Today, he is SIX!

Today my Little Guy turned 6. Six seems so big. And I feel so disconnected from myself when I realize that this puts five behind me forever. Five is my favorite. My kids were great fives.

Let's travel quickly through time:

I took this pic on his first birthday, look at those chubby cheeks and sweet little legs!


And here's #2! Look at his little bare feet. So sweet!



 If you look closely at his third birthday picture, you will notice a superhero cape tucked behind his back. This was the year he loved Wonder Pets and made us call him Ming-Ming.


And here he is on his 4th birthday -- the obsession at this time was all things TRAINS, and especially that railroad engineer cap he is wearing. He got it from the Santa train and wore it DAILY.

Here was his fifth birthday -- the cowboy boots were his favorite thing!

And here we are today... at SIX!

See his watch? He wears it everywhere, all the time. He takes it off to shower and puts it back on for bed. He checks it constantly and tells us the time. I love that little elastic band crawling in geckos.

And I love that Little Guy.

Happy Easter!

I would sing you an Easter song but the only ones I can think of are a) one in Russian and b) In Your Easter Bonnet, with all the frills upon it... which seems inappropriate as I am bonnetless. and I guess the Hallelujah Chorus. (Oh and I was listening to Bach's Easter Oratorio on the radio earlier today. So beautiful.)

ANYWAY! It's Easter! And it's been a good one. We went to sleep last night with heavy snow fall, but since it had been warm only a dusting survived the night, and then it rained on the snow and it was gone. It has been raining a lot today - which is a blessing as we are in need of rain.

So, on to some pictures.

Last year we made hot cross buns - the process was fab, the product was blah. So we skipped that this year. But we did dip some eggs, and the boys also tried out coloring on the hot eggs with wax crayons.

This morning, upon waking the Little Guy discovered a note from the Easter Bunny (which he read perfectly) informing him that there were 18 eggs hidden in the living room, dining room and kitchen. He had a private Easter Egg hunt.

Later when we returned home from a visit to my aunt's house (at which the small cousins tackled the small Uncle and beat him soundly with foam swords) and collecting the older boys, it was time for Easter baskets!

After a tasty dinner, we wrapped our evening by watching Independence Day.

Overall a pretty nice holiday.

What's on YOUR DVR?

Things I've been watching lately:

DOCTOR WHO - TODAY!!!!!  

WOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! BBC America, I love you.

~~Singing: Tonight. Tonight.
There's only you tonight.
What you are, what you do, what you say.~~

Bowties are cool!

Big Bang Theory and Community - endlessly amusing! Yes, we spend significant time on things like "What was that game they were playing" on Big Bang... and Community -  A flashback show where all the flashbacks are to things we've never seen is so goofball!

Castle - OK, I admit we started watching because it was Nathan. We are so very, very not "police drama" folks. No CSIs, not Law and Orders... but Castle? OH HECK YEAH.

Stargate Universe - why on earth is this show getting cancelled? Best thing with the Stargate name on it in a LONG, LONG time. (OK so here is the time for me to make my random Stargate admission. We didn't watch Stargate until Farscape took over. I am en enormous 'Scaper Geek Girl. If you put Ben Browder on a show - say a show about Charlie's Angels... yeah, I'll watch it. So if you put him on Stargate, they did, I will watch that, too. And then I'll get curious about what happened to all the things I remembered from Stargate the movie and watch all 9 intervening seasons on DVD. But I won't watch Atlantis, because a) Space Vampires and b) No Ben.) But SGU came along when there was a gap in sci fi availability and sucked me right in., even without Ben.

The Good Guys - Colin Hanks is as funny and multifaceted as his dad... you know, his dad - Tom Hanks. And this show is as funny as they come. If you can resist Dan Stark, well I just don't think it's possible! It's not on right now but it rocks -- when it comes back, try it out! Hey TWO cop shows! How did that happen?

Game of Thrones.... Another admission, I, in all my massive geekiness have never read these books. I've read a couple of George RR Martin Graphic Novels, and that's it. But Sean Bean (Oh Boromir, my Boromir) is on it, so you know I'm going to watch it! I have resisted in all the weeks of ads from loading the books onto my Nook and diving in. It has been hard.

