Recital Day

They did it! And they did it fabulously, I was so impressed. Rachel's song went off without a hitch, Gabrielle got stuck briefly but played beautifully and Michael could only play the right hand with his finger and Sarah did the left for him. All the kids did a lovely job and the parents are always so happy! I must say I see such an improvement in the kids through the years, the songs get harder and more beautiful! One girl played The Meadow from New Moon, I love, love that song and she made no mistakes (although she did not have her song memorized like the other kids). I loved it.

I apologize for the photos, they are horrible! I don't know what it is about that place. Every year I try and every year the pics are really bad. I have no light, these were done with ISO of 1000 and still they were too dark, blow them up and they have tons of noise. The last one especially, I could not for the life of me get that one to look any better, even after using noiseware. Oh well. Makes me mad, it was such a cute picture too.

We went to the Hongkong Buffet afterwards, so I won't have to cook tonight. Of course I feel stuffed to the gills now :)

School is out! Yeah! The kids can sleep in in the morning now, and there won't be any stress for a while, how nice! I am not missing the assignments and the things to be done...
Michael got his stitches out on Friday, it was very slick! He still has the bandage for another 2 weeks, hopefully by then the stitches in his nailbed will have dissolved and we can take that old nail off.
Thursday was Rachel's voice lesson. I told her afterwards, I felt like applauding, she did a really nice job! Her voice really has improved, she can hit higher notes and sings out louder. I am really proud of her! This morning the choir director was talking about training young cantors and wanted to know if the girls are interested. I hope they will go for it, it would be such a great experience for them!
Tuesday I am going to Hershey with Gabrielle and her class. It's the 8th grade class trip and I am a chaperone. That should be interesting! I have never been there, so I am looking forward to it. I love the rides!

I have also gotten a few pages done :) One more spread for the graduation:

this one was from the field day they had up at school, it was so stinking hot thad day, but the kids had such fun. This little girl belongs to the Religion teacher (her daughter is also in Gabby's class). She was being handed from one to the other person and never flinched. She is sort of the school mascot I think :)

Isn't she just adorable?

I took this picture a few days ago and just had to play with it the other evening. That was fun!

I am usually not good at working with a set of pictures that I have to finish, like the graduation, so this was a nice break...
There is one other page, but it's for a challenge that hasn't been posted yet, so I can't really put it up yet. Next time!
Well, have a wonderful rest of your Sunday!

One more day... (don't look if you have a queasy stomach)

until school is out! Actually they get off at 10.30 tomorrow, why even bother? Gabrielle already said that this will be the end of the peace and quiet we have enjoyed in the mornings while the other two were at school this past week!
Tomorrow Michael gets his stitches out too (at least we think). I have had to change his bandage every day, it actually doesn't look that bad.

see how they took his nail off, flipped it and put it back on as a splint to protect the stitches in the nailbed? Pretty ingenious I think!

Tomorrow I also have a hair appointment, thank goodness, I can't stand it anymore. The color is gone, the gray is coming back, yuck!!!

Then the kids have piano in the evening. I hope I'll be able to do anything tomorrow, I always have so many plans, I need to buy more flowers, still need to do planting and weeding, I need a new pump for the pool, the one we have is shot, so there is no pool for now. Oh brother. When the guys opened the pool they told us they found a dead rat in the water. When they tried to get it out, it fell apart, isn't it just lovely? It just never ends!

A dear priest friend just past away the other day. His funeral is going to be tomorrow morning in Pittsburgh. There is no way I can make it there, but I do feel so bad. We have known him for years and he was such a sweet man! Nothing but sacrifices for others, if he didn't go straight to heaven, nobody will!

Poor TG is still running around with the satellite dish around her neck. I have tried taking it off, but she goes after her stitches, so I had to put it back on. Other than that she is back to normal, she tried to play with Sweetie today, it was really funny with that thing around her neck. At night she comes and sucks on my shirt again, so we are all good :)

she was asleep here, so Gabrielle put her little graduation cap on her head :)

Well. here is what I have been working on:

This is the "before" page to the Hair one I posted earlier. I will make it into a double spread for her, the pages work together

these two pages go together also, they are from the Church part of the ceremony, including the awards ceremony.

I just finished this one a little while ago, that's her best friend and her teacher. Then most of the class sang a song downstairs, a lot of people didn't even notice what was going on, it was just too crazy. Too bad! This page was for the template challenge 

This next page I did today also. It was for the Itunes challenge at DD, I really loved the inspiration page 

on the blog. Isn't it cool?

This is what I came up with

Well, today was another nice day, I love the warm weather, I just wish we had more months of it.

