{schedule changes}

such is life

School is officially over, and my days now need some adjusting! Having 4 (and sometimes more) kids home during the day has its pros and cons. Alex now has someone besides Mommy to play with, which is a good thing. It's also wonderful to see my children for more daylight hours. But now it takes longer to make lunch, and bickering is always inevitable! LOL I have to share my computer with little ones who want to access Club Penguin (an actually pretty good site for kids, btw), and getting work done is not always easy. But my days are definitely more fun!

We had a fun Memorial Day yesterday. Just the family, and a couple extra friends. We had a few summer showers, so we had to work the grill around the rain. We had each person pick a special snack that they wanted to have. Jessie chose Ruffles and sour cream and onion dip (she loves it, but won't go near onions otherwise. Go figure!). Helen wanted the cheese-filled hot dogs. I got pomegranate martinis! Alex got popsicles, and I made our special bruschetta for Ed:



It's a special recipe that my mom got from somewhere, and we just love it!

bruschetta on garlic crisps:

1 package grape tomatoes (I don't like tomatoes unless they are cooked, or are the grape kind)
1 package FRESH mozzarella cheese (trust me, it makes ALL the difference!)
1 cup (approximately) green olives
1 bunch fresh basil (again, MUST be fresh! Not that icky dried kind)
1 french baguette
whole clove garlic

Chop everything up, add a little salt and pepper, and drizzle with olive oil until it mixes together. You don't need much oil. Don't add garlic to the mix! You'll have plenty on the bread. Slice the bread at an angle. Drizzle with olive oil and a little salt and pepper. We grilled it, which was extraordinarily good, but you can broil it instead. When it's done, take it off the grill and, while it's still hot, rub the garlic clove over the top of each piece. Serve with the tomatoes! Yum! SOOO good!

Morgan made candy sushi, which is also a Grandma recipe (hey, she's a teacher!):



I'm not exactly sure how she did it, but I know it involves rice krispy treats, red twizzlers, and fruit roll-ups. She even added some gummy fishies to this batch. You put the twizzlers in the rice krispy treats, then wrap it up with the fruit roll-ups. When it's sliced, it does look a little like sushi, but tastes much better! ;)

down to business

Today is Page Turner Tuesday at WST!



We're celebrating Tiff's birthday, but we're giving you the presents!

latest layout

I used some yummy Prima goodies, and the June sketch by the talented Janine Langer to make this page about Helen's last few days of 4th grade.



Come play with us!

Here's to spending quality days with your children! Cheers!

{summer safari!}

First of all, the random winners from my last post:

kate n.
pam
jaymez

WooHoo! If you would just email me (<---- link on left sidebar), then I will get those out to you right away!

===========

How lucky am I to get to work with Emily Powers again? :D




I'm so excited about this kit! It was so much fun to create, and I've even already scrapped with it! I've included this page as a quickpage with the kit:



This was an ancient photo I found from one of our many zoo trips. This particular photo is my oldest in front of the concrete animals that the Memphis Zoo has at their entrance. In 2006, she would have been 13. I can't believe how much she has changed in nearly 2 years (she will be 15 in July)! Whoa. Wake-up call.

Here's to exploration! Cheers!

{Amy Times 3!}

And because I love my blog readers so much, post a comment here to win my new edges! I will randomly choose a winner to get this set for free!

{birds and babies and spiders, oh my!}

{such is life}

I just had the most terrifying spider incident! I was driving home from the bank, taking the winding roads through my neighborhood. I like the scenic route. I saw something move out of the corner of my eye, looked down, and saw a GINORMOUS spider on the dashboard, right behind my steering wheel. Seriously, this thing was huge. The biggest spider I've ever seen that wasn't behind glass. I panicked, and nearly ran off the road. I managed to pull to a stop and jumped out of the car. I quickly released Alex from his car seat (you know, in case this spider had a taste for toddlers) and set him on the sidewalk while I considered my options. Now, I generally like spiders. We had a rather large one living in the corner of our french doors (outside) last year that I named Aragog and loved to watch. I don't scream and jump on chairs when I see one. I prefer to catch them and put them outside instead of killing them. I'm just not freaked out by spiders. But this one had HAIR! I could see his beady eyes watching me. He was just not something I wanted to be locked in a car with! But now what? Call Ed? It would take him 30 minutes to get to me, and he would laugh. Leave the car there and walk home? Nah, it was stopped in the middle of the road. I had to get the car home, and that meant I had to deal with the spider. By myself. Ugh. So I began looking for a suitable object with which to squish this thing. My flipflop would have just bounced off it. Alex was wearing some lightweight Crocs, and I would have to get too close to it to use those. There was an old water bottle in the car that was probably heavy enough, but it was round, and that would require a precise hit. This had to be a one-shot kill. Then I saw the Atlas. Perfect! It was one of those full-sized ones in the leather case, so it was big and heavy. I managed to roll it up somewhat, then swatted. Spider incident over, thank God. Now I just had to clean up the gooey mess. Yuck!

