Back from Indiana

We had a great time over Thanksgiving with Ryan's family in Indiana. Kaden enjoyed all the attention from his cousins and all-in-all I'd say he did fair adjusting to the time zone and still getting plenty of sleep. He got some great early Christmas gifts (I'll have to show you those sometime soon) and we bought ourselves an early family gift while out there.

We got a minivan! Yep, that's right. We always said we'd never own one, but now we do. It was just time for a family sized vehicle. Poor Kaden was smooshed in the back seat on our way out there and we knew we'd never make it back with all his gifts. Plus, since we hope to expand our family it the near future, it was just time.

Ryan's brother is an expert in the art of haggling, so we took him car shopping with us. He helped us secure a great deal on a 2005 Chevy Uplander. We are loving it! It even has a built-in DVD player with Bose stereo surround sound. That was a lifesaving feature for Kaden on the long, 16-hour trip home and we are hearing things on his DVDs we've never noticed before because of the amazing sound quality. I'm sure Ryan would have other features to mention, but for me, the DVD player takes the cake!

I finally got that picture of Kaden playing in the leaves put into a scrapbook page. Kalanice's Designs "Forestia" kit features beautiful fall colors. It's also perfect for kits related to camping, hunting, and other outdoor activities and has tons of great elements that I didn't have room to include in my LO. Be sure to click on the link above to check it out.

Glitter border by Danielle Corbitt.

I also had a lot of fun using Danielle's Pink Xmas kit on this LO of Kaden with Santa. It was so hot on November 17 when we saw Santa. It think it was over 80 degrees! Kaden was sweatig to death in his sweatshirt. There were kids meeting Santa in their shorts. Poor Santa had to have been dying in that suit!

You can get Pink Xmas at SOTB or Digital Candy. Be sure to check out the great additional frames while you are there!
Scraplift of 2Santas by mlewis. Font is comic sans.

Recent Scrapbook Pages

Today was a beautiful 70 degree day. I can't believe it's mid-November already. I'm sure we'll get the cold weather soon enough.

Anyway, we enjoyed the nice weather and played outside in a pile of leaves. Kaden had a great time. He loved to crunch the leaves and "swim" through the pile. Between Danielle Corbitt's "Simply Fall" kit (and checkout the brag book I made!) and the Fall kit that Kalanice's Designs is working on, I should have plenty of options to get these pictures scrapped! Here's one of my favorites:


I have done a few scrapbook pages lately and have a lot more to do in the near future. I went through my picture folders the other day and estimated that I am about 25 pages behind. Yikes! Here is my most recent page using Harvest Spice by Shabby Princess:


I also recently did a layout using Kalanice's Designs' new "Gardenia" kit. It is very feminine, but is versatile enough for a variety of subjects. As you can see, I used it to scrap pictures of a very unhappy, very tired Kaden!

If you'll recall, I told you about a challenge we were hosting at The Star Studded CT blog. For challenge #3, I created a template. I made a page using my design and Danielle Corbitt's "Mandarin Mint" kit. It turned out cute!

I think that's it!!! I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels.

New Family Photos

What a day! We had a 9:00 appointment at Portrait Innovations to have new family photos taken. I set it so early so that we would beat the crowd and Kaden wouldn't be overwhelmed by the chaos. But, it backfired on me. We needed to leave by 7:00 in order to get there on time, so I set the alarm for 6:00. But, I apparently forgot to turn it on! Ryan woke up at 6:40.

So, we frantically got everything together and rushed to Wichita. We had planned to have our pictures taken in cowboy hats. I didn't have one, so we were going to stop somewhere before our appointment and pick one up. We didn't have time. So, that was disappointing to start with. Then, we get there, and Kaden suddenly decides he is hungry and cannot sit still or smile. We ended up only getting the advertised special package and one other photo because there literally were no good ones to choose from. It was so frustrating. It wasn't the studios fault, just our bad luck.

Anyway, here's what we got. I've done some major editing to this first photo. Too bad the actual prints aren't edited. I had some major bags under my eyes and there was some weird black splotch on the background originally.

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No editing necessary here. Just pure cuteness!

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Luckily, the rest of the day was not a dud. We actually had a GREAT time the rest of the day! We met some friends at Chucky Cheese and our boys (all 4 of them...heee...heee...) had so much fun. Kaden just loves rides. He also enjoyed the arcade games. Anything with a wheel to turn, gun to shoot, water to squirt, or a hammer to pound with caught his eye! He's definitely all boy.

Here's a picture of Kaden in his Chucky Cheese bib with his good friend Noah. Aren't they the cutest?

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And here's Kaden on a ride. Ryan was just thrilled to death about this one!

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Is it really November 6 already?

I haven't even adjusted to the fact that it's November yet, and it's already the 6th! Yikes! Life has just been such a whirlwind lately. Kaden and I are both very sick and that takes all our energy away. It seems like I haven't had time to do any scrapping or blogging since I spent the weekend in bed.

I hope everyone had a great Halloween. Kaden had a lot of fun. He figured Trick or Treating out right away. He watched us knock on the door, saw that someone would come with a bowl of candy, we'd ask him to pick one out and put it in his basket, then we'd say Thank You and leave. After a couple of houses, he was going up to the door, pounding on it until someone answered, getting a treat, then flashing the homeowners a smile while trying to sneak a 2nd piece! The bad thing is, he's so darn cute that they'd usually say, "Oh, he can have another piece. That's okay." Then I'd have to be the big mean Mommy and tell him, "Only one!"

Hopefully I'll get all our Halloween pictures scrapped soon. I've created two Halloween-themed quickpage albums, you'd think I'd have time to plop the pictures into some of them! The problem is that my pictures are on my laptop, and the albums are on my external hard drive which is hooked up to the desktop computer. One of these days I'll get organized now that I have my desktop computer back. It's on it's last leg, so I need to get everything important that I didn't lose when it crashed, off of it and onto the external hard drive. Then I need to wipe the slate clean on it and use it only for games and internet. That means the laptop will be my scrapping computer, so I need to get the scrapping stuff on it! So much to do, no time to do it.

We'll in the meantime, here's a cute picture of Kaden on Halloween. Stay tuned to see it scrapped!