Port Aransas

(click on photos for larger images)

Every year we head to the Texas Gulf coast for a long weekend.  I seem to have yearly posts on the trip (although we've been going many more years than I've been blogging!) and it's fun to look back. I was shocked, however, to realize how easily Sammy took to the sand and the water the past couple of years because this year, from the very first step off the end of the boardwalk, he had an absolute phobia of sand.

Yes, sand.  Terrified, I tell you. 

As you can imagine, it isn't so easy to avoid sand at the beach!  We never figured out what the problem was and he never got past it.  He was convinced that the sand was scary in some way.  It was a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy because his instinct was to try to wipe the horrific substance off the bottom of his foot on the inside of the other leg... and that is exactly where he has the most trouble with his eczema.  It's not surprising that salty sand is really painful on eczema-cracked skin.  But even when he seemed to be able to accept that no rattlesnake or sand crab was going to get him, and the sand wouldn't hurt if he didn't rub it into his wounds, he was still frightened!

James went to town and bought Sammy some water shoes that encased his feet more than his little flip-flops and they helped... but they didn't fix the problem.  He wanted to be carried from the boardwalk to a chaise lounge, where he would sit on his platform and lean over to dig in the sand with a shovel.  He seemed to have a good time and was mostly happy doing that.  Occasionally he would venture onto the hard-packed sand near the water but never, never onto the softer sand farther from the shore.  We really tried to talk him into it, coax him along, insist that we weren't carrying him... but he was frozen with fear and screaming in terror.  And then he would end up grinding the sand into the already bleeding skin from the last time and we had to scoop him up and go wash him off in fresh water... so it ended up seeming just not worth it.

I showed Sammy pictures of last year when he played in the sand with no problem.  He says he's going to be done with being scared of the sand next year.  Even with the strange sand-o-phobia we had a great time overall!  The weather was beautiful.  Two days were sunny and hot and two days had some rain and a lovely little fall chill, though still plenty of time to be on the beach. 

I've been playing around with some of the images I liked from the trip, so I thought I'd share those.  (As always, click on the images to see them bigger.)

[If you are interested in the post processing done on these photos, check out Pioneer Woman's FREE photoshop/elements actions.  Those are what I used and they are really fun!]

These Days: Sammy

These days Sammy is full of personality. He wants to (in this order): play baseball, go to school, do helper jobs. He talks about being a baseball player ALL the time! His belt is like a baseball player, his shoes are like a baseball player, he needs to carry his bat (foam, thank goodness), he wants his daddy to play baseball with him, he was Zack to help him hit the baseball off the tee... et cetera! He's getting pretty good at connecting with the ball on the tee. He then takes great pleasure in flinging down the bat and racing around the far tree while Zack shouts, "Home run, Sammy, HOME RUN!"

He is also going to "Ducks Class", the name of his little class at his pre-school. He's pretty disgruntled that he doesn't get to go every day. If I say something like, "Oh, you are a cutie-pie!" He says, "No.  I am not a cutie-pie.  I am a cutie--pie DUCK!"  In lieu of Ducks class every day, Sammy would be glad to go to Zack's school every day - either to pick him up or to help in the classroom like we did last year. Since we don't get to help in the classroom in the same way (we do go help in the library once every two weeks and I'm about to start helping with something while Sammy's at school), he would settle for picking Zack up every day. He wants to bring either his cowboy dressup outfit or his phone or his Elmo with him.  I don't know if he doesn't want to give them up right then or if he likes all the attention he gets from the other moms!  Since carpool is taking care of Zack's school pickup for us two or three days each week, he keeps finding himself disappointed, which he makes sure to show by drooping his head and shoulders, putting on his saddest face and swinging his arms loose in a full-body display of moping.

We've realized we let those adorable, personality-full, little faces he puts on keep us from following through on consequences like we mean to! It doesn't take much in the consequence department - a quick break in a chair, a removal of some item - but sometimes he seems so heartbroken that it's easy to believe he must already be corrected enough. Think he's playing us? Ha. We're going to refocus on positive, consistent disciple (mostly from this book)... and try not to be such suckers for those expressions!

One thing I'm loving about right now is that Sammy is so excited whenever I can think of some little helper job he can do around the house.  It almost always gets a positive response and a request for another helper job.  

These Days: Zack

These days Zack is adjusting to First Grade. It's pretty different than kindergarten for him. For us, we see playful lessons and minimal homework. But for him, he's sitting at a desk instead of a carpet square and expected to do lessons most of the day instead of just a little of the day. We see a classroom discipline system that's essentially the same with positive rewards and mild negative consequences. But he sees a stricter system and not much time to talk to his buddies.

