The first day of summer is coming this weekend. The last day of school is one week away. Already we are starting to slide into summer mode. The soaring temperature has us longing for iced tea and popsicles. One week ago, we still had frost overnight. This week we have had thundershowers and 30 degree weather. It's been fabulous. The plants are finally sprouting in the garden. The tomatoes, peppers and other heat loving plants are stretching skyward. Some people are complaining "It's too hot". Of course some of these same people complained last week that it was too cold. I am looking forward to flowers blooming and fresh vegetables on the table. I know there will be water fights and sprinklers to cool down the girls. Our air conditioning unit that is sitting in the closet waiting to be installed will be placed in the window and bring welcome relief overnight. There was no hurry until this week because and open window cools the house well if the temperature falls below 10 overnight.

Gardening and reading, creating and storytelling are some of my favorite summer pastimes. They are some of my favorite winter pastimes as well except the gardening is limited to a few plants in a sunny window. I am looking forward to having the girls home with me. Victoria wants to learn to cook. Kathryn wants to learn to sew. I would teach her if I knew how. I think I will see if mom will help start them on embroidery. We used to do that when I was younger. They could make their own pillow.

This summer we also have some remodeling plans. There is a bathroom half torn apart to finish. The girls get to help decorate it since it is between their rooms. They have also been told they will be responsible for cleaning it. If all goes according to plan, we plan to replace the flooring in the living room as well. As I type this, I think, yeah right, since when does everything go according to plan.

Whatever happens this summer, there are books to read and things to learn. There are projects to do and things to see. I only wish I had a nice quiet, shaded spot to retreat to on the hottest of days. Since I don't, I made one up based on a few I have seen on various excursions. Want to see it?



Looks inviting doesn't it?

We like LEGO. There are so many possibilities when you sit down with a bucket of LEGO. Will you build a house, or will you build a car. Maybe you like space and want to make a rocketship to explore the stars. Maybe you like the sea and want to build a submarine to explore the depths of the ocean. Imagination and a few bricks can open hours of fun and stories. During May, a traveling exhibit opened at the science center that is about 2 and a half hours from our place. The entire exhibit is built of LEGO! What fun! We had to go and see it. We chose to go on opening weekend so that the girls could work on one of the models with a LEGO professional. They were building a huge space shuttle. Our girls actually worked on a Canada flag made of LEGO. That was pretty cool itself. The theme of the exhibit is transportation in its various forms. There were trains planes and automobiles. There was a motorcycle and blimp as well as the Titanic.




Here are a few more weekly summaries. They include the trip to the Science Center. We also took some time to enjoy the outdoors and to work in our yard and garden. One photo shows our patchy lawn. It doesn't look very pretty yet in fact it looks half dead. Our spring has been quite cool so hopefully things will still green up.
Week 20 (May 14 to 20):


week 21 (May 21 to 27):

Yesterday was a fabulous day. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the girls were playing and so was I. I had a couple of stories I wanted to record. I had ideas. So did the girls. The girls ideas included school for their teddy bears and Webkinz. We have a few Webkinz and they all apparently like to dance and do math when they are not barking or growling. While the girls were teaching their stuffed friends, I sat at the laptop in the living room and scrapped a page or two and listened to the imagination. Bruce had some ideas of his own and a bug in an upgrade he was anxious to do, so he disappeared into the office and left us to our imagination. When he emerged a few hours later, bug fixed and ready to go for a walk with the family, I had scrapped 4 pages. We did go for a brief walk after we finished supper. The girls gladly posed for a photo by the river. I love the way it turned out. In fact I love the photo so much that I had to do something with it today!

I used a mini kit that DeDe Smith has available for this month's Designer's Element challenge at Digitals. The backgrounds and elements were easy to work with and I think highlighted the photo nicely.

One of the pages I worked on yesterday, may help explain why more days have been fabulous lately. I am trying to see the positive things instead of the things to complain about. It is hard to complain and be thankful at the same time. I am trying to daily make the choice to be thankful for the many blessings I have instead of complain about the things that seem to be going wrong. Notice I said trying, I am far from perfect with this, but I can keep trying and hopefully build a habit of thankfulness.

I used Beth Rimmer's funky My Bailiwick for this page and took my inspiration from Star Wars. Remember how the movie starts with words scrolling up the screen and getting smaller as they fade into the distance? My girls do not know who Luke Skywalker and Princess Leah are. They don't understand references to Chewy or Darth Vader. I think we may have some classic movie education this summer. Of course, that could just be an excuse for us to watch the movies again.

Yeah, I know it has been May for thirty days already. During that time we have had spring and winter again and now it seems that summer might be upon us. I have been spending many hours outside in the yard getting my garden in and enjoying the sunshine and birds. I have also been taking breaks to do a bit of scrapping. We had a beautiful set of days for the school's Hershey Track Meet. Victoria was old enough to participate this year. She seemed to have a great time. She tried hard and had a great attitude.



week 18 2009:


week 19 2009:

Is it spring yet? A few weeks ago we had spring showers that weren't quite showers. It was cold and snowy and melting and icy. It felt like a fine November day, which would be well and good if it were actually November and not the middle of May. I did give opportunity for some interesting photos of iced up flower buds and a good reason to stay inside.



My weekly summaries are from the end of April.
week 16 of 2009:



week 17 of 2009:


It was a busy month. May was supposed to be a little quieter, but has seemed to fly by just the same. I am finding that these weekly summaries have helped me to capture bits of life to help me remember what was happening when I go back to scrap the events. I am so glad I decided to take on this project for the year.

