have at it! (images are linked)

Are you a superhero? April 17, 2009

Amelia and her Daddy were having a conversation the other day. I’m not exactly sure how it all started, but at some point they started talking about being a superhero. Here’s the rest of their conversation:

Daddy: Am I a superhero?

Amelia: You’re almost a superhero.

Daddy: What do I have to do to be a superhero?

Amelia: You just have to save the world.

 

Well, then, if that’s all there is to it, you’d think there would be more superheros, huh?

 

We started gymnastics classes yesterday. Amelia is in the Tiny Tots class  and Jack and I are in the Mommy & me class. For Jack’s class it’s pretty much just a time to play and learn to take turns. Amelia seems to really be liking her class and it gives her a safe way to jump on stuff without killing herself.

 

Last Friday (Good Friday), the Orlando Cooleys went to Ft. Pierce to visit the Ft. Pierce Cooleys. The Ft. Myers Cooleys were also there. It was Mawmaw’s birthday, so Amelia was very excited. Since we were staying in Orlando for Easter, we had our egg hunt while we were down there. Here are some pictures from the day.

Here’s me showing Jack where to find the eggs:

 

Ted installed a tire swing while were there, so everyone had to have a turn on it:

 

Daniel went a little wild on the horse swing:

 

Here are some pictures of Daddy and his kids:

Here is Mawmaw and her cake:

And finally some of the grandkids.

All of them after the egg hunt:

On the swing:

And Mawmaw with the younger 3 grandkids:

More Amelia-isms April 3, 2009

Some of the stuff that comes out of her mouth is quite hilarious!

The other day she was sitting on her Daddy’s lap. He asked her if she was his girlfriend and she said yes. He said that was a good thing because he only let his girlfriends sit on his lap. And to that Amelia said, “You silly old chum!” What? Who says that? Let alone a 3 year old.

Then this morning, Amelia was trying to get me out of bed to make her some breakfast. So I said I was stuck. She looked at me and at the bed and said, “There’s no honey on there.” What a nut!

And for a  total change of topic, here are some more scrapbook pages:

 

I feel so loved March 26, 2009

We were all sitting in the family room tonight playing, when Amelia walks up to me, puts her arm around my neck and proclaims in such a loving voice, “Sometimes, I love you.” That girl cracks me up! Another of her favorite things to say is that she almost loves something… which means that she really likes it a lot. As in, “I almost love cookies.”

Today, I took the kids to a gymnastics place and they each took a trial class. Jack’s class was a Mommy and Me class, so I was with him the whole time. He kind of melted down during the class, but I think we’ll be enrolling both of them in the classes. Amelia had a blast in her class. She was a little afraid of the bigger trampoline they had, but overall her teacher said she did well. And she was in a class with 4 other boys. The teacher said she kind of showed the boys that they were actually supposed to listen to the teacher.

And on another note, here are some more recent scrapbook pages:

Not much March 15, 2009

Not too much going on around here. This past Thursday, the kids and I went to Sea World. We have season passes, so we try to go once a week during the cooler months just for the morning. We usually see the dolphins, penguins, sea lions and the whale and dolphin show. But this week, Rick, Miriam and all the kids happened to be going during Elisabeth’s spring break. She works at Discovery Cove and gets a few free tickets to Sea World out of that. So they all got in free. Amelia was so surprised to see them when we walked up. Miriam took her and Jack off to see the penguins and I got to ride some roller coasters!!

Then after we all watched the whale and dolphin show, we headed over to the kiddie section. They have several rides over there including a roller coaster for kids. This year, every time we get close to Sea World, Amelia will start asking if she can ride the roller coasters since she can see them from far away. I have yet to convince her that she has to be really tall and really old to ride those roller coasters. So when we got to this roller coaster, she was all excited because she could ride it. Well, Jack was being cranky, so I stayed with him while Amelia went on the roller coaster with Marissa and Dalton. After I got Jack settled down, I was able to run back over to the roller coaster just as it was about to take off. And I got there just in time to see Marissa and Amelia getting off the roller coaster without having gone on it. Amelia wasn’t screaming, but she was kind of freaking out and losing all of the nerve she claims to have about going on roller coasters.