Speaking of wildlife (*shudder*), we've been lucky enough to watch a family of robins who nested in our arbor, right next to the house, this Spring. We saw the mom build the nest, lay her eggs, and hatch 4 tiny babies. We got to observe the mom and dad taking turns feeding them, and hear their cute squeaking calls. Well, on Mother's Day of all days, the babies decided it was time for flying lessons. They left the nest, one by one, and went after Mom. They couldn't go far at once, and did a lot of hopping. The last one to leave (we called him John, after my brother, who was 30 when he finally moved out of my parents' house! :p ) walked up and down the arbor all day before he finally got the nerve. I managed to snap a few photos while they were resting in the grass, still with tufts of down on their heads:



These last two weeks have been crazy busy. We have decided it is finally time to build a pool in our backyard, so we've (well, mostly just me) have been interviewing pool contractors and talking to banks. It's been exhausting! But hopefully, it will be worth it in the end!

The kids have had their end-of-school programs and awards this week as well. Their last day is Friday. The 3rd graders had a music program, and Jessie had a speaking part (she's the third from the left on the bottom row):



Both she and Helen (4th grade) received honor roll and citizenship awards. Helen had a small party in her classroom afterwards, and Jessie has her party on Friday. Here's Helen with her teacher, who Jessie hopes to have next year:



The oldest didn't grab any awards this year, but she does have a new boyfriend. Ugh. It's difficult to accept that she's old enough to date now! And he drives! Scary. He's a nice guy, though, and they do make a cute couple:



Oh! And the anniversary. I promised to share more details. Ed told me he was taking me out, but wouldn't tell me where. I love surprises :) He came home with some lovely silver and diamond leaf-shaped earrings that I LOVE, and can wear with just about anything. We drove to dinner, which ended up being here, at the Tower Room. It's located at the top of the tallest building in Memphis, and the view was incredible! We got there in time to have a few drinks at the bar, and were seated for dinner just as the sun was going down. Gorgeous, and so terribly romantic! The food was fabulous, the view was lovely, and the company was good too ;) When we left there, we did something we almost never get to do.... see a movie! We saw "What Happens in Vegas," which was a cute, perfect anniversary movie. It was a flawless, wonderful date!

{down to business}

Have you seen this cool site?



ScrapBlog is a cool, *free* service that lets you create scrapbooks online. It's easy and fun! Everything is built into the site, so there's no software to buy or learn. Use a pre-assembled template, or you can design your own pages. You can even add sound and video! Watch out, it's addicting! I create designs for them on occasion, so you may see some of my work there:



Look for lots more of my designs coming soon!

Starting this week, I'm going to be having Happy Hour at my shoppe every Thursday! One of my products will be on sale 50% off for the entire day. So come on in, grab a cocktail, and relax. I won't tell you which product, but it will be something different each week! Starts tomorrow!



And don't forget the CT call at WST!



And in closing, I can't help but to share this adorable photo of Alex and "Honey" (Alex's word for "Helen"):



Nothing better than seeing love in a child!! Here's to small spiders! ;) Cheers!

{out of print}

{we are}storytellers has some great bargains today in their out of print section! Lots of great retiring products on sale for 50% off! Grab them now while you still can!

Also, don't miss this:



What an opportunity! Don't miss it!

Ed and I just recently celebrated our TWELFTH anniversary! Wow, we're getting old :p There are so many things going on right now. I hope to come back real soon and talk about them!

Cheers!

{occasionally...}

Occasionally, Ed and I get to get away alone together for a day or two. He had a conference in Nashville last week, and I tagged along since it was a free trip ;)



We didn't do much, but it was nice to relax for a few days. We did have an awesome dinner at an awesome restaurant called Sambuca. Fabulous food, wonderful atmosphere, and live jazz. I would highly recommend it to anyone in the area.



Occasionally, I remember to take my camera with me, even when I'm just taking the eldest to the mall.



Occasionally, you can get called for jury duty, even if you're not registered to vote. I found this out the hard way. The girl sitting next to me in the convention center full of 3,000 potential jurors had the most amazing toenails. That's the most exciting thing I took away from that experience. I'll go back in July. Sigh....

Occasionally, my normally sun-resistant Armenian skin will suffer from an itchy heat rash. Apparently more so when the sun hasn't shown itself in weeks and weeks, then makes a 3 day appearance.

Occasionally, ants will crawl out from underneath my laptop keyboard. That can't be good.

Occasionally, mother birds will feather their nest on top of the pergola attached to your house. We now have 4 baby birds that we can observe close up! Very cool :)

latest layouts

Occasionally, the two oldest girls will go outside with the camera, and leave a wonderful photo on my computer:



Occasionally, the sun actually will come out on a nice Spring day:



Enjoy the occasions! Cheers!