I'm Back, Baby!!!

Whew! After almost two whole months of no computer and no internet, we are back up and running. It seems like it took forever!!! And now there's so much to catch up on.

Here's the biggest news that I haven't been able to share on here yet. On November 20, I had my 20 week ultrasound to check on how the baby is growing and find out the sex. Are you guys interested? You want to know? We are going to have......

A BOY!!!! After four girls, we are going to be adding a boy to our (not so) little group of kiddos. I must say it was quite a shock, especially for Keith. He was just so sure that it was going to be another girl, and actually hoping for another girl, that when we realized what we were having, he just sat there in shock for the whole rest of the appointment. Didn't really say much of anything, except "He could be wrong, it could still be a girl". Um honey, no, that's a definite boy. :)

He's since warmed up to the idea and we're both pretty excited for this new adventure. I told Keith he can take care of all the diaper changes on this one. I'm not interested in getting hosed down, which I hear is a a common occurance with little boys. Í'm a little nervous though, as I have no boy experience and am not prepared for a boy at all. There isn't one single piece of blue clothing in this house at all. I guess we've got some shopping to do.

Here's a profile pic of the little booger...

We're pretty excited about our new addition!! (But does this mean I'm going to have to change the name of my blog?)

Live from WV.....

Man, I can't believe it's been over two months since I've seriously posted on this thing. Where have I been? What have I been doing?

Well, October was pretty busy for us, especially the beginning part of it. My dad and grandma came out to visit us. We had Elena's fifth birthday. Amya was baptized. I started a 6 week subbing job for a friend at the school I taught at last year (she was on maternity leave).

And then in the first week of November, our computer broke. Completely. It's been so frustrating. We were able to get part of it fixed but the hard drive was busted as well. Our warranty covers the hard drive, but not data recovery. I have an EHD that I had been backing everything up to and I wasn't too worried, until I checked it and realized that 30 gigs of videos are missing from my EHD. All the videos we took from May of 07 to Dec of 07. A Disney trip, some birthdays, and who knows what else. So we're trying to get those off the dead hard drive before we swap it out for the new one. Hopefully that won't take much longer, cause I am going through some serious withdrawals here. I hate not being able to check my email, I haven't been able to scrapbook, and I can't get on and update the old blog. SOOO annoying.

We're in West Virginia right now - we came out for Thanksgiving and we go home tomorrow. It was actually only supposed to be me and Maricela out here. I thought we didn't have the money to fly us all out here, so Keith said I could go ahead and buy a ticket and he and the other girls would just stay home. Unbeknownst to me, Keith was in cahoots with my mom and sister Kara and about 4 hours after I bought my ticket, he bought tickets for him and the rest of the girls. He couldn't get them on my exact flight, but they flew out an hour after me. He had this whole story about how they were going to go stay at his brother Ian's house while I was gone. He even made me help pack the girls for the trip to 'his brother's house'. For two weeks he was feeding me this story and begging me not to go and whining and asking how I could separate our family on a holiday and even trying to bribe me with money to stay. Basically making me feel really guilty for no reason. So I get here, my mom picks me up at the airport, we drive three hours home, and the whole time I'm on the phone with Keith and he's telling me what they've been doing since I left. Liar. And then about an hour after I got to my mom's house, the front door opens. It was midnight by then and I was thinking "Who in the heck is walking into my parent's house this late?" In walk in Keith and all the girls. Keith says the look on my face was priceless. I was just in shock. I really had absolutely no idea they were coming. Not one inkling. My uncle asked if that shows how good Keith is at deception or how gullible I am. I think it's a mixture of both. Needless to say, I was surprised and glad to see them and we've all had a really good time while out here. And we'll all be on the same flight home tomorrow, so that's good.

Hopefully it won't be too much longer till you hear from me again. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!!!!

Marie-Therese Gown GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!

Marie-Therese Gown GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!

This is THE most amazing costume I've ever seen. I can not believe she's giving it away!!! You HAVE to go check it out on her blog.

SM Birthday Blog Train!!!!!

Welcome to stop #19 on the SM Birthday Blog Train!! You have arrived in Utah!!


To help celebrate ScrapMatters' 1st Birthday a whole bunch of us (CT members and designers) created brag book pages to share with all of you!! They've all been made using the new (free with $10 purchase) kit "You Say It's Your Birthday". It's an AMAZING kit!! If you follow the links, you'll end up with an AWESOME album! Most of the links have 5x7 quickpages in PNG format - all you have to do is add your pictures and you're good to go! But some have even more, like treat toppers and invitations.

