Cards...

I've been making cards lately. I think it may be because I don't have to only make thank you cards anymore, and partly because with my album being more pictures than paper, I've had to get my paper fix in another way. Then, too, there are the birthdays, new babies, and funerals I've needed cards for... (I'm still not to the point where I get everyone in my family a card by their birthday, but it's a goal I'm not giving up on! I got my dad and sister-in-law covered this month, but missed three nephews. :S )

I got a new box of colored card bases at Jo-Ann's while we were in the States, and a two pack of Australian card magazines I found on special at Walmart, and a new giraffe stamp at Michaels, and I've been enjoying playing.  These are a few of them - the ones I thought were worth a photo so I could reproduce them later:

I like the flat edged circle on this one.

Michaels also had good background paper on sale.

Bustin' out the pencil crayons!

 

 

The clouds are cut from patterned paper, and I got a new heart punch.  

This last one I saw as a baby shower card, but I changed the colors and it makes a good sympathy one, too.

Thanks for looking!

Nolan Photos

Nolan got to use his swing for the first time.

New tricks - rolling onto his side...

and grabbing toys.  This has been a fun week!

Grabbing with the hands and the feet get in the action, too.

Reaching for and holding Mommy's hand.  {melt}

Hugging the giraffe - so cute! - and showing off his blanket from Portugal.

He played himself right out.  Still holding the dragonfly...

Awesome tummy time - he's so strong.

We had a Chapters date & picked up some books for Nolan.

My favorite shot of the week. Love his cuddles.

He started grabbing things about a week & a half ago.  How fun to see him interacting with all the toys he's been given.  Another big thing from this past week is that we've begun going to a Fit for Two swim class.  It's a drop in class that's offered twice a week; this week we went twice and I think we will again this week.  Not a bad workout, and while it is a big job to get there with him fed and not tired (!), it's worth it, especially when I have a friend going with me.

Madeline had a full weekend; Friday night to Saturday noon was their 30 hour famine with youth group.  She raised $57.50 for that, mostly just in the last week; she had been focusing for the last couple of months on raising money for the MS Walk, which was this morning.  They had a good time, and we're pretty proud that she raised $450 for that. 

Thanks for looking and sharing our joy!

A Year of... what?

For book club this year, we had two selections that were memoirs of year long experiments.  The first was The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and I just finished The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs.  (I just heard about the third book Jacobs wrote in this style, called Drop Dead Healthy (his first was about reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica).  In a funny twist, I heard about it on twitter, via Gretchen Rubin.)  I also have a request in at the library for A Year of Living Generously by Lawrence Scanlan.

Have you ever thought of doing a year long project??  What ideas interest you?  What could you come up with that would stretch you, take you out of your comfort zone, and make you into a better person?  What would be just plain fun?  For your enjoyment and inspiration, I've compiled up a short list of year long projects...

Write a letter or card a day.
Origami!
Make a Sky Scarf - knit one row a day the color of the sky that day.
Live Generously.
Take a photo a day. (Google Project 365 & you'll find lots of ideas.)
Take a photo of yourself every day...
Crock Pot cooking (Every week for a year?)
Organization - Make a master list and work your way through your home, organizing every corner.
Read a book a week.
Start a blog & write about your project.  Or start a blog as your project.
Draw something every day.
Buy a Daily Journal and write a sentence a day. (I'm doing this for Nolan as his other baby book.)
Write a book; work on it every day.
Sleep 8 hours a night.
Keep all your shopping lists.
Find a geocache every week for a year.

What are other ideas for the list?  Have you done a year of something?

The Album!!

As promised, here are the 25 (!!) pages from the last 3 months.  Enjoy!  They're compressed for going online, so if you want to see them in their full glory, you are cordially invited to come over for tea and a visit. :)

Three Months Old!

Nolan is 3 months today - what an awesome little boy we've got.  Love every minute with him.

