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Just a few pictures from our vacation, or our safari as Jonah kept calling it. We went to the Galleria, the Children’s Museum, some Triple D restaurants, and the Zoo in Houston, then went to Galveston for some good beach time and even better sea food!
Despite the busy weekend with potty training, I still found some tim (usually w/ Carly in my arms) to work on my 2008 family scrapbook. I skipped over 2007 for now so that I could get caught up on the current stuff while it’s fresh on my mind. I actually got halfway through with the pages I have planned for this book!
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!
Here are the pictures from our trip to the farm from this weekend. We saw horses and cows (which I don’t have pics of unfortunately) and chickens. We played on the trampoline, in the flower bed, and went fishing. We dyed eggs and had all sorts of fun at Granny and Papa’s House. I’ll update this album tomorrow (Sunday) hopefully, with pictures from the rest of our Easter festivities. See More Pictures Here!
In the future, I think we’ll give it to him on Easter Saturday morning. I’d rather make a distinct difference in what each of the different parts of Easter are about… like that the typical fun Easter Saturday traditions (dying eggs, eating candy, egg hunts, bunnies, chicks, and what not) are about celebrating the beginning of spring and not try to intertwine it with the religious aspects of Easter Sunday. I want Easter Sunday have its own traditions that are reverent and give thanks to our Savior and what He’s done for us… like dressing in our Sunday best, sharing meals with friends or family, and like how our church does this flower cross thing… where people bring fresh cut flowers to put in the wire mesh cross in the atrium all morning and by the end of the last service, the cross is fully covered in flowers. Jonah even put one in it this year! I feel like trying to make some sort of connection between rabbit handing out colored chicken eggs filled with candy and the crucifixion on the cross is just ridiculous and that the two should be separate from each other. So they happen on the same weekend, yes, but not the same day. I wish there was a good way to separate Christmas like that too. I think the fun family/cultural traditions are good to have, but I think kids need to learn what is “just a fun tradition” and what is “biblically relevant” for the different holidays. Anyway… that just became a really long rambling rant I guess. Congrats if you read this far and aren’t plucking your eyeballs out! 
hehe
I am so happy to be back. I am happy to put the big suitcases way up in the top of the closets. I am happy to put away all the new Christmas gifts and proceed with life as usual. All this travel has been more tiring than I realized. So glad we’ll be staying home for a few weeks before our next visit to Tyler.
I didn’t take as many pictures or videos as I should have, but I’ll get around to posting some here in the next week or so. Hope you all had happy holidays!
I was supposed to be staying in Tyler for 5 weeks straight, because of the business trips Jason was going to be going on. He was going to be home alone for a week before Thanksgiving, but it just didn’t make sense for me to waste gas to drive back to be with him that week so that’s why I planned on being here in Tyler that whole time. However, my little brother is having a theatre performance, on Friday night, that my parent’s want to go to. Since UTD is just a few minutes from our house, and Jason will be getting back from his trip on Thursday, the plan is now for Jason to come get Jonah and I and we’ll be staying with him at home for that week before we all come back to Tyler for Thanksgiving. So for those that want to hang out with us while we’re in town, we’ll be home this coming Saturday – Wednesday. It also means that I won’t have to skip my 16 week OB appointment, so I’m sure my doctor will be happy about that. I guess while I’m at it, I need to go ahead and schedule Jonah for his 18 month appointment with the new pediatrician we chose.
As I finish the pages to my “Week in the Life” scrapbook, I’ll post them here for your viewing pleasure. I’m pretty new to the whole digital scrapbooking (this is actually my first fully digital scrapbook.) Update: as of 10-15-08 I have finished the book! I suppose maybe I should make a cover page for it, but I’ll leave that for when/if I decide to actually get it printed. Here are all 22 pages though! Wow, look at me go, starting and finishing a major project within a reasonable time frame! *gasp* Now I guess I need to focus on finishing our bathroom project! hehe
Pages 01 & 02
Pages 03 & 04
Pages 05 & 06
Pages 07 & 08
Pages 09 & 10
Pages 11 & 12
Pages 13 & 14
Pages 15 & 16
Pages 17 & 18
Pages 19 & 20
Pages 21 & 22
I got this wonderful freebie set of digital scrapbooking papers and embellishments, called “Express Yourself”, by Ronna Penner, from the Shabby Princess website. The “Week in the Life” project idea, again, was from Alli Edward’s Blog. The “Story of Today” layout idea was from her templates that she sells (I just made my own to look like hers) and the other layouts were also from her designs for a Shutterfly album called “Everyday Life” (which I also just made my own versions of). The “Official Allie Edwards Sript Font” you see used was downloaded for free from her site as well. Other standard issue fonts used: courier new, corbel, city blueprint, and impact.
It’s going to be a busy one, I won’t deny that! Here’s the run down of the extended weekend, and I’ll add whatever other details and pics after the fact, when we get back!
Tonight our friend Brent is spending the night here so he can run a race around here in the morning. Then we’ll be headed off in the morning to go to my great aunt (mom’s mom’s sister) and her husband’s surprise 50th anniversary family cookout. Then we’ll stay at my grandparents’ house (the farm) on Saturday night, and travel down to Tyler to visit Jason’s mom and see his grandfather’s new place at the assisted living place. My sister is also turning 18 today, and is having her party tonight, so I’ll miss that unfortunately, but we’ll see them on Sunday and Monday too. Then head back here on Monday afternoon and just pass out from our weekend of travels and partying!
Pictures to come! (If I remember to take some!)
Edited on 9/1/08 to apologize for not taking any pictures…. I was a bit distracted with all that was going on. More to come on that later.
I know you mostly came to see the pics, so I put them all at the beginning, before I start rambling about our trip!
Thursday Night – We left home after Jason got off work and were expecting the worse, as far as traffic goes, because we’d be driving right through downtown Dallas at 5:00! Surprisingly, we only his one small slow down the whole way to Houston! On the way, we decided to stop and eat, so when we got to Ennis, we had ourselves some Chili’s (one of our favs!) and I ordered desert so I could at least say I had some cake and ice cream for my birthday! (more…)
Well, it’s official, I’m 26 now. But instead of moping about being old, we’re leaving for our trip to Galveston as soon as Jason gets home this afternoon! yay! We’ll be staying at our friend’s apartment in Houston tonight and then we’ll all be going down to Galveston together for Friday night and Saturday night. So hopefully tomorrow evening I’ll be sitting on the beach! 
Now THAT’S a happy birthday!
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