Christmas 2009

Let me just start by saying that Christmas 2009 has been the most awesome Christmas of my life. Chad and I got everything that our hearts desired in 2009 and many great wishes for the future. The best gift of all time was the addition of Britton to our family. Chad nor I would be asked what we wanted for Christmas and our response was we have already received the best gift ever in our daughter! It was very difficult to decide what to get Britton for Christmas since she is only two months old, so we did not do too much this year. Britton was really a great baby for the entire day. She did not sleep too much during the day. I think she was afraid that she would miss something. My Aunt and Uncle from Ohio and their son were here as well as my Aunt and her daughter from Arkansas so Britton was meeting other members of the family she had not met before. Here are a few pictures from Christmas as well as a few that I took on Christmas Eve in front of the Christmas tree at our house.

Santa came to visit the day care center before Christmas!







On the 22nd, I took Britton for her 2 month check up and first round of shots. She is doing very well and getting very strong. She weighs 14 pounds and 7 ounces and is 23 inches long. The doctor did notice a small umbilical hernia, that we believe will heal itself by the time she is 2 years old. So for now, we just monitor the hernia and wait to see what it does. She is sleeping anywhere from 4 to 6 hours at a time during the night. We are thrilled for this.

Thank you for peeking in on us! Happy New Year to you and yours. I hope you get all your wishes for the new year.

7 weeks old tomorrow

Well, this past couple of weeks have gone by so quickly. I went back to work one week ago. Taking Britton to daycare was very difficult, but she really seems to like it. I know how can you tell if a 6 week old really likes something. I like to believe that she likes being there and that she is having fun. Everyone at work really did a great job of keeping things going while I was gone, so I have not felt so completely overwhelmed. I am really trying to get out of the office earlier like around 5 or 5:30 and that seems to be going well. One of my staff members, mother works at the daycare center in the older infant room, and that really helps to know that there is someone there everyday that can check in on Britton and let me know if there is anything that I should be aware of.

I can't believe that Britton will be 7 weeks old tomorrow. She is sleeping about 5 hours a night before she wakes up for her bottle and usually goes back to sleep until about the time to head out the door for work. We seem to be getting into a routine. Chad is playing with her on the floor now. I am seeing more and more smiles each and everyday in addition to more noises each day. This weekend we have the last baby shower and I also hope to get the rest of the Christmas shopping finished. On Sunday we will be going to cut down the Christmas tree and then to bother our house and my mom's house to decorate trees and take pictures. I know that Britton is very young for Christmas this year, but I really can't wait to have our family Christmas with her.

Here are a few pictures from the past couple of weeks. I do promise that after the holidays I intend to get some scrapbooking done again and I will post some of those pictures. I am working on my mom's Christmas cards and I will post a picture of those this weekend.


playing in my activity gym.


snuggle time with daddy.


at Windy Knoll Christmas Tree Farm picking out our tree to cut closer to Christmas.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well this is an exciting year for us, since we have our daughter. We are still in the can't believe it is real phase. She is with us and we are so thankful for that. As I sit here updating the blog Chad is getting her dressed in her first Thanksgiving outfit. We will post pictures later. The time has flown by and I have to go back to work next week. I know that things will be okay, but I am going to have a hard time leaving her at daycare and not getting to spend my day with her.

Two weeks ago my dad was here from Sacramento to meet his granddaughter. I would say that he enjoyed his time with us. I just wish that he did not live so far away. We had a great visit and really got to spend time with him.





Britton was born with a slight heart murmur so we are following up with a pediatric cardiologist. We had an appointment yesterday and things are going just fine. Her murmur is still in the very mild stages so they want to just monitor it. We will go back when she is 3 months old for another follow up. I really think that it is something that she will outgrow. The Dr. said for them to consider doing anything the murmur would have to double at the very least before it would be in the level for them to do any type of procedure.

On November 7th our oldest nephew was playing in the playoffs and got injured. He ended up in surgery that evening. He broke his fibula and tore some ligaments. He is doing well now, but just got to meet his cousin a week after his accident.



We want to wish everyone a safe and Happy Thanksgiving. We hope that you get to spend time with your family and friends today. Here are some updated photos from the last few weeks.

Bath Time

Britton and Mommy at a shower.

Thank you for peeking in on us.

Almost 3 weeks old

Well, I really can't believe that our daughter is almost 3 weeks old. My dad is here from Sacramento to meet little Miss Britton. We are doing pretty well. She still is having issues with her nights and days being backwards. My dad has seen her attitude and her sweetness. Chad took off today to play golf with both dads so I took advantage and took Britton to Portrait Innovations for 3 week pictures. I also wanted to make sure that my dad had some professional pictures to take home when he leaves Friday.