What we both see is a good class and some good friends! We have started letting him go in earlier - sometimes thirty minutes before school starts when everyone goes to the cafeteria before they are allowed to go to their classrooms. It always seemed too early last year - we tried to keep the length of his school day from getting longer than it needed to be. But this way he can see his friends and talk to them before they go to the classroom (where they immediately start their lessons without any play time). We are starting to carpool after school, which is leading to some short playdates on a regular basis, which seems to be a great thing.

We also let him join some extracurricular activities: Cub Scouts and Chess Club. We've only been to one meeting of each but I think they are going to be a good fit. We're still waiting for our Tiger Cub den assignment but Zack's already asking how he can earn badges (they are actually belt loops at this age). Chess Club is pretty interesting - they have 110 kids! Almost all of them are second graders and older but Zack and a buddy are some of the few first graders and I think they'll be able to hang.

Scrapbook Layout: Elk Camp

I've been thinking this week about Elk Camp since my extended family has been there the past few weeks.  This is a two to three week camping trip out in the woods in northern Arizona.  Those who want (my dad, uncle, brother-in-law, etc) apply to a state drawing to get to do an archery hunt for elk.  We have gone in the past but did not go this year since Zack is in school now.  It's quite an experience!  you can read about the last time we went here. 

While I was talking to my family members on the phone and hearing about the crazy hail storms and incessant rain they've had, I realized I hadn't ever shown my layout about our previous trip.  I thought I'd go back and pull it out to show.

One thing that made this layout a challenge was that I had SO many pictures and so much journaling.  There was no way I could get down to just two or three pictures.  I managed to narrow it down to 16 photos - and that was hard enough!  Then I needed to have room to tell the main story of the trip plus some notes on each photo.  To me, the challenging thing about having so much is that the more you have, the more whitespace you need for the eye to be able to make sense of what is there.  I settled on a design that allowed me to include all those pictures and all that text and still have plenty of empty space (green space functioning as whitespace this time). 

To do that I really had to rely heavily on the structure provided by a grid, so I made several small collage photos in Picasa, printed them as 4x6s, and cut them apart to be used in a long strip of images.  I put them at the bottom of the page since the block seemed so weighty.  That allowed space for some featured images at the top. 

Finally, I used number stickers to number each image and journaled it's corresponding note below the grid.  This has given me a formula I can return to when I have tons of pictures for one story.  You make recognize I used it again here in the Kindergarten year-in-review layout. Give it a try if you need a design for lots of photos! 

Layout: Expert Road-Trippers

(as always, click on photos for larger versions)

Here is a layout I just finished about how the boys have really grown into car travel.  They can now hang out in the car for an all-day car ride like it's nothing!  It's soooo much easier than when they were little!  It started after the last of our Christmas travels, a ski trip just days after we got back from a family visit.  We could really tell we had turned the corner then, and sure enough they have been champs all summer.  If you have little ones, take heart:  they can adjust to it... with enough practice!

The original design for this layout was by Cheryl at one of her Stamp Classes.  I love love love these "Travel Log" stamps from Stampin' Up! Right now they are not available, as they were in a previous seasonal mini-catalog.  But they could always come back in next year's full catalog so cross your fingers.  Here is the original design:

Cheryl had us make all the elements including that awesome little map.  I usually take her designs and spin them just a little.  For one thing, I like to accommodate a lot of pictures.  Also, between printing and cutting, I end up with various picture sizes. I find I like things grouped together.  But mostly, I really enjoy starting with something neat and making it my own.

This time, I ended up with a lot of red accents in the photos and decided I also wanted a little red in my embellishments.  Also, I wanted to cluster the embellishments and didn't have quite enough to give it a layered look.  So, I made a tag out of an office supply tag and some matching circles.  I used a rosette my sister had made during her visit that happened to match.  Finally, I added a scrap of patterned paper (leftover from Money-Pocket) that tied the page colors together and filled in the gaps in my photo grid.  That gave me enough stuff to make some embellishment clusters and a nice visual triangle out of the red bits.

One thing I found interesting was that I had it like this and then tore up a few things and changed it to the version at the top of the post (yes, one of the tabs has fallen askew here but I've fixed that too).

 

I don't know if the difference is noticeable when you aren't looking at them side by side, but in this one the tag is tilted the other direction.  I thought I had everything like I wanted it but then it felt unbalanced.  I decided the lines of the tag were leading the eye off the page instead of onto it and switched the direction.  I don't know if anyone but me even sees the difference but I'm happier with it switched!

