The Drought of 2009 comes to a stormy end...

The Good News: The Drought of 2009 finally came to an end...

The Bad News: The drought was ended by a storm that contained violent winds...

The kid's beloved swingset was smashed and ruined...

The Drought of 2009...

We've received no rain since April...

It's been the driest May/June ever recorded for the region...

The pictures show the lake level in 2005 vs. 2009...

Look Alike? Look Twice!

Aggie was enjoying a bubble bath last night and immediately started making bubble beards! Watching her reminded me of a picture of Laura and me in the bathtub doing the same thing when we were little, and I had to get the camera. The back of the old photograph indicates I was two years old at the time the picture was taken. Aggie just turned 3 in this picture.

...when the bluebonnets bloom

Here are a few photos from our trip to the ol' bluebonnet patch...

March Pictures...

Ike and Grandpa involved in a massive construction project...

A job well done...

The family at the Museum with a dinosaur in the background...

Ike the cowboy...

This is the model of playset that we have bought for the backyard...the kids are anxious for its arrival...

Mick and Anita at the Bellagio in Las Vegas...

Mick and Anita on the Stratosphere tower in Las Vegas...

The whole family at their favorite restaurant (Cracker Barrel)

The family at the new train in Hermann Park...

February Photos...

A trip to the local Pizza Hut with Aunt Kristy and Cousin Jill...

A visit from Uncle Dwayne (Aggie pronouces his name as Da-gwain)

The kids at the College...

December Photos

The blog has gotten out of date, so here are a few December pictures to catch up...
The image above comes from our trip to the Indiana Children's Museum with Gramps and Granny Lou...

Agnes showing off her fancy Christmas accessories...

Ike landing a big fish with Uncle Allen in Indiana...

Mick, Ike and Agnes at the Sealy Christmas Parade...

Snow in Sealy, and some impressive snowmen...

Opening Christmas gifts...

Ike and Agnes in their Christmas outfits...

Ike and Agnes going for a walk in the woods...

Jump to Valentine's Day

These are some projects that we made at our project share meeting in late January. The Love You Much pull treat is in the middle is the project I brought. I had already prepared my Valentine's Day camp at this point so there were plenty of valentine ideas going around. The projects below are projects I made at home. The first one is similar to the treat bags I made for the kids' teachers. The middle project is my attempt at a "mini-pizza box". It's the first time I had seen this idea so I wanted to try it out. The box is about 3"X3" and opens like a pizza box, hence the name. It will hold 4 3X3 notes with their envelopes. My upline saw this at the project share meeting and asked me to demonstrate it at our next meeting which is next Sunday. I've got another sample using my free Sale-a-bration products that I'll demonstrate, and I'll share pictures of it soon. The third item is made using the Petal Card die with the Sizzix Bit Shot die cutting machine. It's one of the projects we made at my last camp.

Speaking of Valentine's Day! Mick bought me the Sizzix Big Shot die cutting machine starter kit for Valentine's Day and several gifting holidays beyond!! I've been having a blast using it so far. I will have to show a picture of it soon as well. Just so you can see what it is that I'm so excited about. The kids bought me a digital picture frame snowglobe! I didn't know they made such a thing, but it is very nice. Mick resized and loaded about 40 pictures onto it so it's all ready to go. When you turn it upside down to shake up the snow, the photo rights itself so you can look at it, even while the thing is upside down!

Santa Claus is Coming to Town! or Third Time's A Charm

The kids have seen a lot of Santa Claus already this year. And after three Santa visits, we finally got a good picture. The kids saw him several weeks ago at Bass Pro shop. Aggie was screaming and crying in that picture because she was scared of Santa. Last week, Santa visited the daycare. That time, Aggie would stand beside Santa with a skeptical look on her face. At least no crying that time. And today, we went to Memorial City Mall to see Santa and get our "official" Santa picture for Christmas 2008. Both kids did a pretty good job and below is what we got. We had told Aggie that, if she smiled pretty and took a nice picture with Santa, he might give her a candy cane. Of course, it turned out that this Santa was giving out stickers instead of candy canes. But Aggie specifically asked Santa for a candy cane, and one of his elves was able to come up with one for her.

Teacher Gifts

The Christmas rush is in full effect. We're trying to finish getting ready for Christmas and prepare for our trip to Indiana at the end of the week. Since the kids only have two days left at school before Christmas, I needed to hurry up and get the teacher gifts ready. Between the kids, there are five teachers plus a couple of former teachers that the kids are quite fond of.

The idea for the two items above comes from Sandi MacIver's blog and her Splitcoast Stampers posting. They are eight Hershey Nuggets wrapped in Designer Series Paper. They truly are a great way to use those small pieces of DSP that are left over from other projects. They are inexpensive gifts, but it's the thought that counts, right?!

The items above are an adaptation from Andrea Walford's blog. She made them to hold a gift card and some hot cocoa mix, but it has multiple applications. For one of my Secret Santa gifts, I had placed a big, flat chocolate bar in the pocket. I scaled Andrea's dimensions up for my purposes here. In this photo, these have a Target gift card and a small paperback book in the pocket. Shelli Gardner had mentioned on her blog that Richard Paul Evans was giving away copies of "The Christmas Box" (you paid postage). He's promoting a new book, I believe. Anyway, I took it as a great gift option for the kids' teachers. I think the presentation adds a lot, don't you?

A couple more creations

Here are a couple more items I made in my burst of creativity. The red box is a tall, skinny box. The general template is something I got from Convention this summer, but I had to adjust it a bit to hold what I needed it to hold. It has a box of gummi lifesavers inside for my Secret Santa person. The designer series paper is from the Bella Rose package. I used rubons from Season of Cheer. The "flurry" is held on by a build-a-brad with a white snowflake rubon.

This next box is the packaging I made to hold my ornament for the TOPICS Christmas party in a couple of weeks. The ornament had to be store bought or else someone would have gotten one like the one in my previous post!

Kid-Free Afternoon

So the grandparents take the kids for a Sunday afternoon. What do you think Mick suggests we do with our few precious kid-free hours?! He suggests I take the time to clean my stamp room! Can you believe that? Well, if I had taken a "before" picture, you'd believe it. There's now a good bit of visible table top, and the dazzling diamonds glitter and white embossing powder have been wiped clean. Stamps have been cleaned and put away in their respective sets. Paper scraps have been bagged. It actually looks like someone could work in here!

Steak 'n' Shake!!!!!

We were out doing a little Christmas shopping last night. Mick offered me three choices for dinner: two were BBQ and the third was the "Mystery Restaurant". I chose the mystery choice, and boy was I glad I did. It turned out to be Steak n Shake! I had no idea they had built one around here. Granted, it's not "close", but it was a nice treat. Aggie really enjoyed the hat!

Stamping and Such

Over the holiday weekend, I had some time to create some gifts for the Secret Santa exchange we have going on at work. The first one is an ornament and matching box that I made using Ski Slope designer series paper, Alpine ribbon, and Season of Cheer rub ons from Stampin' Up!s holiday mini catalog. I got the idea from my friend and fellow demonstrator, Kirsteen Gill. The little rub ons on the box match the design in the designer paper! So cute!

The second gift is some gummi bears inside of this box stamped using the Mr. Twigster stamp set, also from the holiday mini catalog. The idea comes from Heather Summers, a Canadian demonstrator, as posted on UStamp.

And the third, and perhaps not as exciting, is some candy sticks from Cracker Barrel tied with the Alpine striped ribbon and a tag with a rub on from Season of Cheer. I hadn't really been into the rub ons before now, but I REALLY like them....No mess, just rub with a popsicle stick and you've got great greetings!