You: Create - Week 2

One of my very favorite blogs to read is Gitzen Girl - she is so very inspiring!  If you have never read her blog, hop over there and spend some time reading her story.  Anyways, she decided to have a weekly creativity challenge on Thursdays called You: Create.  I have really been wanting to do some digital scrapbooking but never seem to get around to it.  So I thought this might be my chance to do a page or two a week.  Well, it didn't happen this first week and not exactly this week either!  But I did use my digital scrapbooking skills to create a birthday party invitation for my little buddy, Kage!  He is the grandson of my very good friend, Ramona, who suddenly passed away last February due to a brain hemorrhage.  Her two children and my girls grew up together almost like brother and sisters.  So Kage is like a grandson to us!  Here's the 8.5 X 11 invitation I made!

The Many Faces of Kaiden

We were able to spend a few days in Houston last week.  It was great to spend time with our kids but especially fun to spend time with Mr. K.  He is changing so quickly.  His little personality is absolutely precious.  He is talking more but "ball" is still is favorite word.  He now calls Ashley "tante" (Dutch for aunt) and she LOVES it.  He said "gigi" and "pop-pop" lots over the weekend too!  He also says several things in Dutch but I can't spell them correctly so I won't even attempt to list what he can say.  It's great that he will be bilingual!  He runs all over the house pushing his grocery cart or "walker" but will not walk by himself.  He'll pick up whatever he's pushing and turn it to go the way he wants - not even realizing that he's standing on his own.  He definitely has a mind of his own.  If he doesn't want something, he'll shake his head "no" at you.  Lys bought him a new pair of shoes and he kept shaking his head no every time she tried to put them on him.  Gigi and Poppy did get him to wear them the day we left!  He couldn't tell us "no"!

Saturday was a rainy day in Houston while Amarillo was getting slow.  I found a recipe for Tiramsu pancakes and fixed them for brunch.  (They were delicious but very filling.  You can find the recipe here.)  K was entertaining us as usual and Tante picked up the camera to capture his expressions.  I have to share many of them here with you!

Family resemblance

Most of us would agree that Kaiden really looks like his daddy . . . until I pull out Alyssa's baby pictures.  What do you think?

Madi

Last week I had the pleasure of keeping Miss Madi for the day.  Madi's mother, Lori, is a teacher at the elementary school where I was principal.  I've watched Madi's older sisters, Meaghan and Jaelynn, grow from babies into beautiful young ladies and hope to do the same with Madi.  I've been using Madi to practice learning how to take better photographs so Lori brought Madi some "dress up" clothes for us to take some pictures.  Here are some pictures from our day together.

  Madi has taken an early interest in reading - She would not look up from the book to have her picture taken.  We also had a great time talking and laughing.

Okay, fellow bloggers, you may wonder how I got these pictures posted like this.  Check out MckMama's blog (my charming kids) which is linked at the right.  After you get to her blog, click on the photography button, then photography lessons, then side by side photo layout.  Obviously I still need to practice a little more but it is nice to have a little more control over pictures posted in a blog.  Warning - you need Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to do this.

Canada Fishing Trip - Part 3 - finally fishing

Rainy Lake is about 285,000 acres so there was lots of places to fish!  But it's easy to get lost on a lake you are not familiar with - so our first day of fishing was not too far from Camp Ontario.  We had a 16 foot Lowe boat with a 25 horsepower motor.  Sandy had fixed up some chairs with backs on clamp on bases so we wouldn't be just sitting on benches.  Thank goodness for that because we spent many hours in that little boat that week!  Here's a picture of our boat.

The weather on our first day (Saturday) there was cloudy and dreary.  I was so exhausted from our trip there that I chose to just sit and watch Sandy fish.  I also was a little afraid of taking my brand new Canon camera so these pictures are not the greatest!  Even though it was cloudy the lake was like glass!

 

We fished around this little island which was visible from Camp Ontario.

Sandy casting his first cast.

A pelican we saw -

The first catch

 

The day's catch which we had for supper.

We thought these were pretty good sized fish but Robert told Sandy that these were a little smaller than he usually keeps.  But they sure did make for a good dinner!  Here's Sandy cooking them.