Sick of pages yet?

These aren't really recent - I've tried to start several pages in the last week or so and I'm getting nowhere with them. Here's the one I finished a few weeks ago but couldn't post until it was in store. That's all Kathy Moore's stuff and she's at A Cherry on Top now, if you want to check it out.



And the page I made two weekends ago after my nephews visited - we colored eggs. I wanted to show off these cute flowers from my good friend Chris Wazielewski - I've known her for many years now, and its a lot of fun being on a CT for someone who was a friend first. I'm very excited to see that her designing seems to be taking off - she's got a lot of great stuff coming out and is now selling at Divine Digitals and will soon be at Elemental Scraps as well as Rocky Mountain Hobbies, where she started out! Way to go, Chris - I'm so glad you decided to go digital!


In an only slightly related matter, I found two sippy cups in my fridge today which could only be from the day we dyed eggs. And they had milk in them, unfortunately. I wonder if my sister wants her cup back?

Another couple of LO's

I am still scrapping. I have no idea what got into me. So two more layouts to share:

This one I actually started a week or two ago and I keep pushing the elements around and switching and adding and resizing things and finally just decided to upload it and be done with it. By the time I want to print it, I'll probably be able to open it and spend five minutes moving this or that, and it will finally look 'right'. But right now its just frustrating me so its as done as its going to get for now.


This one was a lot easier - its a great free kit from Shabby Princess if you haven't grabbed it yet, you should! I still pushed stuff around endlessly on the page but at least I'm happy with how it turned out. The pictures should look familiar - from about 2 blog posts ago. Its a good thing I uploaded them here because the originals were lost in the Great EHD Crash of Feb. '08.


Credits are in my DST gallery.

return of mojo?

Whenever someone on the digiscrapping sites says they lost their mojo - I consider how long its been since I had these candies:


And - do they even make them anymore? Where can I get my hands on some? I really liked the pink ones. And the green ones. And the yellow ones.... you know, Mojos might be the only colored candy in existence where each color is a different flavor and they are all equally good.

Anyway, its been a long time since I had a mojo (the candy) but if we're talking 'scrapping mojo' - well, then mine's been lost for the good part of a year. I haven't had any real interest since last spring. I've been so busy lately with hockey pictures and signs and cards and everything BUT scrapping. I'm staring at Photoshop all day and I really don't feel like opening it up to scrap. The last real layout I made was in October or November, I think.

Well, last week - I just started up again and its crazy, I have five layouts done and two half- finished. I even made 12 pages for a calendar and sent that to print. I don't know what got into me but I'll get as much done as I can because who knows how long this motivation is going to last.








Credits for all layouts are in my DST gallery - I have one more done that I can't post until it goes up in the store, and another two that I keep messing with so I'm not happy enough to upload them yet.

First lost tooth

My oldest daughter lost her first tooth today - very exciting business. I know she's getting older and smarter and growing up faster than I think she should - every time I turn around she's doing something new - reading books, writing her own stories, skipping rope, blowing bubbles with bubblegum, and I wonder when that happened. Those things are happening too fast, no doubt - but this tooth-losing thing happens literally overnight. Sure, a few weeks ago she said her top tooth was wiggly - it was still really solid but if I really pushed, I imagined that it wiggled just a little tiny bit. *sigh*

Earlier this week I was looking at some kids' pictures and I realized - it should be the bottom teeth that fall out first, not the top ones. And sure enough, yesterday she comes to me and says her bottom tooth is wiggly. And I didn't need my imagination this time - it really was. I did what any mother would do and ran for the camera to get the last picture of her pretty full set of teeth for what I knew would be the last time.

With all of her teeth, yesterday afternoon

Then I went to take pictures of 6- and-under and 8 -and- under hockey teams and I am sure they thought I was obsessed with teeth. "Show me your teeth! Do you have all of your teeth? You're missing most of your teeth! Oh, look -*you* still have a full set of teeth! Are those your new teeth, or your old ones?" I couldn't help but notice. This is normal - all the kids are doing it.