Here are a couple of pictures since we got home and when she met her other family members. We took her out to her great grandparents house on Halloween to meet the rest of the family. She was a real trooper and loved the attention, but what little girl would not love it. This Thanksgiving season I am very thankful for our family and for the blessing of this little girl in our lives. I am really enjoying being a mom and I know that Chad is so proud to be a dad.

Halloween outfit

Meeting Grandma Diana and Papa Chip

Meeting two of her three cousins


Pictures from today

Thanks for peeking in on us. As you can tell I have not done alot of scrapbooking, but I need to get her announcements finished and start on thank you notes. Have a great rest of the week.

2 became 3

In April of this year my husband and I began the journey of adoption. We filled out all the paperwork, put our name on the list and got the profile ready. We were hoping to have some movement on our profile by Christmas, never in our wildest dreams did we expect to have a child before Halloween.

On June 16th we first spoke with our birthmother, and all decided that we wanted to proceed forward with this match. We were blessed with the fact that the birthmother lived close enough that we could be apart of the pregnancy and then the birth. We attended a few doctor's appointments and sonograms. We would speak every couple of weeks if not weekly. When we received the phone call on October 22nd that our birthmother was at the hospital we had resigned ourselves to the fact that we would not make it for the birth of our child, but we would be there soon after. About halfway to the hospital we received a phone call asking how far away we were and that they were waiting to break her water until we could be there. We got to the hospital at 4pm and our daughter was born at 5:04pm. I even got to cut the cord. What a wonderful day. We are so very grateful to our birthmother and the staff at the hospital for their treatment of us while we were there.

Our daughter was released from the hospital into our custody and today we made everything official. We went to court this afternoon and now we are ready to shout it from the mountain tops that we are now parents. Our dream or wish has come true. We cannot thank our birthmother enough for all that she has done for us and for making our dreams come true. We know this was not an easy decision, but we are so thankful and we plan to make sure this young lady knows just how much she is loved.

Here is our first official family photo.



Here are a couple of pictures of our beautiful daughter, Britton Lee.

2 days old


4 days old

Thank you for peeking in on us. I will be updating with pictures very soon.

Projects taking all the time

Well hello friends! Again I have been gone for awhile. Work is really crazy busy and then add onto that all the projects that we have been doing around the house. I have missed the time to update the blog and share some of what we have been up to with you all. We have been needing to replace some of our siding on the house and then of course the job that comes with it is painting. We had the siding replaced the beginning of June, but could not start the painting since harvest was just around the corner. Harvest means long days for Chad and since I don't do ladders that leaves me out for the high parts on the painting. So of course the time that we could start the painting was when we were having a hot spell with the weather and it was really hot outside. We did get most of the painting done in one weekend, and as of tonight we just have some touch ups to get done in the next week. While we were painting we also replaced all of the light fixtures outside. The first few pictures are of the painting of the house (including our paint crew the very first night)and the last two pictures are of the house as of today and the new lights outside.





I am really happy with the new color. It is harvest brown for the main color and melted chocolate for the trim color. The new lights really do compliment as well.

Last weekend I was able to get away to Maple Memories to get some scrapbooking done as well as a lot of laughter. I promise to get some pictures posted tomorrow of what I got accomplished as well as a few pictures of our family vacation to Branson. This year we took a quick trip to Branson with Chad's entire family and had a great time. We did a lot of laughing and in general spending quality time with family. I really did have a great time and would do it again.

Thanks for checking in on me. I will post more tomorrow. :)

It's about time!

I am sorry that I have been MIA lately. I have been working alot of extra hours (just wish I got paid for the overtime) lately as you can all tell. Work is crazy busy, but I am learning new things every day. Hopefully now that I have hired a new person I will be able to get back to some normal hours.

Last weekend I was able to get out and take some pictures of my brother in law and his family before the wheat harvest started. I was happy to take the pictures and even more honored that they asked me to do it. I had fun doing it and can't believe that the boys have gotten so big. I have added a few of the shots below.





I hope that everyone has a great week. Thank you for peeking in!

TGIF

I hope that everyone has had a good week and ready for the weekend. I took the day off today and we started some pretty deep spring cleaning or maybe you could call it a Clean Sweep. We are going through rooms and closets and getting rid of things that we haven't used in forever. We have already taken one load to Goodwill. I can't wait to see how much more we can add to that list.

Here are some more pages that I got done at Get Scrappy.


