Moments in Time

Well, we're off on vacation in another hour. Right now, two weeks seems almost two long, but I think it will go by fast. I miss Dixie already. Poor Ali cried when we left her last night. But Dixie is staying with a friend from work, Denise, who breeds and LOVES labs. Dixie can go swimming every day and, I think, will have fun. Hopefully she won't miss us too much either.

Before our trip, I finished all my ATCs for my upcoming swaps. I've added them to my Projects gallery. The project I am really excited about is my new, alterable "Memory Purse". You can see all the pictures (including before and after shots) in my gallery. Here's one shot. (You can see a larger view by clicking on it.
I LOVE how this turned out. I love the paper collection - Mulberry Meadow. All products are made by The Angel Company, with the exception of the "smile" sticker on the tag. That's by Creative Memories and I bought it from my friend & super CM consultant, Jill. :-)

I also finished reading "The Yacoubian Building". Great book. Written by an Egyptian for the Middle Eastern market, it's an interesting insight into that culture and way of thinking. There's an interesting side story that relates to the current conditions in the Middle East and the rise of the jihadist movement.

I'm off to do some last minute packing and then it's open road for the next 7 hours or so!

All that wretched cleaning and organizing paid off. It was so nice to work in my CLEAN room! Ugh, I can definitely see why I let it get so messy though. Keeping things all picked up and put away in there is not easy. It's just not in my nature. I'm definitely the messy, creative type. :-/

If you look in my Projects album, you'll see pictures of the ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) that I made today for two swaps that I'm in. Here's a sneak peek. (You can click on the image to see a larger version.)



The girls have been busy creating, too. They built a house and cars (out of boxes) for their Webkinz stuffed animals. Look for pictures!

...when you're having fun.

Well, we haven't just been having fun. I've spent more hours than I care to think in my craft room cleaning, sorting, organizing and purging. (Gotta love FreeCycle!) But, I am almost done (whew!) and look forward to some crafting time tomorrow. Check back for some pictures of the finished projects.

Recent fun for the kids: going out to lunch (Panera), out for ice cream (Randy's), and having friends over. We also saw Night at the Museum. I was never in a hurry to see this movie but I actually liked it a lot. (The preview clips with the movie threw me. I have this thing about monkeys. They give me the creeps. I don't know why.) Anyway, we also saw Ratatouille. Great movie with wonderous animation. I'm always blown away by great animation and want to know more about how the movie was done. I checked out the official Ratatouille site, but didn't find anything there. You can definitely see the stamp of Brad Bird, who also directed "The Incredibles". Several of the characters have Edna-like elements to them. (I think Collette is a younger, prettier, much taller and slightly softer version of Edna.) That's a good thing to me, because Edna was my favorite character in The Incredibles (Although I'm glad I didn't get named Edna - which is what my father wanted to name me - eek!.)

We've got the first leg of our NJ trip planned. We're stopping in Columbus the first night. We'll just make it a relax and hang out at the pool evening after a long day in the car. The next day we're stopping at Hershey, PA to do the "sundown special" at Hershey Park. It's Hershey's 100th anniversary this year, which makes it kind of special. The next morning we may do some sight seeing around the town, then head off for Aunt Jean's house in NJ. While we're there we may go into NYC to the Museum of Natural History. I've always wanted to take them there and seeing Night of the Museum has piqued Jessica's interest. Just planning the trip out has been arduous enough (trying to please everyone when no one else wants to do any work in researching/deciding - I feel like the Little Red Hen!). I haven't yet worked out the entire trip.

Off to my craft room to finish cleaning so I can actually MAKE something in there tomorrow! :-)

Whew! I am GLAD that this week is over.

The dreaded attendance reporting went well. Only a few corrections to make and no angry parents. In fact, my principal gave me a thumbs up on the attendance (literally) at our after work celebration on the last day of summer school.

The last week of summer school was nutty between all the work involved in closing out the session (lots of paperwork and checklists) and the fact that the stomach flu hit full force mid-week. We sent several kids home daily the last few days of school. The end of the session came just in time!!

I am also very happy to say that we are done car shopping. (Give me a root canal any time. Cheaper and not any less enjoyable. I hate all the haggling and hardballing.) On Monday we will be the proud new owners of a (used) Ford Escape. It's an '06 and only had 11K miles on it. They didn't come down much on the price (they said that they'd had it a while and had marked it down a few times), but we were pleasantly surprised at what they gave us on a trade in. Made it worth it not to hassle with selling it ourselves. Here's our new vehicle:

The highlight of my week was finding out my salary for my new job. I had hoped it would be close to what I made in summer school (that job is a higher salary grade than my school year job will be). Even better - it will be a little bit more. They looked at my years of experience (presumably my AT&T years) and put me on a higher step on the pay scale. This is really what they *should* have done, but being the school system you do the happy dance when they actually do it.

I have a month off before I go back to work. (Unfortunately, that also means no paycheck but you can't have everything!) The girls and I are making our plans! :-)

Ever notice how no one ever says "Happy Monday!"? Or "Thank God, it's Monday!"? For most of us, there's nothing happy or thankfulness-inducing about Monday.

