My Crazy Life

Well, I have been real busy lately and haven’t had a chance to update my blog in what seems like forever. In fact I was shocked to see that it’s been almost a month. That always seems to happen this time of the year though. Hockey season is starting to wind down, new semester at school for the kids, mid-winter/pre-spring yard work, the kids birthdays and Mike and I have birthdays coming up. Toss in a cold and the Winter Olympics and life tends to get a little crazy. Oh and I must not forget that the Amazing DigiScrapping Race is going on too. So here is the run down on what’s been up.

Hockey: The kids had a tournament in Bremerton over the holiday weekend and they played some of their best games ever. Our house tournaments get pretty competitive here because the Canadian teams love coming down. They are way more skilled than the American kids so they pretty much dominate our tournaments. The kids love playing against them, they know that winning will be hard but they love being able to affect the Canadian’s standings by not allowing them to run up the score too much. There were 6 American teams and 6 Canadian ones in this tournament and the Canadians won every game until Sunday morning when they finally play each other.  Our final game ended up being against one of the Seattle Jr. teams that we played and tied with during our regular season and it came down to a shootout to determine the winner alas they beat us in the shootout. The kids have two more games to go before playoffs. We are currently placed right in the middle of our division for playoffs so it could be one of our best playoffs in years. Both teams that are above us in our division we’ve either beat or tied with this season and the two teams below us we have beat both times we’ve played them.

The Junior Team I work with finished league play this weekend. They didn’t make the playoffs this year. It came down to the very last game of the season. We literally had to win just one game in order to make it to the playoffs. If we had made it we would have had to play the first place team and they have beat us almost every game we’ve played against them the past two years.

School: Christina started college in January. She is pursuing a degree in Criminal Justice with a focus on Law Enforcement.  She is enjoying it and getting ready to pick her classes for the next quarter. Alex switched from a traditional high school to an online high school. He is doing really well, it has eliminated the “distraction factor”. We spoke with his counselor and his adviser this past week and they are actually impressed with the amount of time he is spending and quality of work he is doing.  He has set a goal to get caught up on his core classes and would like to go back to Foss for his Senior Year.

House/Yard: We have had some crazy weather this year. Most of the plants think it’s early spring because it’s been so mild. We had frost a couple times in November but mainly rain. In fact it’s been in the 50′s the past two weeks. Today I mowed the lawn, cleaned all the recycling out of the garage and have everything ready for overseeding the side yard that we planted with grass in October. This is the year that we are going to do the garage roofs. The little one needs a pitched roof (currently has a leaky flat roof) and the big one needs completely roofed. It’s leaking like a sieve and I’m beginning to think that we may have to rip off the entire roof, build new trusses and put in a new window. I’m having a hard time not tearing into the project right now and have to constantly remind myself that spring tends to be very rainy and it’s only mid-February.

OMG….talk about mmmmm, mmmmm, good!

A blogger I know who is also a Hockey Mom posted a link on her blog recently that I just can’t resist passing on! Girls, if you didn’t like hockey before you might now and if you liked it before you’ll love the hockey eye candy!!! Pssst….there is a link to more below the photo.

  Click HERE and look for the “Hockey Porn” she blogged about on December 9th!

Great Hockey Shots with the new camera

When I was in Hawaii I received my new Canon Rebel Xsi camera and couldn’t wait for hockey season to start so I could get some great shots of the kids. I haven’t sat and read the manual so I really haven’t been able to get any good shots from the kids first five games. On Sunday I got lucky up at the Kingsgate Arena where we were playing Sno-King Green. The lighting was awesome and I managed to snag a spot between the red and blue lines where the glass didn’t have too many scuffs or scratches.  I posted a bunch on my Facebook page but decided to share a couple of the good ones I took of Christina and Alex. I’m hoping to have a chance over the holiday weekend to read up on the settings so that the photos will continue to improve.

I’m sooooo bad

…about updating my blog!

