It seems like two is a magical number or something. Just in this past week there have been a couple of milestones.

Joshua’s cleft runs from his lip on the outside, through his gum line and all the way back to his throat. The notch in his gum line is right where a tooth should be and it still hadn’t come in so I figured it wasn’t going to, but just a few days ago the cranky little boy cried a big sobbing cry for some reason and I saw the little white tooth peek out from his gums. So, that probably means there’s a permanent tooth there too. YAY for us!!

The other development is the use of complete sentences! In just a few days. Today he said “More cereal please, Mommy?” SO cute! And even though he doesn’t like saying certain sounds because of the air that rushes up his nose, he tries really hard. Jamesie, blankie, and baby all sound the same but we’ll get there eventually.

Here’s a photo of him in his new crawl through tunnel. Perfect present for him.

And here he’s trying to blow bubbles…he eventually got it.

This one is my favorite. His face shows how excited he is about getting a CAR for his birthday.

Our kids have asked for pets forever, but niether Ken nor I are pet people. We tried fish without success and that’s the extent of it. Maybe if we had a bunch of property and the animals could run free we’d be more receptive to the idea, but for now, we say no.

So you can imagine the kids’ delight in waking up to a whole litter of ground squirrels outside our window Saturday. A couple of months ago, there was a squirrel in the basement window well. Ken thought about putting a board down there so it could get out but by the time he figured out what to use, the squirrel had burrowed its way out and up through the grass. We thought it was gone, but apparently it was a mommy squirrel digging a burrow to have babies in. So far, we’ve seen eight babies peeking out looking for mom and a VERY interested neighborhood cat hovering nearby.

So, we’re cool with wild animals living at our house. They’re kind of cute! but we still say no to pets.

The kids go back to school Monday and I am actually quite happy about that. It hasn’t been a bad summer and my kids are really great, but the noise level has been pretty high and my brain gets tired of thinking of non-electronic things to keep the kids busy. I’m also looking forward to some Joshy and Mommy time again. He’s at such a fun age and when it’s just us, it’s giggle time.

We went ’swimming’ with Ali Monson and little Spencer yesterday. Joshua took a while to warm up to the water, but once he did, it was a bunch of laughs. He would jump up and land on his little bottom in the 9 inches of water over and over laughing each time. On the way home he was SO tuckered out. He was wrapped in this adorable towel (gotta love the fun stuff at IKEA) and fell right asleep. I loved the colors so I had to do a layout. I used random stuff from my stash (polkadot paper from Anne Langpap and brushes and borders from Rhonna Farrer all from 2ps).

I would do a layout of Kelsey and her friend Aubrey too but Kelsey has taken to making strange faces every time the camera is pointed in her direction. She used to pose so nicely (too nicely) and now she’s acting like her father! I’m going to have to figure out how to correct that one.

CKU-Provo 2008 - I’d never been to a CKU so when they asked for volunteers to TA, I said…”What the heck!” Jessica Sprague is teaching a digital class and there are bound to be people who need help. Well, that was an understatement. I was hopping all day! It was pretty fun, actually and I think I burned more calories than I do in a gym visit. I was impressed with one older woman who came to the class who doesn’t even own a computer but went through the lessons on a new laptop barely knowing the basics. She did amazingly well for not having used a computer. It was super cool to see all the laptops at a scrapbooking event!! YAY for digital!

The most amazing part for me was when I passed by a student who was looking at one of Jessica’s scrapbooks. She turned to a page with a photo of a guy who looked very familiar to me. I remembered him from working in the library in college. He ran the IT department and he showed me Photoshop for the first time. Version 3.0 I think. I was a bit nervous to mess with the expensive equipment and software but what he said pretty much changed my life forever. He said “There’s nothing you can do to this computer that I can’t fix so go for it. Play around and don’t be shy.” After a couple weeks, and a bunch of rebooting, I lost my fear of computers and haven’t looked back since. And he’s Jessica’s DAD! How cool is that? Who would have imagined we’d work for the same company doing similar things? Still in a bit of shock!
Just for fun (and because my hair wasn’t too high that day) here’s a photo of me and the other 1993 ID graduates. It was a small program back then. I’m the one in the front on the right with the red hair!

After crashing CKU last night to meet up with Rebecca Saylor and Stacy Hedemark from Scrapblog, I lead them over to the BYU Creamery on Ninth for some yummy ice cream. It’s a popular little ‘dive’ (using the word lovingly, of course) on the edge of the BYU campus. We waited in line for quite a while as usual but it was so worth it. Rebecca was shocked at the $5.99 total….for all three of us and equally shocked at the yumminess of the ice cream. I asked a nice guy to take our photo on my crappy camera phone and of course the sign just blurred and you couldn’t tell where we were. SO…being the PS addict I am, I sort of fixed it. Found someone else’s photo (Thank you bandanamom.blogspot.com!) of the sign itself and made a little composite. I even made the image look as bad as my camera phone photo!! Not my best work but it’s a quick fix. So…here we are. Stacy, me and Rebecca! Had a TON of fun with you guys! Hope you had a safe trip home.

