RELIEF, THANKS and PRAISE

Rachel does not sleep through the night - ever. OK maybe once or twice but not very often. All those parents with those sweet little babies who sleep through the night - so jealous! Jennifer, my sister, other friends ... oh my kids sleep through the night - so sorry that Rachel does not. Grrr - although I am happy for them I sure wish Rachel would learn from their kiddos!!!

BUT it turns out that it is not all my fault that Rachel is the worst sleeper ever (although I will agree I have been a bit of an enabler). The doctors have finally listened to me and Rachel is now being seen by and allergy/lung specialist. Feb 2 we went to see him for the 1st time and after 6 hours of tests and exams - he diagnosed Rachel with asthma, sinus issues and allergies. A momma knows - I have felt that she had asthma but doctors kept saying "she is too young to be tested"; "she just has a cold"; "it is croupe".

Back to my sleeping God send!! Since Rachel has been being treated for this sinus infection (which the doc said she has had for a looong time) she is sleeping through the night .... EVERY night .... since Feb 3rd she has been up only twice. This is an unheard of run of full nights sleep for Jason, Rachel and I. You should see how clean my house is because of all my extra energy! Rachel's teacher says she can see a difference in her too - more rested and just feeling better overall - participating more in class, more active and more focused. We still have allergy testing to do and some more tests to get to the bottom of the "junky" lungs, but that damage could be from being born at 29 weeks or it could be from the untreated asthma. Well it could be anything, but they have ruled out lots of scary stuff this week! Whatever it is - we will deal with it!

Thanks to God we have found out what we have so far this month! I can see the difference in Rachel now that she is being treated properly for the asthma and the sinus stuff! YIPPEEEE. I am giddeee from all the sleep.

xo Amy

Library Of Memories Rocks

Plain, Simple, Period.

I am purging, sorting, organizing, storing, and being inspired all at the same time!

I LOVE IT! LOVE IT!

Y'all might remember that I bought and started Photo Freedom earlier this year, but I discovered I truly needed the class aspect of learning and implementing this system so I used my Christmas money this year to take this class. It is one of the best gifts a scrapbooker can give herself, or anyone who desires to scrapbook at some point in her life. I only wish I had organized this way BEFORE I started scrapbooking

It's a lot of work and a lot of time invested, but the payoff is going to be huge, I know it.

Sorry there is no picture to go with this post, but I am going to a crop tomorrow night and I hope to have lots of goodies to show you when I return.

xo, Jen

A "Green" Valentine's Day

Kenny's teacher sent home a note requesting the kids make their Valentine collection containers from recycled products. We took this quite literally and started digging things out of the recyle bin this week. I think this is quite possibly the most fabulous Valentine box ever!

(Except maybe the one I made that looked like a robot... I vaguely remember LOTS of tin foil, LOL)

We had fun and saved a few things from the landfill while we were at it. It is covered with chewing gum boxes, sugar free drink tops, leftover packaging from a few gifts, junk mail, pop tabs, a few strategically placed smashed Christmas ribbons, and much, much more. One of the parents said, "now that is one fancy Valentine box." Kenny plans to use it for a treasure box as soon as all the candies and cards are gone. Honestly, I think he questioned my spirit of creating a few days ago, but now he absolutely loves it. He is such a special little boy and I love him so very much.

2 down, 1 to go

We successfully celebrated Valentine's Day in Jackson's Kinder class and Kaden's preschool class this morning. It was full of lots of smiles, pizza, and of course, treats! The boys loved their balloons and their classmates did too.

How can you not smile seeing 50 beautiful balloons walk into the school?

Here are a couple of pics from both their parties.

xo, Jen

Lovely Preparations

I love Valentine's Day! Anyone who knows me well, knows how much I love all things red, chocolate and hearts so I am in my element in February. This week I have been creating lots (and I mean for 7 teachers!!) of sweet candy boxes and working on close to 50 valentine tags for the helium balloons our little boys will give out at their parties tomorrow. I LOVE IT! I tell ya! - it is so much fun to create with colors I rarely get to use in my projects. Here is a little taste of what I have been working on - much more to come tomorrow after their parties.

xo, Jen

California Happenings

Lots going on around here, so much so that I can barely even catch up on blog posts, LOL! But I have a few spare moments while Kenny is at wrestling practice, Kaden is napping, and Jackson is playing wii. Ahhhh, the silence is a nice contrast to our normally loud and crazy home. Lots of random projects I have in the mix too. I made up my clipboard for LOM 2009 which starts on Thursday and I am over-the-top excited about it. I can't wait to start seeing all the photos I have taken and printed in a new and fresh light. It should spur on some really great creating, I hope anyway. There are lots of really great challenges at Peek this year and I am trying to complete them as I can. Usually not in the week they are do, but better late than never in this case. Here are a couple I did over the past few weeks.

The first is for the use your stash challenge and I really used some oldies but goodies on this one. Some of the product dates back to 2006, can you believe it?

This page was for the wrap up Christmas challenge to use traditional Christmas colors on your page, I even added the jingle bell that fell off Santa's coat on Christmas Eve. ;)
Finally, a little project I created a few months ago for our SuperMoms group at church. We were able to work on them a little bit last night and I think they would make great Valentine's gifts, especially if you are on a budget this year. The best thing about them is they are completely calorie free, LOL! I used a template and instructions I found via google to create these paper fortune cookies complete with a decorated take out box.Jackson earned his yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do this past weekend too and we are so very proud of him. Photos coming soon, I promise! See you all real soon!

xo, Jen

Half-Way to 70 ...

That is one of the birthday wishes that Jason got from a friend yesterday. His brother sent him a Facebook message that said "Only 30 years until Social Security Checks start coming".

Happy Birthday to my dear husband - 35 is not so bad. I just spent the last 9 months there and have had a great year! We celebrated the day with 2 basketball games that Rachel cheered at. Then Jason went golfing and had fun (although we won't ask his score). Rachel invited one of her classmates over to have a birthday party for Daddy.


Here they are helping him blow out his candles. They decorated this traditional cake for him - if there seems to be more sprinkles than cake that is because there is - they each had a bottle. I also made a delicious Chocolate Eclair cake that my friend Lisa posted about at Peek. If you are looking for a sweet treat THIS IS IT!

Sadly it is true --- I have to admit it --- I am indeed an Engineer!!

It seems like it should have taken longer for Rachel to get to 100 days of school - but when you think she started in August it does make sense. Here in Texas the 1st grade classes celebrated 100 days on January 30th and they all made posters with 100 things of their choice. There were some very fun posters in the 1st grade hallway. Rachel chose to have 100 Love Hearts on her poster. Over several days we went through my box of scraps and punched out 100 hearts.

The engineer in me came out when she was putting the hearts on the poster. She did not care about straight lines, even spacing, colour patterns - nothing. It killed me to watch her put the hearts down on the poster board. But as Jennifer kept saying to me "It is HER project" so I kept my linear thinking comments to myself and ignored the anxiety her crooked lines were causing. She LOVED her completed project and was very every proud of herself. Here she is proudly displaying the poster wearing the t-shirt we made to mark 100 days.

The morning at school was spent sorting out 10 different piles of treats with 10 pieces of each treat. They also made Froot Loop necklaces to mark this momentous day. Mrs Fleming was very happy to see me show up to help hand out all the items.