These are pages from when a group of us went to YoderHaus before they closed. This was a really great day and I had a blast with such a special group of friends. YoderHaus was a really cool scrapbooking and quilting retreat in the heart of an Amish community. We were going to go back this year, but unfortunately the owners had move back east and have sold the house. On the layout I used basic grey paper, the large tag is chipboard with Coffee Shop Glimmer Mist, the silver "friends" is from all my memories I think.

On the second page I used rubons by making memories. I love the simplicity of this page.

Golf Anyone?
Dad this one is for you!
These pictures are from last year when we spent a week in St Louis for my grandfather's 90th birthday and to see my dad. Chad and my dad spent 3 days golfing in about 5 days, this course was the final one, I think.

The "Tee Time" title is by Jolees's and the base card stock is raven by bazzill, I honestly cannot remember which line of paper the patterned paper is from.

On this page I used the Karen Foster license plate embellishments and thickers for the name of the course and the date on the right.

Thank you for checking in with me. I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend.

Wow What crazy weather

Well, what can I say it is Spring, however, we have been getting snow and ice since yesterday. The snow has stopped, but that doesn't mean that it is any fun getting around. I am finally going to post some pages from Get Scrappy. Get Scrappy was the fund raising crop that I went to with all my friends from the East store. The crop did raise some much needed funds for the YWCA Crisis Center. I had an absolute blast and got about 10 pages done while I was there.


A little about these pages. I wish that I could remember what brand of patterned paper I used, but I can't I have had it too long. The title I painted the chipboard letters with white acrylic paint and then sprayed them with red glimmer mist. The word embellishments are from lil davis. The white on the edges is actually just white acrylic paint and not paper.


These pages are pictures that I took for my friend before she had baby number 2. I know that she is tired of seeing these photos pop up since I have used them several times for class samples when I was teaching, but this layout was done for my book so they should not pop up any longer. I wanted a simple yet elegant look for this layout. This was my favorite layout from the weekend.





A little information about the title. I used Chipboard letters by pink cactus and used of course glimmer mist to add that sheen and the green color. I then added the bling. The swirls are just large punches from paper shapers (thanks Toni for letting me use this).


For those of you that know my scrapbooking ways, I hope that you noticed that I did journal in my own handwriting and at this same time that I did the pages.

Here is one last picture, I took this picture this morning during the spring blizzard that we were having. If you were to look in our backyard right now there is still snow and sleet on the ground, but it has melted off the tree.


Thank you for peeking in and be safe. Have a great rest of your weekend.

More New Pages

Well, this last weekend I went to a PJ Crop at Scrapfunattic and had an absolute blast. We scrapbooked from 5pm until 5am. I really can't believe that I made it all night. A lot of us that used to work together got together and had a great time. Sarah, Sam, Mary, and Kim, and Mary's friend Linda, and Kim's daughter Megan. I have not laughed like that in a really long time. Toni you were definitely missed. Scrapfunattic knows how to have a blast, they had movies set up, drawings, snacks, and just plain old fun. I have to say that I was lucky enough to have my name drawn and I got 3 bottles of glimmer mist. Believe it or not they were colors that I did not already own.

This top layout is from one of our Christmas trips to Prairie Pines Christmas Tree Farm. Up until this past year the tradition was to go to Prairie Pines and then spend the day putting up the trees at our house and my parents. This past year we went to Windy Knoll Christmas Tree Farm and took advantage of their tagging process. When you go out and tag a tree, you pay for it and you can choose when you come back to cut it down. I do believe that we have found a new place to cut down our tree. They really do have a great selection. The patterned paper is by Cosmo Cricket, Bazzil card stock, the word stickers are also from Cosmo Cricket, Heidi Swapp alphabet colored with glimmer mist, and making memories metal snowflakes.




These pages are from Grants Farm in St. Louis. Chad and I went there a couple of years ago when we were visiting my Grandfather, and seeing my dad. It really is a neat little place. Of course I have always been in love with the Budweiser Clydesdales. The paper is Basic Grey Granola and the tags and photo corners are chipboard shapes sprayed with glimmer mist. I found the chipboard shapes and photo corners at Hobby Lobby and I actually got them on one of their 50% of sales. Gotta love deals like that. Can you tell that I really like this product? I wrote on the tags with white pen. I know that Toni has already talked about the white pen that she loves and I will second that review. It is the best on the market.

Thank you for peeking in. I do hope that you are all having a great week and enjoying this lovely weather.

