Monday, September 29, 2008

The birthday week is done.

Dave's birthday was first. For as long as I've known him and as long as the girls can remember, he's always talked about having a Porsche. Chances are it's never going to happen so I rented him one for his birthday. Here it is



Here are the girls behind the wheel. I'm not sure who was more excited -- Dave or the girls. He took both of them for a spin. They said he went crazy around the corners. Ha. I'm not surprised. Isobel particularly enjoyed sitting in the front seat.



For Isobel's birthday, we had a special breakfast celebration in the morning and went to Dairy Queen for dinner. She had her party with her friends on Friday. We had 17 kids at the house for Sportball in the backyard. Everyone had a good time. We had hotdogs and cake and lots of happy children.



I'm still working on my Type + Writer pages, even though the class is officially over. I'm having a tough time with some of the pages. They're just not the pages I would usually do. Here's are a couple of my recent pages:


Templates for both pages were provided by Jessica Sprague for Type + Writer as were all supplies. I know I have more to say but I'm too tired and if I don't get off this computer soon, I'll never get to sleep!! Good night.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Another digi course for me

I am taking another Jessica Sprague course that is sucking up my time again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’m really enjoying it; I just wish I had more time to put towards it. It started on Monday, today is Sunday and I just completed Thursday’s assignment. I’m only 3 days behind!! I guess that’s not too bad.

Anyway, the class is called Type+Writer and it is a journaling/typography class designed to help you achieve “inspirational journaling” and provides you with instructions “for setting your words in beautiful, evocative type.” Every day we are supposed to ‘free write’ for 15 minutes in a journal. Every other day we have a journaling assignment and are given a specific topic to write about and then the next day we complete a page based on that journaling assignment. We are provided with templates for the pages, which makes them nice and fast, but I’m still managing to learn some new techniques, which is awesome. I’m enjoying the 15 minute free write every day. It’s amazing what comes out when you sit down and just write. Things seem to flow out of the end of my pen that I wasn’t expecting.

For the first assignment I did a page about our recent family trip to the EX.



Supplies include:

Paper: JSprague-TW-BlueTapestry; JSprague-TW-DkBlueSolid; JSprague-TW-GoldDots; JSprague-TW-RedTapestry; JSprague-TW-WhiteStripe; KPertiet_KingMePaper-3; KPertiet_LetterBoxBirdWatcher-4; KPertiet_Serenity-8; JSprague-TW-BlueSolid
Fonts: Pea Sarah Cute; Century Gothic; Georgia; Santana
Hi-Res Watercolour Brush Set
Template by Jessica Sprague for Type+Writer

The second assignment was a page about me. I don’t really know how I feel about these. On the one hand I know it’s good to have myself in the scrapbooks. I’m so rarely there because I’m always behind the camera. I never hesitate to do a page about Dave or the girls, but I really feel self conscious doing a page about myself. I guess taking these courses forces me to do one every once in a while. Here it is:



Supplies include:

Papers: JSprague-TW-BlueSolid; JSprague-TW-BlueTapestry; JSprague-TW-; KBlueSolid; JSprague-TW-GoldDots; JSprague-TW-RedTapestry; Trishjones_tnc-radientesence_paper7
Fonts: Justus ; Charms
Template by Jessica Sprague for Type+Writer

Thanks for looking. I’ll post more when I get them done.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Dinosaurs? Hmmm . . .

Well, we made it through the first week of school without any mishaps. Meredith seems to really like middle school, with rotation and her new locker. She’s walking there and back on her own and she really likes that too. On Friday though, she called me on her way home to ask for a ride. They had to run in gym which was last period and she said her legs were too tired to walk home. Poor baby. I’m a sucker. I went to get her. Isobel hasn’t really had much to say about school but she certainly isn’t giving me any trouble about going so I have to assume its all okay. I know she likes her teacher. She is insisting on walking by herself in the mornings. She sees Meredith do it and wants to do it too. I am slowly becoming redundant. That seems to happen eventually no matter what type of work you do. I’ll need to revamp my skills and seek a promotion

Today we went into Toronto to visit the ROM. We got ourselves a family membership, which is a fantastic deal, and that’s going to be our ‘don’t-know-what-to-do” activity for the next 12 months. We had a great time, but the Dinosaurs disturbed me a little bit. I mean, when you really think about it, doesn’t it seem a little too much like a bad movie that these larger than life creatures existed? And really, how do you know they actually did? What if paleontology is actually a secret society dedicated to perpetuating the myth of the dinosaur, just like some of the myths parents tell their children? All the information there is quite detailed about how aggressive they were and what they ate and how they lived. But I just don’t know how we can know this stuff for sure. I’m not sure I really believe it. I think I’m a bit of a skeptic. It just got me thinking and that is never a good thing!

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Back to School is Here

Apparently I’m not very good at keeping up with this blogging thing. I seem to be full of wit when I don’t need to write anything down (in my mind, anyway), but now that I have this blog, I don’t know how to fill it. I’m also not convinced anyone is even reading it so, for now, I’m going to treat it like a sort of online diary for myself.

Dave ran his half marathon on Monday. I am extremely proud of him. I know it wasn’t an easy thing to do. He had to do his training runs either at the crack of dawn or in the blistering heat that comes late in the day. In case you’re not aware, a half marathon is 21K. Holy crap. I don’t like to drive 21K, let alone run it. Way to go Dave. I know you’re hobbling around right now, but not many people can say they’ve done what you’ve done.

The girls both started school yesterday. Being the neglectful mother that I am I did not take a single photo. Meredith started middle school and I wasn’t even able to record the moment. Perhaps I’ll fake it on Friday and take photos on the front porch and pretend they are Back to School photos. The both seemed to enjoy themselves. Meredith informed me that lockers are indeed “all that they are cracked up to be.” I think she likes it. I think she also really likes walking home with her friends instead of her mother and her little sister. And walking to school by herself. Isobel is in a split class and there are barely any girls. She says it is too noisy. Other than that I think she likes it.

I have managed to get out of bed before 7am which is a huge accomplishment for me. Other than that, so far, I am working on getting all those things done that I have neglected over the summer. I’m hoping to be able to start having some fun next week. Maybe I’ll even manage to come up with some fascinating blog entries. Wouldn’t that be great? Perhaps I’ll even branch out and come up with a Scrapbooking blog too.