Boardwalk Empire -- WHEN IS IT COMING BACK???? I cannot wait. Atlantic City under prohibition and the impeccable Steve Buscemi. It's complex and dirty, and fascinating... yes, I went out and read the book, too. So, So VERY GOOD.

Ricky Gervais Show and An Idiot Abroad... Ricky and Steve are mean (and funny) and Karl, I love you (In spie of myself.) I cannot believe Ricky survived your return from Israel after that stunt -- people if you didn't watch an Idiot Abroad, check your on demand - VERY GOOD STUFF!


In the additional fluffy sidelines category:
Pawn Stars - like Antiques Roadshow, but funner. (No, that's not a word. I don't care. It is "Funner")
Food Network Challenge -- Giant themed cakes and sugar sculptures, somehow always etertaining!
Ice Brigade -- These guys made an ice pinball machine! and a ice piano! How cool is that?
Last Cake Standing -- Food Network Challenge turned full on reality show. More endlessly awesome cakes.

Chopped - I got sucked into this show, that I've never watched before, by the All Stars show and am now watching random episodes.

So that's the stuff I watch/have been watching... there's other stuff on our DVR (kid crap mostly) but that's the fun stuff. Do you watch any of those shows? What DO you watch?

Tales of a lonely cropper

I've recently started a new local cropping group. I go through phases - sometimes I love to crop at home and get a TON done at home. Sometimes I have to get out of the house - I have to escape the siren call of all that I 'should' be doing instead of scrapping (laundry, dishes, etc....)

I have been feeling lonely lately. It's been almost a year since my local best friend moved away. Within the next year, two more of my closest friends will be leaving - one will be gone by June 15th, another I expect to see PCSing in a year. As my kids have gotten older, my playgroup has faded away, and with it my contact with the outside world... and I've been feeling it. And I don't really know how to make new friends at this place in my life, and I'm not terribly good at it...  So I thought making some scrappy friends would be a good solution... but so far it's not working out very well. The turn out for events has not been great and I get frustrated with that.

Anyway... I don't know about this whole cropping business but I did finish a LOT of pages, and hey, I thought I'd show a couple more to you!

 Wrestling photos always present a struggle for me - they all look similar... the colors are always tough, the photos are hard to take in the darkness of a high school gym... and they get me in a rut. I've used a lot of this WRMK paper for wrestling pages (probably too much - I ought to use something else soon!)  I liked this quote from a die cut sheet of wrestling embellies : "If you don't invest very much then defeat doesn't hurt very much, and winning is not very exciting." For this page I turned to a sketch from Pencil Lines from August 2010.

 

 This page shows the Middle Child tackling a Junior Ranger badge at Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site. I love these pics, look how much he's enjoying himself!

 At the Science Museum in St. Louis, we took in the planetarium show. This totally awesome paper was a Serendipity Scrapbooks original --oh how I loved that site and how I miss it!

This final page uses some bright funky American Crafts papers and an older sketch from Sketch Savvy. The Little Guy is wild for a rope swing!

Went to a crop!

I went to a  crop this weekend and for once I wasn't working on Scout stuff! It was a lot of fun to play with different colors, papers,and more... So here's a couple to show off:

 "Big Woody" is the name of the giant wooden Go Kart track we visited in Branson. The kids (and DH) all had a BALL!The Imaginesce Let's Roll line is such fun!

In the middle of my box of photos to scrap, which are mostly pretty recent, I stumbled on these pics from Easter of 2006. The papers here are SEI and the embellies are Sass. These are colors I don't use often, but with the Orange background, I feel like it's Eastery but not girly.

 

I love these pics that DH took at the St. Louis Science Center, of the older two boys in lab coats and goggles, participating in some experiments. I also really liked this cover from one of the brochures we picked up at the Science Center (which, I've mentioned before, is AWESOME! If you're in St. Louis, try it out, it's FREE!) 

Project 12 - Feb and March

The Month of March was so packed that I didn't get around to Project 12, so I had a little catch up to do.This is my second year participating in P12 -- every month Scrapbooks and Cards Today provides a Beautiful sketch from Becky Fleck with which I do an overview page for the month. This doesn't replace my usual event scrapbooking but provides a glance back. I LOVE this project (thanks Susan for introducing me to it!)