So, the summer is almost over for us and I’m wondering where it went. This is going to be like 20 blog posts in one!!

We did a lot of fun stuff but all the grand plans I had to organize the house (mostly get control of my closet) have pretty much gone ignored. AND my big summer digital surfing adventure was pretty much a wipeout because my laptop decided it wanted to travel for the summer too….back to it’s maker…TWICE!! I was completely lost without it. Strange how it feels like an appendage is missing when it’s gone. And using one of the 4 other computers in our house just feels like using a prosthesis. Designing the rest of the kits for the summer was pretty much out.

The summer began with a trip to New York for the National Stationery show. I turned the big 35 while I was there and had a bunch of fun with an apartment full of ‘girls’. I’m working on a scrapblog about it and will post it here when I’m done. LOVE scrapblog!

Two weeks after NYC was Boston!! We took the whole family to see the family I was a Nanny for when I was 20. The oldest boy was graduating from high school and I wanted to visit before he took off for Wisconsin for school. This trip is getting the Shutterfly treatment using Brian Tippetts’ travel book. I can’t wait to get it all bound and shiny!

I got back from Boston and had to get ready for a 3 day gig on our local Studio 5 morning show. My first TV appearance and it was surprisingly fun and not too scary! Two of the segments are online HERE

and HERE

Right after I finished the TV segments, we had a 3 day strategy meeting for Digital Scrapbooking magazine. I got to do some IRL catching up with long time online friends and coworkers Molly Newman, Renee Pearson, Anna Aspnes, Angie Svoboda, Pattie Knox, Jen Adams Donnelly. With Jennafer, Lynda and Marin, we had a very productive 3 days and have planned some great issues for our readers this coming year! Anna and Renee and Patty had a bit of fun with that Mac photo booth thingy and I’m waiting to see some photos posted from that!

The last day of the meeting was a half day and I took some of the girls to the airport and at the same time picked up my sister-in-law and cute cute nephew who flew in from Portland and we were off to Park City for a little family get together. My mom came from Salem, OR and my Brother Ryan and his wife (excellent choice, I must say) and three beautiful girls came from Portland. My pretty little sister and her super smart husband and FOUR great kids came from Boulder, CO. My littlest brother just sent his wife and little boy and was a party pooper and didn’t come, but having his little boy there was almost as good! We had a nice relaxing (albeit noisy) time with family and got a little shopping in at the Outlets. My kind of vacation!

We got back and went to lagoon the next day…all day. It was HOT and tiring but the kids had fun. And after that….I did NOTHING. For a week or so. It was very nice! But it didn’t last long enough. I took a fun Illustrator class one night a week and learned to be a whole lot more proficient and efficient in the program. Talk about time saving! WOW! And a fun little surprise…one of my classmates was…Rhonna Farrer. I had to try really hard to be a good student and not chatter through the whole class. Even though we live a few miles apart, we barely ever see each other so when we do, it’s talk talk talk. She’s got some cool stuff coming out for Scrapblog and a line of yummy boxes and stuff for Michael’s that I can’t wait to see. I LOVE seeing my digital friends stuff everywhere! Makes me smile and say, “Remember when…”

So my class is over and now we’re back into school shopping and final summer visits and the house still hasn’t gotten any attention. Poor house. Maybe someday. I keep saying I’m going to get a cleaning lady but I just never do it. [GOAL: Hire a cleaning lady when the kids go back to school.]

Tonight I’m popping in on CKU Provo to chat with Rebecca from Scrapblog and Saturday I’ll be helping out in Jessica Sprague’s digital class. That stuff isn’t work to me at all. It’s pretty much like a party. And I like parties! If I get a chance to take some photos, I’ll share. Maybe on the new CKMedia(CK, Simple, Digital and Paper Crafts all in ONE!) beta site. If you haven’t had a chance to try it out…get on over and sign up. It’s growing and changing and morphing into a great big social scrapping site. Check it out.

So…. one last tidbit in closing. With the summer just about over and James (my oldest) out of town, it seems like all Kelsey wants to do is watch Disney channel, go to Disney.com, listen to Disney radio, watch Disney movies (like Picture This with Ashley Tisdale) and Disney TV shows like High School Musical - Get in the Picture (Disney’s version of American Idol). So it’s Disney mania around here! I was about ready to tell her to go read a book this morning when a little Jonas Brothers segment came on and caught my attention. It was called “Musical Scrapbook”. The premise was that the boys feel like the music they write is essentially a scrapbook of their lives. It reminded me that there are a bazillion ways to scrapbook and no matter how you do it - paper, digital, video, music…etc. it’s a piece of who you are and it should be shared however you like. here’s a little clip.I thought it was cute, but that’s to be expected with Disney, huh? Enjoy…and then so some scrapbooking!