lots of random stuff...

2007-06-30-2344-34

2007-07-14-2150-18

this summer has been a whirlwind. i can't believe we only have 2 weeks left! our weekends have been packed with family visits and lots of fun. in the past month we've been to charles city, ankeny, and i got to go to chicago last weekend. i have a lot of fun pictures to post from charles city and ankeny, but i haven't been organized enough to sort through them all yet. so here are just a few, but maybe more to come soon.

we had such a great time in charles city! kurt's sister and her family from washington state came, as well as his two sisters and families from des moines. 7 kids and 7 adults in one house - and 2 teenagers and 2 adults there but staying in another. at least we weren't outnumbered! :) we ate lots of great food - kurt's brother in law is a chef and i'm afraid he gets stuck with all of the cooking when we get together. he let anna help him make creme broulet (sp?). she's still talking about it! charles city is such a quaint, neat little town. they have a HUGE july 4th celebration. we didn't make it to much of that, but we did sparklers. we also chased lightning bugs, played mini golf and did the slip n slide. we also enjoyed a lot of toga's special jungle juice (what did we call that again?). some of us enjoyed it more than others (steve!). :D

we also were in town for ankeny's summerfest. uncle john and aunt tall were there and we had a great time then too! we went to the parade, the carnival, fed the ducks, and enjoyed our iowa / grimes peaches and cream sweet corn. we went to the mall and got to have chick fil a too. we don't have one of those in omaha and the girls really miss it. lol! we also just enjoyed hanging out at mimi and papa's and getting to play.

last weekend i got to go to chicago for the craft and hobby assocation's summer show. kelly brought a few of us it kit girls and we got to help her pick out stuff for her kits. we had SO much fun! thanks SOOO much again, kelly, for taking us with you! the booths were full of gorgeous layouts and projects - so much inspiration there. and seeing all of the latest products all in one place - it was overwhelming and so fun at the same time. it was so great to get to meet people face to face that i know online and friends of friends. except i was sooooo sad that i gave kp the wrong cell phone number! :( i am just a mess! we'll meet next time for sure!!!

this weekend was pretty quiet. i finished up the last harry potter and we did some school shopping. i spent quite a bit of time on this fun website - goodreads. now i have a huge list of books i want to read. i'm not sure my family will be very excited about that - i tend to get really engrossed and they get neglected. lol!

ok - now that i've written a book of my own! lol! have a great week!

jdrf

as many of you know, my dear friend becca NEEDS a cure for diabetes. she does amazing work for this cause. this year i get to participate with her during the walk for the cure. here is a letter i'll be sending out to a few of you. if you can, please help by clicking on the link and donating. thank you!!! here is the letter:

Greetings!

I'm writing to you to ask for your support in a very special cause.

This year, I'll be taking part in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Walk to Cure Diabetes along with a half-million other walkers across the country. Our goal: To raise $90 million to help fund research for a cure for type 1 diabetes and its complications.

Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes, is a devastating, often deadly disease that affects millions of people--a large and growing percentage of them children.

Many people think type 1 diabetes can be controlled by insulin. While insulin does keep people with type 1 diabetes alive, it is NOT a cure. Aside from the daily challenges of living with type 1 diabetes, there are many severe, often fatal, complications caused by the disease.

That's the bad news... and yes, it's pretty bad.

The good news, though, is that a cure for type 1 diabetes is within reach. In fact, JDRF funding and leadership is associated with most major scientific breakthroughs in type 1 diabetes research to date. And JDRF funds a major portion of all type 1 diabetes research worldwide, more than any other charity.

I'm writing to ask for your support because now more than ever, EACH of us can be a part of bringing about a cure. Each of us can make a real difference

Won't you please give to JDRF as generously as you're able?

Together, we can make the cure a reality.

