Be warned, foot photos ahead

So we went for a little drive this afternoon. I wanted to go to SLC to pick up some Old Navy T’s for the July 4th photos. This is only weird if you are not a scrap booker. We had a slow dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack (I won’t be going there again). Then I stopped at Roberts crafts and only bought two packages of posts for a mini-album class I am going to be teaching.
Since we had nothing special going on we decided to take the long way home and ended up in Wendover Nevada/Utah where we bought an over priced bag of M&M’s three cups of soda pop and some headache medicine and drove home. We ended up on the road for seven hours.
I’ve been to Wendover once before, when my husband was offered a teaching job there five years ago. We went, we saw, we decided thanks but no thanks on the job and returned to our home. At that time it was in southern Utah. The next day DH drove back to interview for his current job ~ still in Utah’s west desert but much closer to civilization. We moved less than a month later.
Wendover has not really improved much in the past five years. My 11-year old DS was pretty happy when we told him we had been offered a chance to live there when he was in first grade and turned it down. He didn’t like the town at all.
But the salt flats are always interesting, for the first few minutes of the drive. I wanted to stop and take pictures at the “tree of life” sculpture in the middle of the flats, but there was no place to stop. Darn our law-abiding personalities, anyway.
We did, however, stop at an official rest stop and take some pictures. We also drove out to the Bonneville raceway ~ but there wasn’t much to see.
So now I am home and grateful once again for a choice we made five years ago. It actually was a somewhat difficult decision, because we did not have a job at the time. But it has turned out for the best.

Lookit!

I've been working with the ScrappinTrends design team to put together an on-line magazine. I did an e-mail interview, a first for me, and contributed three layouts for the pilot issue. If you want to see it, click here http://www.scrappintrends-store.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/julyezine.pdf (whoops, forget the link) (or maybe you have to copy it and paste it in the address line at the top of the page, I'm not sure which.)
I just picked up a new set of glasses, and put them on for an instant headache. I hope I get used to them soon, I'm planning to be on the road for vacation before long and I don't want to travel with a constant case of eye strain.

Wyoming cousins

My sister-in-law came for a visit yesterday so she could take my mother back home. I love my sister-in-law. Really, I do.
While they were here my children played with the cousins.
The oldest girl headed for the tree in the back yard the second she walked in the house. The other children played with sticks, while the youngest boy tried to figure out how to make our swing work. It took him awhile, and it was seriously funny to watch. But he eventually got the hang of it.

My brother has three boys and one girl. I have two boys, so the yard was filled with little male bodies. They are active little creatures.

The oldest boy is 6’2 inches and still growing. I think he is 13 years old. I lured him into posing for photographs by offering him chocolate, and then I told him he could go make himself a sandwich. I think he ate three of them before the two hour visit was over. It takes a lot of food to stoke the fire of a teenaged boy growing a foot a year.
My mother saw the children climbing in the tree and set up a photo shoot for me. Alas, the light was a little funky and it didn’t work well. (hehehehehe) I found something Mom isn’t good at, who knew?
It was a fun, but short visit. They will be coming to say with us for a longer visit in July. I hope to get some better photographs then. We will probably take them to see an Air Force museum in the area.
After Mom left I slept for something like four hours ~ it was wonderful. Then we grabbed some “fix-your-ownie” for supper, went shopping to buy stuff for L to put in a tin foil dinner for a Boy Scout event tonight and rented “The Pink Panther.” It was so much fun to just veg and laugh and eat M&Ms together as a family.This was Mom's vision of a nice photograph.

After messing around in photoshop, I was able to come up with this image, it's a little bet better, but the shadows are still playing havoc with the faces.

More grandma photos

We managed to get everyone ready for church yesterday. When I walked into the living room I saw my mother and sons sitting on the sofa together. All of them were wearing white shirts (or blouses) and black pants (or skirts), except me. I was wearing a red top and a denim skirt. I always was a rebel.
Anyway, the light was beautiful and they were all clean and dressed up so I had to take a few shots. I think this is the best of the lot. They look really good converted to black and white, too.
I send a few of them to Wal-Mart and will be picking them up and sending them (thoe photos, not the kids) home with mom today.