You would think that life would slow down during the summer and the hockey offseason. I don’t know how I juggle it all during hockey season. I’ve about decided that it’s because I get lazy during the off season and as such don’t get as much accomplished.

We spend last weekend at the ocean and visited Westport for Pirate Days. We did a little geocaching, beachcombing and kite flying. I took some new photos of Washaway Beach . We took a family photo at Grayland Beach on a giant stump that washed up onto the shore and had fun just hanging out with our friends. It turned out to be a great weekend weather wise and this coming holiday weekend is supposed to be another great weekend. Weather should be in the high 70′s/low 80′s which will be perfect for camping and enjoying fireworks.

Since my last posting we have acquired a 5 month old, female German Shepard. We named her Hemi and she is cute as can be. I had my doubts about a “big” dog but she has actually done very well adapting. No fights between the dogs/cats and no “accidents” in the house. Which is pretty impressive considering she was a “farm dog” the first 5 months of her life. The upside 0f her becoming part of our family is that I no longer have backyard “poop patrol”. After 17 years of being the main member of that patrol (the guys mulch it with the mower instead of picking it up) I was tired of doing it. So they agreed and we picked her up two days later. I will admit that she must of known that I was the one she had to butter up to when we went to see her the first time. She pretty much ignored everyone else except me that afternoon.

The kids are getting ready to gear up for hockey season. We traditionally take the month of May off and then in June they start Skills&Drills and add some Drop-in sessions in July so that by August they are ready and in shape. This year they both decided to take May and June off from hockey. They are excited because for the first time in four years they are looking forward to having the same coach as last year.

Did some scrapping and we have one tournament down, one to go!!!

I did manage to do a little scrapping this last week in between work, hockey practice and working on genealogy. Played around with a photo of my niece that I snapped of her the night we had our family photos taken. I used a great ATC kit designed by Tangie Baxter and SherrieJD called Curious Adventures. If you look close you will see that I had a little fun with the butterfly’s. I was invited to join SherrieJD‘s Creative Team a couple weeks ago. She does some real great ATC kits. I haven’t explored the whole “Altered Art” style since I quit rubber stamping a couple years ago but I really like her designs. So I haven taken her up on her offer, joined her team and am going to start exploring some altered imaging techniques digitally. Her designs are available at ScrapOrchard.
Well…hockey season is almost over!! We played at a tournament in Bremerton…we didn’t win but the kids had a blast anyways. People think it’s weird that when it comes to hockey you can lose a game yet still call it a good game. Our coaches have consistently approached each game as a learning experience. Three out of the last five seasons we lost more games than we have won. When the kids were younger their coaches made a point of finding three positives from every game and that is what they would focus on afterwards. Now that the kids are in high school they find those positives on their own and still focus on them instead of beating themselves up over it. Our second game on Saturday was the best hockey the kids played all weekend. All the games from this tournament were streamed live on the internet. Anyone could listen to the audio play-by-play live for free or for $5 you could also watch the game online. The company doing the broadcast offered a CD of the game for $10 w/o the play-by-play or for $25 you could get a DVD with all the play-by-play. We are going to pick up a copy of the game to send to Mikes family in Indiana.
I managed to get a halfway decent photo of the kids in yesterdays game. It is so hard shooting action shots through the “glass” at the rink. Alex is on the right while Christina is the short one watching from the bench. Jeff who does the timeclock at our Jr. A games happened to be one of the linesmen during this game. The guy in the red helmet is one of our star players this year. He is actually an exchange student from Hong Kong. We really enjoyed having him play with our team and the kids will miss him next year. He is heading to Minnesota for the next three years where he will be in hockey heaven.
A bunch of players on one of the teams (not the most respectful nor well loved teams locally) caused some chaos at their hotel on Saturday horsing around in the elevator (boys will be boys I suppose) jumping up and down. Somehow they managed to trigger some earthquake sensor doing that which caused the elevator to lock up while they were in it. Their coach had to call the hotel manager, who in turn had to call 911 to get the fire dept to come reset the elevator sensor to get it moving again. We put in a request to have “Love in the Elevator” played during their game but alas it was denied by the management as they felt it was in poor taste which in retrospect it would have been.