Thank you,

Holly Koenigsfeld

Please visit my Walk Web page if you would like to donate online or see how close I am to reaching my personal goal:

http://walk.jdrf.org/walker.cfm?id=86714219

poor ella!

it was HOT today! and yesterday. and both girls were exhausted from being out in it. so i'm thinking that was a little bit of the reason behind this story. but it could just be ella's amazing imagination. the girls were playing with the neighbor kids in the backyard. they had hoses going and there were little mud puddles everywhere. ella came running into the house in frantic tears. i was sure she had slipped and fallen. but then she started telling me that she thought her friends and anna were really turning into frogs. and she was hysterical and SO serious! she told me they all had eaten frog eggs and then crawled into a hole in the mud. and when they came out their feet were covered in mud and they were already hopping. and she didn't think anything would be able to change them back. of course the big kids were just playing a game, and the frog eggs were just candy. but poor ella was terrified. it took me almost 20 minutes to convince her that they really weren't frogs and that everyone would be ok. bless her heart! even after i thought she was convinced i saw her standing by the window and watching them just to be sure. i felt so bad that she was so upset. but at the same time i was amazed and proud. because if her imagination would allow her to believe that someone could turn into a frog for real, i wonder what other amazing possibilties are floating around in there.

the august IT kit...

is for sale starting right now!!! everything in the kit is SO gorgeous! click here to check IT out!

happy birthday wilson!!!

i can't believe he's already one!!! here are some unedited pictures of him eating his cake. he wasn't too sure about it at first so his sisters had to show him how to do it. he dug right in after that! lol!

happy fourth!

hope you all had a great one! we grilled iowa chops for dinner and had this wonderful dessert - red, white and blueberry trifle. i somehow messed it up and had really runny filling, so i added another brick of cream cheese and a little more sugar. it turned out ok! my cooking is getting better - at least now when i mess up i know better ways to fix it. lol! tonight i'm attempting chicken tenders for the second time. the first time set off smoke alarms. so keep your fingers crossed for me. lol!



after dinner we did sparklers, snakes and smoke bombs. and watched as our neighbor boys lit off lots of big loud fireworks. anna LOVED it! she did a lot more sparklers than ella, but i didn't manage to get a picture of her because she wouldn't stand in one place long enough. she was so excited. ella did much better this year than last. she's still pretty afraid of the loud booms, though. it looked like a war zone in our street when they were all done. and amazingly wilson slept through the whole thing!

happy birthday ella!!!

i'm a few days late - it was july 1. we were at grandpa k's for the weekend. aunt lisa, aunt debbie and uncles cory and toga helped throw together a great party! she LOVED all of her presents and of course her barbie cake. everytime she opened a present she gasped with excitement. she is so cute! i can't believe she's already 4. she's growing up soooo fast!!!

chasing fireflies...

friday night we let the girls stay up late for a "special treat" (lol!) to catch fireflies. we had so much fun! as i'm sure you can tell, ella was a tad freaked. when one touched her she shrieked so loudly! we all were laughing so hard. anna wasn't a bit afraid, though. she kept them in the jar next to her bed for a night and fed them grass. it really took me back to the days of being a kid. we let them go tonight. but they can't wait to go out and get more. :)

eta: candi asked about how i managed to get this picture -
i took it with my rebel on manual with my 50 mm 1.8 lens (i wish i had the 1.4 - especially for this!)
the iso was 1600, the fstop was 1.8, and the shutter speed was 1/40. that's why it's quite a bit blurry. well and the girls are blurry because only the lid of the jar was picking up enough light to be able to get the camera to click into focus. i tried manual focus on a few pictures. that didn't work so well with my moving subjects! lol! a tripod would have been good - but there was that moving subjects problem with that too. ;) i took a TON of pictures but only managed to get a few with the fireflies lights actually glowing. i am glad i got lucky on a few! :) ooh - i also shoot in raw. that way i was able to more easily adjust the exposure after the picture was taken. straight out of the camera it was really dark. i also adjusted the levels and the brightness and contrast. i used neat image to remove some of the grain. it was quite a bit grainy, though, so a lot is still there.

the play IT forward july IT kit...

is SOOO fun! and gorgeous! this is the project i made with IT. becky novacek posted on her blog about keeping a gratitude journal. i just think it's a wonderful idea! the july IT kit also includes custom word stamps that are the CUTEST font and they fit perfectly into the 7 gypsies oval scroll stamp. i love them! i think i'll just post the cover here. the rest is in the IT kit gallery and also in my 2 peas gallery if you want to check it out. the IT kit gallery is filled with other AMAZING projects and pages!!! be sure to check IT out! :)

walnut!!!

