Late on the Program

I keep telling myself that I am going to try to participate in Project 365. So far this year, I have taken one picture and then take a few days off. Well I have taken pictures for the last three days and I think that is a great start to completing the project. By doing this project, I am hoping to take more pictures of who we are as a family, but also improve my picture taking skills at the same time. In the process, I will blog more often. At least that is how the plan is supposed to happen.

So now to my first three days of Project 365:

Day 1/365: February 26, 2010 - Melodye performed in her school's 4th grade musical, The Nightingale. (She is in the silver and blue dress.)

 

I had to include a close up picture of Melodye. Look at those eyelashes. They are amazing. She is blessed with my eyes and her daddy's eyelashes.

Day 2/365: February 27, 2010 - Maddy stayed the night with the girls. Melodye was reading to Maddy and Brooke. I love when I find them doing this. I need to learn the controls of the camera so I can take this kind of picture without them knowing that I am doing it.

Day 3/365: February 28, 2010 - You know there are girls in the household when you find My Little Pony's in the medicine cabinet.

Good Girls and Boy

We must have been good in this household. Santa treated all of us well. The girls were cuter than ever with their hair all curly.

Christmas Eve was a busy night. We had fun at Aunt Pat and Uncle Dave's house. Although, we did have to leave after a rousing game of Farkle. then we went to Aunt Pynki and Mike's house. We arrived after a lot of people had already left for the night. But we did get a family photo together.

Then we came home and went to sleep. During that time Santa was busy leaving us all of those presents.

And of course you cannot go wrong with SpongeBob Legos in this household.

Labor Day Pipe Dreams

I don't know about other teachers. But for me, Labor Day is viewed as a chance to get things done at home and for my classroom that I do not normally have time for. Oh picnics are nice and wonderful, but I dream of whole days getting things done because everyone else has plans and then use Monday as a day to do stuff at home that I enjoy. Now this pipe dream never comes completely into fruition. But I can always hope and dream because that always makes my day better if I keep hope alive.

Here are some example of things I would like to accomplish:

• I would like to go through Brooke's closet and dresser to pull out all of the clothes that she has completely outgrown which is most of them. She has outgrown clothes that were bought at the beginning of summer. GRRRRR stop growing so fast!!!!! (You are supposed to be my baby not my amazon girl.)
• Clean Brooke's room so that she has no excuse as to why she can't keep it clean.
• Go through Melodye's closet and dresser. Give Brooke any clothes that will fit her that Melodye still hasn't worn and has tags on it. Get any skorts that are too short for her out of her room. She thinks if there is still room in the waist they fit. But she is so skinny they never fit in the waist, her butt hangs out instead and no just because there are shorts under there does not make it okay.
• Organize Mel's room so that there is no reason why she can't keep it clean.
• Go through my clothes.
• Transfer all pictures off the cameras (I have to find the little one first). Label and order all of these pictures. Back up the pictures.
• Cut and file coupons. (I am so behind it is not funny.)
• Go through organize and label boxes for school. I had help packing last year and all of the boxes didn't get labeled.

Now that was just home stuff. For school, I would like to:

• Get Tommy to make dividers for my big book rack. The ones I have will not hold up the books.
• The boxes for school also need to be listed here.
• Make homework packets.
• Redo my lesson plan form.
• Set up my grade book.
  
• Update my grade book.
• Get some decorative things for classroom done.
• Make some center for next week. (I need to start looking further ahead to see what I need.)
• Some other stuff in my bag that I can't remember off the top of my head.

Once I get necessary stuff done. I would like to:

• Scrapbook
• Read
• Sew
• Just enjoy myself
• Go to Lopez family picnic on Sunday.
• Watch the first disc of Veronica Mars Season 1.

Of course, I won't get all of this done, but I do like to have those pipe dreams and hope that I can become a super hero and finish all of this. I also would like to start blogging again. I am missing it.

Living Room Redo

We have been super busy around the house. Here is a list of things we have been doing;

• Both girls are taking tumbling.
• Melodye is volunteering at the library.
• Melodye and Brooke attends two different summer reading program.
• We have been to Six Flags a few times.
• The living room, hallway, and foyer have been painted.
• We tore up carpet in the living room and hallway.
• We replaced the carpet with bamboo (It is gorgeous!!)
• We bought new living room furniture.
• Brooke is obsessed with Super Heroes like Batman, X-Men, Robin, Spiderman, etc.

