Sabrina in TN

Birthday Party

We celebrated Victoria's birthday this past weekend.

It's hard to believe that she is NINE!!!!!!!!

We normally have parties were she invites 20+ kids, but this year she wanted a sleepover. I said that she could invite 3 girls and we could have it at the Embassy Suites hotel.

The girls had a great time! First we ate dinner at a Japanese restaurant, then went to the hotel. The girls swam from 7:30 until 10 pm, then we went back to the room, changed in to PJ's, ate cake, unwrapped gifts and played with crafts until 1:30 am.

The next morning I woke them up at 8, we went downstairs and ate breakfast then went back to the room and packed up. The girls then swam some more, about another hour and a half.

The older girl in the picture tagged along and helped me entertain the girls. She was great! She swam with them, helped them pack, did crafts and played.

We are heading to Memphis tomorrow to visit the zoo there. On Victoria's actual birthday we are going to Tunica and sail on the Tunica Queen Riverboat.

The best part is that I am going to finally get to shop at Eclectica! I booked a hotel within walking distance. Can't wait to see the store!

Connie Won!!!

Check it out!

the not so lazy days of summer

We've been busy since I posted last. Our Knoxville trip was great! Sarah (Chad's mom) went with Victoria and I and she also had a great time.

One of the best things about going to Knoxville is shopping at AC Moore! I love that store! I also made it to Scrapbooks and Moore which is right next to a Perkins. We ended up eating both dinner and breakfast there, love their pancakes.

Wednesday was zoo day, here is some of my favorite pictures.

That blue tongue is the end result of a blue raspberry slushy!

On Thursday we were supposed to go to the Knoxville Discovery Museum, but it was closed for a private event. Instead we hit the road and headed home.

As we got close to Cookville, I saw a sign for the Scrapbook Warehouse and we made a "short" pit stop. Koles happened to be across the street, so I dropped Sarah and Victoria off and I went off to shop. I ended up getting some of the new Love Elsie papers.

While I was shopping, Sarah and Victoria were doing a little shopping of their own. We ended up leaving Cookville 2 hours later and with a big bag of clothes for the little girl.

After I dropped Victoria off at Sarah's, I headed home and decided to go up to the scrap house a day early. Originally I needed to go into the office where I was temping, but the big boss wasn't going to be there so I didn't "need" to go either. My other rational was that I already had all of my toiletries and make up packed, so I ran home, dumped out the dirty clothes, threw in some clean ones and gathered some scrap stuff then headed to the house.

Angie, Lynn and Leslie were already there. We had a great time and I ended up completing 19 pages! Plus, Scrappuccino was having a special sale that weekend!

Here are two pictures

cycles

Two weeks ago I had my hair cut, again. This time I went to a real salon and had a cut and color. Much more expensive but I love the cut.

Here was the before.....

and here is the after.......                                                                                                                   

If you've know me for any length of time, you know that I've had my hair just about every length there is . I tend to go in these cycles, about every 5 years or so, I get flustered with the long hair that I've grown out and I have it all whacked off.

What I really need to do is go to a salon on a regular basis and have it trimmed. Twice a year isn't enough.

In other news, Victoria and I are off to Knoxville tomorrow to go to the zoo. Good thing there is a scrap store and a great craft store too!

when you give a kid a camera.....

I bought a Fisher Price kid-safe camera for Victoria to take to girl scout camp. The day before she left, I couldn't find it anywhere. Searched the whole house, nothing, nada.

Then I thought I'd let her take my old Cannon APS camera, I've got lots of film left over. Looked everywhere for that camera, couldn't find it.

My next thought was to either give her a half used disposable camera or her princess film camera, but neither take very good pictures.

Then I decided that  my Olympus digital is on it's last legs anyway and I might as well let her take it.

I was disappointed when I picked her up from camp and she had only taken a handful of pictures.

But, I didn't put the camera away when we returned home. Today I uploaded the pictures and found this...

 

She discovered how to use the self timer! There were several cute ones, but this one makes me laugh!

The big news!

