hi!

so! i've been a terrible blogger (but not as bad as miley!). :) becca tagged me a week ago and i still haven't done the challenge. ack! these days there is a constant battle for computer time. we're all hooked on webkinz still, and now we've also added poptropica to our favorites.



wilson would play on the computer all day if we let him. thankfully now the weather is great and we can drag him away from it to play outside. he cracks us up non-stop. he's developed a southern draw, which is funny because most of our friends are not from here. his new favorite phrases are: "that's rude!"; "what am i talking about?"; "i have no idea!"; "what's that all about?"; "i just LOVE that!"; and the one that we're not sure if we love or hate: "oh no you di-n't". lol! he sings the alphabet song non-stop. we are still doing our singing before bed too. we have to sing "lullaby," "twinkle star," "row your boat," "abcd," and "mcdonalds" ("old mcdonald") every night. during old mcdonald i have to stop after singing "on that farm he had a" and he shouts the animal (usually he changes it 3 times first). and at the end he sings an extra oooooooo. if we hear someone else sing "mcdonalds" he gets kind of mad when they don't sing the oooo at the end too. he's quite the character! unless we're at the computer i don't get to sit down for a minute during the day. we have great fun, though!



the girls are both busy and enjoying school. they've both been on field trips and had special activities and parties almost every week since Christmas. anna has had a lot of homework to do too, including an 8 page report on george washington. in second grade! fortunately the report could have a lot of pictures, but unfortunately they all had to be hand drawn. of course at first we thought we had to write 7 full pages for the report, so we took way more notes than we needed to. but in the end it was fine. anna did a wonderful job on the paper and the presentation and got 100% on both. now we just have to practice our 5 minute 100 question addition and subraction test and we'll be home free. i hope, anyway! anna's also decided to take up tennis. so far kurt and i have been the only ones to give her instruction. i'm a little nervous that i'm not teaching her good technique, but we'll see if she's serious about it before we invest too much. she changes her mind a lot these days! (i guess she always has.)



last week the whole school participated in a book character parade. ella went as "fancy nancy" and anna went as annie from "the magic treehouse." this is what ella wore. we picked out a boa and jewelry to wear too, but i think she was too shy to wear them. i didn't get very good pictures of anna in her costume. i'll have to edit the ones i did get and post them later. since i can't seem to get to the computer i've been doing a terrible job of keeping up with picture editing. i have some great ones from Christmas that i've barely looked at yet (sorry tall! i'll get the noah pictures done as soon as i can!). ella is doing great - she is really improving her reading and she's becoming much more outgoing. she's growing up way too fast!



i haven't had much time to scrap as much as i'd like to lately either. i seem to only make time for it if i'm making presents or have an assignment. i made these towels for the bagel girls for Christmas this year and never posted them. i had so much fun making them! i used digital scrapbooking kits from all different sites to make the designs. then i printed the designs on iron on t-shirt paper and ironed them onto tea towels. sounds simple, right?! it really is! i had to make it hard, though, of course. i took forever to pick kits and design the towels. so long so that i didn't get them printed before we left for iowa. i thought i would be fine - i could just print them there. well, my mom's older printer didn't print them well, i broke my brother's computer so i couldn't use his, and no print shops were able to print on the special paper. so they were mailed from alabama back to omaha weeks later. i still feel terrible about that!



kelly purkey asked doris and i to do layouts for her awesome sketch class at two peas. i used the princess pink kit by kate teague from two peas. what a perfect kit for ella!

i don't think too much else is going on around here. we're just anxiously awaiting orders or some kind of paper work that tells us where we're going this summer. we're pretty sure it will be washington, d.c., but you never know for sure until your papers are in hand (and even then it can change).

ok - i need to get to bed! mimi and papa are flying down tomorrow for spring break! we're so excited! before i go, though, i wanted to give a little information about my blog banner for anyone interested in a little digi lesson. first the photo editing. i stumbled across this amazing action called "sunshine in your hand" from the phaunt actions website. if you have photoshop or photoshop elements, even if you've never used actions before you should give it try! the hardest part about using it is getting it installed, but they include a video that helps out with that. the best part is that it's free! :) i also use mindy bush's actions on almost all of my photos. my favorite right now is her "happy color" action in her "remarkable" set, but i've used different ones from all of her sets too. i love that they are easy to customize.

the template i used for my banner was also free from little dreamer designs. you do have to register to get to the freebies area, but of course registration is free too. the template contains all of the rectangle shapes and shadows. i just dragged the layers of my digital papers to the layer just above the rectangle i wanted to use, then used a clipping mask to "crop" the paper. i will admit that long ago when i first heard the term "clipping mask" i was really intimidated. until i learned that you just drag your paper layer so it's just above the layer of the shape you are wanting (the rectangles here), then hold down the control key on your keyboard and the g key. the papers i used are from the "tiny town candy set" by carina gardner from two peas. i made the buttons myself.

ok! now i really need to go to bed! hopefully next time i blog i won't wait 3 months and have so much to say! :) goodnight!