Here are some pictures showing these things.

 

Bamboo flooring is from Costco, wall color is Classic Taupe by Behr from Home Depot, furniture is from Harlem Furniture. I love how it came together. 

Next on our list includes the flooring for the three bedroom, painting the kitchen, and putting in a backsplash in the kitchen. time and energy consuming projects, but will be worth it when we are finished.

Really Not Enough Time In My Day, Week, or Month

I am not in hiding. I have been busy with school ending and needing to completely pack up my classroom due to being laid off and the school also closing. We also had Melodye's 9th birthday and party which meant a lot of time cleaning to get ready for the party. Tommy graduated and asked for season passes to Six Flags. We have already been to six flags three times. I discovered Sorority Life game on Facebook. Whoa Boy is that a time sucker, but fun. The girls' are doing tumbling and storytime programs every week. Those are about two hours each time. Melodye is also volunteering at the library during Brooke's story time. We also painted the living room, foyer, and hallway. Needless to say we have been busy so far this summer and somehow this blog got pushed to the wayside. But I have found time to read, as you will see below this.

The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I could not put this book down. I had it finished in less than one day. The characters were easy to relate to.


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The Awakening by Kelley Armstrong

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
What a wonderful series!!! I wish number three was out already.


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Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I am definitely a Sookie Stackhouse fan! I keep going back and forth between who Sookie should be with. There are so many good male choices....Sam, Quinn, Eric.


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All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Definite tense situations in this book. What else can happen?


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The Passerby by Thomas Ray Crowel

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
The style of this book is not one that I am used to reading. but at the same time I had to keep reading. I needed to know what happened to the little girl Trudie. I put off reading this book, because I can not stand when children are hurt. But this book did not focus on the actual details of the murder. It focused on the cover up and final investigation.


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Somtimes I Am Just Lucky

Sometime I am just lucky when I take pictures. My pictures are usually taken on automatic or sports mode. Even while doing this, I will sometimes get a wonderful picture like this one.

 

Anymore, I ask Brooke "How did you get to be so beautiful?" She always answers " Because I love you." She must really love me because this picture show how beautiful she is. I also ask her, "How did I get so lucky to have you?" and she answers " Because I was a baby." Too cute.

I missed Brooke and Melodye's first two soccer games a couple of weekends ago. These were the first games I have missed since they started playing 6 years ago. The first weekend was because of the Girl Scout Weekend at the Dude Ranch. The second weekend was for a Scrapbooking Event that was a fundraiser for Relay for Life.

This was the first time I had been to a scrapbooking crop in over 9 years. It felt wonderful to go and so nice to accomplish so much in a 12 hour period. For the first time, I made myself little kits for each layout. I wanted to limit myself so that I wouldn't have too many decisions to make. I also decided to scrapbook soccer team photos and school pictures. I normally put off scrapbooking these because they really aren't the first thing I would pick to do. There is always something a little more fun. But I did finish them.

When I took these pictures, I realized that I really have not posted any scrapbook pages. So here they are, even though the pictures aren't the greatest.

This is Brooke's School and Class Photo from last year. I took the class photo which had the photos spread out over the 8X10 and cut them apart to put on one page with her class photo.

 

For every Christmas, I take the cards that we get and punch a square out of each one. The square from each card and the photos we receive go onto one layout. This way I am saving the memories, but not needing to take up a lot of room. This is from 2008.

This is Melodye's current school picture for third grade. She did not like the frame being crooked around her picture. Oh, well!

This is Melodye's soccer pictures from Spring 2008. I really need to make sure that I get the 5x7 team photo and 3 1/2 x 5 individual pictures. They really fit well on a page together.

Melodye's second grade picture. I originally made a mistake and put her first grade picture on here. But it was easily fixed.

Melodye's first grade picture. I love this paper since it was already done, I only added a border sticker to the top and traced words that were in the background. This is also one of my favorite school pictures of Melodye.

Brooke's Spring 2008 soccer pictures. The post it note is there until I can find out a couple of names. This way the names are there to hold a spot until I can find out who is missing.

Brooke and Melodye's Buddy photos. We get a photo at soccer pictures of the two girls together each season.

Melodye's Soccer pictures from Fall 2007.