So sorry for not posting earlier, and for leading everyone on about our big news. Nothing SBR, just an exciting event for us.

In April (gosh, has it been that long?), Victoria got this postcard in the mail.....

   

It about killed us not to spill the beans before the postcard arrived. Yes, we are going on a Disney Cruise the last week of September. This will be her first week of fall break.

When I was pondering the Disney cruise, I found disboards.com and read trip reports. Then I booked and found a thread about postcards. Members of the boards will take postcards with them on their cruise and mail them from the Disney Island. When I found that thread, I knew that would be the perfect way to tell Victoria about the trip.

When the mail came, she read it, thought about it for about 30 seconds, then a big smile crossed her face!

Andy, the guy on the MB list, has the perfect Goofy handwriting. She is convinced that Goofy himself sent her the card.

In other news, I got my hair cut (again) and so did Victoria. We even had a little color added to hers.

Oh, she is now officially a third grader, her last day of school was June 8.

done!

Well those 20 pages with 6 more to go turned into 34 pages total.

Whew!

I'm delivering it tomorrow (2-days ahead of schedule) and all I have left to do is photograph the layouts and put them into the album.

I do for-see making my page goal for the year, to date I've done 57 pages. Only 18 to go to meet my goal of 75.

Now I've got some MAJOR cleaning to do in the old scraproom. I have a bad habit of never putting stuff away when I'm done with one page before I start on the next.

In other news, Victoria has 12 full days of school left and two girl scout meetings. Her last week of school I'm temping at Chad's office then the next two weeks after that I'm temping in a different office.

I realized today that I never shared my big news, I promise to share this week.

still alive

I've been busy working on "the album." So far I've completed 20 pages with at least 6 more to do. I have to check with the mom to see how many more she wants, hopefully not too many more.

Victoria did her mile run last week, came in at 10:36. She was the third girl in her class to finish and and about the 8th to finish out of 19 kids. The good news is that he improved on her time from the fall. I'll have to wait to see her complete report to see how much she improved.

I had a good time at CKC, only took one class at the convention then a class at Scrappuccino. I love the Rusty Pickle mini book!

play

Tomorrow is CKC in Nashville. I have a Making Memories class at 8:30 then I'm going to hang out at the convention for the day. Then I have a class at Scrappuccino and I hang out to crop. Saturday I'm volunteering at CKC. That's my weekend in a nutshell.

This layout is for Scrappuccino, it features the Pizzazzil paper by Creative Imaginations and Bazzill. I haven't seen many project or pages using the paper. Hope you like it.

If you see me at CKC, say Hi!

busy week

Last week Chad was out of town for a fishing trip, gone Wednesday until Saturday evening. Victoria and I kept busy with a scout meeting, ballet tickets for Friday night and going to the zoo on Saturday.

Connie's co-worker blogs about the zoo often and posts great pictures of the new bird exhibit. When we went on Saturday, Victoria and I ventured over to the new part of the zoo housing the giraffes, elephants, birds and wild pigs. I bought a cup of nectar so that she could feed the birds.

This week Chad is out of town again, a work trip Mon-Friday. Monday I was a 6th grade special ed teacher at Freedom Intermediate and yesterday I got to do some appliance shopping and installation.

Here is a little PSA for you, if your dishwasher has water at the bottom of the unit after a load, don't think that running it without dishes will clear it out. It doesn't trust me, it causes a flood of water to go all over the kitchen. Luckily a family friend (who has a year off work courtesy of Saturn) was able to come over, diagnose the problem (the part that sucks the water out of the dishwasher stopped working), assess the cost of repair ($250 for the part, and it won't arrive until Friday) and accompany me to Lowe's and helped me pick out a new dishwasher.

I told Chad that next time he went out of town the range/microwave would probably go out and he would come home to a new one.

This weekend is the Creating Keepsake Scrapbook Convention downtown! I also signed up for Courtney DeLaura's class at Scrappuccino.

Victoria got some exciting mail on Saturday! I'll scan the postcard and share later. She is sooo excited!