Summer Fun

The boys and I were talking about making sure we didn't waste our summer, so we decided to make lists of what we wanted to do.  I was feeling creative, so I got out my art pens and colored pencils.  This was my result.  I may not have advanced art skills, but I do love to doodle.  Reminds me of the elaborate notes I used to create for my friends back in the days before email, social media, and texting ;)

Happy Birthday, Austin!

I don't know whether to celebrate or cry!  Today my oldest is 11 years old!  Where has the time gone?? That can't be right! 

When did this adorable little guy 

Christmas 2002

Bryce Canyon 2004

become this handsome young man?

2012 AAU Basketball

As sad as it makes me that you are growing up, Austin, I'm am loving seeing the wonderful person you are becoming.  I love you!  

I'm looking forward to going back to work today--finally!  It will be a fun week because it's Hallissey week!  That's our big basketball tournament for 7th and 8th graders.  We have events every day leading up to it.  Plus this weekend will be a four day weekend filled with basketball and sleepover for Austin and his friends.  

In honor of Austin, I'm taking a break from Alaska layouts and sharing a couple Studio J layouts that are older photos of my boys.  Enjoy!

29 Alaska Layouts Completed!!

I can't believe I am still down sick.  I went ahead and took the rest of the week off because I just can't kick this bug.  Went to the doctor, and her best guess is the flu, a different strain than the vaccine.  I have never had to take a week off of work before, but since I still keep getting fevers, I can't go back, not that I'd feel like it anyway.  I'm not as weak and achy, but now I've got a horrid cough and all the medication she gave me makes me feel nauseous.  Plus, my Austin is still down with it and home with me, so we're a mess.

However, I am very blessed with wonderful family, friends, and co-workers who have been there for me and done everything they can to make me feel better.  Mike's been running Bren to school, making dinner and bringing me fun birthday goodies, including delicious cupcakes, flowers, candy, shoes (purple!), and even a singing Brad Paisley cards :)  My mom has been picking Brendan up, as well as bringing me lunch and goodies yesterday.  Then one of my friends is subbing for me, and she has been fantastic.  She even told me she's getting everything graded, and will have what I need copied for me for Monday, when I return.  Blessed, I tell you!

I haven't been completely out of commission the last couple days.  I've been getting caught up on grades, though I still have a long way to go.  My biggest accomplishment has been to complete all the layouts from our Alaska Cruise in Studio J.  I finished the last couple yesterday, and got them all ordered.  There are 29 layouts!  I can't wait until they get here!  It feels good to have that done.  It seems our vacation photos never get scrapped, other than a layout or two highlight for our regular scrapbooks.  Case in point, we went to Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania four summers ago, and I have 0 layouts completed.  Oregon Coast trip two years ago, I have two beach layouts completed.  It seems like such a huge task to scrap so many photos.

I've learned that Studio J is the way to go.  Working probably a total of 4 hours this week, I scrapped the whole trip.  I took over 400 photos on the trip.  Now we'll be able to look at and enjoy the album and the memories.  The only problem is what in the world I'm going to do with all the photos I had printed to show family.  Maybe I'll let the boys make their own albums.

Anyway, I'm going to be sharing the layouts over the next week or so on here.  Here are the first few.

These first two layouts use the Travel Express Collections.  With the Express Collections, you get 10 coordinating layouts to make one album.  They are themed and embellished, so they are quick and easy.  However, because Studio J is versatile, you can make changes and use as many or as few as you want.  I thought the Travel ones were perfect for the first couple layouts.  Preview, I used them on the last day, too :)


Boarding Double Spread

Leaving Seattle

Pool Time AKA Brendan's favorite phrase, "Can We Go To The Pool?"

Don't forget, all Studio J Layouts are only $5 for each double page spread.   This month only!  Click here to try it out!    

Knocked Out

Well today is the first day I've been out of bed since Saturday evening.  Whatever this bug is that's going around, it's a nasty one.  I can't remember the last time I was sick like this.  I still have no energy, but I can sit up, so that's progress.

The only good news is that I've had lots of time to read.  Since I couldn't sit up and looking at a screen would hurt my eyes, I finally got to read two books my students have been raving about all year.  I bought both of them at Christmas with gift cards, and they've been sitting there mocking me.  They are Divergent and Insurgent.  Fabulous books--I couldn't put them down (except to take naps).  I'm just sad it's going to be a while before the third one comes out.  I highly recommend these books.  They are dark, as most dystopian books are, but worth the time.