the antique show in walnut, iowa was today. i met mimi there and we shopped until we dropped! it was HOT and crowded, but we had SO much fun!!! we got there right around 8. we made a beeline to our new favorite vendor - thanks to becky for reminding us about her. we sat and watched the vendors unload the truck. people were snatching things up as they came off! we ate lunch right across the street from their booth, and there weren't a lot of things left at all! in fact after lunch we felt like a lot of the booths were picked over. but we were sooo tired and hot that maybe our opinions were skewed. it was a FUN day for sure!!!

first popsicle...

his expression seemed to say he wasn't too sure about it, but he sure snarfed it down! :)

fred astaire in training?

a willsie funny...

this story is from kurt. as he was putting wilson to bed tonight wilson grabbed his binkie out of his mouth, threw it as hard as he could - hard enough to hit the wall across the room, laughed, waved, and said, "bye, bye." stinker!!! kurt had to put his face in wilson's blanket to hide his laughter. wilson just said his first really clear bye, bye today. guess he had to practice. lol!

pictures....

i just learned how to use screen and soft light overlays on my pictures in photoshop. (yes, i'm behind the times. hee!) i've had a ball playing with the ones i took today. i swear i did not pose that picture of wilson reading kurt's espn magazine. he looked at country living first. now that would have been a picture! lol! anna took the one of wilson and i. she's getting good!!!

a few funnies from today

anna was ready for dinner early tonight and kurt is late as usual, so she was going on about how she was staaaaaaaarving (i did feed her a HUGE lunch and a snack!). ella came along and started offering to feed her - only with wilson's baby food. lol! ella was giving her the options - pears, bananas, chicken and rice, and anna would reply back, "no thank you, madamoiselle." those two are tooooo much! they have been playing with the neighbors, outside for the most part, for the whole week. i am glad they are having so much fun. but sometimes wilson and i get lonely without them! :( we are enjoying each other a lot, though. when we aren't interrupted by them coming in and out 50 times. i can hear my mom's voice when i yell at them, "in or out!" and "don't slam the door!" lol!

one more...

and apparently rosadita's dad lets HER sleep with her backpack on.

tonight's ella comment...

kurt was trying to help her pick up the pace and head up to bed and she said,
"you are NOT the boss!!! the real boss is God and Jesus and Santa!"
well...she has a point.
lol!!!!!

look out world...

wilson's walking! he took his first steps last week and he's up to 6 or 7 now. i'm sure it won't be long until he's off and running!

the last day of school...

...was yesterday. anna is officially a first grader. how can that be? i'm sure it sounds like such a cliche to say they are growing up too fast. but my goodness - it's waaaay too fast. denise inspired me to do first day / last day pictures side by side. and if i had known then how much of a difference 9 months was going to make. well, i probably would have just cried even harder on that first day. lol! i am soooo proud of what an amazing young lady anna has become. she's gained so much confidence in herself and she's so much more independent in a good way. i'm so glad, though, that she still likes me to snuggle with her at night and she still likes spending time with me. i'm sure those days are numbered. i'm going to try to remember that this summer when i'm sure there will be times when i've had more than enough of them. like today, for example. lol! just kidding! but it was a little crazy. there are 8 girls in our neighborhood including my girls, and 2 friends visiting, and they were all out playing together for most of the day. they range in ages from 11 down to little miss e who is 3. going on 11. ;) our neighbors have a trampoline and princess ella sparkle (as she likes me to call her) got to jump today for a "special treat." it should be a fun summer! :D

(ps - i over filtered the pictures of e a tad. whoops! i'll have to fix those! the storyboard frames are from katie pertiet at designer digitals.)

field day!

anna's school had a field day today. oooh my goodness, i think it was about the most fun we've had in along time. we could only stay for 3 events - the pirate game, follow the leader, and the water relay. they soaked sponges in water, ran across the field then squeezed them into buckets. they were so cute and funny! it was a little chaotic - poor mrs. kloke - i bet she's going to be exhausted at the end of the day! i was tired after only an hour! we know for sure the kids also got to do a jump rope station and a parachute station. i was really sad we couldn't stay for the parachutes - i wanted to play - er, i mean get pictures. ;) i can't post any pictures here because there were so many kids in all of them. they were such hams when they saw the camera on them! lol! i wish could have stayed and taken pictures all day. it was so fun to see them all together having so much fun. :)