Thanks Valerie!

My aunt Valerie is an incredible artist. Recently she got into face painting. How fun is that? She came to Megan's party today and made the day so much fun! We had 24 kids plus adults and she whipped out incredible designs so fast!! I couldn't believe she got so much done. She is awesome! If anyone wants to hire her, let me know and I'll give you her number. I thought our party turned out great because of her.

There are a lot of kids (and adults) missing in the pictures below. I didn't really take pictures of the kids who didn't want their faces painted. I wish I would have. I don't think I even got a picture of Luke!

Private Concert

Our friends Amy and Shane invited us over a week or two ago for dinner and a private concert. Amy's awesome parents preformed. It was a lot of fun. My iPhone doesn't produce great indoor movement pictures, but I'm glad I still have all of these pictures. Any good pictures were taken by Amy with her camera. I had a really great night and really enjoyed life that night.



Here are a few memories of everyone that I want to remember from that night.

Amy's Parents They are incredible! They are super neat, nice people. You can tell they think the world of their daughter. They are down to earth, happy, positive, fun people. I'm sure they make friends everywhere they go. They are now on a trip to Alaska now. They bring their music and play in RV campgrounds as they go. How fun is that? I want to meet them in Idaho or somewhere on their way back. It would be SO FUN to be camping with music like that. Music and camping is such a great combination.

Shane Awww! Shane melted my heart the way he was looking at Amy. It was so cute. Amy was dancing around and Shane would just smile approvingly to her. He had no interest in dancing himself, but just seemed really nice and caring to his wife.

Caulen This kid is cute! He loves to dance with his mom and it was FUN to watch.

Amy I love that Amy has fun dancing and being with her parents. I wish she could see them more often. Amy is just an all around neat person. She has a big heart and is so much fun to be with. I loved meeting her parents because I feel like it helps me know her better. Amy and I work together and she sees a lot of my crazy when I get stressed. She is a calming force and I'm grateful for her.

Keith I married a really great dad and loyal man. I love watching Keith with our kids.

Megan thinks Amy is the coolest. She loves her and had so much fun dancing with her. I'm glad Megan got to have so much fun.

Luke was there too, but was usually playing somewhere else. I loved listening to him laugh when he was playing in the backyard.

Love This

I love this picture! I found it at the Barn at Gardner Village. What an awesome store! If I had the money I would buy this picture and redecorate my entire house around it.

If you have been in my house, you'll know I don't decorate. Part of the reason is I don't have the money to spend on the type of decorations I would like. I probably never will because no matter how much money I have I think expensive vacations would come first for me. Another reason is I feel obligated to put up the gifts I get and hate to take them down. I also can't stand clutter and since my house is full of clutter it's easier to clean around little to no decorations. Last, I feel so wasteful changing decorations and I get bored of things really easy, so it's easier to have nothing. Maybe I am lazy too. I hate to shop and paint and all of the other stuff that comes with decorating. I would love a beautiful house though. I'd be happy to be someone's decorating charity case if you want to decorate my house around this picture :)

Sneak Peak

An early sneak peak of the next Digital Scrapbook Memories CD I'm working on.

Dance

Just a few pictures I took of Megan in her cute dance costume. They had professional pictures taken this week at dance with much better backdrops, but I hate paying for those. I don't always like the professional pictures, then I'm frustrated when I pay the money for them. My pictures aren't the best because I just snapped them outside the house, but I am happy with them, and love the price :)









This picture below makes me a bit sad because I couldn't get Megan to pose for it. It would have been so gorgeous if she would have looked up, but she wouldn't because it was too bright. Oh well. I'm glad I liked some of the other pictures.

So Impressed

I am so impressed with this picture. I found it on the home page of MSNBC.com today. Isn't it cool? I love the angle, colors, and the lines. I also love the picture because of the airplanes. I LOVE airplanes. I would love to be invisible and fly on Airforce One. More realistically (but not much) I would love to fly on an SR-71 Blackbird. They have one at Hill Air Force Base about 40 minutes from my house. I need to go see it. It's the most incredible machine. Totally fascinating.

One day I would love to own an airplane. When people ask what my dream car is, I always say an airplane. I don't care about cars. Every once in a while I look up pricing on the airplanes for fun. Keith and I have talked about learning to fly for years, but so far haven't been able to make it a priority over the other things we have to spend money on. My FIL is a pilot and an instructor. It would be so fun to learn from him. One day...

Loving This

Pictures by Fico della Girandola

Made in China

My parents brought these back for the kids from China. They are really hard to use, but Megan especially likes them if I am holding onto her.

Bikes

*The picture above is my new favorite*

Luke is super into biking lately. Since his dad was an incredible biker, I'm really excited for Luke to naturally fall in love with it too. All the sudden this spring he wants to be on his bike all the time. We have this dirt patch in our front yard that we haven't done anything with yet. It used to have 20-30 year old bushes in it. I'm kind of glad we haven't done anything with it yet, bucause Luke has spent countless hours outside riding up and down it. The kids also make all sorts of paths on the driveway with chalk of where to go after they ride down the hill. It's pretty fun.