So here are February and March's Project 12 pages:

 I need to go back and fill in the journaling on the February page. Crate paper's Brook is one of my all time favorite lines, I just find it so versatile! Some day I will completely run out and it will be sad! (the journal card is Jenni Bowlin, the rub ons and the tickety doo dads are K & Co, the ribbon is from another crate line, the shaped paper I can't think of...

The pics are left to right - Middle Child and the Little Guy putting on a puppet show on a snow day, Oldest at Eagle Scout Recognition Dinner, Middle Child with the Erector Set airplane he built, the Little Guy reading to Oldest and the Little Guy writing out his Valentines cards for school.

For this one, I busted out some Echo Park: A Walk in the Park... this line is such fun! March was super busy, we remodeled our bathroom painted bathrooms and bedrooms, finished out wrestling season, celebrated a birthday, had company for a week of Spring break, etc. Photos are : the five of us at Garden of the Gods with Pikes Peak behind, the little boys dressed up for Dr. Seuss day, Middle Child's 10th birthday, St Patrick's Day, Tubing in Winter Park and the end of season Wrestling Banquet.

It's good to be back on track for Project 12!

Wild Birthday Rumpus Invitations

Now that the Eagle Court is over, it's the Little Guy's turn to have a party! He's turning SIX! and We're hosting a WILD BIRTHDAY RUMPUS!

The Little Guy is a huge fan of Monsters, Inc. and Monsters vs. Aliens -- so when he said he wanted a Monster themed birthday I thought it would be loads of fun (plus all the recent cute Monster-themed scrapbooking lines flew through my head)

I worked on some invitations today:

The papers are:
Fancy Pants: Trick or Treat (My local discount scrapping store is HEAVENLY - I love everything there and got some great product from this line to work with for Birthday goodies)

The little monsters are:
American Crafts Lil Monsters Remarks Dimensionals
Sassafras Lass Monstrosity Felties

I'm sure you'll see some more fun as the party draws near!

Court of Honor - ACCOMPLISHED

The Eagle Scout Court of Honor for Oldest went very well!

My little brother made everyone tear up. Middle Child delivered a beautiful benediction and it all went very well.


Despite my stressing out there was enough food for everyone (well it was all gone at the end so maybe not quite enough - but is there EVER really enough food for a room half-filled with teenaged boys?)

Here's a couple of pics:

DH, Me and our boys

 3 Generations of Scouting - My Dad, my brothers, my older two and my older brother's boys.

Scrapping away!

I have been cranking out some serious scrapbooking!

I MUST finish Oldest's Scout albums before his EAGLE COURT - next weekend!

I am getting close!

There are three albums - A Cub Scout Album
                                 - A Boy Scout Album (includes summer camp, campouts, Courts of Honor, other scouting activities, and his Explorer Post pages)
                                 - An Eagle Scout Album (including Eagle Project pictures, letters of congratulations from a variety of people - Presidents, NASA, the Air Force, his favorite author, and more, and later will include his Eagle Court of Honor photos)

Here's a sampling of the work I've done in the last few days:

This one is Karen Foster funk! I love this Space Cadet themed paper and the Space Cadet sticker was irresistible. The crazy green is not a color I work with often but it seemed to work (especially with the black and white photo). And how CUTE is Oldest in that Space Suit?

Oldest serves as Den Chief to Middle Child's Cub Scout Den. In this pic, you see Oldest scarfing Middle when he crossed over from Bear to Webelo. The papers here are Basic Grey Oliver. I can't think of the brand on that big Orange journalling spot but I love it.

For this page I used a Sketch from Susan that she did for Memorable Seasons There are a lot of work pics from the project, so there's a lot of pages of work pics,

 Another of Susan's Sketches here - #55, In these pics you can see Oldest with 150 Finished, Full Hero Packs!

And finally here's a sample of one of the many pages highlighting letters and certificates of recognition he has received.

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As these albums will be on display at the Court of Honor, this Sunday!, they need to be done!
*The Cub album needs about two pages finished from long ago.
*The Scout album - well this is a constant work in progress! I've got to finish pages for 3 Eagle Courts, 1 Campout, the district Eagle Recognition dinner, the Challenger Dinner, and the Challenger Flag event.
*The Eagle Album -- NEARLY READY! I've got a couple of letters left to get in there, and to do section heading pages but I got the rest of it done this weekend!

Soon I'll be done with all this Eagle stuff for a while... then what will I do???