Today, she was sad. This tooth-losing thing hurts a bit and is kind of scary when you taste blood in your mouth. She cried through lunch when it hurt to eat macaroni (macaroni?!??) but managed to eat ribs for supper with very little trouble. She couldn't leave the wiggly tooth alone and had her fingers in her mouth most of the evening, kept looking in the mirror to see what it looked like.

Still there, just barely hanging on

Just the teeth fall out. The tongue stays in. Usually.


(If you look closely, you can see the legendary hexagonal forest green bathroom sink with built-in staircase. Its great when you have three kids brushing their teeth three times a day. Always looks fabulous.)

Her dad said "Let me see!" and I had this horrible vision of him just yanking it out which made me feel faint and somewhat nauseous. I didn't want her to be scared because I realize *some* kids actually think its fun if you just yank their tooth out. I am not one of those kids. So I told my husband she gets to decide how she loses her tooth and he's not allowed to decide for her.

Thankfully, I had to run out to a meeting so I didn't have to witness whatever happened next - but when I got home there were photos of my little girl - minus one lower-front tooth, on my camera. She looks pretty happy so I guess it all went well. Her dad says he did yank it out, I still feel nauseous at the thought. That's it - she looks different now. This isn't like learning to read or growing out of her clothes. Its something that was the same yesterday and is different today. She's growing up and there's not a thing I can do about it.

There, finally lost it!

Christmas Vacation - part one!

We still have a few days of vacation left but I've got a lot of pictures to post so I'd better get started. Here's all the pre-Christmas excitement.

Before posting the pictures, I have to say that I had a 97% normal upbringing. There were three really quirky things that I am sure ONLY my mother did - otherwise she just pretty much went with the flow. First, she never heated our Alpha-getti. (for the Americans, that would be Spaghetti-O's, but we get the whole alphabet instead of just O's) Those went straight from the can to the bowl, and I still love them that way. The second thing was breakfast. We were allowed to have the sugary cereals, but only if they were completely outnumbered by a slightly less sugary cereal. So I could have a handful of Froot Loops in a bowl of Cheerios. Or a half a cup of Cap'n Crunch drowning in a sea of Rice Krispies. When we had a babysitter and they poured us a whole bowl of Froot Loops, we thought we'd died and gone to heaven.

The third thing my mother did was make sure we NEVER saw Santa Claus. There are no pictures of me sitting on Santa's knee, because I never did. I suppose he used to show up at Christmas parties and at the school and I am certain he was in the malls -but my mother steered us in the opposite direction and we had no idea. I was completely in awe of my friends who had pictures of themselves on Santa's lap. Where did they FIND him?

This morning my six year old finally figured out the cereal thing - and asked why we can never have a whole bowl of the same cereal. I don't think she has any idea that Alpha-getti is supposed to be warm. But I gave up on the Santa thing long ago - he's everywhere, and I might as well just accept it, and take pictures whenever I have the opportunity. He's been showing up at our community's annual Santa Day (wonders never cease) every year, and my husband's work Christmas party, and at the school, and this year he showed up somewhere VERY special - but that's for later. For now, here's Santa day.

A. making sure none of the other children are harmed on Santa's lap,
also noting that they all get candy

Cecily seemed to make it through okay

Madeleine also seems to be enjoying herself
Santa passed security clearance. She'll sit.
But she'd prefer to get the candy up front.

and then, there was the hay ride

I don't know about you, dad, but there is no way in hell I'm going on that wagon.

Annique 'wrote' her first letter to Santa - glued pictures of her favorite things from the catalog on some snowman stationary. Cecily wrote her letter and asked for a Baby Alive, and marbles. I have no idea what possessed her to ask for marbles, but she was absolutely sure she needed some. Madeleine wrote her letter to Santa at school and the whole class went down to the post office to mail them. I wanted to get a picture of that but Annique was napping so I missed it - I did get a picture when Cecily mailed hers, though. Santa wrote back to Madeleine in French, and she was really impressed. She was very worried when her letter took forever to arrive - Dad teased her that SANTA KNOWS she didn't eat her supper etc. Thankfully it showed up on the last day before Christmas.

