10 Years!

10 years ago today I married my best friend!  We have been through a lot together over the years, ups & downs as life goes.  Together we have watched our 3 babies grow into toddlers and now school age children, who make us laugh and a little crazy every day.  We've supported each other through a few rough patches and the loss of many loved ones.

We can sit and talk for hours on end (yeah anyone that knows us would not be surprised by that), and make each other laugh at the craziest things.

 

I love this man with all my heart, for who he is and all the things he does for me.  I can't wait to see what the next 10 years bring for us!

Happy Anniversary Mike, I love you!

xo

6 Years!!

Fun & Celebrations happened at our house yesterday! It was Sean's 6th birthday...seems like just yesterday we brought him home!

Sean invited some of his friends over to help him celebrate, he was so excited and had so much fun!

Just look at this face when we brought out his cake...now that is one excited little boy!

He managed to get all the candles blown out in one shot...although if you look to the right I think his big sister gave him some help! LOL

Happy Birthday big guy!!

Thank you to everyone that has given us lots of hug and support this week after the break in. The kids are all fine and I think the excitement of the birthday party helped them deal with the trauma. Mike is doing well too, still mad....mostly at himself because he had the chance to save our stuff, which consisted mostly of family jewelry that can't be replaced.

There's no time to dwell on what's happened, I refuse to let any of this ruin the kids birthdays or Christmas! My Mom arrives home on Tuesday and we'll celebrate both Sean & Samantha's birthdays with the family! Then Friday night is Sami's party with her friends, eight year old girls sleeping over should be interesting!!

I hope you all have a great week!

Beach Days

I love the beach, it's so calm and relaxing.......my favorite place to be on a nice warm summer day!

For our holidays last week we thought about heading out camping but the forecast did not look too promising so we decided to hang out around home instead. But of course Mr. Weatherman was wrong and it ended up being a beautiful week....oh well we chilled at home, lots of family time so it was a good week anyway!

We did manage to head out to the beach for the day, the temp was perfect and there was a nice little breeze!!

Here are a few of my favorite photos....

This cute little dragonfly came and hung out on Sami's foot for a while. She thought it was so funny and promptly named him Greenie!

I hope you all have a great long weekend........I'll be busy working on my August Reveal for Love Is In The Details. Sorry can't share it with you yet! ;)

Why is it...

...the older you get the faster time seems to travel? And has anyone figured out a way to make it slow down? I'm really looking forward to summer holidays, spending time with my family camping and being totally unplugged from the world for a week!

This past Saturday we had the chance to visit a family friend's farm where the kids were introduced to the cutest little calves!

We all enjoyed the day....even in spite of the mass amount of mosquitos!

Sunday was a nice quiet day at home, I actually spent most of my day playing with my scrap supplies.....and boy did it feel good!!! I managed to finish up 2 layouts and make a card!!

This layout is based on THIS Sassy Lil' Sketch.

The timing was perfect for this card, a coworker celebrated her birthday today so I gave it to her!

Now I need to clean up the crazy mess I made......you know just so I can do it all over again!!! ;)

Puppy for Christmas

The kids got a new puppy for Christmas from their Grandma T. We decided it would be best to give her to them early rather than on Christmas day which is full of enough chaos!!

Meet little Miss Amy!

The kids just love her so much, and she's fitting in with our family perfectly!!!

I'm sure there will be some cute puppy layouts coming soon!

Brighten your day!

The signs of fall are starting to show, leaves are changing color and the geese have been flying over my house for the past couple of days.

Today at LIITD I posted a color challenge and decided to go with a nice bright color scheme just so we could hold onto summer a little bit longer! ;)

I hope you'll come over and join us at Love Is In The Details, there's a great bunch of ladies there. And we're having a FAREWELL TO SUMMER CROP on Saturday Sept. 19/09....you won't want to miss it, Lori gives away the best prizes!!!

Oh I did promise some first day of school photos, here they are Zach ~ Grade 4, Sami ~ Grade 2, Sean ~ Kindergarten.

1 More Day!!

School starts tomorrow for the kiddos and we're a house of mixed feelings! Zach is not so excited about starting grade 4, he has to get a shot this year, learn the recorder, and he's not too keen on his teacher.....but he'll survive. Sami is full of excitement for a new school year, she loves school....wonder how long that will last? LOL And Sean, well he's not too sure what to think, but once he sees his friends I know he'll be excited.

Me, I'm always excited to see them go back, it's nice to fall into a regular routine, but I'm a little anxious for them too. Of course there's the odd sad feeling too because they're all growing so darn fast.....still dealing with the fact that my baby is starting Kindergarten.

I'll be up bright and early tomorrow (ok that's not much different), with the camera ready to get those first day of school photos......and yes I'll share them with you all!

For now here's a card I made for the September Sizzix Card Challenge at Love Is In The Details...

Well I'm off to get a few more things ready for tomorrow morning....have a good one!

Morning fun!

This morning Sami came bounding into our room full of excitement because her wiggly top tooth finally came out!!! She was so thrilled...can you tell!

