Brenna's 6th Birthday party pictures and Bryce is 13

I'm always happy to see the end of April because the schedule starts to calm down a bit. The city-wide Battle of the Books took place on the 16th, and while the Remington team didn't place in the competition they still did the best that any team from our school has done, so we are quite proud. The dance competitions are all done now- the second one was last weekend on the 18th in the middle of that huge spring snowstorm we were hit with. The twins' tap group picked up another 'first place overall' for their age group, and our dance studio as a whole got the big award for best overall senior dancers. Science projects are going. Bryce has to have his project board completed by the end of next week so we are in the final stretch of that particular one, which means we are to hard part of getting everything written up and put on the poster as well as preparing for an oral presentation of his project to the class. We will be getting Beth's actual experiment started tomorrow afternoon since it involves plants and will take over a week to complete the data collection. Bryce's birthday was last week too and we took him and a couple of friends out for a party yesterday evening- I'll have to leave you hanging on that one yet since I'm just now getting the post for the first birthday this month done and I don't have the pictures off of the camera yet. LOL

journaling: We celebrated Brenna’s 6th birthday with a My Little Pony party. Because of dance competitions for her older sisters we had to wait over a week after her birthday to have it, and she did very well at waiting. I think it might have made it a bit more exciting even. Her friends Abby Dall and Riley Fisher and two of Beth and Carissa’s friends came to help us celebrate. They made beaded bracelets and played pin the mark on the pony, ate purple pony cake, and then played with the new pony and pet toys after they were opened. It was a fun way to celebrate Brenna’s special day.
credits: Miss Cherie by Glam Fairy at scrapbookgraphics; All the Sweet Flavors by Lauren Grier at SweetShoppeDesigns; Template 67 by Yin Designs; fonts: CK Becky

and here is last week's birthday boy. It's hard to believe we officially have a teenager in the house now.

journaling: It’s official, we are now the parents of a teenager. Where did the years and our little boy go? We now have a handsome young man in his place. Already he is 2.5” taller than his mother (which he thinks is quite funny). We are proud of you, Bryce.
credits: by Jessica Bolton: Pastiche for the Boys, Love This Guy, Love This Guy Addon, Just a Memory, Thrifty Solids No 3; Bad Sewing Machine - Don't Be Square by Traci Reed at SweetShoppeDesigns; P52 Week 17 template by Tracy Blankenship at FunkyPlaygroundDesigns
fonts: FO Howie's Stamps Lowfat, TXT Tough Love

Portrait cards

I wanted a pretty way to send some relatives their copies of our annual Easter portraits. The photos are held on the mats with a corner slot punch (remember those?! I had to think for a minute or two of where to look for it LOL) so that they can be removed from the card easily once the cards are received.

digital credits: Loft 18 Silhouettes by Vera Lim at PrimaHybrid, Signs of Spring Chipmates by Valerie Foster at PrimaHybrid.com
font: CK Heritage
traditional credits:
by Prima Marketing, Inc.: Signs of Spring papers (881344, 881283, 881269), Diecut Chipboard (#400026), Chipmates Inkjet diecut sticker sheets, Chipmates Clear Epoxy Stickers (#400002), Bitty Bag Flowers (506988), Bigger Bag Flowers (516703), Mulberry Flowers (#711856), Build-A-Bauble (400101), Breathe Deco Brads (711634),
other: white cardstock, glitter glue by Sulyn, Corner Slot Punch by Family Treasures

A few tips and tricks on how I made these can be seen on the Prima blog in last Wednesday's post.

A Savannah LO - in paper!

I don't go to the craft stores that often any more since I started doing the majority of my scrapping on the computer, but sometimes there is something I just can't pass up! Michaels has started carrying some seasonal lines made by Prima recently in their new Designer Corner. One of them is called 'First Blush' and is designed by Doris Castle and Dianne Rigdon- two fabulous designers individually and they are great as a team too!
I went and picked up a few things from Michaels and made this page of Mark and I with photos from our weekend getaway to Savannah in the fall. I love all of the textures, and the shabby heritage papers with a touch of embossing and glitter. They are a perfect remembrance of that special trip.

