Ch-ch-ch-changes

July blew by, with some absolutely gorgeous weather to go outside and play in. yay!!! We got to go see Tim graduate from Air Force Basic training, and spend a little bit of time with his family. This was the first time all the grandchildren have been together, and the girlies got on famously!
There was a lot of hand holding and hugging, and cute getting to know each other playing.
Tim looked wonderful, if quite a bit THINNER. It was beastly hot in Texas, but everyone held up well. I got to meet a fellow AOL scrap buddy, Tinka! She's was a lotta fun, and took me to a crop with her. We took the obligatory foot photos, as well as a photo of us together. Tinka is an AMAZING scrapbooker. She 'threw together' several layouts, and each of them was gorgeous. I plugged along on a project I'd brought along, which was very basic while she was using all sorts of fun stuff. She teaches a heritage class, and made me wish I lived there just so I could go to her classees and hang out with her.

When you have children you are aware that they grow up, but it seems like you're always so busy with just the daily things you don't notice the changes going on in them. I find myself wishing for time to stand still; they're so cute right now that I want to prolong it so I can really savor the changes going on. Benji (20mos) has conversations with himself all the time, but yesterday I understood him saying: 'What's that? I don't know' A lot of his words are mimicking Anna, but he can make himself understood much of the time. When he wants more to eat or drink, he says 'more please'. He LOVES to jump off things, which sometimes makes my heart stop, and is an adorable little monster when he acts like Godzilla. RAWR! Anna is learning to write her name-a month ago she wouldn't have the patience to try and make the letters, she just wanted you to do it. She can say all the letters of the alphabet, and very neatly rolls up ribbon (when she wants to). She's working on numbers, but often reminds me of King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail "1, 2, 5" (three, sir) 3! She loves to draw, and is good at pointing out facial features.

Andrew turned 16 a few days ago-my baby. He has his drivers permit, and has driven several times already. So far he has been very conscientious, and anxious to do well. Missouri requires teens to have their permit for 6 months, and he plans to have a lot of practice under his belt in those 6 months.
It is time to be planning for the new school year, and I find myself feeling behind the power curve. I know generally what Andrew will be studying, but haven't made a schedule yet. I have some books to find, and some to reshelve from last year. It seems like I've not hardly sat down for the last 3 weeks-always something else to DO. I signed up for Jessica Sprague's class on Brushes..and oh my such great STUFF she includes in her classes! I like that the daily lesson is fairly short, because right now anything with great detail would not get done. I'm having trouble keeping up as it is. So Jeanne and Kel, feel free to IM me and drag me into doing what I love to do-play with digital photos and scrap them! :-) Hopefully soon I will feel sort of caught up on life so I can sit down and relax and scrap!

I found the cure for insomnia!

Toddlers! I'm so tired at the end of the day that I've not been having any trouble sleeping for 6 or 7 hrs straight.
Plus they're fun!!!

I must be super talented...

I can have insomnia in ANY time zone. yay me!
I'm here in Germany, enjoying my time with Katie and her family, but man o man! J E T L A G!
And of course, it doesn't help that I had my Sunday nap...only about 4 times as long as a 'normal' Sunday nap!
But it was a gorgeous day, and I did play outside with the kids for awhile. Yu'd think I'd be darn worn out, but no. I should have taken my camera, but I was too busy actually playing to get to take pictures. I hope we have more nice weather, so we can all go out again. Anna and Ben are just too darn cute sometimes (and other times typical siblings...MINE! No, MINE! HEYYYYYY! MOMMYYYYYYYY!!!!) but they are usually cooperative and get along well. Anna loves pink, which makes me giggle since mommy is not a pink lover. I keep telling her to embrace the pink, and Anna certainly has a fair number of pink outfits. Yesterday at supper, Katie gave them their food-one was a yellow plate, one a pink. She set the yellow one in front of Anna who calmly said "No...that one's Bens!" and waited nicely for mom to switch them. I told Katie she needs to keep a mommy journal, because this is the age of those verbal gems that crack you up (even when you're not supposed to laugh!) but fade so swiftly. I am looking forward to having them come for an extended visit. Just a few more weeks!

