A Scrap of Life

As part of a ScrapAddict challenge, I will be posting regular blog entries about this years holiday season. Even if you don't visit ScrapAddict, feel free to play along and jot down your families memories from this festive season.

Just for fun some of the girls at ScrapAddict have been sharing the pages from their "Colorstrology" book. Something to do with your birth date and how that corresponds to a color and description. Mine is below. I will say that it's a pretty right on description. And it's interesting to note that I'm "compatible" with March 19, however Brian was born on March 20. LOL. The color itself might well fit my attitude, but not my coloring. With red hair and pale skin I look HORRID in yellow -- even if it is disguised as "daffodil".

Well, good karma caught up with us yesterday. If you remember, several weeks ago we found an envelope of money in our local grocery store. I turned it into the customer service desk hoping that they owner would come looking for it. They told us to check back on it so yesterday I went and inquired about it. It was still unclaimed thus, as the finders, we are now entitled to it. So yesterday we walked out of the store with much more money than we walked in with. It was a great bonus to be able to add that money to our vacation fund and to know that we did all we could to return it to it's owner. It was also a great lesson for the kids, who learned a lot about doing the right thing and being good people. Yesterday afternoon we went Christmas tree hunting. We'd seen the weather forecast and knew that the rest of the week would be rainy so we thought we'd sneak out and get a tree before the rains hit. We went to the tree farm right after picking the kids up off the bus. We ha...

Wow, has the phone been ringing off the hook here. No, it's not for me, it's all part of the newest shift in our lives ... kids phone calls. This is something that just got started last week and it has taken over like wildfire. Both Chase and Tristan have had friends calling them. Phone calls center mostly over strategy for their favorite video games. Tristan and his friend Noah are on the phone nonstop to talk about "Animal Crossing". They'll be on the phone for 1/2 an hour and will hang up, only to call back about 15 minutes later. This continues all day long! Chase and his friend Nick can talk forever about "Spectrobes". Sometimes they're on for an hour straight. This newest development is going to take some adjustment for me. It used to be that I jumped up and answered the phone every time it rang. Not so anymore. Tristan usually beats me to it and smugly says "It's Noah" when he reads the caller ID. The kids are growing an...

We took the kids to see "Mr. Magoriums Wonder Emporium" yesterday and this line just jumped right out at us: Life is an occasion - rise to it.

... that felt good. 3 months worth of photos finally edited and sent to Costco to be printed. What a weight lifted there. I usually don't let photos back up on me so this has been a thorn in my side for some time. I just feel the need to keep the photos edited and printed in a timely fashion and with all going on I just hadn't been able to do so. I did have a great time looking at all the photos while editing. There were some absolutely adorable ones. Like this one from one of our summer beach trips (Tucker LOVES the ocean!): And this one of the kids on the last weekend of summer: I love this "mirror" photo of my Dad when we were out on his boat: And the kids pumpkins from Halloween: This one my neighbor took of our kids on Halloween is great: So is this one of Carissa's soccer team: All in all, a great group of pictures and I'm so glad they'll be in my scrapbooks soon. :)

I had the chance to go on a ride-along with the local police department this weekend. I was originally scheduled to ride with one of the other officers but at the last minute I got assigned to ride with Brian instead. It was a bit of a surprise, as they do not customarily get to have riders during their probationary period (the first 18mos.). But I was happy to get to spend the evening riding with him, especially since I hadn't seen him all day as I'd been at Disney on Ice with Carissa. Anyways, I rode with him from 8pm until 4am ... quite a bit longer than I expected to ride. At first he just pulled over people who had headlights out (surprisingly, a LOT of people drive around with one headlight out), those who didn't stop at a stop sign or other minor traffic violations. But later on in the evening (or morning, as it was after midnight) he headed to the only place in town with traffic this late - the highway. We rode the highway for a while and he pulled over a few...

and left a huge pile of candy in it's wake. Ugh. What am I going to do with it all?!? And no, don't say eat it. I REALLY don't need it! Halloween was fun but very LONG this year. It started a week before Halloween with the scout Halloween party. Then there was the party at Abel & Nia's house last weekend. We topped it all off with Halloween and trick-or-treating here on home. Whew, am I glad it's over! This years costumes were a change of pace. Chase originally wanted to be the Egyptian God Seth, who is depicted by a person in a robe with a horse/dog head. I thought it was such a neat idea and I would have LOVED to make this work for Chase. But alas, no dog or horse head to be found and I didn't know how to make one so we went with his plan B, a skeleton. We bought the shirt at Old Navy and then I cut and sewed fleece "bones" to a pair of sweats. It took quite a while but it was worth it... he really liked it and I didn't spend an arm and a leg...