Final Day

Tomorrow is the day! Camp begins! :) I think they will have a good time, I just hope it won't rain for them. They are pretty much packed and ready to go. We took the birds to be boarded today, tomorrow morning I will drop the dog off before Church and then we are done. We decided to head out to the airport in the evening and stay overnight at a hotel, easier than driving there on Monday morning and face all the traffic. Phil's brilliant idea.

I am packing light, maybe I won't need to check any luggage since they charge 25$ now each way. Absurd! I am not looking forward to all the traveling but that's part of the deal I guess.
I finally posted my panning the bike picture for the Kelby walk, there is no way I will win anything, but what the heck...

Talking about winning, the other day I received my second prize from Kodak, a beautiful all in one printer! I must say I was excited about that, I have never won anything with my hobby, so there!
I did one page this morning, a scraplift of one of our CT members, Patricia. She makes gorgeous pages. Here is a link to my page which includes a link to her original page

this one I finished last night, it's done with a new template that just came out tonight, Anna's beautiful stuff

and I am also caught up with my 365 pages again

I really really love creating pages, I get excited when I place things on there and they work. Sometimes it takes forever and I am not sure, other times it just works right away. Funny how that goes.

Michael found a dead bird in the pool today, I have no idea how that could happen. It wasn't even a baby bird. That has never happened before,  I can see chipmunks, they don't fly, but birds...it makes me sad

Here are some more random photos from the photo walk

Hey Barb, do you think I should replace the panning photo with the train shot? I think it's more in focus and sharper....decisions, decisions.... nobody around here will help me

Oh Las Vegas, here we come, lots of photo opportunities. I better bring my laptop so I can upload all the photos I will be taking :)

Have a wonderful weekend you all

Cantoring

I cannot even believe that I forgot to talk about Sunday. I had to have Barb remind me....oh boy! thanks Barb, I feel so bad! Rachel did a fabulous job! I was really sweating it up in the choir loft, fearing she might stumble or not be able to do it! She was wonderful! Her singing was so sweet, the readings were so well done, all that from a 12 year old! Amazing! I don't have any pictures but I couldn't be any prouder. The ladies in the choir came over and told me to start breathing again :) Many people told me how well she did, including Father, who I ran into at the store today! So, she is ready for the next time the end of August!

Of course I did not get all those errands done yesterday, but some of them anyway. Tomorrow is another day. I just realized that I have to get toiletries for all three of them, since they might not be together in the same cabin. More stuff to buy!
We took the birds to the pet store today to have their wings clipped. My African Grey always puts up such a fight, it's pathetic. He starts ripping his feathers out while she has him wrapped in the towel. Poor baby. At least now they can't fly anymore. We were eyeing the new kittens they had in the store, but no, I am not getting another one, although they were really really cute! :)
I got one page done this morning, that's it

That new painter's tray is amazing, so much fun to play with. In fact there is so much new stuff coming to the store, I didn't know what to use first :) What a dilemma to have, I know!

Here are the credits in case you want to take a peek.

Thanks for liking my photos. I have to decide which one to submit for the local photo walk contest. I was thinking about using the panning shot, what do you think?

Anyway, I just wanted to post this for Barb since she was asking, have a wonderful Thursday evening!

Photo walk and Katie

I'm sure you all knew about the Scott Kelby photo walks this past Saturday. I was so happy I signed up. It was really really hot that day but we still had a nice group. The local photo club organized it and directed us around town. I don't spend that much time downtown, so it was a perfect occasion to see things I hadn't looked at before. It took me a couple of hours to go through my photos and fix some of them and save them to Flickr. I have no idea what I will do with them, but I had fun and got to practice some techniques. We were lucky in that the local Y was having a triathlon and we got to watch some of the bikers. I tried my hand at that panning technique, that was really fun, but hard. They were so dang fast. Here is one example

here is some other stuff I captured (don't worry, just a few :))

It was a good time all around, I met a bunch of people, we even had a lady on oxygen and one walking with a cane. We split up, so I don't know if they made the whole walk.

Sunday I got to meet Katie from Designer Digitals. She was dropping off her daughter for camp at a local college and I was able to join her for lunch. I met her once before last year and it seemed as though we had just met a few weeks ago. She is so easy to talk to and really sweet, so this was a treat! All around I had a great weekend, there is life without kids! :) :)

Now we have to get ready for Vegas and the kids need some stuff for camp yet. I'm a little scared about going away without the kids, I hope nothing will happen. My friend already knows she is the guardian should anything happen, we were laughing about that the other day. That would be all she needs to make her life more chaotic, but she is a sweetheart and the kids couldn't be better off... okay, I'm not even going there, nothing will happen and we will have a great time!

I am so glad the kids are going to this camp. No cell phone, mass every morning, getting up early, hiking, swimming, prayer.... it's perfect! I think the routine will be good for them, I never thought I would hear my kids moan about being bored. I don't like these teenage years at all!

