My Top 10 Pages

Nick and Kara are so adorable together. She is her daddy's baby. They light up when they see each other!
I love this page for the wording alone, it's so true.....

Some of our family beach pics from November. I love these pics!

These pics were taken in December on my step dad's birthday. You can't tell Kara is adored by them at all can you? Understatement of the year!

When we went to Florida in December my BFF, her mom, and daughter joined my mom, Kara and me for a day of shopping. We had so much fun. I had to title this "Generations" because there was three for each of us. Click to enlarge and read the quote, too perfect!

Maddy is always putting together crazy outfits. Most of the time I would make her change clothes before leaving the house. This particular day I just thought she looked hilarious and she wasn't shy when I grabbed the camera to get some shots of her.

Maddy with her little sister and cousins. The title is supposed to be Super stars, but I didn't see the point in adding the word star with the background paper. This is the simplest page I think I've ever done.

I just love the title, "Fresh from God". Kara had just gotten out of the bath when I took these pics. She is truly a gift from God.

This is from this past Easter. Kara and Maddy had an egg hunt in my in-laws front yard. They had so much fun!

This is actually a two page layout, which I NEVER do, but I just had to do this one. It is one of my favorite ones, I am actually not done with it yet. I still want to add a few embellishments. I am still trying to decide which ones to use, but I had to add it to my post, cause it's just too sweet!

My new year resolution was to do a scrapbook page for everyday of this year. So far I am doing pretty good. For January and April I am short 12 pages total, otherwise I am all caught up on February, March, and May!!! I don't scrapbook everyday (although I want to, life gets in the way a times), but I try to catch myself up when I do sit down to do it. It's my most favorite hobby in the world and my biggest stress reliever. It just calms me like nothing else. I wanted to share some of my recent pages, my ten favorite ones I have done lately. I am open to critics. Hope you enjoy!!!!

Some new scraps:click to enlarge!

My mom wanted to see some of the pages I have been working on and this is the easiest way to share them. I have been sticking to my one page a day rule pretty well. I am happy to say I have done 48 pages since I got home from the states. Pretty impressive huh? I am going to apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. I took them in a hurry and didn't take time to edit them, but you get the gist of it. Enjoy!

I apologize that this one isn't turned the right way. I am too tired to change it.

My ever shrinking family...

So the last week I have been feeling really down about my physical appearance. I am sure most people know that having a baby changes your body in so many ways. In most cases, your hips grow wider, your chest begins to sag, your feet may grow, you get stretch marks, love handles form, and your body feels and looks like something you don't recognize. Not to say all these things happened to me but some I can relate to. So now when I look in the mirror all I think is "UGH!" Truth is that I was so excited after I had Kara because I lost all most all of my weight in the first 3 weeks. I felt at the rate I was going, I would look awesome before I knew it! I just knew that my skinny jeans were a few weeks away. Then after returning to my pre-pregnancy weight, I realized my body isn't as toned as I want it to be. I have been having a hard time making it to the gym being that we only have one car now. Also, Kara is on a schedule that I don't dare try to change. She gets grumpy with change. They have a mommy and me room at the gym that I want to go to, but Kara doesn't like just sitting in her car seat anymore. I was going to start walking a few miles every night but the rain has been hindering that also. So what's a girl to do? I have been eating healthier and luckily that has been paying off a little. Up until today I had only lost 2 pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight of 125. I was so frustrated that I hadn't lost any weight in the last three weeks. Finally today I dropped down to 122. I am pretty happy about it, but still have a lot of work to do to get where I want to be. I don't think I would mind being this weight if I was more toned.

Most of my family has changed their way of eating and are all doing great with it. Nick has lost a total of 19 pounds in the last 3 months. I am very proud of him because he too has been feeling down on himself. I never saw a problem with his weight but he did and now he eats healthier and works out 5 days a week. My mother-in-law has joined Weight Watchers and has lost a total of 41 pounds this summer. She has really changed her life around with her new diet and having quit smoking. My mom is eating healthier also and is about to start walking a few nights a week. I don't know her weight loss, but she's been working hard to keep herself healthier. I am so proud of my family for their accomplishments. It seems like everyone I know is trying to better themselves. It's kind of motivating to hear about everybody's accomplishments. I am still going to do my best to get myself the way I want to be. Nick and I went walking last night and I plan to keep it up as long as the weather will allow it. At this rate we may all be skinny minis next year!!

Some new pages to share

It's been a while since I shared some scrapbook pages so I decided to add some today. I have been trying to get at least one page done each day, which unfortunately doesn't always happen. Some of these I have done recently, some a few months ago. Tell me what you think of them. I am really trying to use more than one pattern sheet on each page. It has been a real struggle for me but I am getting better at it. Scrapbooking is my FAVORITE thing to do, besides playing with my sweet baby girl. I will try to post some new pics of her soon. Have a good weekend!!