These are the stops you should have already made.
1. www.scrapmatters.com/wordpress (team blog)
2. www.andilynn.wordpress.com (Andrea)
3. www.brittishdesigns.blogspot.com (Britt)
4. www.scrapmuss.blogspot.com (Maria)
5. www.chiascraps.blogspot.com (Andrea)
6. www.digitalcreations.typepad.com (Sharon)
7. www.mommaholly.blogspot.com (Holly)
8. www.stacysbackdoor.blogspot.com (Stacy)
9. www.scrappykate.blogspot.com (Kate S.)
10. www.scrap-stuff.blogspot.com (Sya)
11. www.kimbytx.blogspot.com (Kim)
12. www.zane-escraps.blogspot.com (Erica)
13. www.kandykanekreations.blogspot.com (Lisa)
14. www.neeceebeedesigns.blogspot.com (Denise)
15. www.geekydiva.wordpress.com (Kim - tgmousechick)
16. www.plumdumplingdesigns.blogspot.com (Mary)
17. www.joyrevisited.blogspot.com (Heather L.)
18. www.taterscraps.blogspot.com (Tater)


Whew! Are you tired from all the traveling? (And just think, there are still a whole bunch more stops after mine!) Well, without further ado, here is the quickpage and birthday invite I've created for you.....

You can download my brag book quickpage and birthday invite here.

Also, we're all sharing a birthday tradition from our family. One of our family's traditions (that we got from my family, that came from my mother's family :D ) is to let the birthday person pick their birthday dinner. Whatever they request (within reason of course) is what we eat for dinner. We've had spaghetti, enchiladas, macaroni and cheese, and lots of other special requests. Tonight we're having Italian Crockpot Chicken for Amya's birthday dinner. Feel free to share one of your family's birthday traditions with me (we could use a few more)!!

Next stop on the birthday blog train is www.haynay.blogspot.com (Heather N.)

And please remember, we are an international train, so if one stop isn't ready yet, be patient and wait for it to be posted. The freebie links will be valid for a long time, so you won't miss out.

Have fun guys!!!!!

Scrap Matters Birthday Party

The Scrap Matters website is turning one tomorrow (and Amya's turning 8...ACK!!!)! There is a huge freebie they're giving away with every $10 purchase (and almost everything in the store is on sale), there'll be a chat and a Blog Train with freebies! Lots of fun stuff going on. And I'm participating in the Blog Train, so come back tomorrow morning to see the brag book page I made to give away.

more pages

So apparently, I've been a huge slacker about posting scrapbook pages. I have a whopping 7 that I've done in the last month and not posted. oops!! So here they come......

This is the one I made for the speed scrap I hosted today. I came up with the design all on my own (I've been using a lot of templates lately, so this one took me a little longer than usual!) and then came up with 7 instructions to give to the people participating in the speed scrap. The instructions were:
1. Pick 3-5 photos to use. They must show a sequence of events or be a series of photos. If you want, you can run an action on them.
2. Line up your photos, either horizontally or vertically. The focal photo should be larger than the others (it doesn’t have to be a lot larger, it can be just slightly larger).
3. Pick your papers (no more than three). Your background paper needs to be solid, but the other two can be patterned.
4. Mat your photos. (You can use one of the papers you chose…) Your focal photo, however, needs a frame.
5. Add some elements. You need at least one ribbon, one flower, one “bling”, and one staple.
6. Add your title. Your title needs to be a combination of alpha and font. One word should stand out more than the others.
7. Add journaling on some sort of journaling block (it can’t just be typed on your background paper) and date your layout.
It was a lot of fun to host and not as nerve-wracking as I thought.

If you want to see what the participants did with my instructions, you can click here. Oh and this page showcases Erica Zane's products, which you can find here.

This is one my pages for Sya's CT for this month. It's from when we went to Fort Bridger at the end of August for the annual Mountain Man Rendezvous. Kinda fun! (I'll have to remember to tell you about Maricela swimming in the hotel pool when we were there.)


Being on the ScrapMatters CT means that each month I'm assigned 3 designers from the store. I need to make at least one LO for each designer, showcasing their products. This is my LO for Ellie Lash (you can find her things here). These pictures are of the veggies I picked in about 1/2 an hour at the farm.



This was for a speed scrap back in August. I can't believe I never posted it! I won that speed scrap by the way. :) These pictures are of Keith's niece, Ashley, and her baby, Tenley, at Tenley's baby blessing.



This page was for a Template Challenge at Scrap Matters. While in Hawaii, we went to the Dole Plantation and one of the things we did on the tour there was plant a pineapple bush (are they bushes?). Anyway, I had no idea that all you needed to plant pineapples was the top of a pineapple you've already eaten. Cool!



This one was also for a speed scrap in August. I LOVE my wide angle lens - it's the only way I get to be in pictures, since I'm usually the one holding the camera.



Finally, this one was also for a Template Challenge and also showcases Ellie Lash's designs.

Whew!! That was a lot of information! And because I'm lazy and hungry, I'm only going to post a link for credits once. If you go to my ScrapMatters Gallery you can find all these layouts and click on the individual ones to get credits. I have two more pages from other speed scraps during this month that I still haven't finished, therefore totally missing the point of the SPEED scrap. Once I finish them, I'll post them.

Speed Scrap

So I'm hosting my first ever speed scrap at Scrap Matters this Wednesday at 11 am MST. I am super nervous and way excited at the same time. Hopefully it'll go as smoothly as possible!! So here's the annoucement and a preview of the participation prize if any of you are interested in joining me. Wish me luck!!