Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours. Hope your turkey is good!

Special Helper

A layout that I started on Sunday night and just finished yesterday. Love my office space in the basement where I can leave a layout out for days, weeks and add to it as I please.

Ashley's Christmas Presents

What to get you ask...

• She is getting a Calico Critter's House from Grandma and Grandpa Millie so she needs accessories (kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living room, etc). These are typical found in speciality toy stores
• Calico Critters Families (Beagle Dog)
  
• Anything Playdoh, she loves the stuff
• Preschool Board Games (Hi Ho Cheery O, Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders)
  
• Santa is getting her the Leap Frog Tag reading system, so she needs books
  
• Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD, Talking Words Factory DVD
  

If it is in RED we already own it or someone has told me they purchased it. Hope this helps!

Archivers

Friday night Melinda, Susan, Wendy and I got to have a ladies night! Thanks hubbies! We went to Scrap Mania at Archiver's.

I would have recommended for you to attend at the beginning of the year but not so much anymore.

• Service has gone down - We used to have a dedicated sales associate to host the crop, not anymore
• Giveaways have diminished - They used to have at least three with the last one of the night being bigger ($15 range), not anymore
  
• Food is getting worse - Super Smokers, Pizza Hut Pasta to cheap grocery store sub sandwich, boooo
• No more lettering for the Free Scrap Pack - The host always set up the die cutting machines so you could do your lettering, not anymore (not even a mention)
• They did make sure to get in some demonstrations (so they could sell more stuff)

I get that they are a company trying to make money, but they charge us $15 to attend and then make money off our purchases which for me is always around $25 each time I attend. There were at least 30 people there which is at least $450 in receipts and they can't afford to spend more than $20 on our dinner :(

For Keeps Sake my local scrapbook store is going to be getting more of my business now. Which I should have been doing from the beginning (supporting my locally owned business).
Love this layout even though it was a scraplift of Lynn Ghahary (pretty much copied it off her layout I saw on Studio Calico).

I also stated on some cards for Ashley to give her teachers for Christmas presents, you will have to wait til I'm all finished before I share.

Sea of Red

Today we went to N. G. Heimos Greenhouses in Millstadt for their Christmas open house. Can you imagine 25 acres of greenhouses with poinsettias everywhere? It was huge and very impressive, I can not even imagine how many poinsettias they were growing, but Dave and I guessed at 1 million. There were probably about 30 different varieties too. The scientist in me was amazed at the computer system that controlled everything down to temperature, lighting and humidity.
This picture kind of gives you an idea on how big it was, this row went on forever and it was just one of many. Ashley's favorite part was the free cookies and St. James Children's choir.

So pretty!

The rest of the weekend was pretty laid back, I did lots of laundry, raked more leaves and had a ladies night at Archivers (more on my completed pages later). Dave and I also visited the new Costco, it is pretty much the same as our local Sam's, so for now we did not join.

On my phone

On my last post, I added a photo I had taken with my phone which made me think to add some of the other random things I have saved in my photos. So here goes.

Trinity at the lake... on our bed looking out the window. Now I no longer wonder how dog nose got on the TOP of my window.

Ashley and Aidan at the lake... singing.
Work photo. One of the warehouses I built by the airport is having a water ponding problem (read goose poop problem) and I got to climb up a 30 foot ladder to investigate.

Ashley on vacation in Michigan trying on shoes. Susan and I actually bought a pair but these orange Crocs did not come home with us.

Another lake photo... Ashley and Abby playing at Captain Ron's beach. The girls love this place and ask to go there CONSTANTLY.

Just a few of the more interesting photos, hope you enjoyed a peek into my Palm Pre.

Weekend Recap

Another weekend of great weather. Saturday was gorgeous... and now it's raining again!

Friday we headed to Springfield, MO to visit Dave's parents and go for a tractor ride. Ashley talked all weekend about riding Grandpa's tractor. Sunday was the day. Dave took Ashley for a ride around the field and they even got to pick up a couple of "circle hays". Dave says she is a bossy driver, lots of do this and do that, go that way, turn here going on. The rest of the weekend was pretty laid back. Saturday the ladies headed to Branson to start our Christmas shopping (I did not do this, still holding out, I work better under pressure). The outlet mall was insane and for the most part all of Branson was busy busy. We also got to meet Tara and Chris new baby boy Kyle, such a cutie!

The only pictures I took all weekend were with my phone. Ashley and Kaitlin were playing in the yard or digging up moles for Grandma.

Bunny House

I started this page on Monday night and finished it last night. This is also the weekend of the CKC scrapbooking convention, must have been lots going on that weekend (or lots of cameras). Enjoy!

The Last Hurrah

This weekend was awesome, it almost made it to the 80's and it's November!!!

We headed to the lake this weekend to get this;

Our new boat a Sea Ray 270 SLX

It was soooo nice this weekend that we actually got to use it, but it will be winterized today and we will have to wait til next year to really enjoy it.

Funny story: When we exchanged the boats Ashley was with the Resnik's so she didn't really see us leaving it somewhere. Well we forgot to give them the keys so I had to run those over the next day. Ashley was with me... and when she saw the old boat she broke into tears. She did not want me to leave it, she wanted it back, wanted to know if they were fixing it, overall VERY upset. Ahhhh. She still thinks we are getting it back and she wants Aidan to have it. This one has the same sleeping charm as the old boat, she fell asleep within minutes on the maiden voyage!

Other than some boating the rest of the weekend was all leaves, leaves, leaves (and some relaxing too). Hope everyone enjoyed their last hurrah before the cold sets in!

Happy

I love Monday nights, because there is really nothing on TV and I can escape to the basement after Ashely goes to bed and do a little scrapbooking. I saw this sketch on Studio Calico's blog and ran with it.
The colors are much more bright in real life, but I like how it turned out. Don't you just love the quarter machines at Walmart. I have used them many times as bribes :).

Fall

Can you guess what we did today?

Love this smile!

It's raining leaves!

Now if the leaves would just stop falling I would be a happy camper. We filled SIX bags of leaves and the tress STILL have leaves on them. Oh and if it would stop raining that would be good too. They are closing the flood gates at the end of Vance in Valley Park tonight at 5:00. So it's going to be interesting around here the next few days.

Ashley's Halloween Party

Ashley's preschool had a Halloween Party last Thursday. Here she is with her class and teacher. Ashley is the mermaid. Lots of boys in her class, there are only three girls (I remember the opposite when I was in grade school). I think she had a great time, they played a couple of games (pumpkin bowling, ball toss, bingo), made a jack-o-lantern craft and had a snack.

The best part was when the two classes came together to sing. All the songs were Halloween themed (I'm not going to eat to much junk to The Hi Ho the Dairy-O song). It was so cute watching them belt out the songs and there was some dancing too. When the songs first started it was lots of different words/songs going until the kids caught on to what they were singing. They are lucky, Ashley's teacher plays the guitar. I wish I would have gotten some video, but I could not figure out the camera. I will have it figured out by the Thanksgiving program so I can share.

I volunteered to make a "treat". I made monster claws and I think they went over great. The kids loved them and it was better than candy. I even got to add a scrapbooking flair. I made the tags!