So Proud

I just want to post these pics of some scrapbook layouts that my mom did recently. She is new to scrapbooking and wanted to get my approval, as if I was a professional at it. HA! Truth is the first pages I did are no where near as good at these. Heck some of my recent ones may not be this good. I am so very proud of my mother for picking up on my hobby and running with it. She has done a great job, hasn't she? I think my favorite is the one of Kara and Maddy. What a cute idea!! I LOVE scrapbooking so much and wish I had more time to do it. I have introduced so many people to it, man if only I could have made some money that way. Really I love to see people get interested in doing it. I get on a little high each time one of my family members or friends starts it. I hope that I can keep spreading the interest in it, because it is just that FUN!! Great job mom, keep up the good work.

Saying goodbye

It wasn't easy saying "goodbye" to Maddy or my mom last Thursday. My mom came to visit and stayed for about2 1/2 weeks. She came to meet Kara and to take Maddy back to Florida for us. The time she was here went by pretty quick. I felt bad she had to leave knowing she wasn't going to see her grandaughter for another 6 months.

Those 2 weeks were filled with all kinds of events. We tried to do all the things we wanted to do with Maddy before she left. We still manage to miss a few things but overall did the main things. I knew I would be sad but I didn't think it would hit me as hard as it did. The first time I broke down was while I was packing Maddy's bag. Everyone else was down stairs and I was upstairs packing it all. I had to go to the bathroom to get myself together. Then the night before they left, I was up all night dreading the next day. It was huge cry fest at the airport. People probably thought we were nuts, but it was VERY sad.

I will miss Maddy. I got so used to having her here that I couldn't imagine going back to life without her. Sure I won't miss the kids knocking on my door all afternoon(which made the dogs go nuts)or stuff being everywhere, but I will miss the joy she brought to our house. I haven't had to be alone in our house for the last year and it was so nice. Nick goes on a lot of trips, so I used to be alone a lot. Luckily I won't have to be alone ever again because of my baby girl. I know she will keep me entertained while Nick is gone, but I am sure I will want someone to talk to every once in a while that talks back. When Nick went on his trips Maddy and I would have "girl nights". We would rent movies and drink hot chocolate. She used to scrapbook with me. I couldn't have been more proud that she enjoyed something that I love to do. She made 3 books while she was here. She even started using more than one kind of paper on her pages, "to be more professional" like me (she would say). We also played hair/massage shop. She would put my hair up in all these crazy ways(the spider was the best). She has actually done that with me since she was 3 years old. The massage part just started this last year. She came up with all different methods (like using a pencil or karate chops), but you were lucky if it lasted 2 minutes. She is a very entertaining child and I will miss her dearly.

Our day trip

Anchors away!

The glass bottom boat was our first stop. I have never been on one before, which is a bit surprising since I grew up in Florida. But I have to say it was pretty cool. We saw fish, starfish, sea snakes, blow fish, and sea cucumbers. It was probably one of the coolest things we have done here by far.
This is the beautiful resort where the boat takes off. Nick and I are hoping to come back and stay a few days at this hotel. It had all kinds of cool things to do like jet skis, a mini golf course, and other water activities.
Maddy and my mom along for the ride.
Some fish
Me and Nick on the boat.

This is the view on the way back from the underwater observatory. That was our second place we visited. It was pretty cool. There were a lot of fish and coral around. I even saw Nemo.

This fish wanted it's picture taken by everyone. I must say he was very photogenic.This parrot fish was happy to have his picture taken!

I saw a lot of cool fish but she was the cutest thing I saw all day!!!

So our next stop was Neo park, a big petting zoo, so I was told. I was also told they had monkeys there that were running wild. That was the selling point for this place. Supposedly if you had bananas they would come sit on your shoulder. Notsomuch!!! Sure we saw monkeys, IN CAGES! I was so distraught. I wanted to hold a monkey, to have it on my shoulder, to feed it a banana. What the durn??? So anyone in Okinawa, don't waste your time on Neo park, it stinks, literally people!

After all the tons of birds we saw, I am thinking Neo park should be more like Bird World. They did have a petting zoo part, which, I kid you not, only had dogs and sheep. Yes, I said dogs... a Beagle, Poodle, and Pomeranian to be exact. Crazy stuff!!!

Not sure what this animal is but it was in one of the cages. WEIRD!

Some baby pigs, they were pretty cute!

My mom and Maddy by a fountain at butterfly park. This was our next stop. Maddy had been wanting to go for a long time and we had to take her before she left us. It's like a huge green house thing filled with butterflies and flowers. Maddy said it was her favorite place in Okinawa. It is pretty cool, but not my favorite.

Those things were all over my mom, must have been the flowers on her dress.

She was in awe of the butterflies. Look at her face, she loved it!

We were told that butterflies are attracted to red so Maddy made sure to bring a red shirt to change into. However, the butterflies didn't flock to her anymore than they did to me. So we are convinced they spray their red hats and umbrellas with something to make them go to them. But she had fun trying to get them on her anyway.

Look how happy she was to be in her stroller rather than the hot car. I love this face. My sweet baby Kara. She's just rotten, pure rotten.

Our final stop was a huge playground at Ocean Expo park. It has nets like this EVERYWHERE. Maddy loved it, but Nick was mad because he wasn't allowed to play. Poor Nick he's just a big kid himself. Overall we had a really fun day!