Our Christmas

We had a nice Christmas morning at home. Kirsten didn't wake us up until almost 9 am. She loved all her gifts. We went to my brother's house for X-Mas Dinner. Jake and I went to see "Seven Pounds" on X-Mas Even day since Kirsten was in daycare until 3pm and we were both off. Today she was at school again and we did our after X-Mas shopping and saw "Four Christmases". Both movies were pretty good.

My Present

Kirsten and all her presents.

Kirsten and her new V-Smile handheld.

Kirsten riding her new bike for the 1st time.

In our PJs that Santa dropped on our door step on X-Mas Eve

Our Redneck X-Mas Dinner party at my brother's house. The menu ended up being just turkey and dressing.

New Blog Look

I'm feeling a lot better about X-mas now! Cards have all been mailed, all shopping is done. I have 1-3 more presents to make but I have all days Monday and Tuesday to do that or just go buy a present for them...LOL. I finally got some pointers on how to add a background to my blog and made a new header. I'm totally loving it! Glitter is one of my faves.

Santa..More Santa & Adams Family Newsletter 2008

Wow a week until Christmas...where has the month and entire year gone? I have taken WAY too many pictures in December thus far. Kirsten has seen Santa 3 times (once was a trail run so no pics). We have been to several X-mas activities and still have several more and then all the pics we take on X-mas. I just put my last stack of X-mas cards in the mail besides those that will be hand delivered at parties. I finally added a letter to reach card reviewing what our family has done in the last yr. I did remember that I forget to include Kirsten started gymnastics. The letter is gonna look great on a scrapbook page too! I'm still stressing a bit over X-mas presents as I have a few kiddies let to buy for and my home made gifts aren't going as planned (both printers are out of ink). Luckily I am off all next week so I got a few days to do last min things.

This weekend is crammed full with 2 parties and a meeting.

I'm stressing over Kirsten and her back tracking with the whole Potty training thing. She has been in big girl undies for almost a month and did great until two weeks ago when she stopped going #2 at school. On Tuesday I took her big girl undies away and put her back in pull ups. Broke my heart and hers too but we have tried everything else (treats, taking TV away, Santa's not gonna bring your Dora Bike, diapers are for undies...you name it). I know it's not a matter that she can't do it since she did for a month. She's even getting called a "baby" by the kids in her class and she doesn't seem to care per teacher report. We have finally decided that Santa is going to bring her Dora bike either way but will are not planning on letting her ride it. That too is gonna break my heart but what's a MOM to do? We have still yet to get to Wild Adventures to check out their X-mas lights and such. Gonna have to cram that in there somewhere hopefully. Anyways here's some shots from December:

And here's our Newsletter:

The Adams Family Newsletter 2008

Every wonder what’s going on in The Adams Family? Well here’s the scope! In January Jake turned the BIG 30! Kirsten also started excelling with her language skills, her words had become very clear and she started using long sentences. In March we took Kirsten on her very 1st plane ride to Smuggler’s Notch Resort in Vermont. She did amazing well. It was her very 1st time seeing real snow and she love it. The resort had an onsite daycare so we took advantage of that and took a few ski lessons. What we learned was Amanda does not care for skiing and would much rather be doing digital scrapbooking in the warm room and Jake is crazy. After two lessons and no ski lift experience, he decided to jump on the ski lift. He survived, but barely and got a few battle wounds to prove it. The resort was awesome and very kid friendly so we all had a blast. In May we took Kirsten to Walt Disney World for her very 1st visit. She fell in love with everything about Disney. We got 4-day park hopper tickets so we went to all the parks. Magic Kingdom was our favorite. We had breakfast with JoJo & Goliath and Leo and June from the Little Einsteins. Kirsten loved that and the Mickey Mouse Belgian waffles with strawberries and whip cream on top were amazingly tasty. For Mother’s day Amanda got an awesome new SLR Digital camera that takes perfect pictures of her lightening fast daughter. On June 2nd, Kirsten started a new daycare as her previous daycare was closed due to financial issues. Her new daycare was a lot closer to home but further away from our jobs. She was place in the 3-4 yr old room even though she had 5 months until she turned 3. When she was screened they determine she was too big and more advanced than the children in the 2 yr old room and thought she would fit in better with the older children and she did wonderfully. On June 10th my little brother became a father and I an aunt to Summer Rayn Baldwin. We had a great 4th of July and Kirsten enjoyed splashing in her pool. We went to a local church and for the 1st time we were able to watch fireworks with Kirsten wearing earphones to muffle the sound. On August 26th, Amanda turned 29! In September, Kirsten started ballet classes. She has loved it since the beginning and will have her 1st recital on May 29, 2009. On September 5th, Jake’s Mema passed away. In October Amanda was offered a work from home position as a telephonic Complex Care Manager for McKesson Health Solutions and of course she accepted. The benefits and pay are amazing and almost unbelievable. On October 31st, Kirsten turned 3! She had a very cute Ballerina themed party and Daddy built her a huge swing set. The end of November we took Kirsten to her 2nd “The Wiggles” concert and she had a blast. On December 8th, Amanda and Jake had been together for 15 years. We have brought way too many Christmas gifts but Kirsten’s #1 request was a Dora bike.

Please excuse the red eyes and uncropping as I was just lazy and didn't feel like whipping out photoshop. If I don't get a chance to post again before the holidays...HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Be SAFE!

