Online Crop

This weekend I participated in an online crop at Personal Scrapper. There were 17 challenges I got them all finished. I ended up with 15 layouts, 3 cards, and two mini albums. Here are a few of my favorites.

"Big Help!" was for a punch challenge. I used a circle punch to make my journaling circles. This is a picture from our St. Louis trip. I had to tell the story of Kevin wanting to carry his cousin Olivia's luggage all by himself.

You know my boys are involved in sports. I was shocked to walk in the door one afternoon to get a call from Tom asking me to come pick Kevin up from baseball practice. He'd taken a ball to the face. Luckily he just had a bloody nose and was ok. I took this picture the morning after. He was tender for a few days. This layout was for a "write about it" challenge.
I can't take credit for the design of this layout since it was a scraplift challenge (copy someone else's page). My sister Adriane took these pictures of Kevin wearing her boots she got for her birthday.
I was able to work a Disney page into the challenge for "use 5 pictures on a layout". I am just about finished with our vacation album. I'm currently scrapping our last day at Disney which just leaves the last day at the beach to do. I take a lot of pictures though!
There was a challenge to use up an old kit from Personal Scrapper. I pulled out one from August 2005 - that's old! I paired it with pics from a couple years ago of Blake with a friend, Brooklynne. I don't remember ever not being friends with Brooklynne's mom, Shelly. It was a fun page to make.
I made a Disney layout for my personal album comparing the boys' sizes from our Disney trip in '05 to our trip this summer. They are growing so fast!

Here is another vacation album page. I pulled out some Halloween accents for our page about the ghost tour. We didn't see any ghosts and it wasn't a scary tour, but we had fun.
For the 'summer in review' page, I decided to document the fun things (and some "firsts") that Blake did during his last summer "in single digits." I still can't believe he'll turn 10 in less than a month!
Here are the cards I made. I am so not a cardmaker!
I made a couple mini albums during the crop. In the picture below, the one standing on the right is the original one I made last month. It was a make & take I ordered from Pink Paislee's blog. It came with directions and everything I needed to make it. I wanted to make up a couple to try to sell, so I traced the shape out on chipboard to make another one and bought more supplies locally. I altered the design a little bit. When I sat down to make this Sunday, I decided it would be just as easy to make two at once. I still need to add the bats flying out of the chimney to the two I made. I thought they all turned out cute.

A Month full of fun

It's been over a month since my last post...we've been staying really busy!

In mid-August, the boys both started fall baseball (6 weeks long). They are each playing in the same league they were in this spring. Tom is Kevin's coach and Kevin just keeps improving. He loves baseball and gives 100% every time out. Blake has been getting in a lot of pitching time. This Thursday is their last game.


We took a family trip to St. Louis the first weekend of September. It was a great trip planned by my favorite brother-in-law Terry (no offense, Tim!) and his wife, Dawn. :) The plan was to meet Terry and his family with Tom's mom over there, but we ended up meeting up en route. (What are the chances???)

For years as a kid I'd go to St. Louis with my family every year for a toy tractor show. We'd pass the arch EVERY year. I can now finally say that I've been up in the arch. Although Blake and I DID NOT like the ride up to the top (or back down...), it was amazing once we were up at the top. You could see everything! The cars going up held 5, so our niece Olivia rode with us. She's quite the character!
Here is a shot of the cousins all together - Jax, Olivia, Kevin, Vince, and Blake. My boys love spending time with their cousins!After a very filling dinner at Mike Shannon's steakhouse, we all attended a Cardinal's baseball game. We got to see Albert Pujols hit a home run! My boys were each sporting their own Pujols jersies at the game.
For Day 2, we went to Grant's farm. It's the Ulysses S. Grant national park, but "sponsored" by Anheuser Busch. We saw several different types of animals while on a tram ride, but they also had a walk through area that included goats that you could feed. The kids loved that. Terry did, too. He had the kids cracking up as he'd run around yelling, "they're looking at me!" After a couple goats headbutted, Terry acted like he was going to headbutt them, too. (As seen below.) It's no wonder Kevin likes him so much - he is really fun!I think the biggest memory of the trip...and one talked about for years to come...will be when Blake lost his flip flop on the tram ride. !!! We had the tram stop, but we were too far away to get the shoe. The next tram ended up bringing the shoe to him at the depot. Blake was embarrassed, but we were all laughing about it. I've already scrapbooked the event to remember it!
Here is a family shot of everyone together. The only way the trip could have been better is if Tim could have come in from Alaska.
Earlier I mentioned that Grant's farm was sponsored by Anheuser-Busch...you could get free samples. I'm not a beer drinker, but they also had Bacardi products. (Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!) They limited two drinks per person...but 1) Tom's not a drinker and 2) he had to drive. Lucky me, I got one for each hand! Oh, and a "sample" was a whole bottle. ;)
We got to pose in front of the beer wagon (as seen on TV), but the Clydesdales were in a different part of the park. We saw them on our way out.
Great trip!

In my last post, Kevin had lost a tooth...Last week Blake came home on PICTURE DAY, of all days, holding a baggie with TWO teeth in it. He'd pulled them in class, but thankfully AFTER his picture. I did this layout over the weekend to document the event!

Blake and I got a last minute invite to attend the Kenny Chesney Poets & Pirates concert in Indianapolis earlier this month. (THANK YOU LINDSEY AND BRANDON!) We went with my sisters Lindsey and Adriane. I was excited to take Blake to his first concert. He was amazed at the size of Lucas Oil Stadium (where the Indianapolis Colts play). It was a really cool venue.

Blake was amazed when we walked it. It was nothing like he expected. He thought it would be more like a benefit concert that a cousin put on at my cousin Tiffany's cancer benefit last fall. That was held at the KC Hall in town! Yes, he was blown away by the difference!Since we didn't find out until 1:30 that we were going AND the concert started at 4:00 AND we had a three hour drive to make, we arrived to the concert late. We got there in time to see the last two acts (and the only ones I wanted to see).

Keith Urban was AMAZING!!! I went out and bought his greatest hits CD last week. Blake has always been a big Kenny Chesney fan - since "She thinks my tractor's sexy" came out. Kenny did put on a really good show. Uncle Kracker even came out to sing with him. At the end of the show, he sang a lot of songs that weren't his and I think that was my favorite part.

The funniest part of the night was looking over about halfway through Kenny's show to see Blake ASLEEP! It was so loud in there, but he was exhausted. I think he gets the "I can sleep anywhere, anytime" trait from my dad! I joked that it was my "Weekend at Bernie's" moment.

Cub Scouts have also started for both boys. Kevin is excited to be a Tiger Cub and Blake is now a Webelo. Religious education also started back at church this month. It's good to have them both excited about learning new prayers and more about their faith.

I can't believe that October is almost here. We will have another busy month with Blake's birthday (his 10th!!!), fall break, the school fall festival, and HALLOWEEN!