It's been a while

Well I have not posted in a while. Life gets so crazy at the end of the summer and back to school. Being on the PAC at Dani's school keeps me busy for the first 2 months of school as I have to look over all the health and safetly forms- what a task. Then soccer starts and all the girls other activities. Somewhere in there my offices moved- which was a great thing as they are now a block away from my house!!!! I have been teaching some intro to scrap classes and generally just a busy bee. I am so behind in my scrapping I am trying to catch up but I have been doing all sorts of other fun projects and here I am. In Novemeber a birthday for Dani looming and photos from June still not scrapped!!! So here are a few pages I did for a competition that was on one of the sites I frequent.

Summer's Over?

I cannot believe that summer is almost over. Mind you the weather the last few weeks has been anything but fall like. Well, last week was back to school- Dani is now in grade 2!!!! It was back to school and then do nothing for the first week- my how times have changed since I went to school. But, by Monday she had her class and they were all settled in by the open house tonight. My baby is getting so big {sigh}. This week with all the activities back on it was like the break of summer never happened- I cannot believe how fast time flies!

Now that Maui is done!!

Wow, now that I have created, and printed all 55 Maui pages I am so far behind in my scrapbooking. This is probably because I have to take photos at every waking moment. Frank always laments that we don't do enough family activities-well you only have to look at my photos to know that is not true. I thought that we had a not too busy summer until I browsed through the almost 1000 photos I have taken so far!!! Damn that is a lot of memories. I am still scrapping last Xmas- so somebody stop me from taking anymore photos. Nah- not gonna happen. But the photos aside we have had a great summer- what with 4 family getaways and tons of local activities. I cannot believe that the kids go back to school in a week- wow. I think it is time though- my girls are at each others throats! Ahh the lazy (???) days of summer.

Maui finished!

Finally I have finished scrapbooking my Maui photos! That took forever... Now I am only 7 months behind in scrapbooking- I really have to learn to take less photos :)

Galiano Island

We have had some very busy days these past few weeks. We were in Oregon week before last which was stunning. This past weekend we visited Galiano Island with friends. Wow, talk about beauty in your back yard. A mere 50 min ferry ride and you are in this little paradise. Of course it helped that the weather was co-operative. We had a great stay- we rented a cottage in Bodega Ridge and it was awesome. We got in a great bike ride to Dionisi0 point park (these starfish were everywhere!) The kids had so much fun exploring the tidal pools and seeing who could find the most starfish, crabs and clams. This is a great place and we will go back soon!

Exhausted!

I am so tired- this weather takes it out of you. I cannot believe what a busy weekend we had. Little miss Delaney turned 4!!! Wow- where has the time gone. What a great birthday weekend she had- with a family party on Saturday, followed by a kids party on Sunday. I was so busy baking all the cakes and making all the food. By Sunday night I was done- but no I thought it would be nice to put together the bed that we had bought her so that she had it for the morning. Did I mention that it was an IKE@ bed!!! 5 hours later (and still not done) I had to go to bed- I was was beyond tired. Then I woke up Monday to continue the giant jigsaw! After all that the matress we bought didn't fit (oh wait- read the small print- it takes 3 days for it to recover from it's wrapped up state- it now fits- thanks heavens!) After all of that I spent the rest of Monday sorting through her toys and getting rid of all the junk my girls collect! Does it ever end???

A walk in the Park

FINALLY- we got to go on a "hike" with the girls. We have been dying to try a little hike without Delaney crying-"pick me up!!" So on Canada day we took a walk in Minnekhada Park- it was great. We saw so many great sites. There were birds everywhere and I don't think that the girls even noticed that they were walking! When we got to the lodge it was open and we got to go inside- what a great piece of history in our back yard. We are so looking forward to more hikes...

Baby Finley

Yahoo! My new nephew is here. He arrived after 3 hours of labour on Friday afternoon and I am so happy. He is perfect. Willa got to spend the whole of Friday and Saturday with us too- which was great. She has no idea what is in store for her and she wasn't too impressed by baby Finley at the hospital.
We are happy though- there grows the family!

In the Pink!

I am a bit late with the pink week!
These are photos from our weekend on the Sunshine Coast with friends and family. What a great house to get away to. The kids always have so much fun together, it hard to think that they have all know each other for their whole lives! They don't see each other as often as we would like, but when the kids do get together it is like they were never apart.

Cute as a button

My nephew is as cute as a button and I realise that I don't take enough photos of the girls and their cousins. So that is my goal this month. As there is a new baby boy due in the next few weeks it seems like a great month for cousin photos. That is my goal and we will try and stick to it.
I realise as I scrap that I take photos of the same events and the costumes, weather, age and sometimes locations change from year to year. BUT overall the same photos. I have to step out of that box and start taking photos of the little everyday things that in a few years will not be everyday. For example the girls love all their stuffy animals and play for hours on end with them- I need to snap some of those moments. Or the fact that miss Delaney NEVER wears what I put out for her each day and proceeds to dress herself in the worst possible combinations. She needs a badge- I dressed myself today! Anyway watch this blog for cousin photos!