Luke is trying really hard to get complete air going up the hill. I doubt it will ever happen and keep telling him he needs a ramp to do that, but he keeps trying and gets some really great wheelies while he is doing it. It looks like he is going to fall off, but he rarely has.



I'm really excited to take Luke to the Rad Canyon BMX park and hope Keith will give me the go ahead soon. Keith isn't worried about the park, just the money. It's not that much though if you ask me so hopefully I'll talk him into it soon. I want to ride the track too. Haha. Wouldn't I look dumb with all of the teenagers and kids? I think I could get over that but I don't have a BMX bike anyway.

I'm Back in Business!

My computers are all up and running again thanks to my amazing husband. I love living with a geeky mechanical genious. I'm very lucky.

Here are some cute pictures of my newest nephew. I'm so excited to finally be able to edit and share these pictures. What a cutie!!

I'm Slowing Slipping Away...

What on earth did we do before computers, e-mail and cell phones? Geez. Now, my iPhone isn't working. I'm working on restoring it by loading iTunes on my laptop, but apparently I won't have any of my personal data on the phone because I need to connect to my main computer to do that. I'm slowly slipping away from the cyber world. Maybe someone is trying to erase me. This computer is my last hope.

Must... hang... on...

I'm going to have to rely on friend's to do my blogging for me. Who wants to blog for me tomorrow? Mindee took care of me today.

An Old Favorite

An old favorite of Meg. This is a couple years ago at her Grandma Pope's house.



Well, my computer is still down for who knows how much longer. I realized after I posted the last blog post I can check my e-mail online, so that is good. I also realized (duh) I could use one of my laptops instead of my kid's computer, but it's still so much slower to work this way. It's driving me nuts not to have access to all of my files I need for work. Plus, I have a lot of pictures I want to edit from last week (before, during and after the retreat) and it's killing me not to be able to work on them. I'm especially excited to look at some pictures of my new little nephew. I think I got some really good ones of him and can't wait to show my sister in law. I am lucky my computer went down now, though. Computers never seem to break when it's convenient, but this time it did. I had just finished with EVERYTHING for the retreat when it broke. And then, since I've been home I have been sick anyway so I didn't want it much for the first two days. It's inconvenient not to have the computer now, but I'll be fine and feel extremely lucky that this hasn't put me in a bad spot.

My Computer is Down

I'm using my kids computer right now because my computer is down. I haven't checked e-mail since before the retreat. It feels weird to be unreachable via internet/e-mail but kind of nice. I could check my e-mail on my iPhone but I don't think I will for a while. I have a billion other things to do so hopefully this will keep me focused. Plus, I got sick yesterday and still feel pretty yucky. I'm so lucky I didn't get sick at the retreat, huh? Keith treated me like a princess and didn't make me do a thing yesterday. What a guy! I'm so lucky!

Today is the Day!

The retreat starts today. Here is a sneak peek at what we are doing. I would like to write more about the teachers so you can actually read it here, but I'll have to wait until after the retreat to do that. I'm really excited and I'm thrilled to be feeling that way because last week I wondered why in the world I'm doing this. It's a lot of work and last week I wasn't sure it was worth it. Again, today I'm excited and I'm feeling really good about it. I feel really prepared and that is obviously another great way to feel!

I Love These!

http://www.hightideheels.be/Leer%202.html

They have my mom's name all over them. She is usually in heels or flippers so these would be perfect. Haha. My mom works hard when she is home, then when she is on vacation she plays hard. Same with my dad. They have had the financial freedom to travel the world the past 10 years or so. It's really neat to see them be able to travel to so many great places. This year they went to China, Isreal, Mexico and who knows what other places I am forgetting. ETA: I should add, when I was growing up my parents didn't have a lot of money. We had several times where times where tougher and we even had to live in a apartment when I was in high school. They finally started making good money after I graduated from high school. It really makes me happy to see them so successful now.

Digital Scrapbook Retreat

Just a few days until the Digital Scrapbook Memories Retreat. I'm feeling incredibly organized and ready! It's amazing! I still have to finish up some things for the classes which will take a lot of time, but other than that I'm about ready to pack up and go. I have so many boxes to bring. One prize I bought for each of the goodie bags at the retreat filled my Tahoe completely with exception to the drivers seat. I should have taken a picture of that.

Speaking of pictures, I REALLY want to show off the goodie bags here, but I'll be patient and show you next week after the retreat. I need to keep things a surprise.

Also, I'm really grateful that most of our retreat packages have sold out. We still have a few seats left but that is it. This year's retreat is going to be really great and even better than last year's retreat. I can't wait to take a few of the classes myself.

A Little Deep

One of my favorite things my church teaches is that children are perfect and are guaranteed a spot in heaven if they die. Parents are also promised they can raise these children after they die. My kids are healthy and strong. I'm so grateful for that. Still, I can't imagine how depressing it would be to not have this knowledge and to think that death is the end. I'd constantly be so nervous, scared and frustrated with life. Even with this knowledge I know loosing a child would be the hardest thing someone could ever face, but at least this knowledge could give a person something to hold on to.