Amanda

X-Mas Card and Template

I made my X-Mas cards and turned it into a template for my scrapping friends. It is a complete scraplift out of the December/January Digital Scrapbooking magazine. Scraplift was of a card by Becky Pogatchnik. Enjoy! If you use it I'd love to see your results. FYI: For the words (Happy Holidays at the top and the name of family members in the trunk) I just typed them across and erased what I didn't need and to make the trunk and diamond top the same color as the background I just clipped the paper in the shapes too.

Click image to Download

If you download leave me some love here :)

The Fair..The Wiggles and such

Two weeks into my new job and it is still going pretty well. Ran into a few issues but I was still getting paid since this time it was an issue on their end. Kirsten is doing well. We took her to te fair last weekend and she was able to ride all the kids rides and loved them. I haven't upload the pics yet but they are sure to be darling. We are counting down the day until The Wiggle in concert which is this Friday (11/21). She is getting really excited and started asking , "Mom are they going to sing Hot Potato..." and ask it over and over with new songs. We got 5th row seats too.

I had some issues with my external hard drive and had to get a computer guru to retreive my things off of it as it was getting ready to crash. He got most of my pics (tho our Vermont vacation pics were not saved). They are still on there they just won't let me get them too. I am really hoping sooner or later it will be nice and let me grab them before acting up. Anyways, here's a few of my recent pages:


This double LO is from a challenge where I had to scrap a pic with an imperfection. I take tons of pics so it wasn't hard to find lots with little imperfections.

My BABY is THREE!

My baby is three...well actually not until 9:29 am. Wow three years have flown by. Here's her birthday picture from this morning:

And these are from her party last Saturday. The theme was ballerinas and I allowed the boys to dress as pirates, They were all very adorable!

My new job is going ok. I hit a few snags this week because my Internet went down for over 24 hours while they upgraded the speed. that was no fun because I needed it for viewing slides for orientation presentation and setting up programs and such. But we winged it and I took great notes and caught up quickly. I even scrapped about it already. I'll share the LO soon when the kit I used is released to the public. BTW for anyone that didn't know....I WORK FROM HOME NOW! My official title is a telephonic critical care manager. It's my first week but the company is so different than the last one I worked for. They have been super supportive and the benefits are great!

New Beginnings

I'm off work this week. My last day was 10/16. I start me new work from home job on 10/27. I got 3 boxes today of equipment but not instructions so I suspect there is more to come soon. My computers (laptop and desk top) had dates with a computer guru and they have been maxed out on memory and lots of virus were removed from my desktop. Both had security updated too. Today my external hard drive went to be recovered because it is locking up and we suspect it is going bad.

Jake is putting the finishing touches on Kirsten swingset and Papa and Meme G came over and help us bring our back yard back to life. Here's Kirsten's swingset:

I haven't been able to scrap much due to the computer issues but here's a page I did today:

Kit is The Shabby Summer by Christie Lemmons. LO is scraplifted from ledigicecchoukette blog.

Good News!

I have been having some major computer problems while trying to use to external hard drive. Apparently I am running super low on virtual memory so we are thinking that may be the issue.

On a bright note I put in my resignation letter 10/1 and my last day at my current job is 10/16. I will start my new job on 10/27 from my computer chair at home! My new position is a telephonic case manager and it is a work from home position with McKesson Corporation. The company is #18 on the Fourune 500 list. I am super excited about this new job. The pay is great as are the benefits. And it is from home!

Last week Kirsten started gymnastics. Her favorite part (as it seemed to be with several kids) was the trampoline. She went thru most of the stations and did pretty good with it too. I forgot my camera and only got one not so good shot with my camera phone. I decided to just have fun with her instead of stressing over getting a picture. That is difficult for a scrapper mom. Here a some of my recent LOs:

New Photos

We did a little photo shoot with Kirsten on 9/1 with her dress that Meme G and Papa got her. The pics turned out totally adorable. We even managed to get a decent family pic using the tripod. These are unedited so excuse the centering and such.




Today was Kirsten's first day of ballet. She has not been the cooperative child today but here is one picture we got of her after class. I had planned on getting some shots before class but being I am on my own for get her ready and to ballet class (Jake doesn't get off in time to help) it took every second of my energy to get her ready and there. We will def. be doing a ballet photo shoot.

She had a blast and wanted to "do it again" after the 45 min class was over. The instructor kept them busy for the entire time too. She was so darn adorable and were all the little girls. Ballet ROCKS!

Two new LOs

As you might have noticed I have updated my Creative Teams. I am now on several new teams and loving creating for them. I have been churning out LOs and am gratefully to be on CTs that make creations that inspire me.

One of my new CT has a great kit coming out real soon. It is pink and brown and I totally love it. I creative a darling LO that I will share once the kit is released.

Here's a few of my recent creations:

Credits

Can't find the designer for this one...will update later

Kirsten first ballet class is 9/3. She is super excited and danced around the house in her new ballet shoes. Can't wait to get some adorable pictures.

New Layouts

The 1st one was chosen Layout of the Week at DSO

Credits for most of the above pages can be found here.

We didn't get too much damage from tropical storm Fay but we did get a little leak in the back door and a little water damage to the floor. Very minor to what I have seen today thus far. Lake Ella has totally flooded most of the businesses surrounding it. We went to visit the ballet shop and it was under water. Luckily we were able to go to her Kirsten's ballet school and get the items she needs to start ballet next week. She is also signed up for gymnastics beginning 9/15. She is super excited about ballet and I'm am sure she will have a blast. She has been wanting to practice with her Bella Dancerella DVD set. I really need to get a video of that is is so very cute and she is getting good too.