He's a Footsie Jammie Cowboy

...and very proud of his outfit, too!

Scrapbook Layout: Money-Pocket

 
(as always, click on photo to see a larger version)

I wrote about Sammy's love for money in his pocket quite some time ago, but recently I was looking through our pictures and I decided I wanted a scrapbook layout about it too.  It was really fun to make because:
1) The journaling was already written in the blog post, so I could just play and not have to think too much, and
2) I threw in some non-traditional embellishments. 

That pocket is off a little pair of overalls Sammy had outgrown.  They had a hole in the front so I have been using them for various projects.  I pulled the strap hardware off for an earlier project and cut the little pocket out for this layout.  I like how the lighter fabric makes the pocket show up.  I also frayed out the edges of the surrounding denim to give it a well-worn look.

Also, those are real pennies - a shiny one for the embellishment on the photo strip and three darker ones to peek out of the pocket.  I was pretty amused by the idea of putting them on my layout.  The shiny one is dated the same year the photos are taken.  These are probably the cheapest embellishment around! Hee hee.

There are some random re-purposed bit in there too - the decorative labels are punched out of the pretty envelope this year's calendar came in, the green ribbon was a hanger strap off a dress (I always cut them off anyway so they aren't showing when I'm wearing the dress, but then I really liked the color), and the copper photo mat was a piece of a wedding invitation.  Strange stuff to save but pretty fun to use!

Layout: A capitol outing on a misty morning

You may remember this photo that James took this spring when he took the boys on an outing to the Texas state capitol building. I really liked the drama of the photograph, with that scraggly tree silhouette, the dark lamppost and no one else in sight!

For some reason the layout didn't photograph well - I tried it in a couple of different lights but the picture part of the layout always looked dull and blurry.  Oh well, you can see the real image in the link above if you would like to. 

I wanted to use a black and cream/kraft color scheme to highlight the image.  I chose a black background and black photo matte and then filled in the other colors from there.  I had everything designed and then added the black flourish to the background.   It reminds me of the metal work in old fashioned trim and air registers.  I really really like it - it turned out to be my favorite part of the layout!

I'm going to a brayer workshop!

But not until February.  Still, I'm excited.  This is the instructor:

http://zindorf.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/

She does really cool stuff.  Like check this out. The apple basket is a stamp and the rest of the scene was created with a brayer.  (Click on the picture to see the full post - lots of larger pictures and step by step instructions.)

Or this one. Again, the tree is a stamp but the whole scene looks much different than it would with only the stamp.

Pretty impressive, right?  I'm really looking forward to the class!

Scrapbook Layout: Kindergarten

I wanted to do a single layout looking back over Zack's whole Kindergarten year, so I put together this review. That framed picture on the top left is from the first day of school and the one of Zack and his teacher at the bottom right is from the last day of school.

There are lots of photos- 16! - so I made sure to group them pretty tightly to leave quite a bit of whitespace (or bluespace in this case) in order to give the eye some rest on the page.  To print my photos in sizes that make this easy, I made collages of two, three or four photos in Picasa and print them as 4x6's.  It's cheap and it turns out even! 

The large letters are stickers.  I had a sheet of the alphabet with only one of each letter, all capitals, all different fonts.  It was a really cute sheet but I wasn't sure what words I could make with it and I didn't have plans for an alphabet album.  I decided to jazz up my background with the alphabet tucked behind my photos instead.  A few of the letters were bright green and stood out too much, so instead of using the green ones I stamped those letters in Stampin Up Tempting Turquoise ink. 

I like how it turned out, but I think I'll go back and add some notes identifying the first and last day photos and I think I should put Zack's name in it somewhere - I missed that somehow!  Zack still likes it:

Back to School

Hard to believe Zack is starting First Grade! We went and met the teacher on Friday. She seems very warm and organized and even though she looks young she has many years of teaching experience. That's her in the first photo.

Today we headed off bright and EARLY for his first day. He has three boys, favorite friends from kindergarten, in his class plus some of the girls he is friends with. He's sitting next to two of the boys and back to back with the other, so he's thrilled. The mom's have already warned them that friends get separated if they talk while the teacher is talking! The kids were all a-buzz with their new desks and their supplies all set up for them. Very cute. I didn't cry, but it does seem like he's growing up fast. Sniff, sniff!

Scrapbook Layout: Pieces

This is a layout Cheryl designed at her Stamp Class, but that I put together in a different way.  I used almost all the same pieces, but it turned out so different!  (I hope Cheryl doesn't think I wrecked her design!) 

