April 27

Yep, that is Aaron using (kid) chopsticks! To eat SUSHI!!! That’s my boy!!

April 26

Aaron was cooking in his kitchen after school and decided he wanted to make crab. This is his little bath toy (kind of…) that he got from one of those expanding capsule kind of things. He loves it. BUT all of the sudden he wanted it to be cooked! He went upstairs to get it, brought it down and put it in his pot and said he was making crab. I said “I thought he was your friend??” Aaron said “Not tonight, he’s food.”

HA!

(update…Aaron is watching me make this post and he said “Hey, I’m cooking my friend crabby!”)

April 25

Today I spent my morning at Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria. Beautiful.
 
I was invited there by one of my former students, Jessica. She was in my class when she was a ninth grader and she is graduating this June. We have been close since she left my class. She has gone through many difficult challenges in her life, some of them placed upon her, and many as a result of her own choices that she made trying to cope with those difficulties. To make a very long and personal story short, she is very fortunate to be alive and well, and I am fortunate to still have her in my life. She has experienced many things that are almost impossible for me to imagine, but she has a wonderfully supportive father and church family and has made it through and become an incredible young lady who will use her experiences to help other young people. Sunday she, along with many other amazing seniors, each stood in front of their (huge) congregation and made speeches. She asked me to come and support her and witness this incredible achievement. It was a wonderful morning at church, and I was so impressed by all of the young men and women who spoke. Many students who go to our school attend this church and there were quite a few familiar faces. I was very honored to be there as Jessica shared her emotional story, taking the audience from tears to laughter many times. I was very touched that she called out to me and waved during her “thank yous” and I spent most of her speech trying to wipe my eyes enough to see her. I thank Jessica and her father very much for including me in this special milestone in Jessica’s life. It is occasions such as this that reinforce to me that we can never truly know the impact we can have on another person's life, and that responsibility can’t be taken lightly. She is an inspiration to me and to everyone that heard her speak. Here I am with Jessica and her dad after 20 straight minutes of crying :)

April 24

Saturday night, after a nice amount of housework and a nap with Aaron, we sat down to watch Definitely, Maybe. It is one our Netflix movies this week. Very cute movie. Aaron did a pretty okay job letting us watch in peace for at least the first half, then he got a little noisy. He sat down to read his Monsters, Inc. book by himself, and I thought he looked so cute sitting in the corner with his back to us. Of course as soon as I wanted a picture he turned around. Figures.

April 23

Some cute shots of me and Aaron…

   

and darn draft, continued.

this is about how exciting I find it….

April 22

WHOOPS! Shoot, I knew I preferred sorting my pictures by day! TODAY was the first day of the darn draft!!! Go Rams, at least they got the first pick.

April 21

I had a cheese date!! Our school friend Alicia and I LoooooooooooVE cheese! The stinkier the better! We especially love a good chevre. There is a new cheese maker at my farmer’s market called Sweet Valley Farm Dairy, from Elkwood, VA, and she makes fresh cheese every day. She has lots of different kinds of goat cheese, so I picked out the chive and garlic chevre and Alicia brought in some crackers and apples. We do this every so often and have dubbed ourselves the conquesodores. Here is Alicia showing her cheesey happiness.

 

April 20

Afterschool, Courts is taking a nap that doesn’t look AT ALL comfortable, Aaron is playing at his sand table.

 

April 19

We took a very funny series of pictures after dinner of Aaron and Ashley taking on the phone to Ash’s friend Brandi. Aaron is not good with talking on a touch screen phone, he holds it against his cheek and always hangs it up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 18

Here is boomy Aaron taking a bath. What a silly little guy!

April 17

Boy am I behind! I am kind of mad at my blog for not registering the changes in font color that I keep trying to make for my links…within the text of posts it is correct, but on the sidebar they are bright blue, I don’t know why, and I don’t like it. So…I ignored my blog for a few days to show it who’s boss.

Today Chris successfully gave Aaron the haircut we tried for a while ago…we got some new clippers that are just awesome and Chris and Aaron both did a great job. As you can see, Aaron is engrossed. Thanks, Curious George. I don’t see going back to cartoon cuts when Chris can cut Aaron’s hair so well!!