Brooke's Soccer Pictures from Fall 2008.

 

Brooke's Soccer Pictures from Fall 2007

Miss Cuteness Melodye at 7 years old. I love how this photo just shows her personality so well. The pink background paper is glitter paper.

A layout about my grandparents' house. I think I am going to add something at the top, but I am not sure what. Maybe, journalling?

This is one of very few photos that has my parents with me and all of my siblings. There are very few times when all of my siblings are all together.

I don't know if I am finished with this page about Brooke. I just love this photo since it also shows Brooke's crazy personality.

I also make Mother's Day Cards last night. The color is off because this was taken at 10:00 at night. The paper is from Heidi Grace and is already striped like that. Super easy.

Just Take My Heart Brooke

Just Take My Heart by Mary Higgins Clark


 

My review

  rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a quick, easy read. There are more than one mysteries going on at the same time, but yet they are connected even though they are separate cases. I did have one problem. When a character dies, it is not know what this character knew and is never addressed.
 

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Brooke has gotten herself grounded. This week she has been pushing the line at preschool. Just enough to be annoying, but not enough to not get her stamp at the end of the day. Well yesterday her teacher wrote a note explaining this and asking us to talk to Brooke about this situation. We never saw this note. After Brooke's teacher called today, I found out that Brooke tore the note out of her notebook, put it in her pocket, and then threw it away at home. Needless to say, we really talked to Brooke and grounded her from the TV today and tomorrow. She was not happy, but we need to nip this in the bud. She is only 4 1/2, we do not want her thinking this behavior is okay.

Cumberland Falls Part 3

Boy did I take a lot of pictures on this trip. I have tried to narrow them pictures down and post in increment, but it will still be picture heavy. So be prepared.

 

We drove 41 miles to Cumberland Gap. There was an area that the kids could dress up as pioneer girls or boys. Melodye didn't want to do it, but Brooke did. Brooke decided to be a pioneer boy. Go figure. She was not happy at this point because another family had joined us at this point. But she still is cute.

Of course, I had to include a close up picture of such a cute girl.

 

We then drove up to the Pinnacle and hiked a couple of short trails. Melodye was so excited because we were in a cloud.

 

Everyone walked right on by and didn't realize that they had gone into another state. So I took a picture of my big feet standing in Kentucky and Virginia.

 

When we cam back through the girls had fun being in two states at the same time.

Then we were bad parents and left a girl in each state. Sorry I had to make that joke. It was either that or make the joke that they were grounded to different states.

 

I took a picture of Melodye and me, but it wasn't the greatest because we were cold from being in the cloud.

 

This is where we stayed at the Dupont Lodge. The lodge was very conveniently located to the falls. The staff there were amazingly friendly. I would definitely recommend staying there if you are going to Cumberland Falls. I don't know if I would call the Wi-fi high speed, but it worked for what we needed. Tommy says I am just spoiled and that I used to be happy with that speed.

 

We then went back to the falls and explored a little and took some pictures.

 

These are taken on some rocks before the falls. Let me tell you it was hard to get a good picture of Brooke.

 

While I took pictures Tommy skipped rocks and the girls watched.

 

We made Melodye take pictures of us. She wasn't happy to do that because she had better things to do. But she didn't do too bad.

 

Tommy and the girls at the falls again with Brooke being crazy.

 

Me with the girls. As you can tell Brooke still did not want any pictures taken of her.

 

We hiked further and found an area that the girls played in the sand and tried to make sand castles.

 

I kept trying for a cute sister picture, but this was the closest I go. Although I should be happy with it because it does show their personalities.

 

I then wrote our name and 2009 in the sand. My family thought I was crazy when I told them to put their feet in the shot, but I like how it turned out.

 

We tried to see the moonbow, but gave up at about 11:45pm. The girls were tired and it was COLD. We did see the start of the arch, but there wasn't any color to the arch yet. The moon hadn't risen high enough yet. Plus I don't know if I would even have gotten any pictures since I don't know the controls on my camera. I really should learn that someday.

So this was Saturday and we still have Sunday to show. I forgot after we left Cumberland Gap, we went for a drive and ended up in Tennessee and Virginia. The landscape was just gorgeous in Virginia, so green. I wish we could have stopped to take pictures, but not a safe thing to do on the side of a highway or byway as I saw a sign say. Maybe some other time.