credits:
First Blush line by Studio D and Prima Marketing, Inc. available at Michaels craft stores:
Specialty Papers (715069), Say It In Crystals (715236), Voila! Die Cut Felt Art Strips (715229), Floral Embellishments (714192), Bird Die Cuts (714772), Glitter Brads (715168), vintage Mix Flowers (714239),
Whispered Words Flock Alphabet (812119) by Prima Marketing, Inc., gold glitter leaves were salvaged from our Christmas floral centerpiece

Coloring Eggs, A Purple Pony Cake and Pancakes for Lunch

journaling: We finally squeezed in an egg dyeing session on Thursday night after all of the appointments for the day were done. We had a basic kit with three colors, and the kids had fun exploring mixing them to create new colors from the primary ones we started with. The girls also enjoyed adding stickers to them once they were dry.
credits: Duckys & Bunnies & Eggs, Oh My by Tracey Monette and Saxon Holt at scrapbook-elements.com; Templates With Attitude Trios 6 by Tracy Blankenship at funkyplaygrounddesigns.com; masking tape by Audra Little; fonts: FO Messy Bessy

How I spent my morning and afternoon- Brenna's birthday party is tomorrow afternoon and she chose a My Little Pony theme this year.


and I forgot I did this layout too last week since I haven't uploaded it to any galleries yet. About once a month we go to Grandmama's house for lunch. We usually have some type of pancakes, and Brenna enjoys helping make the batter. Sarah got a puzzle from downstairs and she and I worked it while we waited for the food to be ready.

credits: Rise & Shine, Fresh Fruit, and Vegetable Soup (papers) by Pamela Donnis at DigiChick; Handcut Alpha and Jelly Alpha by Lili at scrapartist; Chipboard Alpha by Kate Hadfield at The-LilyPad; Doodled Borders and masks by Jenna Desai at The-LilyPad; fonts: CK Becky

The next two days are going to be very busy. Tomorrow morning there is an egg hunt at church, then Brenna's birthday party is in the afternoon at home, and Beth and Carissa have a dance rehearsal for Opening Number in the evening. I told Brenna she could come with me to watch if she was willing to spend some of the time working on her sight words and reading with me while we waited. I had tried to get her to do that this afternoon, and she and Sarah were just too hyper from all of the anticipation to make it worth anything. Sunday morning we are having breakfast at church, and then we are going to have lunch at my mom's. I hope I have the energy on Saturday evening for cooking! I'm sure photos of the party won't show up here until Sunday evening at the earliest.

On a happy note, we were thrilled to see some old neighbors again yesterday evening. They lived across the street from us for 2 years and 4 years ago the military moved them to Virginia. They have been renting the house out all these years and now they are back! Their daughter Courtney was a good friend of the twins, so we are glad they have returned. :)

5th Grade Battle of the Books

Beth and Carissa are both on our school's Battle of the Books team this year. It is a competitive program for students to encourage them to read. At the elementary level in our area teams are made up of 5th graders and compete against teams from other schools. There is a list of 40 books that each team is supposed to have read. A team is 5 kids, and a school can send up to two teams to the competition. We only have one team this year.

Beth has read all 40 of the books on the list, some more than once now. Carissa has read about half of them, I think. Here's a link to the list of books for this year at our library: http://www.ppld.org/kids/BookIdeas/battleofthebooks.asp
The list does change slightly from year to year- a few books are taken off and others added to replace them, but the bulk of them stay on for several years at a time, if not permanently.

Our district had their practice competition Wednesday morning. They did great and scored the highest points of all of the teams in our room- only missing two of the questions they were allowed to answer on toss-ups when the first team answered them incorrectly, and they didn't miss any of their direct questions. They said they don't do toss-ups in the area competition next week, but they wanted to give everyone more chances at answering. It was interesting. I was surprised Sarah behaved well enough to sit through the whole hour. The area competition isn't really amenable to small people, so I won't be attending that one- just waiting for a report when they get home.

The competition consists of asking them questions about the books and they can confer with each other to come up with the answer, which are given verbally. The first question our team got this morning was about the book The City of Ember: 'what is the most important resource the city is in danger of losing' (or something along those lines), with the answer being 'electricity'. Another one I can remember was from Where the Red Fern Grows about where the names for the dogs came from- they were carved into a tree with a heart around them was the answer- it's been way too long since I've read that particular book, so I didn't remember that one LOL.



