check out this stamp!

isn't it cool?! my amazing friend becca designed it, it kit studio produced it, and now you can get it for only $10! not only that, when you purchase the stamp your name will be entered into a random drawing to win a slice from making memories! 100% of the sales go directly to jdrf. i know i'm not passing this one up! go to itkitstudio.com to get it! while you're there you might want to check out their HUGE sale too. the more you spend the more times your name will be entered to win the slice too! have fun shopping! :)

the three hour Christmas card photoshoot

we had high hopes this morning of quickly snapping a picture of the kids, picking a premade card, and printing our Christmas cards. i told the kids they didn't have to dress up - they could just wear normal clothes, and that i just needed one fast picture. well, ella insisted on wanting to wear her dress. anna wanted to wear her outfit too, but then the shirt was too tight, apparently (it looks fine to me, but what do i know?). wilson's pants were too big so we got out his pants from last year, but they were on the same hanger as last year's shirt, and he insisted on wearing that too, even though it was too small. ok, we said, fine, we aren't going to argue. finally, we get them outside and these are the faces we got...



"how about a hug?," i said. and we got this:



at this point kurt was frustrated and took away computer and tv for the day. and then we got this:



"ok!" i said, let's just take individual pictures! ella was very cooperative.



except i didn't notice the bird flying out of her head. eeek!

wilson finally cooperated after a little bribery.



it took anna a little while longer, but finally she at least smiled.



i was so excited that i thought maybe we could try one more time for a group shot outside. i came soooo close! first i got this.



and just as i asked anna to brush her hair back wilson hopped down, ran around and did this.



and then went and hid in a basket.



the girls gave me a few more smiles like this.



but wilson never did cooperate. so this year's card is going to be a collage. stinkers!!!

Christmas!

well first, happy thanksgiving! we had a great day! we were invited to eat at our friends' house, so i didn't have much cooking to do. kurt cooked the turkey and i made stuffing and green bean casserole and that was all. since i'm used to hosting thanksgiving i didn't know what to do with myself! lol! so i made these pumpkin cream cheese muffins (without the pecans for the kids). yum!









wilson loved everything! :) friday i did a little shopping. i didn't get up early and face the crowds like i usually do. it just wasn't the same without mimi. i did find some great bargains at dillards and i got to buy a new christmas tree! for the past 12 years we had a very cheap tree from target. it had brown tips that were supposed to stimulate pinecones. kurt and i bought it right after we were married. we had just found out he was going to be overseas over christmas so we rushed out and got the cheapest thing we could find. it was a little hard to let go of the old tree, but we love our new one. wilson seems to love it too. almost every morning when he wakes up and sees it he shouts, "Christmas!" as you can tell the girls took their decorating jobs very seriously. ;)







sorry for the dark, grainy pictures. i'm not sure if it's my camera or my lens. or user error! lol! my 50mm lens is really dirty and just not as sharp as it used to be. i've really abused it. i would love to upgrade to the 50mm 1.4. also, my camera battery just ran out tonight, and i've started to notice that my meter doesn't work very well right before my battery runs out (and these were some of the last ones i took). also it gets dark at 4:45 practically, so i'm having to crank up my iso. i bet they wouldn't be quite so grainy if i had the canon 40d. ;) i don't think that's in the budget, but a girl can dream, right? lol!

Hey crowdSPRING!

Hey crowdSPRING, hire kelly purkey for your new community marketing manager!!!

we voted! :)

apparently our house is a bit split on who to vote for, though. the girls had a mock election at school. anna voted for barack obama, but ella voted for john mccain, because, "his name is john just like uncle john." :)

happy haunting!

guess who...

got to go home from the hospital on tuesday? little noah's doing SO great! so he likes to rock and roll all night and party every day for his poor mom and dad. lol! this is the cradle swing we got for him - thanks to Glue for the recommendation. So far he just loves it! I can't wait to get home and hold that little angel in my arms and kiss those sweet chubby cheeks. :)

the trouble..