He's learned something new this week - yesterday he grabbed his soother when I held it up in front of him, and then grabbed his teething ring.  This morning I tried holding a few different things in front of him and he grabbed them all.  He's been grabbing his blankets and stuffing them into his mouth, and he also has been pushing his soother back in when it slips out but is still close, but this moves him officially into the next stage.  So big.

On Monday we went and got Nolan's first shots.  He was in good spirits when we got there, and didn't cry too much with the first one, but the second one was the painful one, and he had some good screams for a few minutes.  Poor little guy.  Thankfully that was the only reaction to it... he was fine and happy again pretty quick after, and he didn't have any side effects.

I finished the last of the album pages this morning, so watch for that post tomorrow!

2012 - The Album.

Happy Tuesday, Friends!

If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?  I would probably be in Winnipeg, watching my nephew Silas in Seussical the Musical.  Since I'm not there, here with my family is a good second.  It was a pretty plain night, actually - once Nolan fell asleep, Sean and I went out to pick up a new toaster and a curtain rod for N's new drapes.  They're very boyish - dark blue with cars on them.  Now that it's lighter longer, we needed to get something to darken the room, and we needed something to finish off the window anyway.

I picked up pictures today & filled in my pages for the last 5 weeks.  Now I just have to put the finishing touches on them - that will take a day or two, then I promise I will post them all.  My goal this week is to share them with you!  I am enjoying doing our year like this - I've got a weekly routine now for uploading and saving my photos, and when I can get to it, planning each week's page or pages, setting up the smaller ones on Photoshop, and ordering them.  Here are the two pages for Christmas and the first two for January - up to just before Nolan made his appearance.

40 Books Every Child Should Read

Follow this link to the Half Price Book Blog's list of favorites; they've got it listed by book covers & seeing them will bring back memories for all you readers out there, I'm sure. 

I'm going to try to read them all this year.  How's that for a fun goal?!

What were your favorite childhood books?  Share, please; I'd love to add them to my list!

Swimming!!

This post is coming to you live from over the border, and I've got a fun 'first' to share with you. First, a couple of shots from the weekend.

 

We did not have a lot of snow this winter, and it's been an early spring, so what snow we did have has been gone for a while.  This is what we woke up to Saturday morning.  There always has to be one last snow...

This is from Easter Sunday.  Highlights were that Nolan got to meet another aunt and uncle and two cousins, and we found out that there's another cousin on the way!!  K & J are due in November - it was good timing that I took along the bag of maternity clothes she had loaned me!

M and N having fun with the mirror in our hotel room today.  We came down into North Dakota on Monday, along with half of Regina according to the border crossing guard.  The kids do have the week off school... I've never done the Minot shopping thing before, and we came this time because Sean needed to pick up some car parts - they didn't ship to Canada, so he had them sent to a parcel pickup service here.  We decided to made a little trip of it and get in some family time since he had to come anyway.  We went as far as Minot yesterday and walked the mall to check out what they had that was different than home.  This morning we checked out the Hobby Lobby and then hit the road for Grand Forks.  Sean will get his goods tomorrow morning, then we'll explore here for the day, and head back to Minot for another night, then head home Thursday.  A short drive each day is not too bad with the little guy, as he does sleep most of the drive time.  He is being very accommodating about not getting too fussy, since we are either all together in small spaces, like the car and the hotel room, or in public, like shops and restaurants...  He does have his moments, of course, but it could be way worse!

So the big first - since were are staying in hotels, with pools, we thought we'd pack his swim stuff and see if it worked out to get him wet:

 

In the swim pants and cute bathing suit...  It's size 6-9 months, and fits him great!  (Yep, he's not even 3 months yet.)  They have a good kiddie pool here that was a decent temperature, and he did great.  It was just like a big bath, except he didn't get quite as splashy.  Enough to get it in his face, though!

Of course M liked the kiddie pool too.  I took N back for a bath and bedtime and the other two got in more swimming and hot tubbing.  Our little road trip is turning into not a bad little vacation.