Birthday Parties

My girls get invited to so many parties- it is hard to capture them all. But this princess party that they went to was awesome. It was beautiful and they had so much fun. Seeing them drinking chocolate milk out of their mini teacups was adorable. Since then Delaney has been to another princess party here and loved it equally as much. What a great idea. I know when we were kids we were just happy to have friends over and a cake. Nowadays parties are so extravagant, but I like the idea of paying someone else to host my kids parties- it sure makes cleaning up an easy task.

I miss Maui!

It seems like forever ago that we were in Maui. I miss it already- and want to go back soon. It was such a great holiday and such a great place to go with kids. We are maybe going to Anaheim next year which would be great- but that seems like an eternity away. I will have to live vicariously through these photos!

The Aquarium

We had so much fun at the Aquarium. This was lst November, but it has become a family institution for us. We were lucky enough to get a year pass as Xmas gifts- so we go as often as we can. I can never seem to take enough photos. I cannot wait to go there with the new camera.

Halloween!!!!!!

I know what a weird thing to be thinking of in the middle of May! But that is where I am at the scrapping of my stuff. The worst part is that I have a Xmas and a snowfall to go through too! I am dying to scrap some summer photos- like the ones I took today at Dani's sports day. But alas, if I do not stay on the straight and narrow and do the photos I have to do, I will get all caught up in in wonderful summer colours and have no time for orange and red! So here is a lovely Halloween layout to look at. I created the background paper all by myself. The photos were the most aweful ones I have ever taken inside. I am so thankful that I have a new Digital camera that takes fantastic indoor shots as I am sick of dull, blurred indoor photos.

Check out my Slide Show!

A purple tea party!

A few weeks ago after dinner, Danica said that we were going to have a teaparty. We had recently finished painting her teaset which she had from Christmas LAST year. So her and Delaney set up the tea table and decked it all out. We even had some little cookies left over from Valentines, which worked perfectly for our pint sized party. There were "goody bag" which were their toys in purses. What a great time- I love it when the girls use their imagintion like this.

Brown week!

Well, I missed a few weeks of the colour challenge, but am trying to catch up. So it is working out really well that each week the challenge seems to coincide with the photos I am scrapping. I am still so far behind and now I am even further due to the 800 or so photos I took in Maui! But here is my tribute to brown and my pumpkin patch photos. Loved this paper and it was very inspiring to use. These are some of my fav family photos, as it is so rare that I am in photos. I am the historain of the family so spend hours behind the lens and the seconds that these photos caught of me in front of the lens I quite like.

Back from Maui!

Wow! What an amazing 2 weeks. It flew by, but the memories stay strong. I took so many photos I have no idea how I am going to catch up now?? It is amazing how my mind thinks now days- I think in scrapbook pages and it is weird... I was so inspired by the sights and sounds of Maui that I was dreaming about scrapbooking on my last 2 nights there. It was a sign that I had been away from my computer and photos for long enough! Home we are and I created only one page as I have now run out of room on my hard drive and had to buy a new HD to copy all my photos to! But one page I created -paper and all. More soon....

I love the sounds of Africa

http://www.wavelit.com/index.asp?ch=Wildlife&sh=africam


This is one of my favourite websites. It is a live camera at a watering hole in South Africa. It is a great site, I usually call it up when I get to work and listen to the sounds as it is night time over there and I cannot see much! I have yet to see any big game, but still just love the sounds. Africa is so loud- but it is amazing.
I have to have noise all around me, perhaps that is what happens when you grow up in Africa. I have the TV on or music or something on at all times. It is not like I am watching TV all the time, but I like the noise of it if I am at home during the day. Anyway as I was sitting here with the dryer tumbling (jeans with very loud buttons), the TV on and the live cam, I realized how noisy my life is! Well I hope you enjoy this webcam as much as I do.

Friday the 13th

I have never paid much mind to this day. 13 is a lucky number for us it is Dani's birthday. But today- oh no the horror! While making myself a lovely cup of afternoon tea, Delaney decided to jump off the sofa and straight into the coffee table. Heart pounding I tried to assess the damage through the copious amounts of blood pouring out of her head. Off to emergency we raced! Luckily for us there was only about an hour and a half wait before we saw the doc! She definitly needed stitches, but luckily for us he used the super glue! So no pain, no more tears and a great war injury to talk about. I on the other hand am still shaking. Neither of my kids have been to emergency and I really don't want to have to go there anytime soon. I am just glad that she is okay and that a little blood is all we lost. Happy friday the 13th...