I didn't do that many pages these past days, obviously I didn't have time on the weekend, but here are a few. Yikes, it's not even a few, it's just a couple. I finished my 365 pages again:

and I did this one about TG yesterday.

How can that be all????? What the heck??? Oh well, I guess that means I spent more time with the family :)

Today looks like a free day except for Karate tonight. I have a ton of errands to run, so I will get most of them done today, the birds need their wings clipped, I have to return a radio, get gas, have a security tag removed from a shirt I bought in Monroeville a couple of weeks ago, we need to look for a bathing suit for Gabby, get some supplies, run to the store, go to the cleaners, oh yikes!

Well, I better start moving, I hope you all will have a wonderful day!

Church festival and more

Last Sunday was our yearly festival and car cruise. There was a call really early in the morning that a fast moving storm had knocked down all the tents. Of course I slept through the whole thing. I worked the food line after mass and heard then that a lot of people showed up to help. Most of the tents were unusable, the poles bent etc. They had to drive to Somerset to get a couple of new ones, it was a real mess! Sunday was a gorgeous day though, hot and no rain at all! We had a good crowd, so I am hoping they did okay, since all the proceeds go to the school.

We still didn't make the final arrangements for our trip, I just have to call AAA back and book it though, she had a fairly good deal for Vegas at the Bellagio, which sounds awesome. The only problem is the heat this time of the year. Somebody compared the temperature at night to having a blowdryer put in your face all the time. Doesn't that sound like fun? :) I figure there are pools and enough things to see inside all the casinos, so we won't spend too much time outside anyway.

Almost every weekend we go Panera Bread once and I had this awesome salad, I just love it! Mixed greens with chicken and all kinds of fruit, mandarin oranges, pineapple strawberries etc. It's just wonderful and has only 270 calories :)

I have been pretty bad about taking photos this week, good thing there are always a lot of flowers around to fill in my 365 pages :) Yikes!

Our pool still isn't finished. They were supposed to be here first thing Monday morning and replace the skimmer which came on Friday. Guess whose face I haven't seen yet? That's right! It is beyond annoying, I will never use him for anything else ever again!!!! (remind me I said that) :)

Well, let me get the pages out of the way
This shot is from China when we went to get Gabrielle

Rachel took this picture with her cell phone, I think it looks just amazing!

flowers in the garden, very simple, but I loved it

another simple page, this one was for a challenge on using white space

Rachel has the most beautiful smile (when she smiles)

one more page of these and I will be caught up again :)

Anna has a new artsy template coming out this weekend. I really didn't have to do much here, all the stuff on here is new for this weekend, fast and easy, that's the way I like it! :)

Here is a photo for my brother, I should have posted it earlier, but it slipped my mind :) Hallo Bruder. hier ist der Kaktus von dem ich Dir erzaehlt habe! :)

this guy was sitting on the wall just across the kitchen window. The picture isn't the best but it was too good not to try :)

can you see the robin babies? I had to take these through all kinds of shrubs, look how still they sit and then Mama comes with food...

Well, I think I will go outside with Gabrielle and soak up some sun at the pool :) Since nobody is working we have it to ourselves.

Recap

of the week, that's what it boils down to. It seems that time just flies and gets away from me all the time. Every day there is something that needs to be taken care of, appointments to be kept etc. I know, I know, that's just part of life and everybody has to deal with it. I am just trying to find an excuse for not keeping this blog more up-to-date :)

I probably mentioned that Rachel is going to be a cantor at Church. She has practiced with the choir director and yesterday I heard her go through her songs during her voice lesson, and I was soooo impressed. She has gotten so much better, these lessons really are worth it! She projects now, she is more self-assured, has a higher range... not this weekend, but the following Sunday is her debut! I am so excited and nervous for her, after all she isn't even 13 yet!

They are still fighting me about the Camp thing. Every time I mention it, they get mad all over again, you would think they would be resigned to the fact by now. The only one excited about it is Michael, probably because he expects to see a lot of his classmates there. It will be great! Phil and I are still planning to go somewhere, now it might be Las Vegas though, we'll see...

Let's see, Karate, piano, dentist, voice, hair (all times several people), pretty much encompasses the week!
I have been working on the beach photos still, for once I would like to get one trip all done :) This one I combined with Katrina's scavenger hunt challenge, to find photos that match the words she posted. I had fun looking through my vacation photos for it :)

As you can see, I don't scrap in any particular order, just as the muse strikes :)

I did this one for Gabrielle

and this one is about Michael

I hope I didn't already write about this. I received an email from Shruti at Kodak that I won second prize with my baby page. You can check it out here I think that the prize is an all in one printer. I was so thrilled!

One more thing! Could our kids please all stay little??? Pretty please? I am so not liking this teenage stuff that's coming up! I guess we all have to go through it somehow!

Well, looks like the sun is coming back out, we just had a heavy thunderstorm. Maybe I can get some weeds pulled yet :)