Totes

I spent the afternoon making a couple tote bags for the kids. The puppy one is for Adam and the kitties are for Megan. This will be like our library book, going on a trip, anything bag. The idea is, I won't have to carry around the huge diaper bag anymore and depending on where we are going, just through some snacks, cups and a diaper in there.

The bag actually folds up into the pocket to form a tiny bundle. I'm going to make a larger one for myself.

Family and kids' albums

I have spent many, many hours trying to figure out how to "scrapbook" our family memories and still create albums for each kid. I haven't come up with a perfect solution, but I believe I am close to having a prototype. Each kid will have a "baby" book that details their first year of life. From that point, each child will have a scrapbook/photo album that includes primarily pictures of them either by themselves or participating in family activities. Most of these pictures will be displayed photo album style, but will include journaling and some elements of scrapbooking. I do plan to do 4-6 regular pages per child that highlights the essence of that particular age, i.e. for Megan's 2 year old section, I plan to do a layout about dressing up, story hour, new traditions we started, etc. For our family album, I will stick to mainly family activities and do mostly scrapbook pages.

Well, the concept seems simple on one hand, but involved sorting a lot of pictures. I I decided to start with the year Megan was one to see if my idea works.

This page is for our "Family" album:



I then created a page for Megan's book. I repeated the title, used the same paper line and personalized the journaling to Megan. Because I had already done all the hard stuff (picking papers, embellishments), this page came together in about 20 minutes:

Here is another page from the family book:

For Megan's book:

Yet another entry on scrapbooking...

I finished this page today and it marks the completion of Megan's one year album. (This did not scan well due to the flowers being too bumpy to lay flat on the scanner.) I started it probably 2 years ago and after picking out the paper couldn't figure anything else. I feel like I've gotten into a major scrapbook rhythm. I've been working faster and using a variety of materials. My pages are tending to be a little more diverse than in the past. It is difficult to describe, but it is kind of exciting to me. I think the main reason is because we turned off our tv for the summer. We have Dish Network and they let us put it on "vacation mode." We kept everything we had recorded so Megan still has her shows recorded and we could watch re-runs when we wanted (and most tv shows are on the internet now too). In the past, I used the tv for "background" noise and have now realized how much of a distraction it was. I've also discovered "Adventures in Odyssey" this summer and have been listening to it while I work. Chad and I have both enjoyed not having tv so much we are seriously debating turning it off permanently. Our main hang up is whether we can get football games on the computer and if we can hook a cable from the computer to the tv to view it.

This past year has been a little crazy. Adam is a great baby, but there were some serious adjustments. I think getting back in the scrapbook groove has helped me to feel like I've gotten a bit of myself back.

Okay enough rambling. If you want to see all of Megan's album in one spot, visit here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=208774&id=591839532&l=3d13731907

The Village People

Megan received the "Village People" set for her first birthday and like all toys, it has gone through cycles of being a favorite to being ignored. I thought about putting it away for a while recently and I've been very glad I didn't. Both kids have been playing with it a ton. Adam likes to put the people into and out of the cars (and any other container he deems suitable) whereas Megan's play is quite a bit more complex.

This is an example of what I overheard the other day:

"Oh, Katy, do you smell that?" said Donna. *she actually said, "said Donna" and "said Katy" etc.

"Yes, I do," said Katy.

"Lynn, come here, do you smell that?" said Donna.

"Yes," said Lynn.

"It's your favorite breakfast," said Donna.

And so it goes on. She was pretending that the people were my family and it was hilarious to realize what her perspective of life is. Later on, she invited me to play because she didn't know "how Suzy should act." I told her I'd play but refrained from telling her that my sister would probably have picked on me and bossed me around. We also had a major incident last night because the boy with brown hair who is Uncle Tim could not be found. Don't worry, she is equal opportunity and the boy also plays Daddy. She has even included Chad's cousins, Rebekah and Rachel, his Uncle Dave and Chad's 4-H animals, Bam Bam and Wild Thing into her village.

The two of them were playing quite nicely together which is what inspired to picture although it appears that Megan may have been hoarding all the people to keep Adam from taking them from her.

Delgrosso's

A very nice lady who works with Chad gave us free passes to a semi-local amusement park. We went a few Saturdays ago and had a great time.

Here is my new favorite picture (although it was the last one taken that day).

The park is fairly small in comparison to say, Cedar Point, but it was perfect for our foursome. They have a cluster of 8-10 kiddie rides and Megan rode almost all of them. Adam rode quite a few also. You may have to zoom in to see it, but Megan's face while she "drove" cracked me up. She had this serene, just going about my business look that was trying to mask the excitement of driving.

I had my doubts about whether Adam was ready to ride anything, I mean, he doesn't exactly like to sit, but I was wrong. He LOVED to ride the rides and was spinning the wheel and everything.

On a side note, he is really growing up. He's walking great, but there have been lots of other little changes. Things are starting to click for him. If he finds my phone, he holds it up to his ear (well, really it's behind, but the idea is there). He loves to put objects inside other objects. I was loading the dishwasher the other day and realized he was taking forks and spoons and putting them inside the watering pot I keep in our mudroom. He also likes to find the largest or most cumbersome object in the room and carry it everywhere with him. He leaves a little trail wherever he goes. I picked up the house while he was napping and within about 15 minutes of him waking up I had several trails. He picked up the baby doll potty in Megan's room, carried it to his room where it was replaced for a more interesting toy, which I found downstairs by the open cabinet door. I then found a bowl and a spoon on the stairwell where he left it when it just got to be too much of a hassle to get all the way upstairs. This is constant. He always has something in his hands. Oh, and at 14 months, he's the oldest kid in the world to have NO TEETH.

Megan insisted on funnel cake although neither Chad nor I suggested it.

So, I guess if I can get Adam's first birthday scrapbooked before he's 3 then he and Megan will be even. We won't mention that the rest of her album was complete by her first birthday...I started this page at Thanksgiving 2008, which is basically the last time I scrapbooked before this past month. I was feeling a loss of momentum with Adam's book, so I decided to take a look at the works in progress pages. I knocked off 5 others too, they aren't stellar, but I'll call them done. I realize there is a reason I probably got them half finished and then quit working on them.

21 Pages