Time goes by so fast!

I ran accross this photo today and can't believe it's been just shy of 5 years ago this was taken! The boys were both so little!!

Taken 3/11/03. Mateo was 3 yrs and 5 days old. Jaxon was 6 days old!!























Here's one of Jaxon's hand in mine. All togther now, awe...

My Close to My Heart Open House Invitation:

You’re Invited!!
What: My 1st Close to My Heart Open House.
When: Saturday, February 2nd - come any time between 1pm – 4pm
Where: My House
Why: An informal way to check out the great new papers, stamps and fun accessories in the Spring Idea Book! I have examples of some of the new products for you to see in person and play with, as well as some sweets to enjoy while you look!

For those of you that don't know, last year I became a Close to My Heart consultant in order to enable my need to collect more paper, pens, stamps and fun embellishments. I love just about everything that's in the catalog!

If you have any interest at all in paper crafts, card making, scrapbooking, etc., you’ll probably love Close to My Heart! If you want a preview, visit my website: www.kandi.myctmh.com.

I hope you can make it! Any questions, email me at kandi@myctmh.com. Hope you see you Saturday!!

Getting ready for a card swap

I have a Close to My Heart get together here locally with some other consultants tomorrow and I'm participating in a couple of card swaps. Just thought I'd share the two cards I made. For each swap you participate in you make 15 cards then swap with the other participants. If enough people participate, you should end up with 15 different cards back to use as examples or inspiriation. Can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!! Enjoy!

We walked with the Dinosaurs today!

We surprised the boys today with tickets to "Walking with the Dinosaurs" at the Portland Rose Garden!! They were very excited. They didn't realize what we were doing until we were walking up to the arena, then they figured it out.

It was a pretty spectacular show. I would recommend it to all ages. Some of the dinos get a little loud, so that may scare some wee ones, but other than that it's not scarry. They've done an amazing job of creating the dinos. They seem so lifelike.

Here are the boys before we went inside:























Here we are waiting for the show to start:




Our seats were pretty close to the floor, so that was nice to see all the details on the dinos. I was amazed at their movements, including their eyes! I asked the boys what their favorite dinosaur was today and they both said it was the ANKYLOSAURUS. They thought his tail looked like broccoli - I'd say it's closer to asparagus :)

Here he is...
My favorite of the day was the gentle BRACHIOSAURUS (I prefer the herbivores). It was about 30 feet tall and measured about 75 feet from head to tail!!
And of course we were all impressed the the great T-REX and her baby!!






















** I can't take credit for the dino photos. My camera doesn't do well in the low light, so I searched the internet for other people's photos. It looked exactly the same today!!

This one's for you, Jill

Here's..........Toni.

I was talking to my co-worker Jill today and telling her how much personality our guinnea pig Toni has. She's always wanting to see what's going on when she hears a noise. Sometimes I think she might be a better "watch dog" than our actual dogs!

She's been a fun pet to have around. I think she's been with us for about 2 years now. The dog's don't even mind sharing their space with her.

This photo's a little dark, but I thought it was a cute photo of her.

So much for my craft room...

Well, as the title says "so much for my craft room". Ever since the first winter in this house we've had a water leak in one of the bedrooms downstairs. We first noticed it when the room was still Jaxon's nursury (he's almost 5 now!!!).

Anyhoo... after having the builder's crew out here each winter, it was time for round 4 this morning. They came to try to investigate the leak once again. Last time they did find the source of one of the leaks which ended up being the window, which they replaced. The other problem area has been in the celing.

I have been trying to create a little craft space for myself among all of the insulation and missing sheetrock. I was doing pretty well, until they called last night and said they were going to come by this morning. Now my stuff's all crammed into one side of the room and the spare bed that was in the room is now thrown out into the family room. I thought all the kids' toys looked bad! I'm sure they don't even notice. They're not usually bothered by clutter. :)

So, here's a couple photos of the room. One that shows the window wall and the hole in the ceiling, one that shows my stuff pushed to one side of the room and one of the boys at home in all the clutter in the family room.

Oh.. in case you're wondering what they concluded today... they figured out that the large window above our master bath soaker tub (upstairs from this room) seems to be the source of the leak. They trimmed out the 4 exterior windows on that side of the house (all 4 just to be safe) and put flashing above them. We're crossing our fingers that this will solve the problem. Now we sit and wait until the next big rainfall... Wish us luck!!

Update on Joshua

For those of you that have asked about my cousin's baby boy, as of Wednesday afternoon he was doing well. Joshua had heart surgery on Tuesday afternoon up at OHSU, just about 1 week after his birth. Amber said today that Joshua is doing good. He did just have open heart surgery, so he does still have some recovery time ahead of him and your thoughts are prayers appreciated.