with google reader, i think, is that you can't leave comments without opening the blog link. right? or am i missing something? so sorry to all of you who know i read your blog and haven't been commenting. i'll try to do better. not that i was very good to begin with. ;)

well, another week has flown by and my to-do list keeps growing. i started out great with ali's "a week in the life" project, but by wednesday the kids were even more sick of seeing the camera than they usually are, and my battery died at the zoo. wilson and i did some babysitting on thursday and friday for the sweetest little boy named wil. he's two also and quite funny. he just moseyed on into our house and started playing, not minding at all that he was with two strangers and his dad was leaving. he even took great naps with very little fuss. i didn't quite know what to do with myself. my kids would have flown off the handle as soon as i mentioned the word "babysitter" and naps would have been completely out of the question. wil's dad made me feel a little better when he told me his 4 year old daughter would have had quite the different reaction. but i'm still jealous.

anna is on huge reading kick. we finished all of our boxcar children books on hand, so we started reading the magic tree house series. we're already on #12. she can't wait to fill out her whole passport and thinks kurt and i need ones of our own too.

the girls and i went to the book store together to get the next magic treehouse books, and so ella picked this book - fanny. it's such a sweet book. the little girl in the book doesn't understand why her mom won't let her have a "connie" doll, so she decides to make a doll of her own. Her doll is so sweet and much cuter than the "connie" dolls her friends have. i think it finally convinced my girls that they don't need bratz. but, of course, now they are wanting to sew their own dolls. we found a book with lots of fancy doll patterns at the fabric store today, but i think in the morning i'm going to try to convince them that these would be better. they are WAY cuter than the patterns in our book and look MUCH easier. especially considering i've already managed to mess up the fancy pattern, and all we've done so far is to cut out the fabric. lol!

on a sad note, willsie learned how to say the word blue yesterday. :( no more riding in the llllllue car for us i guess. he did start renaming everyone with an "ia" at the end of our names. mommia, daddia, annia, ellia. he's really missing his mimi and papa and mentions them almost every time he goes to sleep. :( we all miss them too. i knew fall would be hard for us but i don't think i really realized how homesick i'd be. plus we're all a little bummed about our hawkeyes and especially our cubbies. i'm seriously really believing in the curse. but tomorrow the girls have the day off so hopefully a little adventuring and doll making will cheer us all up a bit. if not we'll have to have brusters for dessert. :) (again, since kurt so sweetly surprised me with it tonight.)

here's one picture from my 3 days of "week in the life pictures."

12 days?

as i always, i made BIG plans to start blogging more - at least every other day. i don't know where the time goes! i want to follow along with ali edwards' "a week in my life" project just so i can figure out how time flies so fast.

we've been busy, but that's the norm by now. last weekend anna finished her state project for school. she had to research the state of colorado and decorate and fill a shoebox with facts from the state. she did a great job! especially because terri sent us a ton of information and GREAT stuff to use. i HAVE to get a picture of it to post as soon as i can. kurt was able to do some of his school work from home this week so i got to have lunch with both girls. wow, that lunch room gets LOUD!!! it was very interesting to see the contrast between the different classrooms. i'm feeling good about anna's teacher. she seems to really challenge the kids without overwhelming them too much. anna has said she's bored sometimes in school, which worries me, but then she says it is hard for her at times too. her teacher isn't perfect, though. in a few weeks they are having spirit week, and she's going to let anna borrow a nebraska shirt since she's a huge nebraska fan (most of her family lives in omaha). i didn't think we'd have to worry about anna being brainwashed about nebraska down here!!! we thought we'd have her converted back to a hawkeye by now. i guess it would help if they could win, though, huh? :P ella loves her teacher at school too. i'm a little worried that ella isn't quite where anna was at this point in her kindergarten year. i'm hoping to start working with ella more at home too.