Dear Santa...

She addressed her letter all by herself this year

mailing her Santa letter - this picture was in the paper last week

Why toddlers should eat vanilla pudding only.

A few days before Christmas the girls painted their Christmas ornaments. Our little tree is full of handmade ornaments and the kids add a few of them every year. I make an ornament with a photo for each of them every year, too. Of the three girls, Annique actually painted most of hers all by herself - slathering on blue and purple and glittery paint everywhere. I wiped some of the paint off of the face and hands, etc. and painted those parts in but the rest was all hers. The older girls painted a lot of theirs but got frustrated with the details so they made Dad do it for them, and he wasn't much better at it so I just filled in the white spots and painted faces on when they were done. This was a really fun project so we'll probably pick some more up next year.

When they're all done, they're kind of pretty.

More art projects - I made sippy cups and scrapbook tumblers for the girls and my niece and nephews. I also did a calendar for both sides of the family - the printing is complicated and was probably more trouble than actually doing the layouts - I used Shabby Princess calendar QP's so that part was really easy.


A few days before Christmas (the last day of school, actually) my husband was home for the day, and got bored, and decided to tear apart our garage for no particular reason. There's supposed to be a workbench and cabinets along the far wall, under the shelves. I made him put it all back where he found it. I can't believe men actually have to invent things for themselves to do, three days before Christmas. What is wrong with this world?

Snow Day!

So this morning my mother-in-law called to say the buses aren't running and the girls don't have to go to school. We only live a block or so away and we could have walked or whatever - but we were already kind of running late, and they never do much at school when the buses don't run and less than half the kids would be there. So, the girls stayed home with me today.

Playing in the driveway

Hot chocolate and cookies - see the new table and chairs?


Painting ornaments for the Christmas tree

Dad's turn to play in the driveway

the title I forgot

I had something truly fascinating to discuss in my next blog post, but its been so long, I forgot what it was.

Things are rolling along in our household, I'm trying to figure out how I can still be just as busy as I was when I was working three days a week. When did I do all this other stuff?? I finally have it figured out that the difference is - there is a whirlwind of activity in my house all day when I am home, her name is Annique, and she makes a mess. When I was working, she was at daycare. We won't get into the discussion about how the daycare provider could have Annique and at least a dozen other kids in her house all day, and it was always cleaner than mine when I came to pick her up.

Today was the annual Christmas Card Photo Shoot - a.k.a. 'hell' - finally the older girls are used to mom and her camera and they sit still and smile pretty. They're easy. But enter the whirlwind, and its suddenly impossible to get anything at all. I have a bunch of pictures of different parts of her as she tries to escape, and many blurred action shots that were supposed to be portraits. I tried candy, I tried putting her on a rocking horse - I bribed her with toys, I made a fool of myself. It was no use. We might try again tomorrow, if I manage to get any sleep tonight. I wonder if tying her up with Christmas lights would be festive, yet effective?

On the bright side, I did get some pictures of the Cutest Niece Ever. I only have one niece so I can get away with that.

Tricks and treats

We had the best weather ever for Halloween - just a beautiful autumn day without even a chill in the air. I remember going through huge snowbanks on more than one occasion on Halloween - so it was nice for once to just put a sweater on under the kids' costumes and they could actually wear them without a winter jacket and be comfortable. Its not often you get to SEE the kids' costumes on Halloween! We weren't sure about Annique trick-or-treating but she got the general idea when all the kids were coming to our door for candy, as you can see here, she's pretty wired and she's not even in her costume yet:




So, when it was time to take the girls out she was happy to get into her costume and come too. She insisted on carrying her own bag, even when it got really full and hard to carry - heaven help you if you tried to lighten her load. She knew EXACTLY what to do and often led the way for her older sisters. She's not shy at all when there's candy at stake.



