A Scrap of Life

You know, somedays life is smooth sailing. Everything melds. Everything goes easily. Everything just works. Then there are other days that are a bit more rocky. Things go wrong. Things are frustrating. Things just don't seem to go right. I must say that lately it's been more smooth sailing than anything. I've been feeling the joy of how harmonious life can be. I am loving the ages the kids are at, loving how they still like to be with us but are independant enough to do things without our constant supervision. I've been feeling fairly confident in the kids new school and happy with the results of their 2nd report cards (YEAH for Chase, who got straight A's, and kudos to Tristan and Carissa who got great marks but who don't get letter grades yet). I've been loving the joys of being married to Brian. Life is good in so many ways. Even my migraines have slowed down immensily. Everything has been fairly smooth and I love that! Then there are days li...

It's spring break. YEAH!!! I LOVE not having a schedule, not having to get up early, not having to go anywhere. It's wonderful! Of course, the bad side of this is that the kids aren't thinking it's so wonderful, because Mom insisted on spring cleaning during spring break. They've spend the better part of the last two days in their room, first throwing everything on the floor, then moving furniture and cleaning it off, then reorganizing everything. Of course, there is the inevitable evil mommy moments where I make them throw away the piles of paper they have everywhere or make them filter through their stuffed animals and put some in the garage sale pile. But overall it went fairly well and I'm happy to say that their rooms are now MUCH imporved. We threw away at least a full garbage sack of garbage from each kids room and 1-2 full garbage bags of garage sale stuff. Brian and I even went through and spring cleaned our bedroom. It is so lifting to feel so clean an...

Oh yes, the vacation is over but all the Disney designing is still yet to be done. I've started my scrapbook albums (yes, there are 2 of them) from our WDW trip but decided to take a little break from that to start on an idea I had before I left. You see, when we are at Disney parks the kids like to do pin trading. This means that they have a lanyard of pins around their neck and they swap pins with cast member working at the Disney parks. They are all very specific about what they traded for this year. Carissa traded for only "girly" ones, like princesses, Minnie and Tink. Tristan had remarkable restraint and traded only for Stitch pins. Chase went crazy for hidden Mickey pins. In addition to their trading pins they also purchase one pin from each park as a souvenior. The boys now have 3 parks worth of pins - WDW in 2001, Disneyland in 2006 and WDW in 2008. Carissa was just a baby when we went to WDW so she had just two trips worth of pins. Well, I had finally decided to...

Sadly, my Disney posts have come from the end. I've tried to stretch them out as long as I could. But it's been a month since our return from Disneyworld and the trip report has come to an end. Now it's time to update you on what happened since our return. Chase finally had a turn to use his telescope for something really fun. We pulled it out and set it up to watch the lunar eclipse. It really gave us a great view and was lots of fun. Chase crossed over to Boy Scouts. This was a really exciting time for Chase, especially because he got to spend it with his 3 friends who have complete this entire journey, since the age of 6, with him. He has worked 5 1/2 years on attaining the highest award in Cub Scouting, the Arrow of Light. He received that award (check out the golden arrow on his forehead) and then went on to the ritual of crossing to boy scouts. The Order of the Arrow group showed up to do the ceremony, dressed in their version of Native American costumes. The ceremony...

We woke up this morning to the realization that our vacation had come to an end. All we had left to do now was pack up and fly home. So we did just that. We had a late flight but had to be out of the hotel at 10am so we had a quick breakfast and then got to packing. Boy, what a chore that is. Trying to seperate the clean from dirty, trying to pack the souveniors all so very carefully, trying to make sure we remembered every little thing. But by 10am we were ready to go. We checked out and left some bags at the hotel, since we had a late afternoon flight. Since we had time to kill we really discussed what to do with that time. Brian really wanted to see a beach on the East coast, with the tide coming in from the east instead of the west like we're accustom to. So we headed that way. Along the drive I could tell that Brian was starting to worry. He was worried that we wouldn't get there and back in time, that we would miss our flight, that we would stress out about it all. So we ...

Today was our final day at Disneyworld. We had seen all the parks and done nearly all the rides and shows so we planned today as our "best of" day. Last night we all sat down and made lists of our favorite things and today we rode them yet again. It was no surprise that we returned to Hollywood Studios today. For most of us our favorite ride was Rockin' Rollercoaster. So we got up early and made a beeline for DHS. While we were there in time for rope drop, this rope drop was quite a bit different than the first time we were at DHS. This time it was packed and there were cheerleaders everywhere. We talked to a few who said that there was some national competition happening in the Indiana Jones theater, thus the plethora of squealing girls all huddled together in a big group. Of course, they were all heading for RnR too, so we changed our plan just a bit. I rushed ahead of our group, who is slowed down as mom's wheelchair makes it hard to get through a crowd. I got to R...

Last night was a late one ... Spectromagic, Fireworks and leisurely strolls through Main Street means we didn't arrive back at our timeshare until very late. Thankfully, today was our day of reprieve. We got to SLEEP IN! YEAH!!! Instead of our normal 7am wakeup call we were able to sleep as long as our bodies would let us. I will say that they didn't really let us sleep in too awful much, but the little bit of extra sleep really helped. We got up and went out for a nice, filling breakfast before heading off for our 11:30am family photo shoot at the Grand Floridian. This was something I have been eagerly anticipating for months. It's not often that we do family photos and it's usually in some stuffy studio in a nearby Sears store. But this photo shoot was different ... a photographer, beautiful hotel ground to shot on and ideas galore that I had collected from seeing other photo shoots from the same place. We arrived on time and waited just a few moments before meeting o...