Pumpkin Fun....

Yesterday we took Olivia to pick a pumpkin at my parent's house. My dad is awesome because he grows pumpkins just so the kids who come around (neighbors, etc) can have one, and be able to pick their own! Olivia has been getting one from him for quite a few years now and I'm not sure who looks forward to it more - the kids or my dad!

First you have to find the perfect pumpkin!


This is the right one!


Having my dad help her cut the stem because "it's prickly."


Showing off her HEAVY pumpkin!!!

And here are some fun pics of Olivia out front with the scarecrow...

Holding that heavy pumpkin again!

And one last one of the three of us (MJ, Carrie, Olivia)

What a great day!

Guess Who's Here?!?!

Olivia is here again to visit us! She is only here for a short 24 hours this time though. We had tons of fun last night playing To.y Sto.ry Man.ia on the Wii - or as she likes to call it - "To.y Stor.y ManiaC" Too funny! She has seen ads for this game and was so excited that we had it! However she was quite disappointed to find out that it is now "only manufactured at the No.rth P.ole." The only way to get it is to ask Santa for it!!! Teehee!!!

Gotta hit as many bullseyes as you can!


Concentrating very hard on hitting the bullseye!


Jumping for bonus points....


Lassoing with Woody....

Of course the evening wouldn't be complete without some sort of sweet treat. MJ baked cupcakes in her little feet baking cups. They were very cute! Olivia had fun putting tons of sprinkles, etc on them!

Here she is showing off her new PJ's that we got for her to keep in her drawer of clothes that we have for her here. She was so excited about them that she "wishes they were daytime clothes."

And finally, the toothless grin as she has lost her two front teeth!

Up for today- a trip to my parent's farm to pick a pumpkin, some lunch, some errands, and then to meet Mama.

A Plus

I just have to share.....

MJ is sitting here correcting homework. The assignment was to find numbers in your house/world. Write down the number and where you found it.

I think this kid deserves an A+:

"Quantity 30 - My mother's prescription bottle"

"375ml - The Jack Daniels bottle"

Let's just hope mom wasn't chasing the prescription with the JD!!!

Oh. my. gosh. If my kid turned that in, I would be a bit embarrassed - but then again, maybe those are the ONLY numbers they have in that house...

Fall Frolic Crop

On Saturday we had tons of fun with our friends Laura and Sue at a 12 hour "Fall Frolic" crop. It was 12 uninterrupted hours of nonstop scrapbooking! We got ourselves all packed up - you need a lot of stuff when you are scrapbooking for that long!



When we arrived, there was a cute little goodie bag with a candy bar, pretzles, and bottle of water for us:


Here we are taking break for a quick pic:


Here is Laura and Sue:


A couple more pics of us working away and our table:

We had so much fun and accomplished A LOT!!! MJ and I got 18 pages done each - that really put a huge dent in our album making! This store has also started giving a 20% discount to teachers, so that was a bonus for the day as well! While we were there, we also signed up for "Crop instead of Shop" which is another crop being held on Bla,ck Fri.day! We are already looking forward to that!

I'll take a few pics of our favorite layouts that we completed and post them in a couple of days!

My Honey is the BEST!

I had a great birthday last week - MJ made it really special! On Sunday, she let me open some of my presents one day early! Here is the stack of things.....



Opening some fun school supplies! I got pens, notebook, folder, and lots of other fun stuff. (I know I am a total nerd for getting excited about school supplies - but Stap.les is one of my absolute favorite stores!



This may seem kind of silly, but I keep saying that I want a shredder - so I got one for my bday!


Of course, I had to find lots of things to shred just to try it out!



On Monday, my actual birthday, she continued to make my day special. We work in the same school, and all day long, I found little presents in my mailbox with cute little cards. She even snuck a card and a gift into my lunch box! When we got home, there was a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers waiting for me as well!

When we got home on Tuesday - waiting in the doorway was my final prize - the JUST RELEASED Toy St.ory Man.ia game for W.ii - we had so much fun playing it! For any of you have been on the new To.y Sto.ry ride at Holly.wood St.udios in FL - the game is JUST LIKE the ride - tons of fun!

