It has been a while....

I don't know where the time has gone and how it has been so long since the last time I wrote on my blog. I guess things have just been kinda busy since we have gotten back from New York, but not that busy. I just haven't made my blog my priority for one reason or another. I never even really finished posting everything that I wanted to say about Word of Life camp, but in a nutshell, it was just awesome. On the way home from New York, we stopped for a few hours a Niagara Falls and wow, what a beautiful place it is there. You just have to see it in person to get the full effect.

Last week, July 20th-July 28th was the Elkhart County fair and that kept us busy for a few days and then just this past weekend, Lori and I had another scrapbook show in Grand Rapids, MI. (On Friday night we went to see "No Reservations" with Katherine Zeta Jones" and it was a great movie!) On the 22nd, we took Adam and Logan to Camp Michawana for 2 weeks at Team Timothy, and they won't be home until Friday. Seems strange here without him for this time, but it has been nice not having to run him back and forth to work all of the time. That boy really needs to get his driver's license!

The boys did well on their 4-H projects, but they didn't get most of the ones they signed up for completed this year. Between vacation, baseball and Word of Life camp things just didn't get done. Hopefully, next year will be better.
Jared took Scrapbooking and got a blue.
Adam took Weather, (a poster about wind) and received a blue/Reserve Champion.
He also took 3 potted herb plants and he got 1 blue, 1 blue/honor and blue/honor/reserve champion.

I don't think I mentioned it, but the day we got back from New York, my laptop arrived so I have had it now for a few weeks and am just loving it. Right now I am sitting on he couch with it in my lap and Tucker curled up beside me, and earlier I was sitting out on the patio with it. It is just so much nicer to be able to sit anywhere I want and still be online.

I am playing a scrapbook game at The Scrapbook Site called, "So You Think You Can Scrap" and each week there is a new challenge which we have a week to complete. I missed he first week since we were still in New York, but they built into i that you can skip a week. The challenges have been just that...challenging...but so far I have managed to get them done and uploaded on time. Until the game ends we aren't supposed to upload them to any other site but The Scrapbook Site gallery and our blogs, so I am going to go ahead and add them to this post, but won't add them to my Slide until later on.

The first challenge was to use an Elsie Flannigan Sketch, at least 3 photos and 2 different patterned paper by two different manufacturers. Elsie's style is definitely not my style, but I made it work. My layout is based on Sketch #7.
Elsie's Sketches


Week 3 was a Lucky 7 challenge, the title had to be something along the lines of 7 Things I am Lucky o have and also had o include, 7 photos, 7 buttons, and 7 journaling strips. This was hard for me since I don't think I could possibly use 7 photos on one layout, so I had to make it 2 pages and had to run to Walmart to get photos printed just to complete this challenge.



The Week 4 challenge was even more of a challenge for me because it focused on journaling which I am definitely not good at. We also were supposed to create a layout about a childhood memory and how it relates to you now. It had to have at least one photo, bu not necessarily a photo taken during your childhood. I was very perplexed about how I was going to do this one, but when I really started to think about it, I know I had to journal about all of my summers that were spent with Grandma and Pa-pa. The photo was going to be hard to come up with though.
I finally remembered that I had a photo of Adam when he was little with Grandma and Pa-pa on one of our Wisconsin vacations. I was a great photo for this layout and when the journaling was all said and done it was two pages long...so another 2 page layout for me.



This weeks challenge is to use music lyrics on a layout, which is once again something a bit out of my comfort zone since I have never done that before, but I think I have a pretty good idea rolling around in my head so we will see how it all comes together.