Oh Oh

I'm falling behind. Dang!
Life gets busy.
I get forgetful. Dang!

Day 6

Oh oh!
I'm late getting up!
And I lost my picture so this will have to do.
This is our tree.
Boring.
But its too late to snap another one.

Love on the 4th Day

Love.
A big deal in our house last year with my kids.
I don't understand it exactly
but both of my kids really like the opposite sex - a lot!
Boyfriend.
Girlfriend.
Pretty much the norm around here so my ornament for 2006 reflects that.
Young love in all its glory.

On the 3rd day...

I am following someone's blog that is also doing the 25 days of Christmas and today's photo prompt was something fun.
I think my dice fall under that category.
It was my ornament for the year 2004 to represent my Bunko group.
Twelve wonderful and very fun gals I get to hang with for our monthly Bunko gathering of mad dice throwing and much laughter.

On the 2nd Day of Christmas...

Red berries.
One of my favorite Christmas accents is the red holly berries.
Add sparkles, snow, glitter, crystals and they are all the more merrier.

ps. DQ ice cream birthday cake was very yummy.

31 Days of Christmas.

I love all the things of Christmas that sparkle, glitter, and shine. So why not capture a photo a day to capture the moments and the things that are special to me this Christmas of 07. I have my photo from yesterday, already posted a day late but don't have a photo yet today but in a bit here - after Amazing Race airs - I will be getting the camera out to snap shots of Elle with her birthday cake. Once we got home last night we got busy and forgot to eat the cake.

This is Elle on her 15th birthday yesterday. Her friends were over, and they did what used to do endlessly quite a few years ago, dress up. Of course, Elle was the princess, to go with her obsession with princesshoodness. Her friends sported a fun look, too.

Here are her oh so fun friends.

They sported this look when we went out to eat at the local clubhouse bar and grill.

Birthday non-alcoholic strawberry pina colada compliments of the clubhouse.
She could have had another free cocktail when an acquaintance of ours offered to buy her a drink. He was beside himself when we told him she just turned 15. lol

And more Hawk Nelson

More.
I never cease to be amazed at the cell phones that shine throughout the arena.
Makes me remember the days of lighters.
And that ends our Friday night which was a sampler of what was to come on Sat.
I liked KJ52, Hawk Nelson, Alecia Woods, the Drama Team and Chad Eastman a lot but not 100% sold yet.
Ran into Nola, Megan, Paige and others from Our Saviours. Fun.
Even bigger surprise was to run into Katie from the campground.
She's a beautiful girl.

More Hawk Nelson

Same night.
Clothing change.

Hawk Nelson

Headliner!
The crowd was on its feet when they hit the stage.
I have heard of them but haven't really heard their music before.
Hate when I do that because its way more fun to know the band when you hear them live.
I thought they were pretty awesome.
This guy is a great front man.
A way lot of energy.
Fun to watch.

Hea

KJ52

This white rapper guy was excellent. He really got the crowd on its feet.

Revolve Tour

Revolve Tour Mpls. 2007
I liked the way we did this - arriving only minutes before the conference got started.
This was the first place we checked in...its at the Target Center so you can see it is a big, big place.

I actually like this shot better as it shows the Revolve logo. Elle is with her friend Julia from Horizons. Really neat gal, is into the whole urban, cool, design, creative mindset that Elle is in.

And my son.

And here is my son, Jared, with the pumpkin man on the tractor. It was so cool to be at the pumpkin patch with my teenager and friends and have a great time even though it catered to the little ones. More pics tomorrow.

Silly Daughter

My daughter, Elle, is such a silly girl but a lot of fun.
I have all these awesome Halloween pictures but haven't gotten them uploaded so I am going to try and post my favorites this week.

Sights on a Hayride

138 pictures! That's right. A whopping 138 pictures from our pumpkin patch visit which makes my day. Have had a lot of trouble getting the focus right lately but almost all of them are in focus which makes me very happy. Getting a bit better with photoshopping and this picture could use it, but I just want to get it up.
I love the pumpkin patch and so did the kids. The one we went to is geared for the little ones but my teenagers enjoyed it a lot. I am so glad that they went.
More to come...

I'm going to do it.

I said yes. I accepted that part-time sales job at Lakes and Loons, a local publication. Definitely had some reservation that I wasn't anticipating before our meeting. But I am brushing them aside and going to give it a whirl. It should be good. Starting already tomorrow. Nothing like digging right in. Yikes.
So, with this big news, I have no picture.
Tomorrow...

Monday 's Colors

Another beautiful fall day with warm temperatures and the kids were off of school. Wanting to make up for Saturday's lost photo ops I stopped off at a new place...a public boat landing that was very quiet. The colors, in their peak, were so beautiful in the autumn sun light. The girls weren't expecting a photo shoot on the way to the thrift stores looking for halloween costumes but they are always up for photos.
And they want to go to the pumpkin patch this year and carve pumpkins. Oh, that makes me so happy. Last year neither one of them wanted anything to do with pumpkins...so, stay tuned for pumpkins to arrive on my blog in time for halloween.