It's so great to share those special days with someone you love!

I can tell we're back to work!

I can tell we are back to work because it has been a whole week since I posted. There just isn't as much time to keep up with things! We had a good week at school - in many ways it seems like we never left. MJ has a pretty decent class this year which is a major blessing compared to the class from hell that she had last year! I am in the midst of fall testing for the entire school, so I don't get outside of my room very often. That takes the whole month of September and then I get to start my "real" teaching.

We had a great weekend this weekend. Yesterday we spent a large part of the day with my parents celebrating my birthday (it's Monday the 14th). They bought me some new shoes for work, a Li.fe is Go.od shirt and drink glasses, and took us out to lunch. It was great to spend time with them! We also stopped at a jewelry store while we were out and MJ got me a new charm for my Pan.dora bracelet.

Today we did a major organizing of the scrapbooking room - we went through all of our stuff and we have three bags of paper and stickers that we are bringing to work tomorrow to give away. It is stuff that we will never use - some of it we looked at and wondered why in the world we even bought it! We also got all packed up for the 12 hour crop we are going to next Saturday.

So, a nice mellow weekend being productive and celebrating my birthday - can't ask for anything better!

Fabulous Weekend!

We had such a great long weekend! Three day weekends just can't be beat! We went to our scrapbooking and quilt clubs on Saturday and then when we got home my mom called and needed us to help them put up hay. So, we grabbed the dogs and off we went - we ended up putting about 350 bales of hay in the barn with help from the neighbors as well.

On Sunday we took a trip to Jo.Ann's Fab.rics to check out their La.bor D.ay Sale - we had a little too much fun. Let's just say that our receipt was 90 inches long! Here is the pic to prove how long it was:




Sunday night and Monday we had lots of fun sewing. We did our quilt blocks for September so that those are all done and ready for next month. Here they are, however, we are not real excited about the pink fabric in them. I don't know what the person was thinking when they picked that!






We also got a pattern for these adorable little wallets. We made a couple of those on Sunday night too.

Here is MJ's:





And here is the one I made:





On Sunday afternoon MJ made herself a sewing maching cover and I worked on making a tree skirt for our Christ.mas Tree. I have ALWAYS wanted to make my own tree skirt, and finally found a pattern that I liked, so we picked out the fabric for it!

Here is the fabric we picked (you'll have to wait until I finish it to see the whole thing!

Summer Quilt Blocks

In addition to our Scrapbook monthly club, we also do our Quilt Block club on the first Saturday. So, today we'll share our quilt blocks from the summer time. We got both of them done last week so that we are all caught up and ready for the September block. We have been really enjoying doing this!

Here are our July Quilt Blocks:





And, here are our August Blocks:

First Saturday Page Kits

We were on a scrapbooking frenzy last weekend and got five months of 2008 finished - YAHOO! So, we really aren't as far behind as we thought we were! Only about a year!

This Saturday is the first Saturday of the month which means Scrapbook Page Kit Club. We have missed the past couple of months because we were on vacation and we are very excited to get back. We went and picked up the kits we missed so that we could get August's kit done before we go on Saturday. We actually really liked the kit this month. Here are our layouts from the August Kits.

MJ did a nice layout of rafting in Colorado from last summer.







I scrapped some Disney pics from last summer:


Can't wait to see what our next kit will be!

1 down.....179 to go

Well, we survived our first day of school! Here we are all dressed and ready to go this morning. My mom thinks it is the funniest thing that we take our First Day of School pictures still. I think it is just what you must do on the first day! We both had a great day and are still trying to get back into the routine of things!

Here we are - with our lunchboxes of course! Isn't that what you are supposed to have in your first day pic?!?!





We made these cupcakes for our staff as a treat - 8 dozen of them. Then we made 2 dozen more for MJ to give to her class. We are making 2 dozen more tomorrow for me to share with the staff at my other school on Friday ( I work at 2 different schools).



Here's a closeup of the cupcakes - they really are cute!