April 16

It’s Friday, we are ALL tired, except for Mover Aaron. Here is Aaron rocking out on his guitar, being one of the Imagination Movers (Dave, who wears his hat backwards and plays the guitar).

April 15

Our lilac bush is in bloom. It is the third year we have had it, and the first year it has had anything that could really count as blooms. It is really lovely and smells very fragrant. I wish it would GROW MORE!

April 14

This is me, HAPPY! We went to the Apple store and it was not as big of a hassle as I was afraid it would be. They swapped my phone out with a new one, and I was able to walk out the store making calls, texting, and taking a happy picture of myself. Phew!

New Release Friday!

Sarah Bennett has TWO wonderful collab kits out today!

First up, here is a beautiful kit she made with Trixie Scraps Designs called Sunday Afternoon. Again, I am loving the blues, greens and browns! It has good elements for boy and girl use, and really pretty metal word art, which I am into lately. I made this page with some pictures of Aaron that I just love from a day in January that he had to stay home sick.

Sarah’s other new release today is a fun springtastic kit she made with WM[squared] Designs called Go Green. It has all kind of fun earth-loving elements, and there are SO many great colorful papers, making this kit useful for so many photos! I made a page with my favorite photos from Valentine’s Day this year.

Go check these kits out, they are both AWESOME!

April 13

NOT my best day!!!!!!!!!! While I was walking to lunch, my shoe leather ripped! AW MAAAAAAN!!!! I LOVE this mocs from Land’s End…(I have them in 3 colors) they are a staple of my work wardrobe. I am all about shoe comfort! So, since that was only at 10:30 (yes, that is the time of my lunch break) I had to walk around in one gappy shoe for the rest of the day!

But that was NOTHING, (NOTHING I say!!!) compared to the tragedy that was to befall me later this evening. MY IPHONE DIED. like…not the battery. the phone. I used it all day, just fine, I have never had any problems with it. It is my friend. I synced it up in the evening before I went to the grocery store, then used it at the store (GroceryIQ app, of course) and then when I brought it home and plugged it back into my computer, NOTHING. Well, that is not entirely accurate, there was something. It was an occassionally flashing Apple logo, AND iTunes wouldn’t recognize it at all. After some quick internet searching, I saw that there are lots of discussion boards on the Apple site and elsewhere describing the same problem, so I learned how to get my computer to recognize it, and then it prompted me to do the dreaded restore. I was about 1 hour in at this point, and I knew, although unpleasant, that it was the only way. Alas, my phone was so far gone that it wouldn’t even successfully restore! To make matters even MORE stressful, the Apple website was saying my extended warranty (which my phone is only halfway through) was not valid. Finally, I got an error code that the Apple site said was a hardware issue. After all of these different layers of complications, I determined that going into an Apple store and seeing a “genius” was my only option. GREAT. The closest one to our house is…not close at all. But it is kinda by work, so I made an appointment and will have to wait and see what happens. Taking hubby along so he can be the brawn of the operation.

This is what my phone looked like when I finally got my computer to recognize it…it was a fleeting moment of hope. That moment passed. 

 

April 12

umm….time to do laundry?

All Wrapped Up

TWO FRIDAYS AGO (!!!) I neglected to put up Sarah’s new products, even though I did make pages to show them off! She released All Wrapped Up, some glittery stamps made with bubble wrap, which I used to make this page of Aaron’s first walk in his stroller.

(I used Storytime from Sarah, Lil’ Digi Bits by Jude and Stacy’s Backdoor Designs to make this page too. It is the first kit of Sarah’s that I ever saw at ScrapMatters and I immediately had it on my wishlist!)

She also released a set of Commercial Use Bubble Wrap Brushes that can be used colored as you see them in the preview, or, installed as brushes to be completely customized. I did a post on Sarah’s CT blog explaining how to use them. I used them to make this page of some of the earliest pictures of Aaron on his playmat. BOY he loved that thing! I am slowly but surely getting his baby book done….

( I used the ever-popular Sister Sue kit to make this layout. Sarah’s kits are ALL so versatile!)

Phew…glad I finally got all this goodness posted!