Seeing red!

I am into the 4th week of Rhonna's challenge and it happens to coincide nicely with my happy scrapping. I was about a year behind in photos when I discovered this digital thing. I had no room to spread out all my papers and stamps etc. So I started doing all digital pages. Needless to day it is now incredibly difficult to pull out the paper and glue. Having said that I am still a few months behind in 2006 photos. I am currently scraping my Xmas photos which is a tad difficult to do when spring is in the air. But I desperately have to finish 2006 before we head to Maui next week, otherwise I will be 100's of photos richer and oh so far behind in the scrapbook department! I just printed 44 12 x12 digital pages last week and they are mostly of last summer; my girls have opened that album every day and giggled over the pages- it makes this scrapbooking thing all the more worth while.

The tooth!

Dani has this top tooth which she will not let me pull. I have tried bribery, coercion and all to no avail. She will not let me pull that tooth for anything. It looks awful, I keep telling her she looks like Nanny Mcphee and she does not like that one bit! It is gross, tonight I had to cut her food into strips so that she could chew it out of the corner of her mouth- otherwise it bleeds all over every time she bites something (sorry too much info I know!) Mind you once it is gone she is going to have a hard time chewing much of anything as there is no sign off the other top tooth and she lost that baby tooth some time ago.
I should just sit back and let it fall out-there is no rush! I cannot believe that my baby is getting her adult teeth. Where does the time go?

Green Eggs & Ham- or Apples anyway!

Week 3 of Rhonna's challenge and a green week it is. It is perfect for our apple barn trip last September, which is exactly where I am in my scrapbooking! 3 weeks until we head off to tropical bliss. I have to at least finish off 2006 before I come back with 2 weeks of beach photos.

Soccer

What a great weekend it turned out to be! We were supposed to have 2 weekends in a row of soccer, but due to a washout last weekend we had a 1 weekend mini tournament. Dani has come so far in the last 2 years it is great to see her out on the field. All the girls are great, they can actually chase the ball, turn it around and get some kicks on goal. What a difference from last years "swarm ball" where they all just followed each other around.

A colourful weekend

I was feeling rather "bright" this weekend so I thought I would use this great kit that I downloaded from Two Peas last month. It is rather delicious looking and matched Delaney's jacket quite well. These were photos taken at the end of last summer. Just when I think I am getting ahead in the scrapping department along comes a weekend of activities, that I had to take photos of, that puts me at least 140 photos behind. (okay who am I kidding I love scrapbooking :)

A Blue week

We were away the first weekend of Spring Break with 2 other couples and my sister and her family. We had a fantastic time on the Sunshine Coast, although the weather could have been better. The house on the beach was amazing and all 7 kids had a blast. My girls had their rain boots and jackets on and they were off. Danica had a great time building a fort out of driftwood - the 3 older friends had so much fun with this. Delaney and the younger 'uns were content just running up and down the beach. That is the inspiration behind this page- here she is just chasing seagulls. Oh to be so carefree and see the fun in everything!

Orange Challenge

I have been so busy lately that it seems I have neglected my little blog. I have been up late each night doing my digital scrapbooking and getting so caught up in that- I realised that I should start posting those here. Then at least people will be able to share my moments in life through my scrapbook pages (that's the idea behind a blog right?) So in my internet wanderings I can across Rhonna's website (I LOVE her designs) and decided to take on her colour challenge. Well here I am again and hopefully each week will be in a different colour! Thanks for looking.

Snow Boots!

Thank goodness for snow boots. I have lived in Vancouver for 16 years and have never owned a pair of snow boots. Well this season I thought I would go and buy a pair. Thank goodness I did. I have never seen weather like this- we are on storm number 14 and counting. I cannot count how many times we have lost power or the power has dipped and we hold our breath. I usually have no problem with winter but I am about ready for Spring now.
My New Years resolution is to clear out the car port so that I can get my car in. Today would be the SECOND time this season that I could not get into my car!!! I do all the right things get this snow off so that it doesn't form a layer of ice, etc, etc. Then this morning I go and get in the car and no such luck. After attempts to hair dry with a hot dryer the locks- still no luck, I gave up. An hourish later, the back of the mini van seemed to be thawed so I was able to open the hatch- "elegantly- in snow boots!" climb over 2 sets of seats to get to the front to of the car and start it. Only to have the car run for 45 mins while I tried to scrap the ice off. (Sorry Al G0re.) Then I had to drive to work on a sheet of ice. We are so unprepared for this weather- where did all the salt trucks go?
Well that is my rant- although I must say it looks absolutley gorgeous outside. I can see Seymour Mountain from my office window- wow!