The Tulip Festival

Brian's parents have lived in Woodburn for 10 years now. And in each of those 10 years we have seen the signs for the yearly tulip festival. Yet we'd never visited - until now.

Let me tell you, that place was a photographers heaven. Acres and acres of beatiful tulips just waiting to be photographed. And it didn't hurt that mother nature did us a favor and brought out the beautiful, clear blue spring sky for us. It was all just perfect.

The kids liked the tulips and all but could have left within about 15 minutes. I, no the other hand, stayed an hour and a half but could have stayed 1 or 2 hours more just to have fun playing with my new camera and seeing what sort of shots I could get. But in the 90 minutes I was there I was able to capture 86 images, most of which were fairly good. Here's a few of my faves.






Now I also tryed to get the kids interested by having them choose their favorite tulip to be photographed with. Carissa chose the beautiful pink ones and Tristan chose some beautiful red and yellow tulips. But it was Chase's peach and yellow tulips that really caught my eye.





Every time we'd go near the ordering counter (you can order bulbs of your favorite tulips and have them delivered to you in the fall) Chase would yell "Ad Rem" (the name of his favorite tulip) in an effort to try to get me to buy some. Though I didn't buy any, I REALLY REALLY wanted too. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a gardener so I guess I'll just have to stick to visiting the tulip festival again next year to get my flower fix. :)

My precious pig ...

Just a quick post to shout out congrats to Chase. Today he landed the role of Wilbur in his classroom production of Charlotte's Web. Way to go buddy! You rock!

Now the real fun begins. 16 pages worth of dialogue to memorize before May 1. FUN!!!

I'm Employed!

This week has been such a blur for me. The kids had so many activities this week both in and out of school - sports and scouts and music programs and "living museum" showings ... it's been utter chaos.

In the midst of it all comes a phone call from Theresa at Tinkertime Preschool. She's Carissa's old preschool teacher and she's looking for a teachers aid for the remainder of the school year and she wants to know if I'm interested. Ummmm ... YES!!!

So all of the sudden I find myself employed. EMPLOYED. ME!

I haven't had a real job in nearly 11 years. But this is a real job - a job that pays. A job that I can have and enjoy. A job that doesn't require nights, weekends or summers. A job that ensures that we carry through on the decision Brian & I made 11 years ago to always be there for our children and to not put them in daycare. A job that ensures that my children will not be latch-key kids, coming home from school alone and doing who knows what.

Now, I'm not saying that this is a forever job. Things could change on her end of my end sometime in the future. But right now it's perfect.

I'm helping in Ms. Adrien's 3 year old class. The kids are wonderful (yup, worked my first day already), the facility is great and the teachers and aids are such wonderful, warm people. I can see myself being very happy here.

So there you have it -- my big news. I'm now certifiably employed and loving another addition to the chaos.

Happy Birthday Brian!

33 years and counting. You are one amazing man and I'm so blessed to have you in my life. Happy Birthday! I love you.

Cropping the week away ...

So, you should all know by now that I LOVE scrapbooking. And my favorite scrapbook site ever is ScrapAddict. We have such an awesome community there, wonderful kits, all the newest products and tons of inspiration. Oh, and it's got the absolutel BEST designers every (ok, maybe I'm a little bias ... LOL). It's truly an amazing site!

This winter we at SA threw a cyber-crop. I spent all my free time last week scrapping.

There were tons of great challenges to get us inspired and motivated. I ended up completing 15 layouts, which is more than I usually do in a month. And I totally LOVED the layouts that I did.

I won 1st place in the Ultimate Scrappers Challenge and am now enjoying the gift certificate I earned from that (OK, I guess I enjoyed it is more precise since I just bought some awesome new ScrapAddict kits with it ...).

Anyways, just wanted to send my thanks out to all my friends from ScrapAddict who helped inspire me and played along.

Here are some of my favorite layouts I completed during the crop. Enjoy. :)

Science Fair

Today was Chase's science fair. Of course, we were a bit late in getting the project done, but it was done by bedtime last night. Even let Chase use my Cricut to cut letters for his display.

Here's the proud scientist with his experiment, "Are rats more active during the day or at night?"



I must say that he did a great job. He wrote everything out, compiled his data, even glued all those little die cut letters on. Haven't got his grade yet but I think he deserves an A! ;)

Surviving

1 day down, 108 left to go. Not sure if that number reassures me or not. 108 days is a long time. It seems like it's been a while since he left too, not just one day. But we're plogging on here.

The first day and night without Dad have been a bit difficult for the kids. As soon as he left we all sat and hugged and cried just a bit. Then we picked ourselves up and got on with it.

Of course, Carissa mentioned ever 7 minutes that she missed Daddy. Then she'd give me her sad face to go along with it. And today Tristan came to me and said he couldn't sleep because he was sad about Dad being gone.

He's not the only one who couldn't sleep either. Carissa was up and down all night long, which is quite unlike her. She would cry in her sleep every so often and when I'd go in to see what the problem was she would say (in her sleepy, almost incomprehensive voice) that she was sad about Dad being gone. That went on for several hours and when I went to bed I let her crawl in with me. That seemed to help her some but it didn't help me, as she stuck her feet in my back or keep squishing me over to the side of the bed. I know, I know. How can a little 6yr old, 35lb slip of a girl squish big ole me clear over to the side of the bed? I don't know how, but she does it. Sheesh. I carried her, to her bed at 2am and she slept there for most of the rest of the night.

We had plenty to keep us busy today though. I helped out in Carissa's class for her 100 day celebration (100th day of school for her). Then I came home and did several hours of my own homework. Carissa got home and when I went to make lunch for her I realized that I didn't have any bread. Made due with soup instead but had to add a trip to the store to my list of plans for today.

It was a beautiful day so I took the kids to the park where they played on the swings and slides and such.



Came home and got Chase to work on his science project display, which is due Wednesday. Eek.

Had dinner then a few minutes of basketball in the remainder of the sunlight before heading to scouts. Treated them to Dairy Queen on the way home, where they received a much needed call from Dad. They each talked to him for a few minutes then brushed their teeth and headed for quiet reading time. I chatted with Brian a bit after that then went to read Carissa her book. This is what I found ...




Little girl just couldn't keep her eyes open any longer. She'd talked to Daddy and now she could sleep.

The Monday Shirt

One Monday morning several weeks ago Tristan came up to me and said that he was wearing his Monday shirt to school. "Your Monday shirt?" I asked. "Yes. This is the shirt I wear every Monday" he said. So I've been watching him since then to see if it's true - and it is. Every Monday he finds this shirt and a pair of jeans and wears them to school. Why this shirt? I guess because it's one of his faves. He looks great in brown, loves the bright green and it has his favorite cartoon character, Sonic, on it too. Why he chose to wear it every Monday, I have no idea. He could wear it every day it's clean for all I care, but he insists that he wears it Monday. So it has gained a special status in Tristan's life. The Monday shirt ... isn't childhood wonderful?!?

I'm in a mood

I know I should update today and let you know how all is going but I don't have much wonderfulness to share today. So I'm going to leave you with some scrapbooking pages and projects instead and I'll update you after Brian has gone. Until then we're going to enjoy our last bits of family time together. Take care all.