Hopefully the craziness is over...

June has been a lot of fun so far --insert heavy sarcasm here--

Bronchitis, maybe pneumonia, Dr.'s visits, an emergency room visit, summer school for Ty and summer school teaching for Marc, nasty tasting antibiotics, a kidney stone, major pain killers, scout camp near Dallas, car repairs, a teacher's conference in San Antonio...etc. etc. Yes, yes, fun, fun, fun...

I think our family is quite ready for summer to really begin and be the fun relaxing time we were expecting. I'm ready for Marc to be home for awhile too. I really miss him when he is away, and all the fun we have had while he has been gone on these two trips has only made me miss him more. Of course he has had his share of fun over the past 2 weeks too--the emergency room visit was his--so I'm sure he is ready to do some relaxing when he gets home today. Hopefully all of that craziness is over now and we can get on with the fun plans we have made. Big thanks to my parents who were a huge help during the past few weeks and have put up with us delaying a birthday celebration trip to the Houston Space Center for my Dad 3 times in a row now. 4th times the charm right? Hopefully that will make it back on the calender soon too!

I should add that not all of June was bad. The end of the school year was fun as always. Blake graduated from his first year of Joy school, and we had a little party to celebrate. He really loved Joy school this year, it is such a great program--so well thought out and so much fun to do with him. I've really enjoyed having this special time that belongs just to Blake and me! I love the special bond we have created through doing Joy school together and wish we had done it with Ty too. It is a really fabulous program. The other Moms and kids we did it with were great too and I know Blake is missing it this summer. Thankfully we have another great group ready to go again in the fall and we are both excited to see what year 2 will bring!

The happy graduate:

This is Ty on his last day of first grade. A little bit of a bittersweet day I think. Ty was very excited for summer, however, he had a wonderful, amazing, phenomenal, first grade teacher that we both will be missing. I can only hope his second grade teacher is half as good! He is holding my customary end of the school year gift for his teacher. The flowers are pens topped with foam flowers. I saw this similar idea for a mother's day gift on the Queen and Company blog last year, and I knew I'd be doing my own adaptation of it as a teacher gift from then on. I usually tuck a gift card into the card which I tie on the handle. The foam flowers are from Hobby Lobby, and the pot is from the Target Dollar spot.

This is last year's version for Ty's kindergarten teacher. These flowers were from the Target dollar spot as well and the pot.

Fun and easy to do. I just layer the foam flowers, then hot glue the flowers to the ends of the pens. Then stick them all in a little metal bucket with a few beans at the bottom. Add my card and gift card and then beg Ty not to spill them everywhere as he takes them into the school :) I usually make a few other pens to tie to thank you notes for the other teachers who help Ty at school. He has some wonderful special education teachers who have been great at giving him the little bit of extra help he needs. Hopefully everyone likes them. If my boys ever get male teachers I guess I'll have to think up something new--but for now this is the plan.

Lastly for today here is a layout and card I did manage to get done during the crazy start of June. First is a brief tutorial someone asked me to post on how I made my own journaling card for the layout.

First I took some lined paper--this happens to be made by Scenic Route Paper Company, but any kind of paper would work--and punched a circle.

Then I cut a slightly smaller circle with my circle cutter and added temporary adhesive to the back.

I stuck the smaller circle on the larger one to mask off the area I didn't want black.

Then I took a black felt tipped marker and went around the exposed edge a few times. After removing the mask you have a perfect journaling tag.

If you like your handwriting more than I do you can write directly on the tag.

I prefer the easy way out :) I run mine through my printer and then add it to my layout.

Unfortunately for me I didn't notice the typo until after I took these photos. On the flip side all I had to do was punch and edge a new tag, so it was easy to fix the layout. You will have to take my word for it that I fixed the typo. I'm feeling to lazy just now to take a new photo :)

But you get the idea--really easy and fast!

A few close ups of other stuff.

The little Monsters/Aliens were originally refrigerator magnets I picked up from the Target dollar spot--gotta love Target! They are stapled to the layout as I have never found a good adhesive for these types of softies. They melt glue dots after a few months so I figured staples would be best--and fast. And I'm all about trying to speed up my scrapbooking.

And here is the card I managed to finish. It was inspired by this layout in a lift the pea above you challenge on Twopeasinabucket.com

Anyhow, thanks for stopping by. And thanks to everyone who is being so patient about the photos and emails I owe everyone. I am catching up quickly and hope to be back on track with my normal 2-3 week turn around on photo shoots next week.

I can't believe it is June first!

