start of summer

So now the kids are on summer vacation. I love it, for the most part. I love the pace. Nowhere to run to. Sleepng in late. Spending lots of time outside.
The drawback is the inevitable bickering that crops up with all the togetherness. It's stormed here every day for the past 3 days, so we were indoors more than I hoped over this weekend.

The last day of school was the 19th. C & B were invited to a friend's house, so I took the younger guys to the lake to get some excitement and energy out.
Of course, I took tons of pictures. Here are some of my favorites:







We met up with the other kids later that evening to have our annual end of school ice cream cones:




I've managed to sneak some scrapping in too. This was an accomplishment since I had my sister's kids all weekend. So we had 8 kids aged 2-11 running around. Lots of fun, but I was exhausted. No pictures either.

Here's a sneak peek of one of my LOs with my guest kit for Scrap for a Cure. This is all I can share just yet, but trust me, you want this kit!

Happy Father's Day!

Time has just been zipping along here, hasn't it? I've been meaning to update, but it's been a crazy week. The end of the school year means dance recitals, preschool graduations and a zillion other details to finish up, especially with 5 kids!

Today was a good day. Mike and my brother-in-law went golfing with my dad. My sister, the kids and I joined up with them after for a cookout at my mom's. We hung out on the deck and watched all the kids play. Here's a rare picture of my dad and I:


I hope you all enjoyed time today with the dads in your lives.

Speaking of men in my life...
I did this page of Mike this week for a challenge - to use nontraditional colors for your subject. So for this page, I used the Teresa Collins Bella Girl line, available at Couture Scrapbooking:



I mentioned the dance recital - here is a page I did for this week's song at Scrapping the Music. It's one of my favorite pictures of Brenna that I enhanced using Picnik. Again, all the pretty supplies are available at Couture Scrapbooking.




Challenge #6 is up at Dreamgirls. This time, we're asking you to scrap a first time.
The twists are to add some sort of real or faux stitching and add some ribbon or trims. Here is my page for that. And yes, I realized after I photographed it that I forgot the ribbon. DOH! That's what happens when you scrap at 3am. LOL. So I'll be going back and fixing it.



Our sponsor this week is Magistical Memories! You don't want to miss this one!

So that's about all for now. I was up entirely too late several nights this week and it's catching up with me. I'll be back to share some more soon!

Feeling lucky

I haven't blogged for a while. I do have some scrappy stuff to share, but first I want to tell you about the personal stuff. I feel like I dodged a bullet this week. You see, I had a bit of a health scare that I didn't really want to talk about until I knew more. Many of you know that my dad is being treated for Stage 4 colon cancer. Thank God he is so strong and still fighting. It is a life threatening diagnosis. So it was even more frightening to me when I noticed bleeding when I used the bathroom. Now I know, this is a yucky subject, and one I think people don't want to discuss because it talks about something "dirty". But you know what? If me sharing this helps anyone in the future, I don't mind talking about it.
I was so scared, so I immediately called a gastroenterologist. He happened to have an opening that very day. We talked and it was decided that I should have a colonoscopy. Soon. Again, an icky topic, because the idea of having a long tube inserted in you , especially THERE, is unpleasant. But I got over my fear and had it done Wednesday.
I was found to have a large polyp that was the source of my troubles. It was big enough that both the doctor and the nurse told me I was lucky I went in when I did. It was removed and I'm waiting for the report that it is not cancerous. My doctor says he thinks it's not going to turn out to be serious, so I am cautiously relieved. You see, most colon cancers start as these benign polyps. Given time to grow, the odds increase that they will become cancerous. I am now going to need to be watched very carefully the rest of my life.
So my point of sharing all this is this: Do NOT ignore any change in your bowel habits. Any type of bleeding there warrants a trip to the doctor. There are lots of minor problems that can cause bleeding, but there are some that are BAD. If I had tried to blame it on something like hemmorhoids, and waited, I might have heard BAD news in the future. I am only 40 years old and have a lot to live for. Some people think this stuff only happens to older people, but that's just not true. There's a 22 year old girl who gets chemo every 2 weeks with my dad. She had colon cancer. Colon cancer is the third most frequently diagnosed cancer in our country. We can't afford to be embarrassed to talk about it.

Okay, so let me share some projects now...

Here is my LO for the current Dreamgirls challenge - to scrap 5 random facts on five locations of your page and use doodling:




Here are a couple of recent 8.5 x 11 pages:




Once again, it seems I've stayed up later than I should, so it's off to sleep for me. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.