If you feel like throwing rotten tomatoes at me, I don't care, but I'd like to announce that I am FINISHED MY CHRISTMAS SHOPPING as of last weekend. I had a little bit of help with shopping as you can see in this video:



It was so great to be able to just walk out of our hotel and into the mall like that - we're just passing the waterpark in that video, where the kids spent a lot of time. When we were young my parents would take us to a hotel with a waterslide for the weekend while the grown-ups did all their Christmas shopping - so the family tradition continues!

Rant ON!

Today some woman came in to see me at work and she brought an ENGLISH TEXTBOOK with her, and she had a page selected and a paragraph circled. A month or so ago I typed up a story she had written about her trip to Scotland, and if I had gone through it like I'd go through a student's "What I did this summer" essay - it would have been full of red. But whatever. When people bring stuff in and its not perfect, we correct the glaring errors and maybe re-word a little if its necessary for clarity - but if they're telling the story, we let them tell it.

ANYWAY, she proceeded to teach me (myself?) a lesson on the use of the words 'me', 'myself'' and 'I' and she even shared the handy tip she'd looked up to make it easier for me to know when to use one or the other, and isn't it curious how people use 'myself' so often when actually, its wrong to do so! My jaw was on the floor. She said that her daughter (an English teacher, apparently!) thought the article was well written, but she couldn't believe that a newspaper would leave in such a glaring grammatical error.

First, I don't recall typing every sentence of the very, very long story I typed over a month ago, second, I would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS correct her copy if it said "My husband and I" to read "My husband and myself" - so what the heck is she doing in here? Finally, it dawned on me. She wrote it that way (my husband and myself) and she was coming in to take ME to task for not correcting it when we published HER story. WTF?!

Anyway, it was actually kind of funny, the way she laid it on so thick that her daughter is an English teacher. So am I, but we (or at least I, or should I say, I, myself...) don't go around correcting everyone else's random English unless its really, really awful. She also informed me that the Rec. director constantly makes the same mistake in his weekly report (don't I know it?!? How many 'myselfs' do you think I take out in a week?!?) and *gasp* the editor himself sometimes uses 'myself' in his writing.

My goodness. I'll be the first to admit that my English has been backsliding severely in the past 7 years or so, since I'm not teaching anymore, and I'm living in a French-speaking town with a husband who has a lot of his own quirks and adjustments to the language. I've adopted a lot of those quirks, and I don't mind. Because as much as I like English and grammar, I can get pretty flexible with the rules, myself. (heee.) I think its okay to write like you speak, especially if you're telling a story. How expressive can we be if we don't break the rules now and then? Yes, we have an editor, but that doesn't mean we re-work everything until it would get an A+ in English class. The paper would be pretty dry reading if we made sure all the rules were followed.

Maybe she's just getting back at me for phoning her to clarify a few details before I typed it up. She wasn't impressed when I pointed out (very politely!) that the ship she visited was not the 'sister ship' of the Titanic as her story claimed. I used to teach history as well -- I know where the Titanic's sister ships ended up, and this lady wasn't touring either of them. I might let a pile of grammatical errors slide, there'll be NO messing with the historical facts. ;) For the record, I also changed 'the eighth wonder of the world' to 'CLAIMING TO BE the eighth wonder of the world' - accuracy is important, you know. ;) If you didn't visit the actual eighth wonder of the world, you'd better make that clear.

Plz suggest caption

I was looking through my photos tonight at full-screen size and was absolutely terrified when I ran across this one:

Now, if its not frightening enough for you, I dare you to click on it and see it at full size. Can you believe we let this animal in our house? He clearly wants to rip my face off!

