Give a Kid a Camera.....

........and this is what you get.

The boys got a hold of my camera yesterday after we had gone swimming and this is the result. Remember.....these pictures of me are after I was in the pool for a couple hours and then got attacked while relaxing on a towel. Please forgive me if I look like I'm not all made up.

My CSS Friends

As I said in a post earlier today, I got to visit with some of my great online pals in Chicago a couple weeks ago. This is the third year I've done this and it's always great! My first year I was really nervous about meeting these people. It just seemed so strange. But it's been wonderful getting to know them in real life as well as online. I thought I would share some of the pictures of this wacky group of ladies.

To begin with, this is one of my bestest friends. Karin and I have known each other since 2000 when we worked on the 2000 Census together. Last year I talked her into going with me to the retreat and she was hooked! So we loaded up my van this year and drove the 13 hours to Chicago. We had lots of goofy, zany moments along the way. Her 17 year old daughter came with us and I think she is conviced we are both nuts!

The lady in the middle is our CSS list mom. She is also the lady who puts together this whole weekend for us. Marybeth is an amazing woman of God and she is the perfect person to lead our group. Over the past 6 years I have come to love and respect her very much. The other one is Becky. The two of us have a "thing" going. We kind of like to pick on each other, although I think she starts is most of the time! I just have to defend myself! We sat on opposite sides of the room this year and we were throwing comments across the poor gals in the middle. Becky once threatened to throw a paper piercer at me! Can you believe that???? Check out our shirts........they were a prize from Marybeth..........and they both say "Anything you can scrap I can scrap better." When we saw these we just knew that the two of us had to have them! Seriously.........I think Becky is wonderful! Just don't tell her I said that.

This is Marybeth with the chef for the weekend.........her husband Paul. Their daughter Steffi also cooked lots for us and was constantly bringing us good things to munch on.
This was a challenge over the weekend. It was a 4 Product Challenge. Everybody received the same 4 products and had to make a layout using them. You could only use those 4 products, plus some cardstock. I loved how everybody created totally different layouts using the same products!
These are the gals who attended from our CSS group. There were also come local Chicago scrappers there. These CSS ladies are: Marybeth, Becky, Denise, Kate, Karin, Judy, Heidi, and Julie (in front). This was the best part of the weekend..........getting to know all these great ladies in real life! We are already planning our retreat for next year! I can't wait! It's just too bad that Chicago is sooooooo far away! What a looooong drive! But so worth it!

57 Pages Done

A couple of weeks ago I traveled to Chicago for the weekend. I went all the way to Chicago.......about a 13 hour drive............to do a very important thing............scrapbook! This was my third yearly get together with an amazing group of online friends. We belong to a group called Christian Scrapbooking Sister (CSS). There were 12 of us that scrapped for the weekend. I ended up getting 57 pages done. I was hoping for more as I had completed almost 80 the years before, but I was pleased with how much I did get done. I won't bore you by showing you all of the pages but here are some of my favorites.

Hay Bales Fun

Last night the kids and I were playing on what's left of the hay bale pile, which is about 30 bales. For some reason the kids always think this is great fun. I don't really get it. Have itchy hay all over my body just isn't too great to me. But.....the kids love it! Here are some pictures I took of them:

This first one is so typical of Chris and Benji. When I get out the camera they both instantly start making goofy faces. Benji acts up and tries to make me laugh. Chris does quiet, but silly things.

Here is Clara being brave at the top of the bales.

While playing on the bales we found 2 arrows from Jacob's bow & arrow set. We have him shoot the arrows onto a target on the bales and they often get lost. So he was excited to find these lost arrows. He was throwing them off of the top of the bales and wanted me to get a picture of one of them flying through the air and....surprise, surprise.....I managed to do it!

Here's the last kid, Debbie giving me a "HUH?" look. Or is that a look that says "I've said cheese enough, can't I be done yet?"

My Favorite Things

Yea, yea.......I know that kids are not "things". But I decided to use the title anyway. This is one of my assignments for May I had to do for The Wishblading Well. The squares in the back are files of theirs.

Losing Weight

UGH! This is such a hard thing to do! And I get tired of the struggle! But.........since the beginning of the year I have actually been doing it!!!! On January 1 I decided that I needed to "just do it". I am a huge fan of the show The Biggest Loser, so I decided to go with what they do............minus the hours and hours and hours of working out. LOL! So I have been counting calories. I try to eat around 1300 calories a day. Sadly, many days I am over that. I find myself always reading the nutritional info on things. One of the biggest shockers is comparing the calories in a box of something with how many servings in the box. They really trick us there! Did you know that there are 2.5 servings in a 20 ounce bottle of pop? I shudder to think of how many calories I've downed drinking my favorites, Mountain Dew and Root Beer. One of my favorite foods has always been cereal. Since I was a kid I loved my bowl of cereal in the morning!!! I would sit there, eating my cereal and reading a book. In the last years I would usually have more than one bowl...........yum, yum! Serving sizes for cereal are SO small and you can't forget the calories in the milk you pour over the top. I'm sure that there were many days I would eat 750-1000 calories........just at breakfast!!! No wonder I was gaining weight!

For the last 5 1/2 months I have been watching my calories and trying to put some miles on the treadmill. And, surprisingly, it's been working!!!! Wohoooo! As of this morning, I have lost 33.6 pounds! To get to my goal weight I need to lose another 28.4. I am over 1/2 way there!!!! So I keep plugging away.......counting my calories........working on smaller portions........trying to excercise.......not eating cereal.......drinking a diet root beer every once in a while.

I'm doing it!

BTW, I'm adding a weight loss ticker to the sway bottom of the page so you can keep up with my weight loss progress. I'll be updating it once a week.

This past Saturday was National Scrapbook Day. This may not mean too much to most of you, but to a scrapper it's a big deal. LOL! I scrapped as much as I could on Fri, Sat, and Sun in between laundry, kids, a soccer tournament, kids, church, and kids. Here are some of the pages I got done. The first one is of Dave and Jacob playing Battleship. Jacob is amazing at this and I have to try as hard as I can to not have him beat me! The next one is of Debbie on the day she was officially placed with us for adoption.
I love this picture of Dave on the tractor. He was giving us a hay ride when I took it and it so sums up how he is! Yesterday was the 2nd anniversary of my Mom passing away. Kind of in honor of that, and because I've been meaning to for awhile, I did a scrapbook page about my dad. My dad is awesome!!!
Here's Jacob in his favorite position in the whole world, all crouched down and perched on his feet. This looks horribly uncomfortable to me but he loved it. In Kindergarten and 1st grade he would do this on the chair at his desk. He was constantly falling out of his seat! In this picture he is perched like this on top of a porch railing at a cabin we were staying at. He obviously has amazing balance while "sitting" like this.