Allison - 4 months

• 15 lbs 7 oz (90%)
• fat rolls on your thighs and arms
  
• your head is smaller at 50%
  
• chewing on your fingers like crazy
• lots of drooling
• have stated putting things to your mouth
  
• laughing out loud (especially at Ashley)
• lots of people are asking if your hair is red
• easily distracted while nursing (my nipple has never been stretched so far)
• just starting to grab those feet
• doing great with tummy time, but tires of it after a couple minutes
• head is on swivel checking everything out
• will not take a bottle
• some of your 3-6 month clothes are getting small
• still sleeping in the pack in play in our room
• love the swing
• love to watch tv
• working on sitting up by yourself
• loves to stand with assistance

It is amazing how fast they grow. Allison is at such a fun age, I just wish we could slow down time.

Pioneer Woman

This weekend I made the trip to STL to meet Ree Drummond aka The Pioneer Woman!!! Yes it was worth the trip. I am so so glad we went to her book signing.

Let's go bullet style to make this easy on my thought process;

• Susan, Wendy and I got to the St. Louis County Library a little after 5:00 and the line was outside
• We feared for this since it was chilly (in the 40's) and we had the three babies (Hannah, Reagan and Allison)
• We bundled them up and stood in line, Wendy nursed Reagan in the truck so they got to stay warm a little longer
• They handed out line tickets to get into the signing room, we were group #6
• They handed out 13 groups of tickets and I am guessing about 50 per group, so approximately 650 people!
• We meet nice people from Mt Vernon, IL and Jefferson City, MO in line.
• At 5:30ish they started letting us inside the Library
• We grabbed some seats and waited for Ree
• She was introduced a little after 6:00 and did a short talk and some question and answers
• She was nervous, you could hear it in her voice and she mentioned it numerous times
• She was sweating, she preempted the question and told us flat out
• She had on her signature boots
• She chastised one lady asking a question for bringing a baby
• All Pioneer Woman traits, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way!
• They started calling the groups at 6:30, so we found a more comfortable place to nurse the babies and hang out
• We got asked MULTIPLE times if the girls were triplets????
• We got to meet Ladd aka Marlboro Man (much much cuter in person)
• Note to Ree: take more pictures of this fine specimen, we need more full face shots!! (no more hiding under the shadow of a cowboy hat).
• We apologized to MM for bringing the babies and asked him if there was going to be a #5 in the future, he stated Ree wanted more but just not the pregnancy (same as me!) and they would have to adopt
• Our group number got called at 8:00
• Meanwhile the babies were awesome, no crying at all, thank god for small miracles
• There was a cute couple behind us in line and the guy hid the line tickets but had shown them to the librarian first. Poor girl she was searching everywhere for her ticket, turning red the whole time. He finally fessed up. Susan and I were about ready to vouch for the poor girl.
  
• In no time we were first in line
• The triple threat of babies threw Ree for a loop, she just looked at them all and said Really whats a girl to do
• It goes by so fast, but we did get to visit with her for maybe a minute
• She asked us lots of questions; Are we friends? What are the babies ages? If she could have one of them?
• We asked about a sequel to Black Heels and she said maybe but a cook book would be next
• Also inquiring minds wanted to know if they ever moved into the yellow Indian house.. no
• We were in the truck headed home by 8:30

Sorry I did this bullet style, I know it's not the easiest to read but it was the easiest to get all my thoughts and memories down.

All in all a great night! Thanks to Susan and Wendy for coming with.

My first 2010 page!

I am now into scrapping last year... not too far behind am I?

Just a quick one of a family picture before Allison was born. I used my Studio Calico February kit.

P.S. Walgreens will have a free 8x10 collage tommorrow (just pick it up in the store for no shipping costs). I just went thru my photos and I think I will do pumpkin patch pictures. Yeah love this freebie!

Happy Valentines Day!

Ashley checking out her loot at her school's Vday party.

Allison chillin' in the Bumbo in her new outfit from Grandma and Grandpa Wrigley.

Happy Valentine's Day!

This makes me smile

This weekend we were here at our house with no plans. This is kind of unheard of but it was so so nice. I emptied quite a few more boxes which always makes me happy. I am slowly trying to decorate this house and make it feel more homey. I struggle with where to put a lot of my collections so we can enjoy them. This is my laundry room. It is a much happier place now by just adding a row of collected jars.

I know many people want pictures of the new house but it is an overwhelming task to do it all at once, so maybe I can show it to you a little at a time. Hope your day is happy!

Sketch Challenge

This two pager is based off a Sketch Support two page sketch. I used my new Studio Calico February kit. I had canceled my monthly kit memembership right before we moved and I had Allison. Now that things are back to somewhat normal I've signed back on. I love the February kit and couldn't wait to start using it. The Happy Birthday chipboard piece was a make and take I did at Scrap STL.

Use your imagination here....I took a picture so that you could see both sides together.... but blogger flipped my photo and I can't figure out how to flip it back. I even googled it and it seems to be a problem with Canon photos and something embed in the image.... GREAT!

Two more

Bad photo.... but I love this layout. Sliver Dollar City would not let you use a flash so it was next to impossible for an inexperienced photographer like me to pull off a great photo with light behind the subject. Plus we sat in the very back row, we were the misfits. I used a sketch I think from Sketch Support but I don't feel like linking it right now.
I just threw this one together with the scraps leftover from the layout above. I used a sketch from Studio Calico, again I don't feel like linking it.

All I have left of 2009 is Christmas!!!!! But I dread Christmas photos, no wonder it is the LAST thing I need to do.

Off to bed, goodnight!

Halloween 2009

I have been on a mission... finish my 2009 layouts so I can start into 2010. But really I will probably try to start and finish Ashley's first year of preschool in her School Years Album. That will really only be two - two pagers so it should be a quick project.

This layout is based on a one page sketch by Allison Davis.

This layout is based on a two page sketch by Allison Davis. As you can see I am really loving Sketch Support.

Well this one is ugly... but it is done. It was made with a kit from Archivers that I got at a crop. I sure do miss those crops. The LSS store here does not offer weekly crops and I don't really have a local scrapper to go with anyway :(.

Sorry to bore you with Halloween photos in February.

I hope you all survived "Blizzard 2011", we faired just fine. We got 4-6" of a sleet snow mixture. No power outages to David's dismay. But we were ready for the predicted 20". Thanks to the media everyone pretty much freaked out.