wilson is good! he's always cracking me up. he loves to put his blankie on his head and say, "ooo (where) are you me?" he's also always asking "whee (what) 'appened?" he always wants to ride in daddy's llllue car too. that one really cracks us up. he can say black just perfectly but he always says lllue. his favorite lunch now is "daddy's sandwich." he loves to share with daddy - it's not the same if i make the exact same sandwich, it has to be daddy's first. i always have to sing "rock a bye baby" to him now before he goes to sleep. that's far from my favorite, but thankfully my neighbor cindy taught me to sing "mommy will catch you, cradle and all" so it's not so scary. lol! speaking of cindy, we've been walking with her about 3 mornings a week so i haven't been getting up quite so early. wilson loves walking with her 2 year old talia. he talks about her all of the time at home. but then when we're walking together he's always arguing with her. they are always pretending to see monkeys in our trees too. they're so cute!

well, i think i had more to write, but we're waiting for kurt and the girls to get home from church so we can eat but wilson is having a HARD time waiting. i better go help him find a good snack that's not the sucker he's begging for right now. here are a few pictures before i go...(the fancy frames are from karen russell from the polka dot potato digi shop, and the simple frames are actions from mindy bush. i used mindy's happy color and vignette actions on the pictures too.)

ps - sorry google readers for 2 posts - i thought a few pictures looked dark so i tried to edit them in picnik and then they disappeared. boo!

october it kit...

although i keep accidently calling it the september kit. i didn't have it together enough to have time to scrap the september kit and i was upset about that. it was yet another one of my favorite kits. so i used the heidi swapp mask from the september kit for the card. i love that houndstooth paper! all of the paper is so fun this month! and the notebook stamp! and oooooh - that autumn leave ink. i am not a very good stamper at all, but i made a perfect stamped image on my first try with that ink.

kurt is gone to d.c. and we had a crazy day yesterday. well, none of us slept well saturday night before he left. i think the girls were anxious about him leaving. and i was up late scrapping. and yesterday we were so busy - we went none stop between church and a playdate and then a birthday party. we didn't get home until 7 pm and then we still had to eat dinner (the kids didn't want what was served at the party. and then i had to fix nearly the same thing when we got home. stinkers! lol!). and we had to do baths and discovered that the ants are back. :( we didn't get our baths done until about 8, but i was only running about a half hour behind normal so i thought i was doing ok. but then we discovered that i had left wilson's blankies at our friends house that we went to for the playdate. so we had to all load up in the car to go get it. ay yi yi. of course that riled everyone up so the girls didn't drift off until about 9:30. needless to say we're all dragging this morning. well except for wilson who is up and at 'em. and wanting his mom. so i better run! heeelp! lol!

wilson...

real men wear flowers in their ear, right? lol! this is the one he "took care" of in the grocery store. ;)





you could say we're a bit curious george obsessed. we are watching george on tv, painting a picture of him, wearing a george tshirt, and those yellow books under the tv (the blurry rectangles) are all george books too.



he is also obsessed by the computer lately. kurt and i are in awe of how he can move the laptop mouse with his right hand but click with his left. we can't even do that! he's a pro at navigating the sesame street, webkinz, and of course the george website. he really wants to do disney channel and fun brain like his sisters, but he hasn't figured out how to read and do math problems. yet. lol! i laugh, but it's so hard sometimes because he REALLY wants to play those but he gets so frustrated!



most days we make our fisher price little people village by setting all of our pieces up around the family room. (thanks again aunt debbie for adding to our collection!) i have to giggle, though, because almost every day when we're done playing wilson sets all of the chairs around our three tables and everyone "eats."



wilson begged and pleaded and cried and threw a tantrum (and had a timeout) because he wanted a brownie for breakfast. lol! i stood firm but he very stubbornly took one bite of toast and that was about it. we had a few grapes for snacks but he was still mad about the brownie. so finally by lunch he caved and ate A TON of 'sketti. and got his brownie for dessert.

morning

morning, originally uploaded by holly k 123.

i've been debating about blogging this. i've failed so many times. maybe if i make it public i'll stick to it? i'm hoping the pink shoes help. along with the HUGE mug of coffee as a reward when i get home.

happy labor day!

