Scrapbook Challenges 1st Birthday on Ning!

Hi there and welcome to my little blog world! Today I am partying with my fellow scrappers because it’s been one year since Scrapbook Challenges moved to the ning forum site! Happy Birthday SC! Hard to believe it’s been that long, but at the same time hard to believe it’s ONLY been that long! To celebrate, the DT has planned a lot of fun birthday carnival themed challenges, games, and prizes for you to enjoy this week!

This is our little Ferris Wheel Blog Hop where you can hop on and ride it all the way around, checking out the DT’s blogs and their take on the following sketch challenge as you go…

So if you’ve just stumbled onto my site from somewhere else, head on over to the beginning of this hop at:

Pamela’s Blog

If you’re coming here from Holli’s blog, you’re in the right place! Welcome! Now on with the sketch!

Here’s the sketch challenge that Pamela gave us, and for my take on it, I went with the carnival theme. Here’s my layout of Jonah’s first ride. Hehe, I thought it was funny that he was pretty scared of the tame cars that went around in a circle, but he LOVED the roller coaster! Go figure!

Journaling: Since it was his first time at a fair at all, I thought the cars would be a nice safe intro to rides. He was excited, but halfway through he wanted off because he was getting a little scared ...BUT... believe it or not, September 29, 2010 he actually REQUESTED to ride the rollercoaster and LOVED it!

I put this page together digitally, and THIS SUNDAY, I will be posting a step by step TUTORIAL on how you, too, can transform any sketch into a quick and easy digi page. The kit I used for this page is Hopscotch kit and the Hopscotch School Additions by Shabby Princess, who has also graciously donated a $15 gift card for her Shabby Shoppe to one lucky winner, selected from those who post a digital layout this week, following my tutorial, using a sketch of your choice. Check back on Sunday for that tutorial and please make sure to stop by and check out Shabby Princess’ FREE Digital Scrapbooking Kits, as well as her wonderful collections in the Shabby Shoppe!

But Wait! There’s More!!!

Everyone who leaves a comment on all the blogs in the hop will be entered into the drawing to win the It’s Your Day collection from Fancy Pants Designs.

Everyone who does a layout based on the sketch and posts it in the Hop On section gets entered into the drawing to win the Early Bird Collection from Cosmo Cricket.

Everyone who joins the group during the Birthday Bash gets entered to win the Merry Christmas collection from Echo Park Paper Company

Everyone who invites someone to the group during the week, through the “invite” link on main page, gets entered into a drawing for the Road Map collection from October Afternoon.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the Ferris Wheel Blog Hop ride so far… continue celebrating with us at your next stop:

Natalie’s Blog!

First Twiggy Piggy Tails

Her first little pig tails are just too cute. Her Daddy even said so!

Only took me 19 tries to get a semi-decent one of both of them together!

Here's one of the shaggy boy who I should have thought to get a haircut, from Mamaw, for while we were in Tyler.

Conversations and Crawling

Jonah is now holding conversations with us! Where did my little baby boy go? Almost 2 weeks ago now, this was the 1st conversation of any real length that he had. I was sleeping in with Carly a little bit, and he and Jason were up getting breakfast in the kitchen before church.

Daddy: Hey Jonah, what do you want for breakfast?

Jonah: (spying the cake carrier full of muffins for our Sunday school class) Oooh! Muffins! Oh, I LOVE muffins Daddy. I can have a muffin, please?

Daddy: No, those are for us to take to church, for our friends.

Jonah: Oh I like go to church too!

Daddy: I know you do. We’re all going to go to church in a little while.

Jonah: (pauses for a second to think) But Mommy’s still sleeping!

I think I mentioned in my last post Jonah coming home from church one day, trying to sing us one of the songs he had learned. About all he could get out was “Stand Rock” and “Faaaaall” I finally got that video uploaded to You Tube, so here ya go!

I’ll try to get a video of him “singing” his 5 Little Pumpkins song sometime soon too. He enjoys the part at the end that says *clap* OUT went the light! hehe He’ll lay in be just repeating that part over and over.

Speaking of bed… we are giving up formal nap time. After several days of struggling with him for 2 hours to get him to go to sleep for nap time, with lots of tears (from both of us!) I decided it’d do us both good to just have a daily “quiet time”. I read him a story, give him a book and a toy and tell him he doesn’t have to go to sleep, but he has to stay in his bed and stay quiet, or I’ll come close his bedroom door (he REALLY wants his door to stay open these days, and last night was the first time I didn’t close it after he fell asleep). Wouldn’t you know it though? The last 3 days that I’ve taken that approach, he’s been fast asleep in 20 minutes or less! Whatever works I guess!

School and work junk has been keeping Jason super busy, but thanks to an extension his professor gave the class on a project they were doing, he was able to take his day off on Friday and spend it with us as a family. We went to Rocket Park, at inside Mc Donald’s for Jonah to play some more, and just generally had a great day! Here’s a little video of Rocket Park. It was a pretty awesome public park!