I suppose I should be happier about this Monday. It's our last week of summer school. (Now that gets a big YIPPEE!!!! from me.) But it's also the start of all the work of finishing it up. Several of our problem kids were slightly (?) bonkers today. (Principal sent 2 home today - one for the rest of summer school.) And I get the true test of my attendance taking skills when I brace for incoming calls about any errors (or at least points of contention) about the attendance reports I sent home with all the kids today. (Since any absence counts against the gift cards kids earn for attending, people get VERY touchy. And they really hate the policy - which we have NO control over - that doesn't excuse any absence. Not even doctor certified illness or Grandma's funeral.)

Oh, but there was one other good thing about today. I emailed Ali's summer school teacher today. I wanted to let her know how much Ali liked her and enjoyed summer school. I also thanked her for giving Ali a free pass to Bonkers (play place) for an act of kindness. I mentioned that Ali sometimes had trouble in school with following directions, etc. and asked her to let me know if there were any issues I needed to be aware of. This was the teacher's response:

"Thank you for letting me know how Alison is feeling about summer school. I want you to know that I really have enjoyed having Alison in my classroom and she always shows 100% effort and motivation in the classroom.
I hope you all enjoy going to Bonkers and have a great rest of the summer."

It's always an especially good feeling when someone says something nice about your "problem child". (Problem child is an overstatement, but Ali is my child most likely to have school "issues".)

I just have to get through tomorrow.... Blech. I am dreading it already.

Yippee! After weeks of having her stuff all over the living room, Jess was able to start moving back into her newly decorated room. The new carpet looks great! It's hard to judge the wall color in these photos (the flash changes the color), but it's a deep purple blue. I think it's the color of hyacinths. The accent colors are a bright green (not so yellowish as in the photos) and 2 shades of light aqua blue.

(You can click on the 2 photos of the walls to see a bigger version.) Here's the striped wall:

That was pretty simple. Would do it again in a flash. Not so the circles. They came out pretty good, but, boy, were they a pain in the butt!

Of course, in our house, the pets have to give their stamp of approval. I think Tiger likes Jessica's new comforter set from Target:

Dixie obviously finds the new carpet comfy:

We're off to the lake tomorrow for a belated 4th of July family celebration, but Jess will have the fun of putting away the rest of her stuff on Sunday. I'm so glad I'll be at Jill's crop. :-)

Until I can get some things loaded to the site, you can visit my Gallery on Split Coast Stampers here:
Lisa's Gallery

Happy browsing!
Lisa

If Martha can have her "good things", Oprah can have her "favorites" and Alton can have his "good eats", surely we mortals can share our good finds, right?

MOM finds -
Panera Bread Company's Strawberry, Poppyseed and Chicken Salad. I *love* this salad. That's the first time the words "love" and "salad" have ever been uttered in the same sentence by yours truly.
McDonald's Iced Coffee. I'm hooked on the Hazelnut flavored version. Way less expensive (and I"m hoping way less fattening) than a Starbuck's Mocha Frappucino. We're all hooked at the summer school office. :)

KID finds -
Molli Coolz ice cream. Ali loves Dippin' Dots but they're more expensive than Starbucks! This is the grocery store version. I can buy a 4 pack for the same as a medium cup of Dippin' Dots at the mall. And they come with a free reusable ice pack!

PET finds -
Self-cleaning slicker brush (http://tinyurl.com/325enr). Dixie's hair is short and fine and clogs up a brush in no time flat. The self cleaning "grill" is a great invention!

If I thought I was way behind in my blogging when I hadn't posted in 3 months, what does that make me when it's been a YEAR and two months?! ;-) When I finally get around to making that schedule I keep talking about, remind me to include a regular blogging "appointment"!

In case you're relying on this blog to keep you up to date (and, boy are you in trouble if you are!), here's the reader's digest of life since a year ago last May...

Jess is officially a teenager (13!) and a soon to be junior high student. I can still remember driving her to school on her first day of kindergarten! How does this happen and when was I consulted to say it was OK for her to grow up so fast?!

Ali is still, well, Ali. :-) She marches to her own drummer, but she's growing up, too. Being the youngest child and the youngest cousin (with 2 older female cousins and one big sister), she sometimes is growing up too fast, wanting to be like the big girls.

We've adopted a wonderful dog, a yellow Lab name Dixie. She's big, sweet and cuddly. All the things I look for in a dog. :-) We still miss Tash, but Dixie is the best dog we could've adopted for our family. She's loving, gentle and well behaved. But has her goofy moments, too. :-) She loves to eat bugs (I dread the day she catches one of those bumblebees in my garden!) and loves to come barrelling at you to tackle you. (A 70 lb dog running full out is quite a force to be reckoned with!)

Other household pets still include Tiger the cat, Fluffy the guinea pig, Speckles the rabbit and Emmett the snake (who has since been joined by Layla the snake). The foster animal contingent changes on a revolving basis but currently includes a huge rabbit named Silver Cloud. (Hey, I just foster them, I don't name them!)

I'm looking forward to working full time next school year at a local high school. The job search was a long, arduous and stressful process, but I think I've found a good fit.

I hope to add some of my stamping and scrapbooking projects over here. Look for those soon.

And my next post will be sooner than 1 year and 2 months. I promise. :-)

Lisa