happy 8th birthday peanut

Here is Alex's cake. I was overly impressed that they actually had Pokemon at Walmart this year. He was so excited to see the cake when he came home.

Eight balloons for his eighth birthday! Also a plastic decoration in the kitchen.

Some presents for his day!

I added some crepe paper to his doorway while he was sleeping.

Daddy and I delivered balloons to his floor the night before his birthday as a surprise.

Inside his room looking out.

Plastic decoration in his room. I am pretty sure this will move behind his door so he can have it.

 Hallway decorations.

There is my birthday boy!! He is getting so big.

Present time!!

Oh look.... Lego's. Lots and lots of Lego's! Yes all those boxes above were Lego kits. All but one box was the Super Hero sets, the last one is a city set so that they Super Heroes can destroy the city while capturing the bad guys.

Little bit happy.

Big breath. It took him a few tries.

Cupcakes that I made for his class to enjoy. They also received a Pokemon pencil. Pencils are always a good choice for kids.

Happy 8th Birthday Alex!!

who knew??

That you could achieve gold status on the Michaels Rewards card?? Not me. I was quite surprised when it showed up in the mail. Of course my husband could understand it. Not only that... he wondered out loud how long it would take me to get to platinum status. He's so funny.

I can't help it if we purchased some stuff for Christmas as well as art stuff for Kira there. Not to mention items to create two Pokemon clocks that are still not finished. But I digress...

I'm in the gold at Michaels. Go me!!

I hope all your days are golden too. (yup totally snagging your tagline Alien!!)

clay critters

A couple years back I purchased a large quantity of  Sculpey oven dry clay. Of course I was thinking we would be making dogs or cats as that is what both kids were really big into at the time. Fast forward to now and the colors I have... sometimes just don't work too well. Guess I need to invest in some more colors besides browns.

It was an inside kind of day so I pulled out the clay and let the kiddos have some fun. Alex makes these clay blobs and puts holes in them. Not sure why but he likes them and plays with them so who am I to say anything?

Kira... my Kira. That silly girl of mine. As you can see by her face she was quite happy with her creation. A clay Pikachu. We did have a bit of a giggle time when she put the brown on his butt. Yup... mommy went there with the potty humor.

I mean seriously... how could I not say anything???

Alex working on his turtle. You can see one of his blob creations in green at the top of the aluminum foil. He worked so hard on this turtle, I was very proud of him. He did it all himself.

Kira ended up with a female Pikachu which I did not realize could happen but I guess it does. Who knew? And she made a chocolate chip cookie for her to eat. The red blob is a chaos emerald from Sonic the Hedgehog made by Alex and his turtle. I did the purple bunny and the headless pig. I was so bummed when  that happened. Since then I have fixed piggy and both parts are happily back together. My bunny fell over so the nose and the belly have a bit of a flat spot. I can live with it.

I'm pretty happy that doing this with my kiddos took about two hours and we had so much fun and laughs. I need more clay....

sketch challenge, field day and birthday....

Yes I have been quite busy, but in a totally great way. Below is a sketch we were given to use in my sketch challenge group on FB. It is pretty neat and think it will be used again in the future. I can also see where I would add extra pictures!! I love taking pictures.

And here is my layout inspired by the above sketch. After I took the picture and loaded it to the computer, I realized I did not put the date on the layout so that has now been done. This was Christmas Eve 2008. Kira looks so tiny!! She got to make reindeer food in her class and then another teacher gave her the small bag of food. We had some very happy reindeer that Christmas!

Field Day for the kids was on Friday. The day started overcast and not looking too great. By the time they did the roll call of nations/ classes... the sun was out and stayed out all day. Which was a great thing since the school had rented two bounce slides and turned them into water slides!! The kids LOVED it. Even Alex who hates to have water on his face.

Each class was a different nation and they designed puppets and made flags from their nations. The theme this year was the Olympics. All the kindergartners were Ireland. You can see Alex in the front by the white of the Irish flag. And his amazing teacher in the red shorts on the left.

Kira's class was doing Fiji. Here's a picture of my little lady with her puppet which she made into a tree kangaroo and her flag. She did such an amazing job on her puppet! I love it.

And a friend of ours, took mine and Dave's picture after the ceremony. Something that doesn't happen often since one of us is always holding the camera! Aren't we cute?? I then went into the school and helped with Alex's class while they did their events.

Then it was Saturday and a special Saturday it was. My little baby girl turned 11! I mean seriously. How does one lose eleven years?? I swear she was just being born and look at her! Heading into sixth grade and looking oh so beautiful. I'm afraid to blink since she'll be in college then!

For her day, she wanted me to make her a Piplup cake. ummm sure. I can do that. I found this image on the web and posted it to Pinterest since I am like that. Dave printed it out and off to town we went. This was my first time making a layer cake and learned a few lessons. One... you don't need a ton of frosting in between the layers (but I do like frosting) Two... make sure to level them so the cake doesn't wobble. Three... if you are going to decorate with additional frosting... you don't need as much of the base frosting. We are getting on quite the sugar high eating this cake. Totally not complaining... just explaining.

The black gel we used, was fighting us a bit and running when we didn't want it to. Hence poor Piplup's lazy eye and his crooked beak. But the cool thing is that the gel was glitter gel so Kira didn't mind these imperfections and was quite excited to see it after her bath.

Tomorrow begins our last week of school. Not sure how much learning will be happening, but it will be the end. Alex will find out his teacher for next year on Friday and they are having a step up day. I do believe I will have to be there taking some pictures!!

the first of alex's turning 6 celebrations

Every year we head to Syracuse to celebrate Alex's birthday in February when everyone is on break. It makes his birthday stretch out for about a month. I don't think he minds much. Here's Kira, my father in law, Alex and hubby waiting for everyone to arrive so we can start the party!! As you can tell... Alex was beside himself waiting to open his gifts.