Anyway, it reminded me of this site: icanhazcheezburger which never fails to crack me up. Something about the combination of hilarious cat (and other animal photos) and the horrible spelling/grammar in the captions. Of course I found the captions hard to take at first WHY CAN'T THEY JUST SPELL IT RIGHT?!?!? WHO TALKS LIKE THAT?! but the more I see of these, the more I realize that's a part of the humor, and now I firmly believe that all cats talk like that. I love it. However, I cannot DO it, so, plz suggest caption. So far all I can come up with is:

365

If I'm not posting anything here, you can be sure that I am posting at least one photo a day on my other blog:

Yes, I said other blog. I decided to start a 365 project, where I take a picture of SOMETHING every day, and post it. I didn't want this blog to get cluttered up with that - and of course, I don't trust myself not to just abandon the whole thing around day 34 or something, so I didn't do it here. That way if I wander away from it I can just delete that blog and it will be like it never happened. And I'll still blog here, I promise.

So, if you want to visit it, here it is: Cheri's 3-6-5

Pictures as promised

We ended up with 34 people at Thanksgiving - at least we think so, it was impossible to get everyone to sit still for a head-count. But there were lots of us, and I took a lot of pictures. None of them are especially good, but it was kind of crazy and busy, and so are the pictures.

The weekend was nice - weather was perfect for a last weekend at the lake - if its too warm, you feel like you're shutting things down and leaving too soon. It was kind of cloudy and cool but still nice enough for the kids to be outside most of the time (thank goodness! There were 19 of them, I think!) but cool enough that my dad could have the wood stove fired up and nobody passed out from the heat in the livingroom.

The morning was quiet - we had a volunteer to do dishes

meanwhile, I made the sugar pie (see recipe/results in the previous post)

people started arriving in the afternoon, the ladies kept busy in the kitchen
the kids played outside most of the day - this is 'flag tag'

when they all came in, the living room got pretty crowded
and the other half:
Shoes!
(***my mom reads this blog, so if you think the carpet is ugly, PLEASE don't hesitate to comment on it)

Its not Thanksgiving without a kids' table - in this case we moved them all next door.

That's about it! We had a great supper and a good visit with everyone. We look forward to seeing some/all/most of the family again sometime around Christmas.

Giving thanks

Its Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend - we're going to a wedding and then to the lake for what will likely be our last lake weekend. I always think I'll be down a few more times at the end of the season because I really enjoy being there in the cooler weather - dad always has a fire going in the stove and I love to curl up with an afghan and a book and just stare out the window at the wind and the waves all day. It doesn't have to be nice out to enjoy being at the cabin. There's always good company there, too - and the kids don't care at all about the weather - they'll hide out in the loft upstairs and play all day or if its not raining or too cold they run outside and in and out of the three cabins - we just see them at lunch and supper and bedtime. If this is our last weekend, they're going to miss it. And for the next six months there won't be a day that goes by without one or the other of them asking when we're going back to grandpa's cabin. Annique's learning to talk so I am sure she'll be joining the chorus.

In celebration of Thanksgiving, I'll share my contribution to the dessert lineup - I make a sugar pie every year, mostly because I don't like pumpkin pie and there's no guarantee that someone else will bring saskatoon or apple pie (which *I* certainly won't be making - those take WORK!) - but Sugar pie is almost as easy to make as toast, so I can do that. I love this recipe because there's nothing in it that I don't need (ie/ just enough flour and milk to hold the sugar together, and crust to hold it all in) - its so rich that just a small slice is enough for most people and so one pie goes a long way.

Sugar Pie
1 1/2 cups - Brown sugar or maple sugar, packed
1/4 cup - flour
1 1/2 cups milk or whipping cream
unbaked 9 inch pie shell

Mix brown sugar and flour in a bowl, stir in milk.
Pour into a pie shell, bake on bottom shelf in a 350 degree oven about 60 minutes, check with a toothpick which should come out fairly clean but not completely.

Its great with real whipped cream on top. Because, if its not rich enough for you - a little bit of whipped cream will fix that!



I'll put up some pictures later - I am sure I'll take a lot over the long weekend. I've started a 365 project and I made another blog just for all the pictures - so I am trying to take a picture every day for a year. That shouldn't be hard for me since I take pictures every day, anyway - but the tough thing is going to be to remember to pick one and get it posted every day.