Only three weeks left of hockey for us!!

Actually we have four practices and two tournaments left before we leave the regular season behind. This weekend we are “off” then we travel 45 miles to Bremerton for a tournament. The first weekend of April is our “Daffodil Tournament” which we host and for the first time in years it’s the same weekend as the Daffodil Grand Floral Parade and the Spring Fair out at the fairgrounds.
I haven’t mentioned to our kids that they may miss riding the tow truck in the parade this year. Our best friend (our kids “uncle”) has worked for a local towing company for over 30 years. The company enters one of their trucks in the parade every year. Occasionally he drives the combination tow truck/bus Incident Response Vehicle in the parade and we have ridden along with them tossing daffodils out to kids along the parade route. During years that we are watching from the sidelines he pretends to “run us down” where we are sitting. His family is with him in the truck and we all think it’s funny because who ever happens to be sitting next to us (we pick a certain spot to watch the parade from) thinks the truck is outta control and runs from it while we sit there and enjoy the “show”. Their kids all love waving at their Aunt Laura and Uncle Mike and hollering at us from the truck.
Well..it’s another genealogy weekend for me. I’m still taking advantage of my free month long membership at ancestry.com and downloading images left and right. I found the passport application collection the other night and some of the applications actually have photos attached to them. As a result I have a good photo of a couple relatives that I didnt’ have before. Today I’m attacking the Canadian/US Border Crossing records. There is a huge chunk of Garbett’s and Garbutt’s that lived in Michigan that went back and forth between the two countries. I gather information on all of the Garbett’s and Garbutt’s that I come across because there arent’ alot of us but somewhere along the line we are all tied together.

Three more layouts from the Think Pink Charity Collab Kit

I completed another three layouts from this kit. I decided to post a different preview image of it today. This one focuses on the ribbon and trim that is included with the kit. The paper preview gives you a better idea of the diversity of papers in it.

The next couple of nights are going to be pretty busy so I’m not sure I’ll have time to work on anymore until this weekend. I have a board meeting tomorrow night (I’m the Secretary for our youth hockey association). I’ll be finishing up the minutes on Thursday night so Friday will be here before I know it. Our association is hosting the State Squirt Festival this weekend so I’ll probably pop in at the rink to see how that is going. The kids don’t have games this weekend but we do have two more tournaments to play in.

This layout has a completely different feel from all the others that I’ve created from the kit and I’ve only played with about a third of the kit.
Our office attends one Orthodontic Meeting each year. He pretty much lets us pick between the AAO (American Association of Orthodontics) or the PCSO (Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists). We have picked the PCSO meeting the past two years. In 2007 it was in Monterey, CA and we had fun shopping in Cannery Row and took a daytrip up to San Francisco. Up there we rode the cable cars, visited Alcatraz and shopped in Chinatown. This is the first photo I have taken the time to scrap from the trip.

This last year we went to Palm Springs and the three of us (Jodi, Lee and myself) zipped over to Disneyland and California Adventure for the day. This year the meeting is in Phoenix and we really haven’t planned our “side trip” per se. My only request is that we take in a Coyotes game…provided they are playing at home that weekend we are in town.

I had fun playing with the flowers and string element with this layout. I actually created the border by using the element twice on each side. It turned out to be the perfect “paper” for showcasing my niece in her kimono. She participated in a Japanese Immersion program from Kindergarten thru 7th grade. She is one smart cookie and the program challenged her in a great way. I honestly believe that if she had been in a “traditional” school she would have been bored to death.

This last one is a photo of Velvet again but was probably taken when she was in 2nd or 3rd grade.

As I said before…it’s absolutely amazing how many ways this kit can be used. It’s definitely worth every dollar that you donate for it.