The condition that required Joshua to need surgery is called "Transposition of the Great Arteries". Here is a link to the American Heart Association website and their explanation of it.

http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=11074

Thank you again for your well wishes.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow...

Oh the weather outside is frightful... No I'm just kidding. We awoke to a little bit of snow this morning and can you believe this much snow has the schools in Forest Grove closed today!! I just got an email this morning from my friend Philippe in Norway and he sent some beautiful photos of his home in the 1 meter of snow they received in 24 hours. They probably still have to go to school today! Oh well, too bad the adults can't have a snow day too. It's off to the babysitter's today for Mateo & Jaxon.

Belated Holiday post...

I hope everyone had a great Holiday season!!

We had a nice Christmas. This year we had my Cousin Amber and her family (husband Grant and two year old Anna) staying with us. They live in Klamath Falls, and Amber was due to have a baby sometime during the holidays and needed to deliver at OHSU, so they stayed with us for about two weeks. It was nice having them here. I'm sure it was probably hard for them to be away from home for Christmas, but I think they had a pretty good time.

We tried to do a little bit of sight-seeing with Amber & Grant during their stay, but the weather was pretty bad to do too much outdoors. We went to the Oregon Zoo one day. It was cold, but it wasn't raining that day. There were hardly any people there, so we practically had the Zoo to ourselves. I think the kids had a good time. We also went down to Saturday Market in Portland one weekend. That's always a good place to people watch!! Chico wanted to take Anna to ride the Carousel at Jantzen Beach, so we did that one day and took a drive through the different areas of Portland.

Christmas day:
I didn't do a very good job of getting many photos this year at Christmas, but I did get a couple good ones and thought I'd share...

We got our normal GIANT Christmas tree. I think this one was about 12 feet tall this year (a little smaller than last year). I had Jaxon stand in front of it Christmas morning to show how big it was. I also got a cute one of the boys together in front of the tree in their jammies...



Here are some photos of the boys opening their gifts...

This was one of the gifts that Jaxon got from Santa. I love the expression on Mateo's face! Jaxon's really into his Geotrax Trains, so he got some additional pieces. He really does a good job of building tracks without help from anyone.
Here's Mateo with his gift from Santa. He was very excited!! He's been asking for a DS for quite some time. He got the Star Wars Lego game to go with it!!
I didn't get a photo of Amber's family, but I got a quick one of Anna opening one of her gifts while sitting with Amber.
New Year's Eve:
We all managed to stay awake to see the ball drop this New Year's (minus the kids). I probably only stayed awake because we had company. We got to hear the usual gunshots and fireworks in the neighborhood as the clock struck midnight.

As for Amber's baby... Amber went in to OHSU early in the morning on January 2nd to be induced. After laboring almost all day, Joshua John Knoll was born at 11:52 pm!! He weighed in at 8 lbs, 13 oz and was 21 inches long (a big boy and he was a week early)!! Joshua is scheduled to have a heart surgery tomorrow (1/8/07). My mom and I got to meet Joshua on Sunday and he looked just beautiful. He was asleep while we were there, but even asleep I could see that he resembles his big sister Anna. I can't wait to see him again. Our thoughts are with Amber and Grant while they await Joshua's surgery and speedy recovery.

One of my side jobs...

I have a couple of side jobs that have to do with my love of crafts. I became a "Close to My Heart" (CTMH) Consultant back in April 2007. CTMH offers great products for Scrapbooking and Stamping. I've never been a Scrapbooker and I'm still not. I've tried a couple of layouts and hope to do more in the future, but I love to make cards and alter items using all the great papers and accessories.

When I signed up my goal was not really to sell much product. I basically wanted to get a discount on supplies for myself. I've done a couple of small gatherings for some friends and they went well, but I haven't put a big focus on that at this time.

I do plan to have an open house hopefully sometime in January. The new spring "Idea Book" (that's what CTMH catalogs are called because they do have lots of great photos of artwork to go along with all of the products and offer a lot of inspiration) came out on January 1st. I'd love to get copies to anyone that's interested and let people see actual samples of some of the new papers and stamps that are available in this new book. I'll let people know when I schedule the Open House. You can also check out the link on the right side of my blog to my CTMH website.

I did do a scrapbook layout for a contest through CTMH and I thought it turned out pretty cute, so I thought I'd post a photo of that one. Enjoy!!

Here we go...

OK, I'm joining the world of bloggers... finally!! I'm going to give this a try. It may be a bad idea because I really don't need anything else that keeps me from doing what I'm supposed to be doing around the house (housekeeping is sooo overrated in my opinion).

I love reading other people's blogs - even people's that I don't know. I'm on the computer way too much, but oh well... Maybe this will turn out to be a good way for our family and friends to keep up with what's going on in our lives.

I hope you'll check back often and see what's new. Enjoy!!