we had such a fun weekend! doris and the g man came to visit. our first visitors in our new house! hopefully next time they come to visit the scrap room will be organized and we won't have ants. :P and we won't try to walk to the park again, right d? ;) places always seem so much closer when you drive to them, don't you think? we had fun anyway, and the pool felt extra cool later that afternoon. :) g is such a sweet boy and was so patient helping the girls set up his train sets and even let them beat him in a race or two. thankfully we had some dinosaurs too. i don't think g was too interested in all of our very girly toys. lol! actually i don't think he minded them too much, but the girls were just having so much fun with the trains. although apparently it's required that you have your tongue stuck out when you play with them (see picture below). ;) hope everyone had a great weekend too!

links

i always love when people post inspirational links to other sites and blogs on their blog. today i was searching martha's website (since we're on a first name basis - lol!) for recipes for this weekend. i'm going to admit that before a few years ago i never really cared for martha. i mean of course she's perfect, but her not-so-great ruthless reputation always made me think twice about buying her products. i guess i'm softening. now i'm hooked on her show and i love her magazine. her website is great too. through it i found these really fun sites -
Hostess with the Mostest
Mozi

my mom and aunt tall are into embroidery and cross stitch. i love the pieces they make, but i've never really had time to do it myself. i love these funky Urban Threads. Somehow I can't picture Mimi doing some of those! But these are so cute too - Colonial Crafts.

these are probably old news, but i've never been too good at keeping up with the latest and greatest anyway. lol!

tagged...

i was tagged by doris who is coming to visit this weekend! yay!!!

so here are the rules -
(1) The winner can put the logo on their blog.
(2) Link the person you received your award from.
(3) Nominate at least 6 other blogs. (I'm cheating on that one.)
(4) Put links of those on yours.
(5) Leave a message on the blogs of the people you’ve nominated.

my nominees are . . .
miley because she is the BEST writer and i miss hearing her stories so much.
denise because she's such an amazing artist and friend.
gabby because we need MORE ev pictures and stories! i can't get enough of that adorable little baby boy!!!
and aunt tall because we need MORE chubby, adorable baby noah pictures. he's doing so great!!!

now for the blog post part - we are doing ok. we're still adjusting, especially to our new school. i should say of course i am the one who's having the hardest time adjusting. although wilson does go through his list of everyone he misses before he goes to sleep. the girls like school, but there seems to be a LOT more pressure to memorize things for a test they are taking in a few weeks. anna is worried about memorizing her math facts. ella isn't too worried about that i don't think, but she had a rough morning this morning. well i should say yesterday there were tornado warnings here almost non-stop from 7-9. we weren't sure what to do, but we knew the storm was on the other side of the county and that we were safe. also the montgomery schools superintendant was on tv saying that they weren't calling off schools and that the kids would be safe. so we took the girls - it's only a 5 minute car ride. but they ended up sitting in the hall for 2 hours. we had no way of knowing that the warnings would last sooo long, but next time we'll for sure wait it out. the girls both handled it all with flying colors! but i think it really wore them out. and then anna had a really loose tooth last night and she was awake late worrying about it and she kept poor ella awake too. so we were all really tired.

i have to post a few wilson stories so i have them down to scrap later. in addition to saying the names of people he misses i always have to sing to him before bed. he sternly demands the song he wants. "twinkle star," "wiggles," and "wuwwaby" are his favorites. sometimes i also have to do "lollipop" which is really "circle and a dot" on his back like his aunt "wewa" taught him in florida. i almost always have to hold his hands to make the "diamond in the sky" shape during "twinkle star" even though he figured out how to do it long ago. he usually reaches out and gives me high fives or pats too. but today he reached out and grabbed my nose, so i had to sing everything plugged up. lol!!! sometimes he sticks two binkies in his mouth at once and gives me this look that just cracks me up. he's so funny! he's got such a personality! funny and spunky like ella but yet really sweet like anna. i miss the girls a lot while they're at school, but wilson and i are really having a lot of fun just the two of us too.

here's one more random thing before i go to bed (it's late!). we were watching the cubs tonight (woohoo!) and i saw a commercial for a marathon of the show coach. remember that show? it brought back so many memories! it was filmed on the u of i campus while we were there. i can remember seeing the film crews around. my friends would all get together to watch it and point out people we knew. i think griz and maybe sherm were in the background a few times too. those times seem like so long ago!