One year from now I'm hoping to be having another little getaway with my friends - this time in Denver or somewhere around there. I think the time will pass a lot more quickly if I count down the days with this 365 project - a lot can happen in a year!

To fall, or not to fall?

At the beginning of September, the weather really did get chilly - I swear I had every right to think it was all over for summer, and after about 10 days of long pants and long sleeves, I finally accepted that fall is here, and I packed away the summer clothes. We went for a long quad ride and the bite in the air was really harsh - after the first few miles, I really regretted not wearing long underwear! The scenery is always really nice at this time of year, even if the weather isn't.

Two weekends ago - the valley was starting to turn


We had rain, and then a rainbow on Sunday - this is actually a double rainbow, if you look you can see another rainbow above the really bright one.

touques, long pants, sweaters and layers - it was COLD!

So, that was the beginning of September. I'd post first day of school pics, but they are sideways and I am too lazy to turn them. I am sure everyone's wondering if we have TV yet. Yes we do. Its crappy and half the channels still don't work. But its ours, and we love it. We're watching The Deadliest Catch right now. How did we ever survive without it?

Mornings are going a lot better than I thought - actually, its not as rushed as it is on my days off! I started packing lunches and getting clothes ready the night before, and getting up 15 minutes earlier and all that seems to work well - usually the kids are still sleeping when I get out of the shower so I wake M. up first, get her cereal ready and her clothes and toothbrush, and when she's done eating, I get C. up and do the same thing. They've been really good with that, and most mornings the baby sleeps until its time to bring the big girls to school - so I take her out of the crib and right into the van, drop them off, and I come back and get her breakfast and dressed, hair done, etc. and leave for work. We usually have a pleasant drive except that I've had to give up my morning talk radio for Fred Penner. I drop her off at the sitter's and she's been okay with that - a little whiny but I think its all a show and she's probably fine as soon as I'm out of sight. Then, off to work and if all is right in the world, they'll have coffee ready when I get there.

Its getting darker, earlier and its so much harder to drag my ass out of bed when the sun is barely up. Somebody tell me when the time is going to change because that will complicate matters in a HUGE way. This darkness in the a.m. thing has me thinking - its probably going to be soon, right?

The baby is starting to talk a lot more, and really - she's not a baby anymore, she's a two year old. Or, almost. I am wondering about her language development. Its so interesting that she only bothers learning words that she thinks she needs. And I wonder - how does she learn a word like 'mine' that she rarely hears (how often to parents say 'mine' in conversation with a baby?) - but words that I use one million times every day like 'WAIT!' or 'STOP!', or yes, no, milk, eat, drink, sleep, shoes, etc. - I've never heard her say any of those. She calls shoes, socks. Even though we've just been through summer and we haven't really talked about socks in months. And we talk about shoes every day. But shoes are socks.

And, she knows the cat's names. Her older sisters have been around the cats for 5 and 6 years, respectively. And I don't think either of them can tell you which cat is which, either or both of them is Casey, or maybe Percy. Never mind that the two cats look completely different - but the big girls have never bothered to really know which is which. But the baby knows. And with her pronunciation, I really, really would prefer her to just call them both Casey. Just so you know.

Due to the fact that I packed away 99.9% of our summer clothes the week before --- we had a BEAUTIFUL weekend. You all can thank me later for bringing summer back. I accept cash and gifts.

Anyway, even though the weekend before was freezing cold - last weekend was certainly hot enough to wear shorts, and a tank top. There wasn't even a chill in the air - it was gloriously warm and we and another wonderful weekend out on the quad. The kids joined us in the evenings for bonfires and hot dogs.

She'll only go near the quad if its not running. If its running, she screams.

Beautiful day! - here we're parked on the sandy riverbed.

Short sleeves! Capri pants! Bare toes in the sand!

And to think all week before they had been saying it would be so cold and miserable, and might even snow. Now, for this coming weekend they're actually predicting warm weather - so I'd better get out my mittens. We're going to the lake and I'm planning to make a few batches of salsa - it will probably be one of our last weekends out there this season so we'll make the most of it.