January 26 and 27

Things are kind of quiet right now, well aside from a little screaming by me at the basketball game on TV, so I thought I would get this thing current!!

January 26 Lance talked Jeff into playing Battleship with him. Lance is still learning strategy, but they seem to have a good time.

January 27 Allie and I have been working on her birthday party invites over the last couple of days. The gym we are having the party at provided the cards, we are personalizing them by coloring some of the graphics.

And here are my layouts for the last two weeks!! Yay, I am actually keeping up with them.

January 19-25

January 20 Wednesday homework. The worst! Writing sentences with spelling words. Lance does great in school, but writing is not his best subject, so Wednesdays are always a little rough!

January 21 We had BINGO night at school. This is Allie and her best bud Carson. Can you tell she likes him???

January 22 My friend Kaysee gave Allie a bunch of hand-me-downs. She found these slippers and robe and was in H-E-A-V-E-N! It truly is the little things for her.

January 23 The kids camped out in the living room and watched a couple of movies before going to sleep. They typically do this upstairs and thought they were pretty special to get to do it in the living room.

January 24 The kids helped me make some bookmarks for Valentine's Day. Allie helped me pick out the papers and Lance stamped the back. They love to craft!

January 25 am One might think, "Ahhh, what a sweet little girl.". That is until they realized that it is a three foot stuffed dog being cuddled by an almost four year old, in MY bed!! LOL She is pretty sweet though, even if she won't make it all night in her bed.

January 25 We are all still recovering from sickness, so Allie and I decided to make soup for dinner.

January 12-18

Wow! What a week. I missed a couple more days this week, but we had lots of sickness and I just didn't get them done. The quality of the last three is pretty bad since they were taken with my phone. I did the best I could with what I had!!

January 12 This is Lance counting his money. We are trying to be better this year about making the kids do chores and in return, they get a small allowance.


January 13 Allie decided she wanted to take a bath today and actually used her bathroom (instead of mine). I wasn't paying attention to the water level and Jeff noticed that it was only a couple of inches from overflowing. She was happy though!!


January 15 Day one of the sickness and the long weekend. Lance had the day off from school started it off by complaining of his tummy hurting. He thought he was better, so we went to McDonald's to meet some friends for lunch. We had been there long enough to get food and make it to the table and he was ready to go home. He spent the rest of the day on the couch, between visits to the bucket on the floor to get sick. Not much of a fun day off school!


January 17 Day one of Allie being sick. Ugg!! Lance's sickness lasted about eight hours, but took a couple of days to really recover. We went to our friend's house for a football party and came home, everyone happy (well, except for Allie who wanted to stay LOL). A couple of hours later, she was complaining her tummy hurt. And so began my very long night on the couch with a three year old going between sleep and completely freaking out because she didn't want to throw up, but needed to. It finally ran it's course at about 3:30 in the morning and by 7:30 when she woke up, she was ready to make up for those hours she lost!


January 18 Unfortunately for her (fortunately for me), she was exhausted from the late night. We laid on the couch together and napped for a couple of hours. Something that hasn't happened in a couple of years!

January 8-11

Well, I got a bit behind (and even missed a day - oops!), so while I am waiting on my OSU basketball game to come on, I thought I would do a little update and show you my first week layout!!

January 8 A couple of my girls and I went to the mall to have lunch and let the kids play. Allie had a great time making a spectacle of herself, climbing to the top of things and yelling "look at me mom". I think the people on the other side of the mall could probably hear her!

January 9 We had a get together at my friend Kristi's house to watch the Dallas Cowboy's football game and although we are not very into professional sports, we couldn't pass up a party!! The kids had a great time playing upstairs while the guys watched the game, the girls talked and then all of the adults played a game of Balderdash. Had to take a picture of the game board. Jeff is in the lead and our friend Neil, who wanted to play the game to prove that he could win, is in the back, pulling up the rear!

January 11 I spent the day today trying to clean house a bit and printing out calendars for my mom and myself.

As promised, here are the layouts! I am using the Weeds and Wildflowers kit and template. LOVE IT!

January 7

I let my daughter guilt trip me today without her even knowing it. She said something this morning about only painting once before. Now, she was talking about going to a place where you paint pottery, and she has been more than once, but... it really made me think about all of the crafts I made time for with Lance, but haven't really with her. So, when I was at Target, I picked up a new marker set, just for her. It even came with a little bag to keep them in. Of course Lance was invited to play too, but she loves having some that are just hers, and that makes me happy.

Lance is in the 2nd Grade. They have spelling test every Friday. Along with the spelling test, they have a pre-test of the next week's words. If they get 8 or more of the 10 correct, they get a harder list of "content" words. Check out this week's list!!! Seriously? He is SEVEN! Luckily, he is a little genius and got almost all of the correct!

January 5 and 6

First off to answer Jolene's question - the reason there were no erupting volcano pics is because it was less than spectacular. I am not sure if we did it wrong, or if my baking soda has gone bad. Since I can't tell you the last time I bought baking soda, it is probably the second! We will definitely do it again, hopefully with better results!!

January 5
Well, today was Allie's first day back at school and I realized once they were both in bed, that I hadn't taken my pic for the day. So, I looked around the house for something and came across this. The girls and I exchanged birthday presents on New Year's Eve. I bought all of us these key chains that have beads of each of our favorite colors. The girls seemed to like them and I know mine is very special to me!
Oh, FYI... My friend Vanessa makes the key chains (as well as some great jewelery). You can check her out here: http://www.mymommysbracelets.com/



January 6
After I got out of the shower this morning, I came in to check on Allie and this is how I found her... Sitting on the coffee table looking at the digital picture frame I got for Christmas. I think she likes it more than I do!!

January 3 and 4

January 3
Lance got this Star Wars science/volcano kit thing from his Aunt and Uncle for Christmas. He has been begging us to do it since we got back home. So, he and Jeff made the trip to Target to get the bottle of vinegar and club soda that needed to make the volcano erupt. He had a great time getting the stuff together and then chickened out when it came time to pouring it in and made Jeff do it. Love the look of joy on his face though!!

January 4

Lance is back in school, so it was girls day at home for the first time in a couple of weeks. We made a quick trip to Wal-Mart (ugg) after a pit stop at McDonald's for some lunch (one of the benefits of not having to go to school every day - she can talk mom into taking her out..). We came home and I caught her laying on the couch watching TV.

Then she caught me taking her pic! I used a couple of actions from Pioneer Woman again. Loving them!!

January 2

So one of the projects for the New Year is to turn the "game room" into an actual "media room". So, the first step is to paint! The adults are kicking the kids out and taking over!!

January 1

Well, it is a new year!! So much happened last year and I totally lost track of this project. I hope to be able to keep up with it and doing weekly layouts. They may be a little behind, but hopefully I can get them done!

So, one of the many things that happened last year was making new friends. I have found a great group of girls who have welcomed me into their group and have become my adopted family here in Texas. They truly are the ones helping to keep me sane. We had a little family get together New Year's Eve. Nine kiddos, eight adults to help ring in the New Year. SOOO much fun! I took this pic right at the stroke of midnight (or close to). I used a couple of actions from http://www.thepioneerwoman.com/ Off to grab the camera and load the few pics I took yesterday... I will be back soon!