What do you do??

What do you do when your stuck at home because you are house poor and if you go anywhere you'll spend money you don't have, your house is clean, your laundry is done and your kids are either at school, sleeping or want nothing to do with you because you don't have a remote?? I make banners, and then blog about them. Silly I know!! I'm sure I could find more constructive things to do with my time but this is fun!!






Melanie-Your banners should be in the mail tomorrow!

Photo Shoots!

For some reason my family thinks I'm this great photographer and the keep asking me to take pictures for the, i don't mind because it give me a chance to practice so someday i may become what they call me!! Kirsta and Devyn both came over this past week to have me take some "head shots" and i think their beauty is what make these pictures great!!











I also had the chance to take a few pictures of Brandon and Jamie's cute kids. They were highly cooperative and after we broke into the neighbors backyard we got some great shots!!

Animal Handprints

When we took the kids to San Diego this summer we went to the Wild Animal Park. We don't usually spend money on souvenirs but when I saw these darling pieces of "art" i had to have them. Brett was too cool and wouldn't make one but the other 3 did. The "artist just makes a hand print with the kids hand and the kids choose and animal and they make a picture. I bought these frames at Ikea (my favorite store) and I finally got around to painting and framing them. The frames match the kids shower curtain and I just got lucky with the pictures matching too!

I Think....

It's time for a haircut. Anybody else? I seem to be going longer and longer these days inbetween hair cuts and I caught sight of just how long my hair really is in the mirror this morning. It is waaaay to long.

Life of a Mom with ADD

I wake up and get ready, get the older 2 off to school. On my list for the day, 7 loads of laundry, pick up, clean bathrooms, clean kitchen, clean pretty much everything. As I am picking up the house I find the head to Bonnie's Cu-pie doll when I pick it up I headr it jingle. I look inside to find my 5 missing keyboard keys. I open my laptop to put the keys back on (they are broken by the way) and I think to my self, while I have my computer open I'll just check my e-mail. While checking my e-mail I see I need to reply to a few and publish some blog comments. While I am publishing some blog comments I see some of my peeps have updated their blogs, well i can't NOT comment so I comment. After all that I check my photography class message board and see that my teacher has replied to some of my questions and told me how to fix the haze i am getting in my backlighting pictures. I grab my camera and take Colby downstairs in front of the big windows to take some more pictures. I then upload them to my computer to see my results. Make a few edits in photoshop and realize I have just waisted 2 hours of my morning!! It's not easy staying on task when you have ADD. I continue my day ping ponging around the house. I eventually got it all done (at 10:00pm) but i never stay on one task at a time. I jump from bathroom to kitchen and bedroom to laundry!! It isn't fun, may I need some medication!!

Oh and since it is against my religion to leave you with out a picture here is the picture I took of Colby! It is still a bit hazy but better than the ones I was getting

Baby Girl!

I hope you don't get tired of looking at this face because you'll probably be seeing alot of it over the next 12 weeks. I just started a photraghphy class this week and since she and Colby are the only ones home during the day they are my subjects, willing or not. The assignment this week is tricky lighing situations, this one is a bit back and side light.

I'm also messing around trying to figure out how to put bigger pictures on my blog so hopefully this works. I love looking a big pictures and i hope you all do to. let me know if you don't though and I will re-evaluate wether or not to make the change!! I like your input so tell me if you don't like it, I promise I won't be offended.
Thanks to JENNIE! for the info on resizing!

A Mission and a Blurb

**For those of you who have asked, I made my blog book before blurb started having problems with blogger. I got really lucky, but they are trying to rectify the problem, I just hope they get it figured out for my 2009 blog book**

For family home evening this Monday I had had a plan that we should write a family mission statement so we know who we are, what we stand for and what we hope to accomplish. It was on the whole successful, with a few outlandish requests (like Brett is the King) we set to paper out MISSION. Terry and I then took the things we had decided were part of our mission statement and put it into a true mission statement form. I then took it and with a lot of pain staking screw ups with the vinyl (should have just called Shannon) we now have it posted on our home for all to read but mostly to remind us who we are and what we stand forfor future reference, always use a level when placing vinyl on your walls.

As for the "Blurb" I mentioned in my post title I am referring to my blog book. if you haven't heard of blurb, check it out. It is a website that has a down loadable program that you can use to take your blog (or other material) and make it into a book. i took the first year of my blog and spent the week Terry was in Grand Cayman putting it together. I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. I had 5 printed for parents and grandparents. I is our family record in print. Here a few pictures so you can see. The page of Brett was a digital scrapbook layout i just added to put in a snipit about his junior festival. I think if I ever get some time i will just switch to digital scrapbooking and have the layouts put into a blurb book!

5 Days and 1 Lousy Picture

I can always tell how good of a time we have had on a trip by how many pictures I have taken. oddly enough the more fun we have the less pictures I take. we had a great trip to Dumont this past week. With the exception of breaking down on the way home and having to squeeze in with Brandon and his family just to get back to Vegas.( Oh and Bonnie got into some hot embers and burned her hand pretty badly) We played games and visited a lot. We had a small group with us this trip out.We were missing the rest of our "regulars" this trip due to having to work! Just us and my 3 older brothers and their families. (and 3 extras Brandon brought) We were greatly out numbered adults to kids were 8:20. They had a fabulous time digging holes, ridin and sledding behind the 4 wheelers (maybe I'll get a picture of that next trip.) We had some delicious food. Terry and I made teriyaki steak and we finished off all 27 steaks. We had pizza and enchiladas, chili and burgers with homemade fries. And dessert EVERY night. I think I gained 4 pounds this trip. A grand time was had by all.