Phil just took the girls to the Giant Eagle to get more bananas, so he can make us all a milk shake. That has become such a ritual, every night we get one, fat free milk and fat free whipping cream on top, yumm!!! I am being spoiled! He puts this tall glass in front of me, with a large spoon in it, how about being served like that :)

Well, I better clean up the kitchen a bit before they get back! Have a wonderful Thursday night :)

Happy Memorial Day

Is it possible that I haven't done a post in over 2 weeks? Oh my! So sorry in case you missed me :) It's just been crazy, between the end of school, Gabrielle graduation, it seems as though there are always forms to be filled out or some other stuff to be done, ca-razy! Well, Gabby is done, she graduated and we had a nice Mass followed by the Awards ceremony. She received a Good Citizen award from our State Senator and several other awards. We were sooo proud! That morning we went to have her hair done. At first I thought I wasn't going to spring for it, it being just grade school, but then she told me all the other girls were going, so I finally gave in. The lady who did it, did a fantastic job, we wound up leaving her hair down and curled, it was gorgeous!!! Here is the page I did with the photos of her hair (before she changed into her dress)

I think she looks like a college graduate :)

Let's see what else happened. I took TG to be spayed, she is still walking around with a satellite dish around her neck, because she won't leave her stitches alone.

Talking about stitches, last weekend was horrible! We had done a lot of cleaning outside and inside and I suddenly heard this loud screaming from Rachel and Michael inside. At first I thought they were fighting or goofing off but then I realized that the sounds were different. I dropped my broom and ran inside only to find them running around through the house, Michael holding his hand, blood all over the kitchen floor and him.... He slammed the basement door on his left middle finger and it looked like the tip was partially cut. Needless to say we rushed him to the ER where we sat, and sat, and sat some more before anybody even came into the room. Good thing he is such a trooper. I was getting madder and madder by the minute. Then somebody came in and put some stuff down, and of course I thought, this is it, finally. Then she left again, telling us that somebody would be in soon. We spent about 6 hours in the ER, that is just outrageous. The ER doc tried to numb his hand by giving him injections around his finger, but when he tried to stitch it, Michael still had a lot of pain. So he gave up and went to call a Plastic Surgeon. He told us we might have to put him under and perform surgery that way. We already thought the whole night would be shot, by then it was after midnight! Well, the surgeon came in, gave him a few more shots and stitched him up with no problems. Cracked me up, Michael told him that he would be an "Excellent score" on his game and if the other doc had done what he did, we would have been out of there a long time ago. It really was funny! Anyway, it turns out that he broke the tip of his finger and put two gashes in his finger, one of them in his nailbed, so that they had to take the nail off in order to put stitches in there. It's doing well, he'll get his stitches out next Friday. What an adventure though. I always wondered when we would have our first trip to the ER with him :)

Good thing their piano evaluations were the day before or else he would have been in trouble...

The other day I received the kids' papers for camp, so they are officially in! They still are not happy about it, but resigned. I think they are going to love it after a while. I have to figure out where the two of us can go while they are there. It's the perfect opportunity to get away for a few days! We were thinking maybe Key West or something like that!

Other than that I have been busy scrapping of course

I did a few 365 pages,  I am still behind with these, it gets so boring....

A macro shot I took a couple of weeks ago

Sweetie when she was still little, I can hardly remember her this way, so cute!

This is the page I did for Kodak for their new website about babies... they are having a contest over there

Michael doing his stunts last year :)

sleeping on the floor in our bedroom with his dragons by his side

some more flowers in the yard, I love these, they remind me of Germany

A visit to the Pittsburgh Zoo a couple of years ago

We had this sudden downpour about a week ago, it hailed like crazy and the street in front of the house was a small river. The kids had to go out and wade around in it, until it all dried up again

This was a page for art journaling, chosing a word and making a page with it.

Michael's favorite thing at the icecream place, nice and green! He loves those things!

Designer Digitals had their quaterly sale with a chat all day Saturday and I managed to finish 5 pages that day. Nothing grand, but it was a lot of fun. This was one of them, the papers and stuff we got as freebies were perfect for that picture even if I had already scrapped it before :)

Katie came out with this cool template and I just had to use it for these ancient photos of a trip to Gatteo A Mare in Italy. WE used to go there all the time as a family when I grew up. I am the one shading her eyes :)

All the azaleas and rhododendron in the yard were blooming at the same time. It was such a gorgeous sight!

This one I just did today. It was another one of the photoshop user magazine tutorials. Some of them are pretty cool. This one was fairly easy, you create the text and then use it as a clipping mask. There was a neat little trick about reproducing the text though, that was cool!

The weather has finally improved, it was so hot all of a sudden, quite suddently! Today we had a heavy storm and it cooled off a little. We didn't have anywhere to go, I had suggested a ride to Ohiopyle and a picnic, but I didn't have any takers. So we just did the picnic food at home and it was quite good. We are such a boring family. I guess it's because we are always doing stuff during the week, with piano and Karate and all the other nonsense, that sometimes everybody wants to just hang out at home. On the other hand they are complaining about being bored, can't win for losing!