Holding up their answer for a toss-up question, which they had 15 seconds to write down. They got 5 points for correct answers to these questions.
Answering a question directed first to their team- they earned 10 points for correct answers. They were allowed 30 seconds to confer amongst themselves and then answer the question.
The final scores after the end of 5 rounds. Remington earned 95 points- 50 from their own questions and 45 on the toss-up questions.
Celebrating another correct answer.

Scrapdish Easter sale and egg hunt

Scrapdish is having a store-wide sale and an Easter Egg Hunt Eggstravaganza!
But instead of eggs, you'll be collecting scrap kits. 15 Designers have designed mini-kits with an Easter palette. These kits will create an awesome Easter Mega kit...if you can find them all that is! Visit the Scrapdish Forum on Friday 10th April for the first clue and you can
begin your Easter Egg Hunt!

Here's what my egg hunt kit looks like:

Each designer's kit is hidden in the description of a product in their store. There are clues to follow to each one. You can get your first clue in the Scrapdish forum here.

a few layouts

Things are super busy right now, and I'm exhausted trying to keep up with it all. I'm always glad when we get to the end of April and all of the Easter programs and birthday parties and school projects are done. I have managed a few layouts this week. Here they are.


Saxon has a new collab coming out on Sunday with Tracey Monet at scrapbook-elements that was perfect for getting a couple more pages about Daddy done. It is huge and filled with all sorts of perfect embellishments for pages about the handyman in your life or constructions projects.

journaling: There are very few pictures of Richard working at church. He was always in the background, taking care of things dependably and quietly- working on the building the years we spent on the building program, designing sets posters and programs, setting up for Sunday School and ringing the bell, stuffing bulletins into hymnals. He was a silent servant, happy to help in any way he could and content to know that things were done well even if he got no credit for them.
credits: Joe Six Pack by Saxon Holt and Tracey Monette at scrapbook-elements.com (coming April 12); fonts: Zapf Chancery LT

journaling: Richard was rarely the one speaking in front of the church. He worked in the background, taking care of the building usually. Heritage had installed a new multi-media projection system not too long before he passed on and was in need of a good ladder to reach it for occasional maintenance. We all agreed that it would be an appropriate use of his memorial fund money to purchase the ladder for the church. It is something he might very well have gone out and bought for them himself. I’m sure he would have been one of the ones using it on a regular basis to change lightbulbs and clean the gutters of leaves. The ladder is pictured on the right the morning that they dedicated it in his memory. Jan. 14, 2007
credits: Joe Six Pack by Saxon Holt and Tracey Monette at scrapbook-elements.com; fonts: Zapf Chancery LT

Manteca- Prima hybrid LO

I got a new box of goodies from Prima a couple of weeks ago and played with some of the new stuff on this layout for their April Build-A-Page Template. I spent lots and lots of time carefully cutting out all of the swirls with scissors and a craft knife. I highly recommend the Fiskars fingertip craft knife, it really did make all of this go faster than it would have otherwise. These are a couple of pictures from one of the dances that a group of older girls at the dance center do entitled 'Manteca' which is a modern lyrical jazz style dance. The expressions on their faces in these poses just crack me up. When I showed their teacher and a few of them the pictures on Tuesday they all thought they were great fun.

I printed the Melody flourishes directly onto the Life Patterns paper, and then cut them out with scissors and an Xacto knife before attaching the crystal swirls.

digital credits: Melody Flourishes by Valerie Foster at Primahybrid.com

traditional credits:
by Prima Marketing, Inc.: Papers: 'Flamboyant' (812775) and 'Ringlets' (812768) from Flirty Little Secret collection, 'Trinkets' (602000) from Coquette Collection; 'Life Patterns' (910044), and glitter specialty paper (910105) from Life In Colors Collection; Silk Road Can (515867), Essentials 3 Rue 88 (517267), Belle Fleur (520991), Festive White flowers (527556), Say It in Crystals Swirls (517335 and 517311), Alphablends (840686), Center Kisses Round 6mm (520700), Build-A-Bauble (400378)

