Trip to Kentucky

Kelly and Rebecca came up Friday night and stayed the night with us. We got up early yesterday morning and drove to Mayfield, KY for a crop. We went last Feb. and had a great time. Laura Clark told me about it last year and we barely made it in this year; we were on the waiting list and just got in this past Tuesday. It started snowing on us around Martin and by the time we reached South Fulton it was coming down hard and covering the roads. Laura said it wasn't bad there so we treaded on. We made it fine, but I told Kelly I wasn't driving back. :) We had a great time again this year at the crop. We sat with Laura and her friend Johnna, who we had not met before. I saw Ruby from LM there, but she was with another group and I only had a chance to say hi to her. :( We did a little shopping and had a great spaghetti lunch. We stayed until a little after 4 this year (I think last year we left at 2 or 3). I got 3 1/2 layouts done (1 2-pger) so I was happy with that. The drive home was much better as there was nothing on the roads and most of what had fallen earlier had melted. We did a little Target shopping on our way back to town and William cooked chili dogs for us for supper then they headed back to Amory. It was such a fun day! I hope we can make the crop in Sept. this year!

I'm Cooking Up a Wonderful Holiday Meal

That's what Rylie just said while playing with her kitchen. She said it was going to be warm too. I love this girl!

5 Days Off

And I couldn't be happier! William has to work today, but then he is off the rest of the time. I'm staying home with the little one today; she wants to play Candy Land and Chuttes and Ladders. :) We'll probably scrapbook some too. I have some cleaning I want to get done in case the in-laws come over tonight; William ordered all his computer parts to be shipped to them and if they come in today they're driving them up. I want to continue cleaning out and getting rid of things too. Amanda has a great little challenge on Lifetime Moments going on with a quick layout challenge and cleaning challenge everyday to help us get ready for Winter Scrapfest. Those challenges have been just what I needed; I have cleared out and straightened out so much of my scraproom already! They've gotten me in the mood to clear out things in the rest of the house too.
I want to get our dinning room finished this weekend too. All we have to do is clean the floor and move the furniture around. Then I want to get all this Christmas stuff down and put away. I may work on that some today and just leave the tree until New Years. I always love the first of the year because I'm ready for changes. :)
I got my Christmas pictures back from Fototime yesterday; they look great! I think I like them better than ClarkColor or Winkflash. And, since the .06 per print special is good until the end of the year, I'm frantically trying to upload all my fall pics and get them printed too. I sent them twice now to ClarkColor and both times there was a problem. I can understand that, but what I don't like is that they just let my order sit and sit both times until I emailed them about it. That's when they proceeded to tell me there was a problem with the upload. They should have let me know that as soon as they tried to process my order. Anyway, it's Fototime for me from now on.

Day 18 - Dinner

This was a great subject for me to write about. We stayed home just the three of us this year for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and did our traveling before hand. I wanted us to have a special dinner Christmas Eve and we did. I wrote the journaling as it had not happened yet and didn't go into the details of the items that we had last minute. We ended up having a great Christmas Eve meal and night together.

Day 17

Another quick one; just trying to get caught up. Lots of Jen Wilson here. Ribbon is from A Whimsy Holiday kit I credited earlier, but everything else (besides date) is from Jen Wilson. Can you tell I'm a huge fan? :)

So Far Behind - Day 16

What a week! William and I both ended up with the stomach virus early last week. Luckily Rylie never got it. I was pretty sick and even missed work last Tuesday. William was a little better off than me, but not much. At least I didn't gain weight over the holidays. :) With being sick and then traveling for Christmas I fell really behind on my Christmas journal. I'm hoping to get caught up in a few days. Here is my entry for Dec. 16. Really simple using mostly the Holiday Sampler by Shabby Princess. The word art is from the Holly Jolly kit and the tree is by Jen Wilson. Off to do more pages...

Getting Caught Up

I had fallen several days behind on my Christmas Journal. With trying to finish up shopping, making cards for the Holiday Mart at work and other just general tasks to be done, I had not had much time this week for my journal. I had been reading the prompts each day and checking out all the beautiful work everyone has been doing. There is so much talent in this class! Everyone is doing such beautiful journals!!
I got some new goodies by Jen Wilson this week and I have been using some of them on these pages. Jen is one of my favorite digital designers. The glittery alpha, papers (except the pink one), charms, tree, notepapers, presents, off white snowflakes and tag are all hers. The red ribbon on the visitors page is by Shabby Princess. Everything else is from Holly Jolly or A Merry Season Kits that I have been using throughout this journal.
Day 13 - Presents; we do it differently in my family and in dh's family. In mine, the little ones have always played Santa and passed out all the gifts. I have fond memories of my cousin and I doing this at my grandparents' home when we were little. Now it falls to my youngest nephews and my own dd. There are so many people on my family that we open our gifts all at the same time. Once everything is opened, we go around and show off what we received. My dad then gets out his notebook he keeps every year with his list and calls out everyone's name and their gifts to make sure nothing was misplaced. We get a big laugh out of Daddy doing this each year. At dh's family, my dd is the only grandchild so she gets to help pass out the gifts. She will pass one out, then it gets opened while we all watch, and then she will pass out the next gift. It takes about as long to do this as it does in my family to get everything passed out and opened because there are so fewer people with him being an only child.
Day 14 - I love Christmas songs, but especially the old classic ones. My absolute favorite would be "White Christmas" sung by Bing Crosby. I love his rich, effortless sounding voice. A close second would be "The Christmas Song" sung by Nat King Cole. There's something about the nostalgia these old standards evoke in me that makes me feel all warm inside.
Day 15 - We are the visitors at Christmas time. We have to travel to both sets of families. I journaled about how we make sure we see as many people as we can, but we don't always get to be at every family celebration so we don't get to see some cousins that often any more. It's sad in a way, but the families are just too large for everyone to see everyone.

Day 12 - Looking Back

Today was all about reflecting back to those Christmas celebrations of long ago and those of today. Our families have always been pretty flexible and so our celebrations may be at different times each year, but we all get together and that's what's important. We're the only ones that have to travel in both of our immediate families and we're always home with our daughter on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning so depending on the year, we celebrate with our families on different days. Both sides have grown and expanded so much that only on dh's father's side do we still get together with the extended family, and each year it's different people that can attend. I miss those times with the ones that aren't here with us any longer and those that are, but are too far away and busy with their own families to see any more. I guess that's just part of growing older though.

Day 11 - Ornaments

I've been thinking about this one all day. I already had the photos taken when we put the tree up and knew what I wanted to say about them. I just wasn't sure about my design. I did this one in a hurry, about 20 minutes, but I really like it. It seems like sometimes the more I think about a layout the less I like the outcome. Easier on the brain, lol. And speaking of brain, my CT scan came back normal and my sister was impressed that not only did I have a brain but my head was normal. Such a comedian!
We have such a wide variety of ornaments on our tree; nothing matches, but almost every single ornament has some meaning. There's the ornaments from when dh and I were kids, Rylie's ornaments, ornaments from vacations, lots of cat ornaments, ornaments with my college mascot and crocketed snowflakes my MIL made. It's always fun when putting up the tree to reminisce about each one.
Credits are the same except the journaling stamp is by Katie Pertiet.