This coming weekend is National Scrapbooking Day (NSD). Now Bruce kindly pointed out that a weekend is more than one day and so this is a bit of a misnomer, either that or I am confused. With everything I have been trying to keep straight this month, it could easily be that I am confused. Another option is that we like to celebrate so much that we have taken a day and turned it into a weekend celebration. I googled it and found a few facts. The most important one, in my mind at least, is that National Scrapbook day falls on the first Saturday or May. Many places do celebrate for the whole weekend though with crops and sales in the stores. My local scrapbook store is having a special crop this weekend. I am unable to attend for a few different reasons but I do not want to miss out. Instead of travelling across the city, I am going to travel across my living room. I hope to chat with friends from around the world as we create art and share stories. We may even try to send some chocolate and cookies over the wires. I wonder if the cable modem can handle it?


Digitals is celebrating NSD for not just one day but for a whole week! I just received a flier in my mailbox. It looks like a full line up of chats. There is also going to be a treasure hunt. I always look forward to those. New this year is an art doll challenge. I had heard of art dolls before I started digiscrapping and had tried to craft one. It did not go as well as I had hoped. Since I have started using the computer for scrapbooking, I have also tried some new things and enjoyed them. I think the undo button has helped since there is less fear of messing up. If I do not like something, I just delete it and start over. So last week, when I was reminded of that first art doll, I tried a digital one. Meet the Blue Jean Queen:


One of the things I found when chatting at digitals is that there seems to be a few queens hanging out there. There is the Crop Queen, the Hybrid Queen, and the Queen of the Universe. Now we also have a Blue Jean Queen. This lovely lady would have gone to her wedding in jeans if she could have. I am a little jealous of her. She is quite quiet and hasn't let me know much of her personality yet, though some have speculated that she may have mentored with Mary Poppins. She has a friend who like to spend her time in the garden.


This Garden Beauty is a little bit shy. She probably has dirt under her nails and the bottom of her bare feet will be cracked and dirty. She spends her spare time with the bugs and birds outside watching the earth change from one season to the next. There is work to be done before playing, but it is so much more fun to play. She has an extra set of arms to help finish the work faster (I'm actually a little jealous, think how much more time I could spend creating if I had an extra set of arms).

If you want to join the fun, there is a free challenge kit being given away in the Digitals (link on the side) forum during the NSD week celebrations. There is also an Art Doll Insanity kit in the store. I think that is aptly named since once I started making these ladies they started taking on their own personalities. Maybe I am a little insane that my dolls are talking to me and telling me what they like. Or maybe it is just an active imagination. What do you think?

I am still one week behind in putting these summaries together. We had a school break and dealt with some illness. Of course there are always too many ideas and things we want to do for the time available.

week 14 (April 2 to 8)


week 15 (April 9 to 15):

I was reminded that I have not updated for awhile. There are multiple reasons and excuses for that. One of them is that we were busy living life instead of just writing about it. There was also a much needed software update to be done. The software is up to date and the database restored, well except for the comment that I deleted by accident. I can now post again. Which is perfect timing because spring looks to be finally here and calling for us to leave the walls of the house behind for a day and dance in the sunshine. I think maybe I'll leave the dancing to the girls. I do know I will be outside more often now and things inside may get neglected. Since I can not neglect the laundry or the dishes and meals, this blog will undoubtedly be neglected at times. I am still on track for a photo a day. I am still on track to scrap them even. I have a few other scrap projects and goals that will draw me back to the computer. Hopefully, I remember during that time that I have a blog that is to be another journaling source for me.

Week 12 2009:


week 13 2009:


As you can see from these pages, winter did not want to let go even though spring was trying to come. We have had some fun playing in puddles and some imagination. Imagination is a fun place to play. I decided to follow the girls lead and found it quite enjoyable. Imagination is a place where you can converse with hummingbirds and search for fairies who are sleeping in flowers.

Today is the last day of the twelfth week of the year. That puts me one week behind in my photo journey. I had good intentions but there were too many distractions. Some distractions were fun, like reading a new book or playing with some new scrap supplies. Some distractions were urgent and definitely not fun, like dealing with migraines. They are all part of our life though. Here is a glimpse from last week.

I have seen pictures of daffodils and tulips poking through the ground as I visit galleries and blogs. The rain boots and jackets are in the stores. There are even shorts and tank tops in some stores. They tempt us and taunt us for outside it is not really spring here yet. In fact, it is starting to seem like spring may never come. Now I know that each season comes in turn and that winter will end, but when I look out my window it is impossible to guess when. Here are some photos from the first official day of spring to show you what I mean.

The trees are pretty when covered with hoarfrost but it hardly seems like spring weather. The very next day there were puddles everywhere as the temperature soared into positive territory. Alas, it was fleeting, Monday we awoke to fresh snow covering the puddles. Today it was almost cold enough to force us to keep the kids inside for recess and lunch.

Of course, being inside lets me glimpse the imagination of the kids. On Monday I learned of Nitso and Nassah and their trips into space. I also heard of battles with masonry eating termites. Maybe some of that imagination is what led me to this magical place where there are fairies and princesses talking to hummingbirds.


Maybe I am just so ready for spring that I have to create my own place where winter does not exist. Whatever the case, I am having fun dreaming of warmer days and watching my seedling poke through the soil. One day it will be warm enough to take them outside and let them flourish. Until that day, I will wait and watch and dream.