(un)Flattering photo of SLC sis

I had a house full of folks here for a cookout last night.
The guest list included my DH ~ the cook
My two DSs
My SLC sister
Her husband
Her son
two of her four daughters
A nephew on her husband's side
A golden retriever puppy
My oldest Sister
Her husband
and my mother.
While we were visiting and I was taking photos, my SLC sister said she has been reading my blog, but not commenting. She also said she wanted to have a blog about her one day. So here it is, sis, you are the subject of the blog.

She has four daughters and one son. (The son is the oldest) This is her third daughter.
Here is the youngest daughter. She just graduated from high school and will be attending college next year. Her eyes are not really quite that blue, but they are very pretty,
The puppy was a little sweetheart. Our cat was not amused.

To my beloved family members. Need I say more?
Perhaps I do. The vacuum just started upstairs. No one is home but me and she and I am on the computer.

My Mother

She's in the car headed my direction even as I type. How can such a sweet little woman cause such frantic cleaning in my house.
Bathrooms, check.
A's bedroom which doubles as a guest room, check.
Kitchen. Oh no! I still need to mop the floor, hang the laundry and put away the mess that is my scraproom.
Plus I have a story to write for tomorrow.
Breathe.
Breathe.
It's going to be okay.

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a bride??

My family and I attended a rather unusual wedding last night. The groom wore a bow tie, the bride wore white. They both wore parachutes. The couple was married while skydiving in the skies over Utah’s West Desert. They said their vows on the airplane, took the leap of faith and exchanged rings and kisses mid-air during the free-fall.
Usually when I cover stories I labor in obscurity, but this event had all kinds of news media in attendance. Including myself there were three print journalists there as well as four local television broadcast teams.
But the impetuous for the event was the wedding was being filmed by The Learning Channel (TLC) for their “Wild Weddings” program.
My oldest son was fascinated not only by the airplanes and skydivers, but also by the television crews. He was so excited to see the show on the news later that evening.
The youngest child was just interested and slightly alarmed by the aircrafts. When I asked him if he wanted to stay up and watch the program air on TV he said, “No, I’ve already seen it.” Clearly he is not a junior journalist.
This morning I filed the story and prepared to go to the newspaper office to write captions for the photos and pick up my camera card. The staff photographer was delayed because of an automobile crash, so I took the photos and gave him my camera card when he finally made it to the wedding.
While I was in the shower DH knocked on the door and told me my mother was on the phone. After toweling off and dressing, I asked her what was up and she basically told me her husband was driving her crazy and could she please come to my house for a few days to get away from him.
So at some point this week, Wyo. Sister and my mother will be arriving to visit. Wyo. Sister won’t stick around, but Mom doesn’t drive long distances. Neither one of them have seen my house since I moved into it in 2002. I have a lot of cleaning to do.
I expect the next three weeks will be crazy ones, with Mom’s visit, my work, DH and DSs being home from school and a family vacation on the horizon. I don’t suppose I’ll get a whole lot of scrapping done.

Yep, I'm a braggin'

I've been sitting on this news for days, but finally the announcement has been made at ScrappinTrends, so I can toot my own horn and let you all know I took second place in the ScrappinTrends Friendship book contest held in conjunction with Crate Paper.
http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/scrappintrends/vpost?id=1193558
I was up against some awesome albums. As the second place winner I get three of the five current lines of Crate Paper and $20 to spend at the ScrappinTrends store.
But in addition to this, I will also be teaching a class on the Ya-Ya friendship book at my LSS ScrappilyEver After in the middle of July.
It was a little touch and go for a while, as I couldn't find any of the metal recipe file boxes necessary to teach the class. But my DH (who happens to be one of 10 children) has a brother who works at a retail Ben Franklin Store in St. George. The brother was able to order more than a dozen of the boxes. So now I am in business.
I have had a huge response to the class. We put the box out for display with a sign up sheet a little more than a week ago and more than 14 people have signed up to take the class. It looks like I'll be teaching more than one class.
Teaching is one of the more reliable ways of making money as a scrapper, so I am very excited to get my toe in the door.