Where did April go?

I lost April. I blinked and it whizzed by. How is it that life, which seems so plain and every day can whiz by? Was I busy? Too busy? *sigh* I feel like there is never enough time in the day-especially those days I get lost on the computer. What did I do before I had a computer? Ahh I read. A lot. But wait..I STILL read a lot. Oh. Clean house? I'm supposed to cook supper? Those things can wait because I have to decide what I want to plant out front. How is it that I've been looking at flowers for five hours?? And did you know that just reading updates on facebook can take an hour? I don't even want to talk about email...and then there are the blogs, I must check those and see who has written something new...
But back to April. Maybe I just blocked it out because I had to pay taxes. I know I took a lot of pictures, because I've spent a lot of time editing them. (I obsess a little over the pictures. Should I go with the auto white balance? Should I tweak this juuuuuuust a little more? Is this how I saw it, or was it different? Do I want it to look realistic or...? When will I remember to put the wrist strap on when I use the point and shoot so I don't have to clone it out?)
And now it is May. May, the month of birthdays. Daughter, sister, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, multiple friends. They remind me to spend time thinking of someone other than myself, and be part of the world once again. Maybe May will be the month that lazily drifts by, with plenty of time to do all I want to do. A girl can dream.

playin it cool...ha, what's that??

Jeanne introduced me to the wonders of textures on photos, and to a group who do a challenge every couple of weeks. I'm so psyched about this that I already did the photo sent out today... lol
I'm afraid if I sit and think about it I will totally forget to send it in. It's sooooooo much fun to play with making a photo into a whole different work of art than how it started.
I'll have to find where I downloaded some textures, since there was no name associated with them in the file. (OOPS) I know where I found the link to them, though, so it shouldn't be too difficult. (I hope!)
And for Katie, here is a picture of a jack-in-the-pulpit; she's been having to listen to me wonder when they were going to show up at Maramec for 3 weeks. lol

and one more of the dogwood, which I have to say I didn't notice any perfume from the flowers either pleasant or unpleasant.

masking fun

Hanging out at jessicasprague.com, you see many different styles of layouts and scrapping. One of the gals that hangs out there, Anke, uses page masks to get an ethereal style of scrapping that is just beautiful. This is my first attempt at doing a page mask, and it was a lot of fun figuring it out. I figured out *a* way to do them, but I don't know if it is the best way. I'll find a tutorial sometime, I guess. I masked the background paper over the photo, and did a layer mask to lightly erase over the photo.

Paper and flowers: Kaye Winiecki
brushes: Liv Esteban, Anna Aspnes
Fonts: Scriptina, CK cursive

more Maramec

I am really enjoying going to Maramec Spring every week, but today was chilly and wet and I sooooooo didn't want to go!
We did anyway, and I was pleased-dogwood! For me, that's the sure sign of spring, the first blossoms tinged with green and changing to snowy white when in full bloom.

We've had a lot of rain this week, and the water was even a little higher than last week, but fairly clear. I got a nice picture of the falls just below the spring since it was a cloudy day. The first week we went this year, the water was low enough that it was possible to walk across the falls on the rocks. No more, unless you have a desire for a battered body as the water sweeps you down the river.


The spring on average puts out 100,000 gallons of water a day I think, and I suspect today was well over average. It is mesmerizing to stand and watch the water boil out of the underground spring and flow on downstream. The sound of the falls blocks out all conversation and other sounds. It is a peaceful place to be, to absorb the wonder of God's creation. Each time we go there is something new-new life, to be sure, but also the circle of life. Flowers grow and die, fish get released to nourish some lucky persons body...all things that remind us we are a small cog in God's creation, and it is humbling. The bounty of beauty in the springtime is a joy to watch unfold, and I feel blessed to witness it.
Although, my daughter tells me you don't want to take time to smell the dogwood, only admire it. Apparently it isn't a particularly pleasing fragrance. :-) I'll have to go smell for myself next week, and report back, since I've never smelled dogwood.

of course we have to look towards the spring-just look how nice and lush it is getting!

A close up of the redbud. It got hit pretty hard by the cold snap, but it is still quite lovely.
I can't wait to see what next week brings!