Carly Sitting in a Buggy for the 1st Time 10/20/09

In Carly news, she had her first taste of butternut squash last night and seems to really enjoy it! A few days ago, she also sat up in a shopping cart without a car seat for the first time! That is all totally overshadowed though, by the news that she is now a crawler! I have 2 videos; the first is kinda long and random with the kids and I hanging around in the playroom. The second one is a couple of days later when she’s really got the hang of it, and it’s much shorter.

Here is a link to the album with our Pumpkin Patch pictures from today, and a few other random fall pics. Enjoy!

Learning New Things

Jonah’s vocabulary has just been exploding lately… phrases combined with subtle little sounds and gestures that just leave us in stitches… like frumpling up his eyebrows, smooching out his lips, shaking his head no and say “umm, I don’t really need to go night night right now” or the little lip smack and sigh followed by an exasperated little “you know that!” cause obviously… I should know these things. Everything is “I love” right now too. “I love our furniture”… “Oh I really love grapes.”  “I love my bed (talking about our bed)… it’s all comfurbal.”

That’s the other thing he’s been working on trying to figure out… what comfortable means. He had a flap book out that has touch and feel parts on it, like this padded angel. He was poking it and say “oh, it’s all comfurbal” So I try to tell him that comfortable is something that feels nice to sit or lay down on… so then he sits on the brick fireplace hearth “It’s all comfurbal?” hehe not so much kid, but you’ll get it eventually.

I have a video that I’ll have to load up from tonight too… his first attempts at trying to tell us about a song he sang in Sunday School today. Our church just did “Promotion Sunday” (where the kids all move up to the next level class) a month or two ago. He’s no longer in the “baby hall” where all they do is play for 2 hours. His new Sunday School class actually has tables and chairs, they do art projects, sing songs, learn Bible studies and all that. In fact, if I can remember to, I’ve been intending to scan his first Sunday School art projects and post them here. Ironically, they learned about the story of Jonah and the whale. hehe Anyway, he’s been telling us for weeks now about “sing songs, and guitars” after church… so that’s how we know they have a music time… but tonight he was going around smacking his fist on his hand saying “Stand on rock” and then with prompting we asked him what else he sang about and he said “Fall down” and he wiggled his way to a squat and popped back up. So my video clip is of him doing the 2 of those together plus doing random flips all over the place. He was WOUND UP tonight. He actually worked up a sweat before bed! haha

Carly’s learning new things too, she’s rolling all over the place, and sometimes it looks like she’s actually rolling with a purpose. We’re sitting up now from time to time… not right after eating or bad things will happen, and not when she’s tired cause she’ll stiffen her legs and fall over… but if she’s happy, and especially if she’s busy watching brother… she can sit up for as much as a minute at a time without support from me. She’s also started “talking” to Jonah. They both take turns shrieking as loud and as high pitched as they can, giggling in between. Worse than a couple of parakeets I tell ya! Oye! It’s cute though.

Hard to believe she’s already 5 months old! We started her on her first “baby food” last night… mashed up avocado and milk. With the price of pre-packaged baby foods these days, I’m thinking I’m going to try making the majority of her baby food meals myself. The avocado thing is what most moms, who make their own baby food, start with… that and mashed up bananas, because they both have a lot of good vitamins, healthy fat content for brain development and such. She seemed to like it last night, so tonight I gave her a little larger serving size (about 3 tsp + milk) and that seemed to be just about right. She was getting a little tired of it right near the end, but did end up eating it all. Now if I could just get her to take the dang bottle! She just chews it and plays with it… not really drinking anything. :-\ Oh well. I’m learning to cope with it. So I guess we’re ALL learning new things!

Good news also to share, Jason got a promotion this week! We’re on such an ancient cell phone plan (one they don’t even offer anymore cause it’s TX calling only, no mobile to mobile, no family talk, no free texts… nada) so we’re both excited about getting iphones in a month or two (after we save up for the phones themselves, the pay raise increase will pay the extra monthly service charges.) We don’t generally blow pay increases so “frivolously” but we have both been wanting to upgrade for a very long time, our phones are both having some battery life issues recently, and on so many occasions, we’ll be talking and Jason will ask me something and I say “I don’t know, let me get out my iphone so I can tell you” hehe. So this was actually a planned budget move… planned for whenever the next pay increase came. There’s also talk of a possible performance bonus coming that’ll get us the savings for the phone sooner… and maybe a decent Christmas tree since I “blew” all the money I made, painting Audrey’s kitchen, on Christmas gifts, a clearanced patio furniture set, and a portable outdoor fire pit, instead of buying myself the new tree I’ve wanted for 3-4 years now. We’ll see though. I’m just thankful that Jason’s finally getting some recognition for all the hard work he’s been putting in.