Well, sorry I had to bore you with such a long post. I always promise myself to post more frequently, but it seems to get worse....

I hope you all had a great weekend, I'll try to keep you more posted. (do you believe me?)

Have a good one!!!

Camp

Yesterday I sent in the reservations for a few days at Camp Zacchaeus. All three kids all at the same time. They never wanted to go before and I didn't push it, but this year I just signed them up without telling them. Last night on the way to Karate I gave them the news and you would have thought I had decided to sell them into slavery! The girls flat out refused to go (not that they have a choice in the matter), it was kind of funny. Michael was okay, some of his classmates are going, so he won't mind. I really think they will enjoy themselves once they get there. It's just the idea of having to do things, when all they want to do is sleep in and lounge around the house. Of course they'll be crying about how bored they are all day long. Oh well, I might just have to carry them there :) It seems that there is a lot of moping around the house lately, the girls are getting to be that age, I am not liking it one bit. I think a summer job or something might be a nice cure for complaints...
The weather around here has not been helpful either, it's raining all the time and when it's not raining, it's freezing. Weren't we supposed to have Spring by now? Yuck!
This morning Phil and I went to Mass at 10, Gabrielle was reading the introduction and was part of a skit for the homily. I must say, I am really impressed! She does a fabulous job reading, clear, concise and loud. The skit was great. All three girls did a nice job, no mikes and I could still hear them in the back. I remember last week the 7th graders, they did a little skit (not acted, just read) in front of the mikes and I could not hear a thing!
We got Gabrielle's paper from HS yesterday, she is signed up for all honors classes, except Math. I am so proud of her!!! Now to keep up the grades, it's going to be tough! She is pretty much determined to do it though and I can see a little bit of competitiveness in her which will aid her on her way! Oh kids!!! The worry has just begun! I am sure all you mothers out there know exactly what I am saying. Group hug!
On a more pleasant side, I got a lot of pages done, my relaxation of the day :)

I had this add from Sears with those large block letters and I really liked the look, so I tried to recreate it here :) I actually did this one last week, but forgot to post it

this is another one I forgot to post. I just got my new photoshop program and the new features are awesome! There were at least 6 power lines on this photo and it took me less than a minute to get them all out! I tried working with this photo before and gave up, because I couldn't do it. Love this new PS5!!!

This was for a the AAM challenge at DD, talking about what home means to you. I really liked thinking about that...

This is my Mother's Day card from Michael, made me cry when I got it. He probably thought I was a little whacky! I hope you can read the journaling...

Last but not least I finished Gabrielle's photos from the tournament. This template is just awesome, I hardly had to do anything to make this page! If you should be curious about any of this stuff, just click on the link to my gallery on the right and you can find all the info there (you are allowed to leave me comments too :))

I hope you all had a great Mother's Day. I got a peck on the cheek from my kids in the morning and that was that! They still expected dinner and whatever... at least I got a dozen roses from Phil the day before. That's why I was so happy to receive that card from Michael, at least somebody.... I must say though that at the end of the day Rachel handed me a card she drew during the day and it was really cute also!

I guess I shouldn't be complaining, they are sweethearts, but they have their moments. Oh well!

Saturday is Karate testing again, all of us have to certify, it's going to be a long day! I am supposed to jump flying side kick over three people for my break. I am just managing to jump over something lying flat on the floor for crying out loud! Old lady here, give me a break! It will be fun, I hope I won't injure somebody!
Okay, that's it for today! Come back soon :)

My little cantor and more

How can it be Saturday again? wow, the weeks are just flying by! Rachel asked me to come to the kids' Mass on Friday because she was cantoring. What a nice job she did, I was so proud of her! She does have a lovely voice and taking the lessons helps her project a little more. She is still young, so I am sure she will get better yet as time goes by! I think it's great that they just go up there and do this, I would die a slow death!
I also had my hair appointment yesterday, all the gray is gone again for a while :)
Other than that the week has been unremarkable, the same old thing every day, kids go to school, then they come home, make dinner, go to bed. Whoopie! Such is life I guess! At least the weather was nice most of the week. Today it's really cold and windy, yuck! The other day I got some nice backlit shots, it was fun to create these

For the azalea shot I had to lie on my back underneath the bush, because the sun was still high in the sky. The other one is our trellis. The wisteria is just sprouting leaves again. It's such a cool place in the summer (literally)

Katie Pertiet and her husband were taking this photography class in NYC and they were taught about foreground, center and background in their photos, so I tried to apply that here, I kind of liked the result, plus the color was so pretty against the dark fence.

I finally got another 365 page done. Of course it's almost time for this week's and I still have to do last week's, but who is counting?

That's TG in the picture, not Sweetie, I did correct it on the page! Any typos please let me know (thanks Jeanne)

Little Max at the Vet's on Tuesday, just for a rabies shot. He gets so excited!

Well, that's it for a brief update, like I said, not much going on around here.