Now she has that cute little lisp that kids get when they're missing their front teeth! tee hee

My prize pack from Cosmo Cricket arrived on Thursday, I must say I'm impressed at how fast it got here!!! They sent me the Jack's World paper pack, stamps & ribbon, along with a set of Blackboard Alphas!!!I pulled it out today and played a bit....I love the colors, and all the cute little animals!!! Sorry you're going to have to wait to see what I made though! ;) Well maybe I'll play a little more and make something I can show you all!

In my last post I said all good things come in 3's..........I can confirm that they do, but can't say what #3 is yet!!! YAY!!

That's all for today, I rented Twilight so I'm off to watch!

We Survived!

Once again Christmas has come and gone so fast, sometimes I wish Christmas day could last a little longer! The kids were all thrilled that Santa came and left exactly what they wanted....how does he do it? tee hee ;) This certainly wasn't our merriest of Christmases, poor little Sean came down with the stomach flu in the wee hours of Christmas morning. Despite being sick he managed quite well to get all his gifts opened, but the joy & excitement was pretty low key for him. He ended up sleeping right through Christmas dinner. But we all made the most of it anyway!!

Here are some photos from Christmas morning!!

Boxing day the weather finally warmed up enough for us to head out and hit some small hills close to our home! It was perfect since Zach was itching to give his new snowboard a run!!

It was such a fun afternoon and I'm so happy we all got out together as a family and just enjoyed it!! After that the flue hit me, then my husband and subsequently the other two kids. We're all on the mend now......finally!!

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!!!

The Perfect Start!

What better way to start the day than having the chicklets bring us breakfast in bed!!! Seriously how did we get so lucky to have such thoughtful loving kids!!

After I devoured my Fruit Loops I headed down to the computer with my coffee to begin my daily ritual of checking the sites and email. To my surprise and excitement I found an email waiting to welcome me to the Design Team on Scrapping Out Loud!! I can't wait to work with all of these wonderfully talented ladies on such a fun challenge blog!! I hope you'll all come out and play along with us, the next challenge will be up on January 6th!!

Here is the layout I submitted to try out for their Design Team, it was based on a sketch provided:

I've been busy getting everything ready for Christmas, the tree is up, the baking is almost done, the gifts are mostly wrapped.....so not too much left to do!! This year I'm hosting Christmas Day dinner, this is a first for me, but I'm excited to have all of my family together for the holiday!!

I hope you all have a wonderful Holiday Season full of joy & good food!!

Games & Pox

The new Say It challenge will be going up today, watch for it......it's all about The Games We Play!

Now I took this one the literal way, our family loves to play games.....but you can interpret this so many different ways. Have fun with!!

Saturday morning Sami woke me up saying she had lots of pimples on her tummy....she's not even close to an age of having pimples so I knew that wasn't it. Yup she has Chicken Pox, which she keeps calling Chicken POPS....tee hee so cute!!

Isn't that the saddest looking face you've ever seen!! This was just the beginning of her spots, but she's been a real trooper and hasn't been scratching them. I'm just waiting for the boys to break out......I'll be really surprised if they don't!

A Real Treasure!

We recently had to move my Grandma into a care home, at 91 she's done very well at taking care of herself, but we just felt it was time for her to move. Unfortunately this isn't the end of the story, she's now in the hospital, but I'm not going to go into that today.

With her moving of course we (well my Mom & Uncle mostly) have the job of cleaning out her apartment, and it's pack full of things. Of course there's the usual junk that no one in the family wants or needs, but there are many treasures to be found as well.

This is one very special treasure that I have claimed for myself.........

Isn't she a beauty!!! I have named her Claire after my Grandma! She runs smooth as silk for such an old girl, best guess is that she's at least 50yrs old, my Mom remembers sewing with her when she was in High School. She also comes with her own carrying case....sweet!

There are memories held in this old machine, and I can't wait to start making more!

Catch Up & A Challenge

Wow have I been a bad blogger lately!! Things are busy around here these days with school starting, hockey & ringette starting.......and I have a special little guest each day, I'm looking after my bff's little guy....and he's a real cutie!!!

Last weekend we celebrated the big guy's 8th birthday.....I mean really where has the last 8 years gone?! I'm always amazed at how fast the chicklets grow. Of course I keep threatening Zach that I'm going to stop feeding him because he's just getting too big! LOL Here are a couple of birthday shots:

So Zach decided to snoop for his gift this year, this is a first for him! I decided that I wanted to discourage this behavior so I wrapped his gift in 5 layers of paper, with the first and last having all the seems taped! bwaaaahahaha!!! He got in, didn't take that long, but I told him if he snoops again I'm pulling out the packing tape!!!

Of course we had to have a pinata!!

Nothing like a little traditional lemon birthday pie!!! What can I say, he drums to his own beat!

Haven't been doing too much scrapping lately, or at least nothing I can show at this point. ;) But I can show you my layout for the latest challenge at Say It, this weeks inspiration is to use 'What Was I Thinking?' I love how differently all the DT members took this, now I want to see what you do with it, so head over check out all the inspo and get to work!

Awe wasn't I cute, and such a fashionista!!!

I'm heading out to Miami, MB on Saturday for the big LIITD crop, can't wait! Hopefully I'll find my mojo out there...if not I know I'll find lots of new goodies to bring home with me!