Game face

I am probably the only one on the planet (with the possible exception of DH and the DS pictured) who find these photos fascinating. I just can't believe it took us so long to figure out A's niche in life. The boy loves to catch and throw. So far this summer has been one of endless delight for him now that he has a mitt and a few balls to toss around.
The other day I spotted him in the back yard tossing a ball on the roof, waiting for it to fall back down and catching it. He did this over, and over, and over again.
The three photos on the top of this entry are a series of him playing catch with Daddy. Don't you love the technique. In spite of the goofy moves, he is remarkably good at the catching throwing business. We need to get him enrolled asap with a ball team.
Jake, buddy! We need you to come visit and give my son a few pointers!

Personal note to MOA. I know you have medical issues going on at your house, but we are planning a trip to Vernal at the end of the month. Any chance you, G and A can meet us there?
E-mail me!

Play day!

DH made a run to the border (of Utah) to visit with his brother, who ended up having emergency surgery for a hernia Wednesday. So, I've become a scrapslug. I've been working my fool behind off during the first week of summer vacation. but I have taken the opportunity of D being out of town to just sit around and scrap all day.
The first page I did was a challenge posted on ScrappinTrends.com. One of the DT members posted this (and other) photos of Big Bob and we eventually ended up challenging each other to scrap the page using Big Bob's unique style.
The second page is my niece, Karen. Isn't she pretty!? I thik I was 14 when she was born, so she kind of half niece half sister. I love the daylights out of her and her little sister, Lisa. They have grown up to be amazing women. I could have put all kinds of journaling on this page, but I didn't I just played with my papers.
Hope you like it Karen and MOK.

The Ya-Ya Code

Yesterday and today I spent some time with Ya-Ya Quick Rabbit helping her do an iron on photo quilt block for a church project. I did an iron on block for my family, so Quick Rabbit asked me to help her.
Actually, it has kind of snowballed.
After I turned in my block the woman in charge of the project called and asked me to take a picture of our Bishopric (Three men who preside over a Mormon congregation or Ward). Since we are making the quilt for the Bishop, and we are trying to surprise him with the gift, it was a little tricky to call everyone, and say “hey, we need you all together dressed in your Sunday best for a photograph, and no, I’m not going to tell you why we’re doing it.”
But they were good sports, and I managed to get the Bishopric block and Quick Rabbit’s block finished last night. Then Quick Rabbit enlisted Ya-Ya Sitting Duck and asked her to contribute her family photos. I still have that one to scan in and iron onto a quilt block.
Ya_Ya Running Mascara is also doing a photo block. It’s kind of our Ya-Ya version of The Da Vinci Code in quilt form.
I don’t believe it will be a major motion picture.
But while Quick Rabbit was visiting today, her little guy kept my bigger guys busy herding him around. Kade is crawling, and boy does he cover ground quick. He stopped for a minute to watch the boys play catch on the lawn and I tried to catch a few photos.
As you can see, I had mixed results. But I love the photo of him reaching for the camera because you can see his two little teeth. I never did get good photos of my babies first teeth.

I thought I was paper, or brads

I took a quiz to find out what scrapping supply I am. Here is the result.
I'm so confused

You are Fibers! Fun and crazy at times. You are a warm fuzzy kind of person. You run around getting things done but still find time for fun! You have so many diverse interests that it is often hard to pin you down to any one thing. People love your friendly attitude and carefree ways. You often brighten other people's days. But Fibers Beware - Sometimes people don't take you seriously because of your happy-go-lucky ways. Sometimes you find yourself feeling left out from decision making that could directly affect you. Even though you like to be happy and cheerful, make sure others know that you can also be serious and in tune with reality.

Chairs are done

I finished the chair! Yes, it is still uncomfortable and heavy, but I like the way it looks now. The darn thing took me several days to complete. Now I have to finish at least one more to make a set. I have a total of four chairs. Two look like this one and two are slightly different.
So my question is, what do you think a set of two such chairs would be worth on the botique market? I'm thinking about selling them and buying something comfortable for my deck. hehehehe.