Jack Hannah event

I think I need to do a lot of posting.  I've found pictures I haven't posted and then of course there are Easter pictures as well. So let's start with March 11.

We were invited to go see Jack Hannah.

  We were given 5 complementary tickets, when each ticket costs $35. He is the man who gets on all the tonight shows (Jay Leno, David Letterman, etc.) and brings animals to show.  I was pretty excited to go.  However, when we got there it was open seating and we got stuck in the back of the room. Ashley found 2 seats up closer and so Greg and she went to sit in them.  I couldn't see anything, not even the huge monitors on either side of the stage.
This is what I saw:

  The boys went up on the balcony and stood for part of it and they were able to see.  I was upset.  I felt like this was a huge waste of time.  But as the night went on, many of the families with kids started leaving.  And as they left we moved closer. I got up to a good point about a half an hour to the end of the show.  Here are some of the pictures I took.  I played with Photoshop on this one:

Michael W. Smith was the host.  And he also had Scott Hamilton (Olympic Gold figure skater) host with him.

This baby cheetah smelled something. Jack Hannah didn't know what it was, but I had a guess.  There was a seeing-eye dog in the audience about 5 rows back.  I suspect it smelled it.

 The women who brought out the owls had to wear these heavy duty arm gloves.  He told us that their claws would rip your arms apart, not meaning to do so.

Greg asked if it was worth it. I told him yes after we were able to see, but if we would have been stuck in the back of the room the entire time then no it wouldn't have been worth it. Imagine if we would have paid $35 and got stuck in the back of the room? I'm very thankful the tickets were complimentary!

Scrapbooking the Project Life Way

I've been scrapbooking again!  Yay!  I have always been interested in Becky Higgin's Project Life kits.  When they first came out they sold out and I couldn't get one.  Then year after year I would revisit the idea of purchasing it and never did.  This year my friend Doris gave me a few things to get me started and I LOVE it!  It is a different way of thinking.  Anyway, here are a few pages that I've created from my vacation to Florida:

I was so frustrated when I found a couple of pictures I for got to include.  So I just added a little 4x6 sleeve to the middle of the page.

I think I'll be able to scrapbook faster once I get the hang of it.  I can be as creative or not as I want to be and it will still be cute!  I love the idea that my pages are directly going into an album. Anyway, I'm interested in a few other kits that I might like to have in the future. *hint* If you ever want to buy me a gift I would like these:


Project Life Amber Edition

or Project Life Turquoise Edition

or Project Life Cobalt Edition

What God put on my Heart Today

Today at church our preacher preached on The Sower and the Seed, Mark 4: 3-8.  We heard the passage being read 3x and each time we looked at it from a different perspective.  All through the sermon God painted a picture in my own heart and I wanted to make sure I wrote it down and shared it with you.  (I'll see if I can find some pictures on the internet to help)


Imagine a very well cared for, manicured lawn...

source

 

Now imagine across the street a not so cared for lawn, not necessarily ugly but the owners obviously don't spend all day working on it.

In that yard a child is playing.
  The mother is watching him from the window.

The child sees something amazing.

  His eyes light up...

he reaches down and picks it up.

 

Then a smile sweeps across his face.

  It is one of the most.. beautiful.. things he has ever seen!

It is a dandelion.

source

In his innocence he blows it toward the well manicured lawn.

source

You can hear the Mom rushing to the door...."Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

Most of the seeds dropped down by his feet.  A couple seeds went across the street into the well cared for lawn. But a few of the seeds were blown by the wind down the street to a nearby playground, where many of those children have never seen this type of flower before.  It planted and grew. A few had seen the flower before and were reminded about it's joy.  They were then excited to share; and they too blew the flower.

How was God talking to me today?

1.  Don't stop the spreading of the Word of God
2. Many to whom you speak to won't listen and the words will just fall to the ground where you are standing and not go any further.
3. Some people don't want to hear at all.
4. But then there are others who are excited to hear and may even share to others. 
5. Many times you won't know where your seed goes or where it is growing. And you may never know.

It's our job to plant the seeds, but it's God's job to make it grow and get it to the people who need to hear it.



Brrrrrrrrrr

I'm cold!

 

Yep, that's my post for today.

December Done!

My kids are camping out in the family room tonight. I remember making forts and how fun I thought that was.

 

I finished photographing my December book:

I actually have 132 pages in the book not including the hidden journaling cards and hidden Christmas letters, but I'm only counting for 89 Calvinball.

 

I know it's a lot and you can decide whether you want to look at them all or not, but I thought I would post them anyway.

 

I would tell you about each page except that most of them have already been blogged.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bonus points for photographing entire book and putting them into 16 photos total! Shoot! That is digital scrapbooking so I'm counting all 16!

+1 for cleaning the family room while taking breaks to edit my pictures.

+1 for going to a playdate and talking about my album.  I took it too, but unfortunately it didn't come out of the bag.

+1 for going to bed before 2, while visions of Calvinball dance in my head!

That brings my totals to:

 

calvinscraps -89

calvinblogs - 2

calvinbonus -22



 



December Scrapbook & Calvinball

I'm FINALLY finished! Finished with what?  My December book!  And I absolutely love it!

However, this thing is MASSIVE!  I can't even tell you how many pages it has as I haven't counted them yet, but I will.

My friend Doris is playing a little game with some other bloggers and I thought I would play along. I won't win even when counting every page of this book, because some of these girls are big time scrappers!

Here are the rules (straight from Doris' blog post)

calvinball! are you in?

one more day!  are you in?

the rules:
1. the rules are subject to change at any time by anyone.
2. layouts = 1 point
3. the layout is the gold standard. all other projects are measured against the almighty layout.
4. smack talking is expected.
5. cheering on your teammates is also expected.
6. the reward is the huge feeling of accomplishment at the end of the month!

Anyway, I'll post this book in segments because I know it is huge!

Total in counting so far:

calvinscraps -18

calvinblogs - 1

calvinbonus -3

 +2.5 (+3 rounded) 1 point for each hour stayed up passed normal bedtime doing scrappy stuff.

+2 for Friday night same as above (using 2AM as normal bedtime)
+1 for eating cream cheese hamburger dip by the spoonful before bedtime last night.
-1 for the heart burn I got from eating that which caused me to stay up nearly all night.
-1 for almost throwing up and Greg running to get a trash bag in the middle of the night.
-1 (probably should be more) for missing church because had no sleep and stomach upset.
That brings me down to +3 points. I better get scrappin' & blogging! 

There really ought to be some kind of points involved for cleaning while doing Calvinball!  Seriously, I need some major credit for all the cleaning I've been doing!

Very tired tonight...I already turned off the pc once.  Then did dishes and turned it back on again. I've declared tomorrow cleaning day instead of a school day.  Pray that we all feel well and have energy to get some good work done.

Addendum:  Seriously, can I count? Obviously not at 3:30AM!  Usually 16,17 & 18 would follow 15 and not (12,13 & 14 again!) Geeesh!