How did that happen? It seems like 2009 just got started, and now it is June? Wow! June is an interesting month for us. Ty will have his last day of first grade on Thursday, Blake's last day of Joy school is also Thursday, and Marc will wrap up his 6th year teaching high school on Friday. That will make for a fun but busy week as we go through all the activities and festivities associated with the end of another school year. Ty seems to have mixed feelings about it all. He has had the most wonderful 1st grade teacher--seriously awesome--and he is sad to be leaving her. At the same time he is excited to have some time off and play more with Blake. Marc however, does not have mixed feelings. His feelings run somewhere along the lines of "Hallelujah!" :) The rest of June will contain both of our father's birthdays, scout camp, summer school for Ty (and maybe Marc too if he is called in to teach), Father's day, swim lessons, and hopefully lots of fun spent together as a family. It should be good--even if it is hot as all get up already! Anyway, just a little share of some cards I've been making. I know it's no where near Christmas, but there are lots of Christmas card/tag magazine calls out there right now, so I'll cross my fingers that some of these get picked up.

Thanks everyone for stopping by! I hope your first week of June is great!

Well, the weekend kind of got away from me....

but, it was a fun and relaxing one for me and the family. We spent a lot of time together playing and hanging out as a family. We played disc golf again with my parents, watched movies, talked, tickled the kids, played games, went to a BBQ with friends, visited with far flung family members over Skype, and relaxed. Those kind of weekends are always my favorite and the relaxing part was much needed! Why can't all weekends be 3 day weekends?

So to make up for my lack of posting over the weekend here is a big one with scrapbook stuff and photos :)

These are a few cards I made using one of Basic Grey's newer lines.

I thought I'd get the jump on father's day this year :)

And here are a few layouts I've done this past month. More Basic Grey, some Chatterbox, and some October Afternoon too.

This one is a recent favorite. Blake is in Joy school, and they recently learned a song about how much we wanted him to join our family. He loves that song and has asked me to sing it to him a lot lately. I wanted to capture his joy in the song's sentiment, so of course, I scrapbooked it :)

This one is about our trip last summer to South Padre Island. We had such a good time and thanks to my brother Adam (and some very silly faces and sounds from the grandparents and other family members) we also got a great family photo out of the trip :) Thanks Adam!

This one is another favorite of mine. Lately I've been watching my two oldest boys become closer and closer. They really are best friends and get along so well. I wanted to remember this stage, because as all things, I have to admit it may not last--even if I wish it would!

And I really had a lot of fun with this one too. Ty was voted the Coyote Champion of his 1st grade classroom in Feb. The class votes for a new one each quarter and Ty was very excited to be picked this time. It was especially nice as Ty was sick with the flu and stuck home for a week when he got the medal. It certainly helped lift his spirits! His teacher said his classmates picked him because "Ty is a good friend. He helps you when you need help. He smiles a lot. He is kind to everyone. He follows directions." For those of you who are familiar with Ty and some of his learning difficulties you can imagine this touched our hearts for another reason too. We are so grateful his language difficulties don't keep him from having some good friends. Way to go Ty, we are so proud of you!

Here is a look at some regular sessions from last fall/winter. A regular or standard session differs in many ways from the mini sessions I described below. First of all I try to capture 2-3 different poses of each child. We also will try to get several different poses of the family together. This will include several candids of the family interacting, as well as more posed shots. I'll also try breaking the family down into smaller groups and get them to play together (Mom and girls/Dad and boys/ parents with just the baby etc. or whatever arrangements seem natural and fit with the amount of patience the children have). I'll still try getting the children all together on their own and I'll try getting the parents on their own just as in a mini session, but we may also get some candids of these arrangements--it really just depends on how the kids do and how much time we have. When the family is in a playful, relaxed mood we will most likely get more photos. These sessions take about an hour, and typically yield about 2 dozen photos.

You may notice I said the word try a lot in that paragraph. Please keep in mind I can't guarantee all the above will work out perfectly in any given session. I just try to give you a wide variety of great shots and they typically include these types of shots. Also please keep in mind that I am not a professional and only offer my services because so many people want me to do it, not because I want to make a business out of it :) This is the reason I charge so little, don't take clients from the general public, and only do 1 session every 2 weeks.

That said, also know that I do really love doing photo sessions and look forward to the sessions I have booked. We have a lot of fun during the sessions, and I always enjoy getting to know everyone's family better. The friendship and fun we have during these sessions is a benefit in and of its self to me!

All right enough talk! Here is a look at a few regular sessions I did several months ago:

Thanks for stopping by today!