Christmas Cookies and Zoo Pages

Here are a couple of layouts that I have done recently. On this page the patterned paper is by Around the Block, the letters are cork letters from Hobby Lobby and I sprayed them with Glimmer Mist. Boy do I really love to use Glimmer Mist. The buttons were from Michaels.




Here is a two page spread for a trip to the zoo. I can't remember which company the patterned paper is from, I found the ribbon at Scrapfunattic, the letters are flocked from Hobby Lobby and the items that look like brads are little stick on brad tops also from Hobby Lobby.

I am looking forward to next weekend and a chance to get a lot of scrapbooking done. I am going to Scrapfunattic for a PJ crop 12 hours of fun!

I hope that everyone has had a great Valentine's Day. Thanks for peeking in.

Product Review

Well, I know that it has been a while. I hope that everyone is having a great week. Things have been crazy at work, but I am looking forward to the weekend. I want to share with all of you a great product that I have found. For those of you that use the ATG tape gun, it may be difficult to find the refills. I have found the Scotch ATG 908 refill for as low as $5.50 per roll that is including shipping and handling. This is the only refill that I could find that was listed as acid free. I have used the following website to order from and the more rolls you order the cheaper it is. I have ordered from Framing Supplies, http://www.framingsupplies.com/3M/InformationATG.htm, the wait is not bad at all. As far as the tape goes, this is the best that I have found. I have seen this same tape at other stores, but not as wide or as much for substantially more than what I can get from Framing Supplies. I hope that this product review is helpful to everyone.

New pages

 

 

 

The last couple of weeks I have gotten about 10 pages done. I am feeling much better about my hobby since I am actually getting a chance to enjoy it right now. Even though my full time job has been crazy busy, I have carved out time to scrapbook the last couple of weekends. This next weekend I am going to a Super Bowl crop during the day then I plan to join my husband's family for the remainder of the game. The top picture is of our godson on the 4th of July in 2006. He was having a ball getting their dog wet and just playing in the grass and mud. He is such a sweet boy. Under the marbles I have written Splish Splash as the title. I honestly cannot remember the brand of the patterned paper. The base cardstock is actually a cross between red and orange, not quite as orange as the picture makes it seem.

The baseball page is our youngest nephew pitching. He has really taken to pitching just like his oldest brother. These pictures are from 2007. I am gaining on my back log and boy does that feel good. I used Thickers for Brian's name and then I used the cricut for the year.

I hope that everyone is having a great week. It is cold here with some ice and snow expected tonight. When I came home from work it was just starting to get slick outside. Be safe!

Random Thoughts

I know that it has been awhile. Things are going pretty well, but busy. I guess it is that time of year when you work in Human Resources and Accounting. I am trying to work on the W-2's to get those out and still find time for my wonderful hobby. I have gotten to scrapbook the last two weekends and boy does that feel good. I have cleaned out some of my scrapbook room so now I can just go down and work for a little bit and not have to clean up to get the space to work. I will post some pages later tonight, but I thought that I would update everyone on my life.

As most of you know, we got a new dog, named Lucky. Well, let me tell you his name should be Houdini. The silly dog can climb a 6 foot privacy fence and run to play with other dogs or the kids in the neighborhood. He did this not once, but three times Saturday afternoon. So needless to say, we were at our wits end and we had gotten a work out. Lucky would come to me after he was done playing with everyone else or he saw Chad heading his way. Sunday afternoon we went to PetSmart and purchased an electric fence that you can string on the fence and not have to bury. We plan to install that this weekend. I will let you know how it works. In the meantime, we are having to stand outside with him so that he will not try to climb the fence. Boy, he is one fast dog. Well, that was our excitement this weekend.

I hope that everyone is having a great week. I will post pictures tonight.

Last Christmas

Brent and Lucky


Brian playing wii bowling


Brent playing wii bowling

Well, I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and Happy New Year. My husband's family finally got to celebrate Christmas this past Saturday. My sister-in-law had a great idea this year, and that was to just spend some quality family time together since everyone is getting so hard to buy for. The rest of the family was okay with this as long as the kids were okay with it. I am very proud of our nephews, they were more than okay with this plan. They even told Grandma that they did not want anything for Christmas, but to buy something for someone that probably won't get anything. So, instead of buying gifts, we went to a movie, out to dinner and then back to our house to play games. We were able to spend 8 solid hours together enjoying family time and playing with the new dog. The only reason we were so late getting together was because of illness throughout the family. We played a couple of other games, but ended up in the basement teaching Grandma and Grandpa (Chad's parents) how to play the Wii. We had a great time, but it sure went by quickly. I, personally, hope that this becomes a family tradition.