Last night and this morning, I've been taking advantage of the Studio J $5 special.  My goal is to get all of the photos from our Alaska Cruise last summer scrapbooked.  I'm up to 12 two page layouts.  I think I have about 16 more to go.  Unfortunately, I can't post them until I order them, and I won't order until I finish all of them.  Did you know you can order up to 50 layouts and pay just $5.95 in shipping?  So, until then, I'll be sharing some of  my past Studio J layouts.

Here are some from our last Trip to Disneyland.  I love that you can coordinate pages, resize photos, and embellish as much or as little as you want!

Curling Up With a Good Book (I wish!)

As anyone who knows me can attest, I LOVE books!  Reading a good book is one of my favorite things in the world, a fact my family just accepts, even when it means I am completely tuning them out. Sadly, I haven't had much time as of late.  While I love my job, the demands of teaching, grading and editing writing in particular, sometimes overwhelm my time.  As a result, I have a serious backlog of books.

My growing pile of books to read.

At the beginning of December, we had our school book fair.  Between the gifts from generous and parent and the spending of some of my teacher funds, I racked up a number of young adult books.  I like to read them before I put them in my classroom.  Then I received a number of Barnes and Noble gift cards for Christmas, and right now for teacher appreciation they are offering 25% anything for teachers (not just books for the classroom).   I added a few more to my ever-growing collection, including Divergent and Insurgent, which my students have been telling me I HAVE TO READ.  I love that my students come to me to share books they've loved and ask for recommendations.  I just wish I had more time to spend reading!  The above photo doesn't even deal with my Kindle list!  Mike bought me a new Kindle for Christmas, which I am loving.  I have a bunch more books on there I'm working on.   He bought me Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.  He heard about them on NPR and knew I would like them because they take my place during the time of Henry VIII, my favorite historical fiction time period.  Such a thoughtful hubby!

I have one more setting of writing to grade before I can reward myself with some serious reading time.  With the temperatures like this, maybe there's a chance.

On the other hand, today is National Popcorn Day, so I'm sensing some movie time in our future, too.  

Snow--in Haiku

Oops--I didn't get on last night to post.  I've decided that Friday will be our poetry day at school, so I did have a little poetry to share from yesterday.  Literature classes yesterday wrote poetry about the novels they're reading.  I went a different route for mine (although I did write one on the book we're reading in class as an example).  I wrote a couple haiku on the snow.  One reflecting our snow day and the other reflecting the drive to school yesterday, although it wasn't too bad for us on our route.  Some students, however, were an hour late due to all the accidents on the interstate.

Snow in Haiku:

Snow, glimmering white

Falling softly, quietly

Through the cold window

Slick, icy black roads

Treacherous in the darkness

Praying for safety

Come back later today to see the 30 cards I made during our snow day.  I still need to take some photos.

Tales of the Snow Fort or Is It an Igloo?

I"ll apologize in advance for the poor photo quality.  It was dark out, but I had to get a few shots.  As I showed in my previous post, we got lots of snow Monday.  Monday night, the boys worked on building an igloo/snow fort (not sure which, since they kept calling it both.  Brendan gave up after an hour or so, but Austin stayed out until almost 8:00, when I forced him to come in.  

Day 1 photos:

I took this one from our upstairs window.

As soon as we got home from school, the boys got back to work.

They rushed home to work on it right after school today, but sadly, it warmed up today, and they're fort is about the only snow left.  It made me laugh.

This Just Makes Me Happy

As a lover of all things Disney, especially the movies and songs, I found this irresistible!  So fun (and funny).  You definitely want to watch all the way to the end--Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid are the best!

Snow Day (I Wish!!)

Unfortunately, all the snow came AFTER we got to school.  It was beautiful, but cold!  Of course, I had recess and parking lot duty.  I still can't feel my feet!

On the way to school--nothing.

By lunch--looking out from my classroom door.

My car as we left to head home.

I think it's time for a new ice scraper!  I couldn't even reach the middle of my windshield.  Luckily, another teacher was scraping his and saw my difficulties.  He loaned me his long one with a brush, and then told me I needed to upgrade from a California scraper to an Idaho one :)  Only 5 years back in Idaho, you'd think I'd have a better one.

Our normal 20 minute drive took 40.

Now the boys are outside playing--trying to build a snow fort.  I only have slippers on, though.  A photo of that will have to wait until they're done.