So after she got off we all went on the tea cup type ride they have over there. She loved that. Then we went on another kind of fun ride that she loved as well. After that one, we kept trying to convince her to get back on the roller coaster and try again, but she was having none of that. So Marissa and Dalton went to ride it and Amelia and I were going to watch. As we were standing there, I kept trying to convince her to ride it and eventually something I said clicked and she agreed to go on it as long as I held onto her and as long as it wouldn’t go too fast. Well we rode it and after it was all done, she said, “That was fun!” However, she didn’t want to ride it again.

While Amelia was riding all of those fun rides, Jack only wanted to play in the water section they had. So we stripped him down to his diaper and let him go for it. He loves playing in water and had a blast putting his hand into the shooting fountains.

 

Yesterday, I met up with a someone I’m friends with on an online message board about scrapbooking.  We met her at Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney. Here are a few pictures from then.

This is Melissa (the friend), her son Kieran and Amelia inside Planet Hollywood:

Here are Jack and Amelia playing in the water fountain outside:

If you look closely in the picture above, Jack was in the process of turning himself around so he could just slide right into the water fountain and play. Well, this was his reaction when I wouldn’t let him do that:

Amelia and Kieran:

Melissa and I:

 

And last, but not least, here are a few more scrapbook pages I’ve done recently:

More scrapbook pages February 28, 2009

I have a few scrapbook pages to post on here that I’ve done recently.

Duct tape really does fix everything! February 23, 2009

Warning: This story is not for the squeamish!

 

So today started off just like any ordinary day. Then the unthinkable happened! When I pulled into the driveway after having gone to the Y and Publix, there was a black snake slithering across the driveway! Oh, I almost puked. So my silly first reaction was to push the button to close the garage door. If I hadn’t done that, it probably would have kept slithering to the other side of the yard. But I guess the noise spooked it and it slithered right into the garage.

So I left the car running with the kids and groceries inside, grabbed the shovel and went over to our makeshift work bench. The snake was freaking out and just slithering wherever it could go, but was too fast for me to chop its head off! The way the makeshift workbench is set up, the snake was able to hide out under a board out of my reach. I probably tried to get it to come out for 10 minutes or more. Then I realized that the kids needed to get out of the car and so did the groceries.

So I unloaded all of that and went back outside to figure out what to do with the snake. After conferring with Daniel on the phone, I decided to trap the snake by stuffing the hole he was in with towels. I even put heavy cans of paint on top of the towels so the snake couldn’t get out. And like a dummy, I closed the garage door because I didn’t want someone breaking into our house.

Here’s what my trap looked like:

Then at naptime, Daniel called to ask me how things were going. So I confidently walked out into the garage, around the car and immediately started freaking out. I told Daniel that I had to call him back. Again, my first instinct was to open the garage door. This freaked him out again and he went back into the work bench area, but in a different section this time. So I took my car out of the garage and began my snake stakeout! I got a chair and the ax and waited! That stupid thing poked his head out of his hole at least 5 times and eventually ducked back under the board the same amount of times. So again after conferring with Daniel, I proceeded to cover his new hole with… wait for it… duct tape!!!  And here’s the picture of my second trap!

Later in the day, again after talking to Daniel on the phone, we decided that I should try pouring gasoline into the crack that you can see just in front of the duct tape above. So I did, not realizing that the gas might interfere with the adhesive on the tape. And then the tape started moving! Oh man, did that gross me out something awful. But the snake couldn’t seem to peek its head out  from under the tape, so I lifted it with the tip of my ax head. And I saw the snake stuck on the tape. Again, I was grossed out, so I put those paint cans on top of the tape and waited for Daniel to come home. Luckily, he made it home before 11 tonight!

So when he got home, he reluctantly pulled up the tape with ax in hand and this is what we found!

I think we were both prepared for the thing to suddenly jump off the tape and wriggle up our legs or something, but it was as dead as a doornail! After convincing Daniel not to throw the thing into the bushes again (now that’s a whole other blog post and it’s a whole lot grosser), the tape and snake are now in the garbage can waiting for pickup tomorrow! So like I said… duct tape really does fix any situation!

Nothing much February 17, 2009

Nothing much is going on around here. Well, there’s the whole issue with our HOA, but that’s a story for another time! Instead, I’ll just leave you with some more scrapbook pages I’ve done recently.