this little monkey man LOVES popsicles and bananas and anything that is super dirty and messy. and lately he's into trying to climb onto anything he possibly can. including the coffee table, the desk in the kitchen and the kitchen table. he's too much! and as i get him down from the table he usually gives me big hugs and loves. yep. i'm in trouble!
becky tagged me - so here are 8 random facts about me...
1. i secretly love most of the disney channel movies the girls are so into now: high school musical, the princess diaries, even (or especially) the made for tv ones like ice princess and right on track. and oh! princess diaries 2 (on now) was written by shonda rhimes! of grey's! so it can't be all bad, right? :D and speaking of really bad movies i love, the cutting edge is on that list too. :) i do love a few good movies too!
*eta - matilda is on tonight and the sound of music is on all labor day weekend. woohoo! :D
2. i love to read even more than watching movies. this summer i discovered goodreads.com. i haven't gotten to read nearly as much as i've wanted to, but i love getting to see what others like.
3. my first car was a 1969 camaro that has been in our family since it was new. i could beat everyone off the line at the red lights back then, except for the other guy in school who also drove a '69 camaro. i think he only beat me because his was an ss. ;)
4. in college i lived with 3 guys. but not like that! i was an electrical engineering student, and there were only 3 girls in my class, and one was married. we tried to have one of the other ones as a roommate for 1 year, but it ended badly. my roommates were great guys - very protective of me, almost as much as my 3 brothers are. we had TONS of fun too! :D
5. i still have 3 more? :P what else?... hee! well i'll default to the one everyone pretty much knows. i HATE birds!!! that's really on my mind today, because the zoo aviary has some new really pretty HUGE pink ones that ella just HAD to go in and see. half of those pink birds were perched on the exit doorway and the other ones were swooping at us! ok - well probably not swooping at us, but i was still freaked. lol! i think i hid my fear pretty well from the kids, but i did kind of race out the door fast. :)
6. back to tv. :) i watch soap operas. hee! my grandma and mom have always followed all of the shows on cbs. i am only keeping up with the young and the restless right now - they do take up a lot of time! it's fun to at least be able to talk about that one with my mom. i can usually imagine what gram would be thinking as i watch.
7. i can't cook. at all. i'm trying to learn, and i am finally learning how to cook a few rachel ray recipes, but for every one i succeed at i think i have at least 3 goofs. thank goodness for take out! :D
8. i was a ballerina. hee! i studied ballet, tap and jazz until i graduated from high school. i'm so excited that anna is going to start ballet and tap this year! i think there are so many benefits. I learned so much about discipline, confidence and grace from ballet. Not that I have that much grace, but imagine how much worse I'd be!
ok, so now i get to tag other people, right? ok! i tag:
kelly p
denise
becca
bridgette
tall anna
gabby
( you're all welcome! ;) )
you've been wondering what ella's been up to while anna's at school.
she didn't know anyone was watching.
this concert when on for at least 15 or 20 minutes.
it was quite the song too!
i love her. :D
i took these pictures through our dirty window with the screen on.
so some of them are pretty grainy and dirty.
they were awful sooc, but i used one of mindy bush's actions on them.
and what a HUGE difference!
they just make editing pictures so much faster and easier.
i love her photo borders too!
it's the 15th, which means the it kit studio has posted next month's kit! i had SO much fun with IT again this month! the stamp designed by denise is SO versatile! it breaks into 3 pieces too. i love that! i love how she used it in combination with the journaling stamp from the august kit on her project here. there are so many amazing projects in the gallery. check it out! here are the projects i made with the kit. i had a lot of fun with the hambly transparency and the little labels. it was hard to photograph, though! all of the little buttons and round paper pieces on the calendar are attached to magnets so everything can be moved around and changed. i got a little button magnet happy! before long our whole fridge will be covered with button magnets. lol! a little psa if you ever want to make your own magnets -- buy the ones in the craft area at walmart. there are 2 different packs that i found work really well. they are pre-cut as circles and are in 3/4" and 1/2" sizes. i'm sure there are other good places to buy magnets than just walmart, but the magnets on the roll that you cut off and the magnets by the sheet from hobby lobby did not hold well at all for me. hee! ok! i think that's all! thanks, kelly, for another amazing kit! :D
ella is standing right next to me (she hasn't been much more than a few feet from me for the whole week). and she looked up at me and said, "hellloooooooo! i'm boooored!" yep. it's definitely time for school to start. 4 more days for anna. but e still has a whole month of summer left. heeeelp! :D
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| 2007-06-30 |
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| 2007-07-14 |
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
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.
is for sale starting right now!!! everything in the kit is SO gorgeous! click here to check IT out!
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!
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!
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!!!
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.
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! :)
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!!!
his expression seemed to say he wasn't too sure about it, but he sure snarfed it down! :)
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!
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!!!