They say it's going to stop by midnight, so I doubt we'll have a day off tomorrow, but one can always dream.  After all, this was supposed to be mostly rain with "less than an inch of slushy accumulation."  Not even close.

Back to School Tomorrow

This break has been so wonderful, and I'm having a difficult time wrapping my mind around getting up and heading back to school tomorrow.   I look forward to seeing my students and hearing about their Christmas and break, but 5:45 is going to come way to early.  I have thoroughly enjoyed the two weeks we've had off as a family.  It's been a time of relaxation and rejuvenation.

It's also been a time of denial.  Below is a photo of the work I brought home to get finished over the break.  About a tenth of it is what I accomplished.  I'm hoping to get their big writing assignment edited/commented tonight, but it still won't be nearly what I hoped I'd complete.  I'm trying to be ok with that.  I love that work didn't invade our family time.  However, it's only two weeks until the end of the quarter, which means report cards and comments on top of grading the rest of these assignments.  Not to mention all the new exciting stuff we'll do in the next two weeks.  It's a good thing I LOVE my job!   Ready, set, here we go again!

Work Around the House--Before and After

We've lived in this house more than 5 years, and we still had a couple blank walls.  We bought paint a couple years ago and didn't want to hang anything until we painted.  We finally had time this week to paint and Mike's been busily hanging everything.  

Before--looking from our family room to the front door.  

After--same shot

Family room--these photos are from our school dinner auction a few years ago.  The theme was Rock Star and the decorations were the huge canvases of all the siblings.  We had to buy it and have it framed.  THe smaller photos were ones we took.  Mike wants to hang drum sticks or a guitar up above.

Dining/entry way shots

Austin helping with the painting.

I'm loving the results!  The only problem with accomplishing this is that now we want to put in new floors, paint other walls and rooms, and get new furniture.

Goodbye 2012...

It's hard to believe it's the last day of 2012.  Where does the time go?  It's been a very busy year.  The older the kids get the more it seems we have going on all the time.  I have been a very bad blogger this year, but I'm hoping to be better next year.  I love going back and reading my early blog posts.  I shared so much about the kids growing up, things I probably wouldn't remember otherwise.  It makes me sad that I haven't been doing much of that lately.

 I've been inspired by one teacher's blog.  She committed to blogging every day for a year.  Her blog is so positive and so inspirational.  She inspires me as a teacher and a person.  I don't know if I'll be able to post every single day, but I'm stealing a couple ideas from her for myself this year.  The first is listing five blessings every Friday.  What a powerful, uplifting way to end the week.  She also does poetry constantly with her classes.  This is inspiring me to do "Poetry Wednesdays" in all my classes.  You can look for my own poems here every Wednesday.  I'm also going to try for a creative Saturday, so I'm posting at least one piece of artwork per week.  Hopefully I'll have more, but we'll see.

I wanted to share a few highlights from this year:

Austin turned 10 with a bowling party with friends at Westy's

Brendan turned 7 with a Star Wars party at Bodies in Motion

In March, we went to California to visit family and celebrate my Grandpa's birthday

And the Star Wars exhibition at the Discovery Science Center (I wanted Disneyland, but was outvoted by my Star Wars nuts)

Then to Vegas for a wedding.  I got to meet Blake Shelton, but was so excited I messed up the photo.

In June, we went on an Alaskan Cruise.  By far the highlight of our year!!

After we got back from our cruise, my grandparents came to visit.  It was so much fun having them here.  

Over the summer, there was fishing,

 swimming (both boys mastered the high dive)

Bike Riding,

 Camel's Back Park,

And Bruneau Sand Dunes

Over Labor Day, we went to Seattle to see the King Tut Exhibit

and the Mariner/Angel game.

We had French dress up day for the School Auction.

We had a scare with our little B, who had pneumonia.

Both boys played basketball this year.  AAU for Austin

 and YBall for Brendan.

In December, Mike and I took an early anniversary trip to Seattle to see the Seahawks play the Cardinals.

We celebrated 14 years on December 26th.

Others I couldn't readily find photos of: my sister came with her kids and the boys got to spend time with their cousins.  .  Andy came to visit over the summer and Sondra is here right now.  On Christmas Eve, my brother, Taylor and his girlfriend, Kaitlin, got engaged!!

I think that about sums up our year.  Here's to 2013 and the many blessings to come!