Easter Portraits 2009

Bryce

Elizabeth

Carissa

Brenna

Sarah

P365: March 2009

credits: Spring Delight by Irene Alexeeva at scraporchard (previously at scrapbookgraphics); 365 Project Templates by Amy Pearson

Happy 6th Birthday, Brenna

Another one of my babies hit the 6 year mark today. We're in the second week of spring break right now, so things were busy but fairly low-key. I took everyone to the mall this morning to get our annual Easter pictures taken (2nd week of spring break = avoid the crowds!!) The Easter bunny was there and bored out of his/her mind because no one was interested in having that done. The kids stopped and said 'hello' from the other side of the fence, but since I didn't feel like asking if I could use my own camera and wasn't interested in buying their photos after dropping money at the portrait place that was all I let them do. While we were waiting for the appointment time they had open we went to the KMart in the mall to pick up partyware the twins wanted for their birthday (yes, I buy them this early if they know what they want and I find it!) and since I hadn't purchased anything for Brenna for her birthday yet (bad mom!) I let her pick something she wanted. She chose some My Little Pony sets.

We had lunch, picked up the printed photos, and then stopped at my mom's house for a few minutes since it is not far from the mall to drop off her pictures and say hello. She was surprised to see all of the kids with me- evidently the second week of spring break hasn't sunk in for her yet LOL Then we had to stop at the store to pick up a few things for the birthday dinner that Brenna wants tonight. She wanted 'breakfast for dinner', so we had pancakes, sausage, fruit and juice. We ended the day with cupcakes I bought at the store last night after orchestra rehearsal. I only make one fancy birthday cake and I'm saving the effort for that for the party next weekend. (Any time we did something that was an 'official' birthday event after we got home from the mall Brenna would go get one ofo the crown headbands we have so everyone would know she was the birthday girl LOL)


I finally got Brenna's birthday party officially scheduled for next Saturday in the afternoon earlier this week. I know that is the day before Easter and it will be extra crazy with the church egg hunt in the AM and the twins having a dance rehearsal in the evening, but she wants to invite some friends from school and I just didn't have my act together enough before spring break started to get invites out with all of the dance competition craziness going on. So, Easter weekend will be a zoo and I probably won't know whether I'm coming or going- but how is that much different from normal? :P

Steve Green concert, April 5

Purchase tickets at www.v7pc.org.

Contemporary Christian music artist Steve Green comes to Colorado Springs April 5. Steve joins The Village Seven Sanctuary Choir, Pikes Peak Village Singers and Orchestra in a never-to-be-forgotten concert of worship and minis­try at Village Seven Presbyterian Church April 5 at 6:00 p.m.

Steve Green is a trailblazer in con­temporary Christian music. Throughout his years of ministry his music has been honored with four Grammy nominations, 13 No. 1 songs, and seven Dove Awards, Christian mu­sic’s highest honor. With 23 re­cordings to his credit, including chil­dren’s projects and Spanish-language albums, Green has sold over three million albums worldwide.

Steve’s break-out year came in 1985 with the release of He Holds the Keys, which earned him Male Vocalist of the Year the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) category. Many of his songs have become recognized standards, including “People Need the Lord” and “Broken and Spilled Out.” He has often been considered the male version of Sandi Patti, using many of the same songwriters and styles as well as the traditional ending songs on a (literal) high note.

Born in Portland, Oregon to missionary parents, Steve is one of six siblings who spent much of their early lives in Argentina. His bilingual abilities have enabled the release of six Spanish CDs in the United States, and much international ministry.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time now,” Steve says. “With each passing year, I’m asking God and myself these questions: ‘Is this the place where I can most effectively glorify Him? Can what I do be explained simply by natural means or is there the evidence of God’s presence and power? Am I still approaching every event as if it were my last chance to communicate God’s truth?” Steve confesses that he still feels a joyful responsibility and strong urgency to share the gospel, encourage believers in their faith, and invite others to God’s gracious gift of salvation.

I'm playing in the orchestra for this. We had our first rehearsal last night, and I'm sure it will be a wonderful evening of music and worship for everyone. I actually don't play in all that many songs, so I will get to sit and enjoy most of it along with the audience albeit from a slightly different perspective than theirs since the orchestra sits behind him LOL Of course that doesn't make me any less nervous about performing in the ones I DO play in. I'm sure it will all be good in the end ;)