ok - well that was quite the random rambling post after not posting for so long. as usual, huh? lol! i shouldn't post when i only have two minutes or at midnight. :) hope everyone's having a great week!

first day 2008

first day 2008, originally uploaded by holly k 123.

it all went great!!!! anna was a little scared because i thought i was going to get to walk them in, but then i didn't get to because of the traffic. for the record we left 40 minutes before school started and normally the school is less than 10 minutes away. ay yi yi. but ella told anna she would help her out. lol! i'm SO proud of ella! and of course anna too. we had to run ella's nap mat up to her because we forgot it this morning so i got to peek in on both of them, and they were both doing great! ella didn't even notice me! i think they are both going to have a GREAT year!

we'll miss you, brent.

i've had such a hard time even starting this post. we found out our dear friend brent williams was in a plane crash a few weeks ago. brent was one of kurt's very best friends. he was an amazing man. in the past few weeks i've been reading and hearing a lot of stories about him, and in almost every one the person starts off saying brent was one of their best friends. he was just that kind of person - he made everyone feel important. he was such a great father. he was a single dad, and i think one of the best dads i've ever known. he was so involved in everything the kids did. he coached and attended every game he could. we got to see him in action coaching his son border's football game one fall in texas. he was an amazing coach - he was always sure to take the time to explain the ins and outs of the game to the kids in a really great way. he was also so involved in the kids' schools. he was always on top of how they were doing and always went above and beyond to be sure their transitions to new schools went smoothly.

brent was always so generous. he was always hosting boxing night and football watching parties. he was a HUGE college football fan, especially for his beloved oklahoma sooners. he took kurt to a few games in norman and we all went to dallas one year for the red river shootout. i can remember how he couldn't wait to show off the stadium and the atmosphere to kurt. every time the phone would ring on a saturday or on nfl draft day or during recruiting season i usually guessed correctly that it was brent. but every time i answered he so sweetly asked how i was and how the kids were doing. even though there was important football to be discussed. lol! he invited us to make another road trip to dallas one summer to see the rangers play his yankees. he converted anna to a yankee fan that day. so he wasn't a perfect man. lol! she had such a great time and he did such a great job including her and getting her excited for the game. he always did a great job of including everyone everywhere he went. we're really going to miss him. i wish i was better at putting into words just how we feel, but it still just feels so raw and so wrong. we've had quite a bit going on this past month, and for most things i've been able to see at least a glimmer of a silver lining. but not with this. brent had every plan in place to take care of his children if anything happened to him. but they are going to miss their dad so much. please keep them in your prayers and we will too. we'll really miss you, brent.

august it kit and koenigsfeld reunion pictures...

ok - this has to be fast because the packers are coming TOMORROW and we are not even close to being ready at all. ack! inbetween (well or instead of) packing i've been sneaking in some photo editing and scrapping. i've posted some of my koenigsfeld reunion pictures on my flickr account but i still have a lot more to go through. we sure miss the beach and the pool and toga's awesome meals and all of our aunts and uncles and cousins!

i made a little mini album for our florida picts with august's it kit. it's 4 1/2 x 6 so when i'm done editing the rest of my pictures i can just put a little strip of paper on them and stick them in the album with the journaling pages. i made the covers from the chipboard in the package of canvas letters. i love those letters! the postage frame stamp on the top is from an older it kit (sorry i can't remember what month) and the bottom lines are from this month's kit. i love those bazzil borders! so quick and easy! the other page, obviously, is from wilson's first plane ride. he loved it! he especially loved the treats of getting pop and gum. he's still talking about that. lol! i really would like to stitch those squares down and stitch along the plain contrails and maybe around some other parts too. in my spare time. ;) my machine is really temperamental (boy that's not spelled right). i'm always afraid to stitch right on my page because inevitably i always get a thread jam and rip the paper. so frustrating! maybe i can hand stitch. later! lol! ok - speaking of later - time to run! :)