These pictures are ones that my sister has recently scanned in her effort to digitize all our family photos (quite a project, and one I'm really grateful for!).  These are all me as a toddler or pre-schooler.  We have been so entertained by looking at these types of pictures because we immediately see features that we notice in our own kids.  I think Sammy does a little side bend like the top left picture, and the older pictures of me remind me of Zack's smile.  My mom looked at these and could remember where several of the dresses came from - she made the red with white rickrack hat and long-sleeved set (at the bottom of the title) so I would be shaded in the boat while my dad fished. 

If you are curious about the puzzle pieces, check out Cheryl's post here - she has the supplies listed too.  One thing she doesn't mention is the crumpled style flower at the left.  We had three flowers punched with the Fancy Flowers Punch.  We misted all of them with water and then crumpled them up into a tiny ball!  It was intimidating to crunch our pretty flowers!  But then we opened them up, let them dry and inked them a bit and it made a beautiful vintage effect, especially fastened together with that fancy Antique Brad. 

TCBY, here we come!

Finally it's Wednesday. The day known in my brain as Waffle Cone Wednesday.

There is a TCBY shop across the street from our church. I managed to attend church there for fifteen years (oh wow. I'm old.) without ever setting foot in TCBY. I'm not a sweet-tooth person - I want dessert if it's being served, but I don't crave sweets (I'm too busy craving chips and salsa. Or chips and guacamole. Or chips and queso. Or chips). I think James had taken the kids over there once but I didn't go with them. But then a few weeks ago we walked over for their Wednesday special: the 99-cent waffle cone.

And now I'm obsessed.

It might be because I quit drinking diet sodas (which means all sodas, since I only drank diet) or maybe the yogurt is just that good. Or maybe it's the cone itself. It's a kid-sized waffle cone filled with an adult-sized portion of any of their soft serve flavors, which change by the day. I have been wracking my brain trying to remember if I've ever actually eaten a waffle cone before now. I may not have - it's usually an upcharge and it's messier than a cup and all that.  Either way, I'm really keen on the waffle cone now.  My kids are happy with my current obsession with the waffle cone as well.  Since I'm waiting all week for the special (which is a good way to avoid just splurging on frozen yogurt every day of the week), I can't very well pass up the waffle cone just because it's getting to be past bedtime, can I?

Now I just have to make it until 7:30. The time known in brain as Waffle Cone time.

Thinking of You card

Hello! I thought I'd pop in to show you another card we made with the service project group at my church. I was really impressed with all the individual coloring-in work by all the ladies! They think they aren't artistic but it was really pretty. The card background was embossed using the Big Shot and the butterflies were cut and embossed in one step using a Stampin' Up! Embosslit. Simple but pretty.

Diamond Crater State Park

Zack is crazy about collecting rocks.  He is convinced his finds are very valuable.  He stores them in treasure boxes varying from paperboard boxes from the craft store that he painted himself, to clear stacking screw-top organizers, to shoe boxes, to the old dog house in the back yard.  He even has some extra boxes from my jewelry on which he as written "PResHus RocKs GeMs".  Sometimes I have to do a sweep of the house and send a big pile of rocks back outside.  James had the idea to structure some actual rock collecting into our summer trip, so one of our destinations was Diamond Crater State Park in southwestern Arkansas. 

We spoke to several people who thought it might not be worth a day but for us, it was great. This may not be something the kids will love in a few years but they loved it at this time!  The diamond area in the state park is a field in which diamond-containing rock runs seven miles deep.  Every month or so they plow the field, exposing new soil and rocks.  You pay an admission fee and dig as long as you want (all day! It's only 100 degrees!), keeping anything you find.  There are diamonds found regularly - mostly yellow or brown but some white too.  Half-carat diamonds were found right before our visit so they are definitely there! 

You can walk along and look, dig in the furrows and do "dry sifting", or use the ramadas (shade!!) to do "wet sifting".  Zack dug, Sammy roamed around, and I did wet sifting.  It was more work than Zack was expecting and the weather was really hot but we all had fun. 

By mid-day we'd had our fill of dirt and heat and not found any diamonds so we decided to call it quits and headed to the attached splash park and pool.  Now, someone was really thinking with that pool attached to the hot, dry diamond field!  That was at least as good as the diamond hunting.  The pool was mostly two and two and a half feet deep - a great depth for our young kids.  With the slides, fountains and play structures, it was a great place to play.  Before this both Zack and Sammy had been really timid in the water, clinging to our necks or the side of the pool.  But there the shallow water and beach entry gave them a chance to play without being nervous - I think they gained a lot of confidence that has been benefiting us going forward!