An exciting week!!

We had quite the week in our house!!

Macy became very confident on her 2 wheeler.
She turned 6.
She became a Brownie Girl Scout.
She became a first grader!!

All of that within a few days of each other!! She's getting so big!!


Her birthday was on Tuesday but we did the family celebration on Monday because Chris worked all day Tuesday. We made homemade pizza (her and Jack's favorite!) and had a Cold Stone cookie dough cake for dessert! YUM!!

One of her presents was a ProvoCraft felt purse that I decorated for her and then filled full with Claire's goodies!

Wednesday night, she had her Brownie fly up ceremony complete with ice cream social afterwards!



Friday was her last day of kindergarten!! She is officially a first grader!! Her report card was great. Her teacher said she does work beyond expectations! (No pictures of that!). They had a different theme day this week; circus, fairy tale, and Wednesday all 4 kindergarten classes cooked out their lunch and had a picnic outside!

Macy's friend birthday party was today. She had 6 of her best friends come over and we had a tea party!! They all came dressed in either Princess dresses or pretty dresses!! They were so cute!! Everything went well!! We started off by decorating straw hats! We served pb&j, cucumber and cream cheese and ham and cheese finger sandwiches, homemade fruit salad, pretzels and "princess punch". The punch was quite a hit! For dessert we had mini chocolate eclairs and cream puffs!

(she's getting slightly annoyed at my picture taking!)



Here is a better picture of the hats. This is Steph, my friend Andrea's daughter! She was much more willing to pose for me!


Lastly, I must thank my dear, wonderful friend, Andrea, for helping me with the party!!! She was such a HUGE help to me!!! Love ya, girlfriend!! Please don't kill me for this picture!!! I think you look cute!


There's more big news that happened this week but I'll save that for another day! :)

I'll have some layouts to share too!

Thanks for reading!!

Lots of fun stuff!

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day! We had a great time here!! Lots of fun stuff to do!!

Thursday, Jack graduated from 3 year old preschool and had the picnic afterwards. It was really chilly, in the low 50's, so everyone pretty much ate and ran! I can never get good pictures inside the church, plus we always manage to sit on the opposite side that he is at, so we just have video. Here he is with his teachers at the picnic. Without them, we wouldn't have made it through this year! They were so good with him.


Friday we had some really wierd weather in the afternoon. It was bright as could be out but pouring! There were double rainbows. I couldn't get great pics because I had the wrong lens on my camera, but if you look closely here, you can see the second one in the top right corner.


Saturday night, we had a spur of the moment GNO at my house. We played Boogie on the Wii, that was a HOOT!!!! Let's just say I kicked their butts!!! Karma Chameleon, baby!! LOL

Sunday, Macy went to a miniature golfing birthday party. It was her first time doing so and she did great! She tied for first place on her team!


Macy and I walked in the Memorial Day parade with her Daisy Troop. She really loved that!! It's totally her thing! We saw lots of people we knew. Jack totally missed us when we passed him and Daddy, but Macy missed him too! I didn't get any pics of them in the parade, I didn't feel like lugging my camera along! She was on the news though! Unfortunately, the news website has every other parade video for download EXCEPT hers!

When we got home from that, I ran to the store for good picnic foods!! We had ribs, chicken and hot dogs, plus salads, watermelon and brownies!! Yum!!! We set the sprinkler up and let the kids run through it.


Meggy also enjoyed the day. She loves her purple ball!


It was such a beautiful holiday!! The weather was perfect!

In exciting scrapping news, the latest issue of Scrapbooking and Beyond is now out (the summer issue) and it features 3 of my layouts! One of which told the love story of a good friend of mine, Marlene. (I need to add her to my links, along with many others! She's a hoot, check out her blog!).

End of the school year!

Yesterday, I dropped Jack off at his last full day of 3 year old preschool!! He cried as usual. I should have been the one crying!! My last 2 1/2 hours of free time, time all by myself to do whatever I choose! No more of that until the beginning of September! Chris and I went out to lunch and then to a hobby shop for those last 2 1/2 hours.

My baby boy graduates his first year of preschool tomorrow!! Many times, say about 98% of the time, I wondered how he would make it through the school year! We had about 3 weeks of no cry days! The other days were filled with clinging onto my leg while I was dropping him off. He's the youngest in his class, he turned 3 about 2 days after starting. He loves school, but he also really loves his mommy. As soon as I'd walk out the door, he'd stop wimpering or crying. We were really lucky that he had a great set of teachers! They were so good with him and we're so thankful for that! He just loves them! It's been really good for him, he's grown so much and needs and loves the socialization! He's very proud of himself, and so are we!

For next school year, we've enrolled him in the 5 day 4 year old program. I'm hoping that he has this huge revelation over the summer and will not do the cling-on thing the whole entire year again!! A week or two would be fine, but please no longer!! What a wonderful thing it will be when I have 2 1/2 hours free to myself 5 days a week! Is there a huge bright light shining from your computer? That's me beaming at the thought of free time to myself everyday!! *giggle*

Macy is done school on June 6th. Wow, we'll have a first grader and a 4 year old preschooler soon! It's amazing! We've got lots of fun things planned for the summer!!

I've been busy working on projects for Scrapbook News and Review but had time to sneak in a layout for an art challenge I hosted for my LSS.


I painted the entire background paper for this. I kinda felt like my friend Kimberly. I think she would be proud of me! Whaddya think, Kimberly??

I'm going to journal on the arrows but not really sure where I want to go with the journaling, so I'll figure that out later!!

Gotta go get Macy at school!! Have a great day! Thanks for reading!!

Definately a big girl!!