A rare weekend with no hockey!

Go figure, it’s a holiday weekend during hockey season and we have no games!!! But it will all be back to normal next weekend. Actually we decided to forgo going to a tournament this weekend because we have two next month plus playoffs. The kids have playoffs the first two weekends of March and the juniors have first round playoffs starting next week. Our association is hosting the State Squirt Festival the third week of March, we have a tournament in Bremerton the fourth weekend and host the Midget Daffodil Tournament the first weekend of April. Which means that our camping trip this weekend was the last one until Mid-April when we go to the International Crab Races in Westport.

This was also the last week of the ADSR for Brandie and I. The final challenge of ADSR4 was hosted by We Are Storytellers.com where we were challenged to create a layout with at least half the page being made up of journaling about why being a storyteller is important to us. We had to collaborate and were limited to two small photos in the lower left corner, at least five elements, no more than two papers and had to incorporate a piece of word art supplied by the challenge host.
Brandie sent Laura a photo of her and why she thinks storytelling is important. Laura took her own feelings about storytelling and combined it all into one story. We decided to keep it simple so that the journaling could be the focus of the layout as requested.
Journaling:
For the past six weeks Brandi and Laura worked together as a team to preserve twelve stories
as part of the Amazing DigiScrapping Race. They have now completed all twelve challenges and may or may not win the Grand Prize. Winning the Grand Prize is not the most important aspect of the race, it’s the satisfaction of knowing we have preserved almost a dozen individual stories for the enjoyment of future generations. These are priceless stories that we all have within us ready to be told.
Both Brandie and Laura as individuals have a passion for preserving information, photos and stories of their ancestors for future generations. When Brandie comes across a story about one of her ancestors she tries to create a scrapbook page so that future generations may know what that person was like. This is very important to her because she doesn’t know what her father’s family is like and her mother’s family is from Germany. When Laura comes across family photos and family stories she adds it to her genealogy program and posts the intormation on various family websites so that other family members can enjoy it too. Eventually Laura gets the information preserved as a scrapbook page. We both feel that when you have a story about an ancestor it becomes a way to know that person a little better, even though you have probably never actually met the person in real life.
The simple stories we record about our day-to-day life now, are the stories that future
generations will cherish for years to come.

Kit Credits:
Treasured by Liella Designs for the Trash to Treasure Freebie Hunt

Word Art provided by We Are Storytellers.com

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

I have lots to get done today before heading out to the hockey game. It’s the last home game of the regular season for our Junior A Tomahawks and I am running the clock. Its a nice change from goal judging and after running the clock about a dozen times over the past four years I have finally hit the point that I’m no longer nervous doing it. The scorekeeper and I get along great so we always have fun working together.
Before I head out to the game I really should get at least one of our two attics organized. Half of the one that has all the holiday decorations and the kids old clothes is done so I’ll probably finish that one first. But what’s left to go through is all the clothing that I was saving. Those special outfits and such from when they were little kids. Christina has way more saved than Alex does. I don’t know if it was because I had sewn so many “party” dresses for her or what. But I did save almost every outfit that I’ve sewn for either one of them that wasn’t stained, torn or ruined. The old joke was that Christina had so many dresses she only wore the same one twice a year. At that time I was working for Hancock Fabrics and as an employee we could make display garments then keep them for free. Well I was the only one that had toddlers at the time which meant that every couple of weeks one of the four “kids” displays was changed and I generally had sewn the clothing. I have several dresses that I made for myself and a couple of shirts I made for my husband. Then there are all the “craft” items we would do for the holidays.

So the half of the attic that is left to go through is pretty jam packed. I’m thinking I’m just going to make sure that the clothing containers are still sealed and go through all the Halloween Costumes we have up there. The kids got into them once or twice in the last couple of years and I know that they are laying all over the place. I’m thinking about just taking photos of the costumes then donating them to Goodwill.