I am back...again!

OMG, its been way too long since I have been here. Have gotten some great photos during my absence and wanted to post but I haven't. Hard to get back in the groove and get that first post up.
Thinking I am going to change things up a bit. Still wanting to get the photo a day up but want to write more. More about life. More about parenting teenagers.
I still haven't learned my camera...being the slug that I am. It is on my list...seriously, just have to find that particular list. I have really made leaps and bounds in the digi scrappin' world and had thought about starting a digi scrap blog, but I think I will just post the random layout here, now and then.
So, what was the trigger that got me back here? This photo. This is looking out my office this past Saturday on a gorgeous fall day but I was determined to back up photos on my computer but once I looked out and seen the sun had finally arrived I so wanted to get out and take some shots...even texting Elle to see if she wanted me to join her and her friends at the park for a photo shoot. Never heard back but she did call me to tell me she had lost her phone. In the woods. Not a good thing and this is not her style. She was pretty upset as was I. The cell phone was only a couple weeks old. Well, it didn't take long and she was calling me to come get her so I told her I would come out and help her look, thinking I will find it. Ha!
So, one of my best friends, Diane, and I head to a nearby park we have never been to with camera in hand. Park was surprisingly nice. Seeing Elle I could see she wasn't a good candidate for her usual model self as there was evidence of a lot of tears. Optimistic, the 3 of us head out down a paved path for a mile or so, take a short walk on a grass trail to the woods. And here we start our search. Mind you, like most teenagers, her volume is turned off even though I call in hopes of hearing a vibration. Elle gets confused in the woods as this isn't a clearly marked trail. We call the boys and they run out to help us get on the trail again (they had a fort a mile or so into the woods-don't ask). We get to the fort on our own and no phone. There are so many photo ops that I wish I would have brought my camera, but then again, my mission was a cell phone not photos. It reminded me of looking for golf balls but so much worse. Once we get back to the beginning of the trail, we call it quits as night will be upon us soon.
We get home and the tears are falling. I am frustrated because I hate losing stuff. There is talk of shutting off the text messaging and promises made.
Later on I get the idea that if we go out in the night we would see this new phone light up...there has been little wind and no rain yet so the phone would still be good to go. I tell Elle but she is concerned we could get hurt in the dark but I am no, we will have flashlights. Her Dad, out of town on a hunting trip, thinks its a great idea.
So with our flashlights, her ex, Jake, we head to the woods. We see deer on the road in the park. We walk the tar path and there is a bit of moonlight but I am saving our flashlights for when we have to navigate that trail. Its kind of fun. Kind of spooky, too. Didn't want to think to much about horror flicks. We find the grass trail easy enough and find what we believe to be the path into the woods. On goes the flashlights... and our first call to her cell and we are all thinking about light, bears, being butted by a deer, etc...and there was a flicker of light right away...thinking it was a reflection from our flashlight...Elle takes a closer look. it is one new cell phone. Unbelievable. That was just too easy. There would be no navigating of trails in the dark, no fear of getting lost in the woods or encountering a bear. Our big adventure came to an abrupt end. Who would had ever thought. We were all so incredibly happy but no one happier than Elle. Ex might have been a bit dispapointed that his time with Elle would be shortened by this stroke of good luck.
I want to go back and get those many incredible shots that I missed. I also and going to remember those promises made to keep text messaging.

Oops. Missed these favorite teams

Brazil was really whooping it up.
So colorful!

Blurry, but can't miss the plaid skirts.

I love the Caribbean so had to capture the Mexicans. They had the coolest hats.
The thing to do is to exhange club pins and my DD ended up with quite a few from Mexico.
She also was given a Mexican jersey.

USA Soccer Cup Opening Ceremony

The main sponsor, Scwann's, mascot

And the teams roll in...

And the teams start to come in. It is very exciting with a lot of hoot and hollerin'.
This seemed like the closest thing I will ever get to what is similar
the Olympics. I took a bunch of pictures and these are just some of them.
Cropped in Picasa as needed and uploaded from there as well.

This is the biggest youth soccer event in the USA as well as the
Western Hemisphere.

Japan & Sweden

This group from Japan was a lot of fun~!

I was happy snapping pictures of the various teams. I tended to snap the ones with the older kids as those are the ones our girls might meet at the dance.
Those Swedes are a nice looking group - don't you think?

More teams plus DD's soccer club

Snapped this Florida team for any POTD'ers from there.

Unlike last year, the teams came in from 2 different sides. We had great seats but unfortunately my DD came in the other side. Past visitors will probably know she is the 1st blonde on the right.

Sky Divers

Here I thought I might be a little bored. Not so. Once the program got rolling it was quite entertaining. Planes, sky divers, Italian national anthem and a wonderful firework display.

England

Lots of flyovers from various sponsors.
The team below, from England, lit the torch.
They were the only team from England and I believe these are the girls my
DD will be playing.
Poor thing, that big flame did not want to light.