I always said that I would let Macy get her ears pierced when she was old enough to ask me to have it done.

She's been curious about pierced ears probably since about 4 years. I have pierced ears but very rarely wear earrings, so she didn't really know much about them until she started going to preschool. I've always told her the truth about them, that they are indeed holes in your ears and it hurts for about a second when they do it. She didn't want to "get holes in her ears".

About 6 months ago, the topic came up again. A lot of her school friends have pierced ears. I told her the same thing and said she could get it done if she wanted. Maybe 2 months ago, all 4 of us were at the mall and a little girl about her age was getting ready to have hers pierced, so Macy and I stood and watched. She didn't like that and ran out of the store saying she didn't want it done!

Fast forward to today. She's totally been into doing her hair all up, putting her glitter lip gloss on and just looking at herself in the mirror. I was packing her lunch this morning when she came downstairs. I looked at her and saw these things clipped to her ears. I had to hold in a little giggle! Upon closer examination, I find that they are some clip earring pieces from one of her bead kits with those little jelly rings attached. She had them totally clipped inside her ears! *giggle*

I looked at her and said they would probably really start hurting at school and she said that they already were!! We took them out and I told her to go to school and think about the piercing and talk to her friends about it and if she wanted to, I'd take her to get it done tonight.

She did just that and decided she wanted it done. After supper, her and I headed to the mall. I thought for sure she'd decide against it, but on the drive to the mall, I could tell she was serious!! We waited and watched a 7 year old and her mom get theirs pierced and then she went! She picked out the pink daisy studs, of course!! I had them do both ears at once and she was a trooper!! I knew she would be. Her and Jack never flinch when they get vaccinated either!!

She was so proud and was strutting around and looking in every mirror, telling all the store clerks that she had just gotten her ears pierced!! We did a little more girly shopping and had a great few hours together!! We don't get to do that much anymore, so we both really enjoyed it!!!

You know, she seems so big when she talks to us, but looking at her sitting in that big ear piercing chair, she looked so little!

Here she is in all her proudness!

Happy [belated] Mother's Day!!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day!!!

It was very nice here!! The kids and I went to see my Mom on Saturday while Chris was working. Macy picked out the Mother's Day presents this year for the Grandmother's!

Yesterday, Chris and the kids took me to Daniel Boone Homestead. I have lived here my entire life and have never been there! So glad we decided to go there, it was such a nice day to walk around and play football, wiffleball, frisbee and bouncy ball! I'm sure we'll be going back more often!








After we were done there, we went for Chinese! I filled up on sushi! Man, was that yummy!! It hit the spot!!

After filling our stomachs, I was tired! The kids played outside with Chris for a bit while I crashed in the recliner!!

I watched more movies this weekend than I have in a long time! Saturday night Chris and I watched Juno. I really liked it! Then Sunday night we watched Evan Almighty. While I was crashed on the recliner, Macy and I watched Jumanji (I finally got to see the whole thing through!), some Yellow Dog movie and about 2/3 of Akeelah and the Bee. I haven't had relaxation like that in a long time! It was nice!

Ah, Friday night I did the first entertaining in the new kitchen! I hosted Bunko this month. We didn't quite get to playing bunko, but we did have lots of laughs and fun (and food) until about 12:30!

Have a great week!

Happy Anniversary to me!!

Today is our 9 year wedding anniversary!!! What a great nine years it has been!! We've been very lucky that it's been a smooth ride!!!

I think we may go do something while Jack is at school and perhaps tonight we'll pop the cork out of the apple raspberry wine we picked up in Jim Thorpe!!



This is a layout I did for the premiere issue of Scrapbook News and Review. Make sure you check them out, it's really reader focused!

Weekend Getaway

Our 9th wedding anniversary is coming up on Thursday! On our previous anniversaries, we would go away to Atlantic City but we decided to change it up a bit this year. We went to one of our favorite little Pennsylvania towns, Jim Thorpe. We've been going there several times a year both with and without the kids. This time, we stayed overnight for two nights at the Inn at Jim Thorpe. It was a fabulous time! We ate at our favorite restaurant, enjoyed the towns unique shops and did some hiking and biking. I had the best ever kahlua tiramisu too, at a restaurant called Moya! It's all about the food, ya know!

You can click on all of the pictures to see them bigger!

This is the inn (left) and our favorite restaurant in town, JT's.


It drizzled a smidge, or 50 drops as my friend, Andrea would say, on Saturday morning, but cleared up fast. We were able to climb to the Glen Onoko Falls and then ride our bikes through the Lehigh Gorge.


On our way out of the gorge, we stopped and walked across the newly restored railroad bridge over the Lehigh River. There were lots of whitewater rafters out that day! We didn't get any really good pictures of the two of us. I planned on ordering one of those Gorillapods, but forgot! So, we had to use nature as our tripod, which didn't work out that great!


Yesterday morning, we toured the Asa Packer mansion. We always wanted to do that and finally made the time! He is the founder of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. It sounds like he and his wife were overall great people too, not taking their wealth to their heads! They were very generous to the people that worked for them, including their live in help. What a gorgeous home too! The woodwork was so ornate and it was in really great shape for being 140 plus years old. I even got some inspiration to use on some layouts! The Asa Packer mansion is on the left and the Harry Packer mansion, his son, is on the right. The Harry Packer mansion was the inspiration for Disney's Haunted Mansion. It is now a privately owned hotel.


But, we are back to reality today. It wasn't too hard to get back into it since it was an absolutely gorgeous day! Jack and I played outside and did yard work until we picked Macy up from school, then we all went out! It's going to be a repeat tomorrow! I just love playing in the dirt!!

Have a great week! Thanks for reading!