Here is a great shot of him opening a Pokemon figure. Cannot tell you which one of the 600+ there are, but he can and that's all that matters.

Another pretty exciting find from Grandpa.

Time for a big ole hug for Grandpa for such a great present. Can you say excited?? Love the smile on Grandpa's face.

Here's another happy smile for a Pokemon. Okay... so he can be a bit of a ham.

The AMAZING cake created by the wonderful bakers at Wegmans. I sent my parents into the store with a picture of a cake and they recreated it perfectly! We supplied the figures but they did the rest. I was so happy. I am writing a letter to the store for making my little guy so happy on his day.

Had to share this picture of Alex. Whenever he wears a shirt with buttons, that is where his hand usually rests. I love that I captured it for all time!!

Big wind there! Happy pre- 6th birthday big guy!!

It was a good but quick trip to Syracuse as we got snowed in on Thursday and had to leave on Friday instead. Hoping to go back at the end of May for the newest Foltz addition from brother and sister in law, but with these insane gas prices we'll have to see. Filling up caused major sticker shock to us. Seriously... we filled up in Syracuse after driving the entire trip and it cost us $71.55 for 18 gallons! Coming home it was $63.05 for 17 gallons. ouchie!

cold but no snow

And I am not complaining about no snow either! We had a few flakes fall on Christmas day so I am good on the snow front for the year. I'm sure it is coming our way and when it does, we're in for some rough days.

Anywho... I am currently feeling pretty lousy due to a lovely head cold that has decided to pester me. It started the day before Christmas Eve but is now in full force since the beginning of the week. Lovely. My poor head is going to explode soon, I just know it.

Speaking of Christmas Eve... here is an adorable picture of my two sweeties before we went out to dinner. Hubby found the red Pikachu shirts and got one for each of them. They were quite happy to wear them and at least they were both in red! Love their little smiles.

I have been working on some pictures that have been hanging out on my desk since April. Yes they have been there that long. It is shameful but things got in the way of my scrapping. Lots of things. Hoping in 2012 that I can keep on top of things and still scrap. I have missed the creative outlet and am drowning in pictures that I want to do things with!

The pictures I have been working on are collages that I created with Picasa 3. Love that program and the fact that it is free... BONUS!! Anywho, since I had a zillion pictures on my computer at the time (fact be told I still do) I used the collage feature to create 8X10's and 5X7's of my favorite pictures for some events. Makes it much easier to scrap now with one picture going on the page instead of cropping and cutting and working in the ones I love versus the ones I just want to scrap. So far it's working great. Hoping to take pictures of the ones I have done and get them posted. We'll see. I have a LARGE pile of laundry calling my name.

Oh yeah... lovely daughter came to tell me she has a ladybug in her room. Off to remove said creature from her sight. She is not big on bugs at all. A mom's work is never done.

and the fun continues

This morning we found Scout hanging out on Kira's book shelves doing a bit of light reading. I think he liked this book as he was practically at the end by the time the kids woke up!

The day before, he went to spend some quality time with our Pooh tree topper. Both of the kids were giving Pooh all sorts of loving before he was placed at the top of the tree on Saturday night. Guess Scout missed Pooh as much as the kids did.

Saturday hubby and the kiddos went to see the new Pokemon movie that was playing in limited theaters across the country. Thank goodness we had one close enough to us (in Massachusetts) that they could go to. Scout was sitting on the half wall wearing Kira's Pikachu hat all ready to go to the movies. Alex was trying to figure out how to grab him so he could go with them. Pretty stinking cute.

Friday morning found Scout leaving a little note for the kiddos on the white board.

He even watched over Alex while he was sleeping. He looks like he belongs on that shelf!!

I wonder where he will end up tonight?? Hard to tell with that little guy.

goodbye and more adventures

We had to say goodbye to Nana and Papa today... until Christmas. The kids were not happy about it one bit. Alex would not look at me this morning at drop off for the picture. I think he saw someone he knows in the parking lot. And yes it is warm enough here for light jackets. Shhh... don't tell Mother Nature. We are enjoying the warm temps.

More fun with Scout. On this day he took a bunch of Kira's Pokemon cards and laid them out along with a couple of her reference books and some of Alex's Pokemon toys and some of Kira's Pokemon toys to stage this fun scene. Alex did not find it funny in the least bit. He was thinking he couldn't play with his toys because Scout took them. As soon as I explained that he could play with his toys, that the only thing we couldn't touch was the card Scout was holding, he seemed to be better with things. whew...

He spent the next day hanging on this picture which is at the top of our stairs. He could see what everyone was doing and where they were going. It was a good spot for him.

Last night, he was watching over Nana and Papa (who were camped out in Kira's room) The kids found him after a bit hanging from these butterflies. Looks like he could have a fun day with his new friends!!

I am loving having him around the house and I know the kids are too. Looking forward to seeing what other adventures he will have until Christmas.

project life weeks 38-43

Here is the last batch of my pages. I know... we don't have that exciting of a life but it's ours. There are many things in this scrapbook that I don't think I would have ever scrapped traditionally but since I only need one quick picture and some journaling... all is preserved for the future.

The best part of Project Life?? You can do it however YOU want to. Love the flexibility of the products. Especially the new ones coming out now and in the future. You do not need to do a picture a day. You can do a layout for a month... or two. Or even a vacation album. Or maybe a few vacations in an album. With the different plastics available, you can set your album up however you choose. There are even these amazing Big Envelope Pages available. Talk about great for souvenirs and other goodies all scrappers collect. 

Sorry for the hard sell on Project Life... but I think it is an amazing way to capture life and all that entails. Enough from me... enjoy the pages.  :)