A couple of videos

4th of July Weekend 2009

Carly looking quite patriotic

Dinner at the lakehouse w/ my family

People full of good food

Chad playing w/ Jonah

Jonah playing with Cosmo

My dad’s new (used) 26′ sail boat

Jason and my dad on the sail boat watching fireworks

Kay on the boat, looking way younger than she is!

Jonah an Mommy on the sailboat

the fireworks

Jonah trying to sail the boat

McCarty Family Reunion 2009

A few of my favorite pics of us and the kiddos at our family reunion this past weekend. To see the rest of the pictures, visit my facebook album!

A Trip to the Park

Both kids in the double stroller for the first time

I took both kiddos out in the double stroller today, just down the street a few blocks, to the little swing playground.That’s literally all there is there… some swings. Jonah doesn’t care though. He likes it just the same, and it’s only about a 3 minute walk from our house.

When we got there I tried fooling around with my camera to learn how to get the right settings for outdoor shots, but think I was somewhat unsuccessful because the sky is way too bright in all of these shots. Jonah was fairly patient with me though. He made it into a game of peek a boo!

Boy Child Shoveling to His Heart's Content

After I let him down, I asked him if he wanted to swing, and he said no. Uh Oh I thought. It was because he wanted to shovel though. So he ran around scooping up pebbles with his shovel for a while, and then eventually he did ask to swing.

Girl Child Enjoying the Warm Breeze

Carly and I just chilled in the shade while Jonah played. I could see us doing this fairly often this summer.

Got Alot Done

With my mom hanging around and helping out last week, we got WAY more done than any couple with a nearly 2 year old and a 1 week old should! My mom is a major DIY handy-woman, and just couldn’t contain herself when she came to stay. By the end of the 1st day she was just itching to get started on some projects. Who am I to complain?! I knew it’d happen, so that’s why I had already started a list of little projects around the house that needed doing, that just haven’t gotten done, for whatever reason. She actually started working on things while we were still in the hospital!  My to-do list that my mom tackled this week… as you’ll notice, she didn’t leave us much to do after she left! hahaShe got Jason involved in a lot of the projects too, and some of these he actually did on his own.

• Install Handheld Showerhead & Caulk Around the Ring
• Install Blinds in Our Bedroom
• Fix Drippy Master Toilet
• Fix/Oil Master Closet Door Knob
• Fix the Storm Door Alignment so it’ll Actually Close
• Remove the Satellite Dish
• Remove the Antenna
• Put a Piece of Screen Over the Chimney to Keep Birds Out (need to call chimney sweep first to get current nesting birds out)
• Put Hinges on the Sandbox Door
• Re-Configure the Sandbox Lid Boards to Make an Easier To Open Lid
• Dig Out the Rose Bush in the Front Flowerbed
• Dig Out the Bush Stumps in the Front Flowerbed
• Check on the Roof Leak and Seal Where Possible
• Hang the Letters for Carly’s Name in the Nursery
• Fix the Wet Bar Cabinet Door that’s Sagging
• Install Trim Around the Guest Bath Mirror (need to buy trim)
• Change Light Fixtures in the Guest Bath (need to buy light fixtures)
• Install and Overhead Light in the Garage (Bonus! They ended up re-wiring a bunch of stuff and putting in 2 new outlets too!)
• Paint the Nursery Furniture (need a non-muggy day to paint)
• Some Projects she thought of that I hadn’t -
  • Replace the Missing Toe Kick Under the Dishwasher and End Cabinet in the Kitchen & Install Trim
    
  • Fertilize the Yards
  • Replace Missing Pickets on the Fence
  • Replace the Damaged Board Around the Garage Door (We discovered ACTIVE termites there! Yuck! so had to get that treated first, so that project is sitting unfinished right now.)
  • Clean Some Previous-Owner Junk Out of the Attic

It was such a busy week that I’m probably forgetting some of the other stuff that got done, but we always appreciate having my mom come stay for a while! Jonah CERTAINLY enjoyed having his Mamaw around to play with, and to “help. work. hammer. outside. saw. ears. noise. loud.” with!

The Main Reason for Coming

The Other Main Reason for Coming

Jason Helping With the Projects

Jonah Helping With the Projects

Blue Bonnets 2009

I had intended to take pictures of Jonah in the blue bonnets last year, and make it a yearly tradition, but I never could find a good place that was safe to pull over and put him in them. Since we moved here though, I have been passing a local biking trail, all the time, that has a sign that says “Blue Bonnet Trail” and until they actually came up this year, I hadn’t even thought about it… but wow! What a great place for us to take our annual pictures now! No busy highway to have to pull over on, plenty of flowers in the field… the only down side is that it’s a giant power line green belt park, so there those in the background on both ends and houses/apartments in the background on either side… so we ‘ll just have to take close ups I guess!

One of the few smiles I caught.

Jonah destroying the flowers!

By far, my favorite shot!

A shot of the BEAUTIFUL power lines!

Smell-um he says.

Walking back to the bike trail w/ Daddy.