Which is worse?

Which is worse potty training a child or sending said child to kindergarten in diapers? Honestly I think potty training was created to drive parents to the looney bin. I forget between children how trying this time can be. With 4 years between each of the kids it is a long time between potty training sessions. Yet despite that, I am surprised that I don't remember it being this hard with the girls. Jessie (10) and Emily (6) got the idea fairly quickly and just kind of did it. David at 2.5 is another story entirely. He knows what he is doing. He knows that if he holds out long enough he will get a diaper for nap or bed time and then he is good. If he runs around naked, we have no problem with #1 but having underwear on is another story. He KNOWS that they are not diapers but he still uses them just like a diaper. I know he can get this but can I last until he does?

Projects

Projects. There are so many I could work on. I am constantly finding new ones too. The latest is baby booties. I have found great baby yarn and I just had to make some baby booties. I am going to make a hat too. They will go to my new nephew when he arrives in late April. I already have a blanket project I have started for him too. I taught myself to knit and am still very much a beginner but I have had experienced knitters tell me I am doing good work. I just hope my SIL likes these things. They are certainly made with lots of love. It is easy to go find something they have picked out from a store and put on a list to buy, wrap and send. There is no personal investment, little time and even less interest in a gift like that. Fitting for our relationship. But is that what they want? Or do they want something with a little more investment and love? Who can be sure?

I have not had the best relationship with SIL. I can't read her and don't know when she actually likes something I have given her, if she ever does! Hopefully she will at least put these on the nephew when he arrives.

Other ongoing craft projects are all scrapbooking related. I have books started for all three of my children. I just finished a gift album for the above mentioned SIL. I am finishing up a gift album for a friend. Those are just the projects in actual progress. The ones in the planning stages are numerous and endless. Lucky for me I have an endless supply of scrapbooking materials available to me through my own Creative Memories business. It does nothing for my profitability but getting the pictures into books and the stories written is far more important. Better get back to work on one of those projects now.

Rain, rain and more rain!!

It is an inside kind of day today. It is raining buckets outside today and no one wants to venture out into it. I am using the quiet morning to get a gift album finished for my friend's baby girl. This is a project that should have been done a few weeks ago. I have been feeling idea blocked so I put it off, then I had to get the gift album done for my SIL. Her shower is today but I am not able to attend because I have to be here for my daughter's basketball game. My FIL came down and picked up my other daughter so she can attend the shower. Consequently, I was able to send the gift album up to the shower with her. I am feeling a bit insecure about this gift. I think it is a nice album, my CMC team thinks it is a nice album but SIL is a non-scrapbooker so I am not sure what SHE will think. I have had a rocky relationship with her so I hope this turns out to be something unique that she will enjoy and use. I had the darn thing all wrapped up before I thought about taking pictures of some of the pages. :( I used the Once Upon a Baby Boy album kit available from Creative Memories and two packs of spargo pages for this album.

The other gift album I am doing is more generic. I am doing it in a 7 x 7 album with a pastel snap pack and a pack of soft touch papers on natural pages. All of these items are CM of course. I am hoping this will be a good Mom's brag book for my friend.

It feels good to be back to scrapping. I have been treading water for a while now, unable to find the inspiration to get anything done so to have paper on pages is awesome. Now I just need to translate that enthusiasm over to my own projects that are being neglected lately.

Happy scrapping on this rainy day.

Oley, moley it has been almost a month since I lasted updated the blog. Does that mean I have a month's worth of rambling to do? Probably but this has been a pretty tame month so it shouldn't take long.

An update, quickly, on the medical issues that face our family. Grandma is not doing well. She cannot, as mentioned in the orignal post on this subject, take the medication the doctors wanted her to take for the cancer. She was found by a friend very ill with pneumonia and rushed to the ER. She came home on antibiotics and was doing well for a short time. However, she had a stroke last week and has been sent home on Hospice. When I asked DH about the prognosis, he said "the doctors say she is very ill and needs to see the people she wants to see". Very scary and stressful for the family. My MIL in particular (this is her mother) is having a very tough time. On the one hand I think we should find a way to go up and see her but on the other I worry that having the five of us there would be too much of a strain. Besides I am not sure what the effects of the stroke are and I am not sure the kids are ready to deal with that reality. Oh the decisions we face as our family gets older!

On a happier note, we spent President's weekend playing in the snow and camping in the mountains. It was cold and windy as there was a storm coming through but boy we still managed to have fun. We stayed at Hoodoo Ski Resort in one of their electrical hook up sites. During the day we played on the sledding slopes and in the evening we played board games. We wore out the kids so much that they went to bed early and got up late. I have some fabulous pictures just waiting for printing so they can go in the scrapbook. Oh joy, more to work on. Just a couple of these great pictures:
Emily (dd 6) sledding in the dark.

Jessie (dd 10) and David (ds 2.5) sledding in the dark

Slide show fun

Playing with pictures is fun. Try it out. These are a few of the many, many pictures I took on our trip to Canada last summer. These are from our first two days of travel north. Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier National Parks were our stops for those days.

The weather was beautiful and the sun reflected on the snow. It was so much fun to share these sights with my kids. The look of fascination on their faces when we saw the bald eagles flying high above Mt. St. Helens. Their rapt attention as we read the storyboards along the trails we hiked. They absorbed the information and remember still the fun we had together on those beautiful, relaxing days.

What is beautiful?

Last week on Scrapshare (a fun and helpful scrapbooking site) the blog challenge was to look up the word "beautiful" and then apply it to our lives. According to Dictionary.com beautiful is defined as:


1. having beauty; having qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about, etc.; delighting the senses or mind: a beautiful dress; a beautiful speech.
2. excellent of its kind: a beautiful putt on the seventh hole; The chef served us a beautiful roast of beef.
3. wonderful; very pleasing or satisfying.

So what is beautiful to me? Beautiful is the smile on my daughter's face when she makes a basket in her game, the first one of the season. She loves the game but struggles to keep up with the others at times so it was a great moment for her. Beautiful is a completed scrapbook. Even when it is just a volume of an ongoing project, it is a major accomplishment that will be treasured in the future. Each of my children have a scrapbook. The two older kids have two books so far. My son, at 2.5 years old, only has one and really I have only gotten the first 6 months of his life done but it is started and when it is done, I will cherish it. I hope he will as well. Beautiful is a quiet evening spent with my husband even if all we do is watch our favorite TV shows or lose ourselves in our own private quiet.

So what is beautiful to you?