Sheepie

Romy's play was last night. It was hilarious. It's iprov style and the teacher guides the play and the kids kind of go along as she leads and those who can't retain thier lines, just repeat the teacher. With kids ranging in ages 3-9 it was pretty funny. Some kids hammed it up, others refused to participate and were bratty. Romy did a great job, and took it very seriously. she delivered her lines loudly and clearly and on time.

After the show we donated her costume to the teacher as well as a few others I had made for Miss Cheryl to keep.

Afterwards we went to the Texas Roadhouse for dinner. Both grandpas were there and MeeMaw was also there and we had a really nice dinner.

And yes...Batwoman was in our play. For those who may not be familiar with the story of the Ugly Duckling, Batwoman played a vital role in her transformation into a swan. It's a ittle known fact.

ipod romance

Shortly after I started to date Matt, he converted me to Ipod-ism. The ability to have every song I can think up at my fingertips at any time, is wonderful. I started to really see that I needed an ipod when I made my first solo trip to Chicago, and having an ipod to watch Lost on- spared me having to talk to other people on the plane, plus...hello...LOST.

But Ipods have one fatal flaw. They, like man, are born naked. They must be cothed.

Matt, Parker and I enjoy wasting our resources making sure our ipods are decked out in the latest styles and we justify it by saying the skins protect our ipods.

My ipod has been on a downward spiral for some time and we did all we could to save it, but it has officially committed suicide, and in a way that apple will not repair it. Since Matt Got an itouch as an award from work, we decided not to buy me a new ipod, and to give me Matt's old one. 80 GB's of love, pure love, baby. I could not call myself a good mother and keep his old skin, though, even though it was pretty cool.

When I chose my new skin, both Matt and parker "needed" new skins as well for thier ipods,lol.

We found our new skins at http://www.gelaskins.com/

I don't have a pic of their skins, but here is my new baby, all decked out.....

scrapping blog to stalk

http://gotsketch.blogspot.com/

I'm posting this as more of a reminder to myself to check it out when I am stumped.


Parker noticed how long my favorites list is in my computer and said "Instead of calling it a favorites list, why not just call it what it really is?"
"what's that?"
"The Internet."

Maybe I need to limit the number of sites I bookmark.

Cutie Baby

I did this layout of Miss Abbie. I still don't have my "groove" back in scrapping, but cleaning my scraproom at least gave me enough space to be ungroovy.

We're missing Abbie a lot these days, but sadly, our utter laziness and our transformation into human sloths wins every time.

And for all of my family who objects to the "only" niece, it looked stupid to have "only Olson" niece. We adore and love Ashley, Sarah, Maddie and Kalia tons as well. If thier parents gave me more pictures we'd scrapbook lots of cute layouts about them as well. And by we I mean me and I don't know why I am writing in the voice of a crazy person.

The next thing you know I'm going to start saying things like "I really am a nice person....."

Shutting up now.

Here's the layout.

I don't do whitespace

I suck at whitespace. I choose the wrong colors and don't know how to use it without feeling like my "real" layout is just floating there.

This layout was a partial scraplift I thought I could replicate the use of white space and actually do a layout with this aspect and not have it feel like something is missing.

I was wrong.

I am bad at whitespace.

I tried, that counts.

I do love this "layout" by Romy that prmpted us to create a new rule for all of the girls this weekend: No scrapbooking pages without pictures. Romy has created many layouts that were simply six hundred stickers on a sheet of gaudy 12X12 paper. This one she did because she had started without me after asking me "MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?" until I said "YES!!!!" just to get her to stop asking "MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?MomcanIscrapbook?"

Saturday-yay

After blowing our budget at the expo, we decided to skip the crop and headed home and talked Matt into loading us all up and hitting Lagoon again. The arm-twisting consisted of "Hey, honey, do you want to go to Lagoon?" and he was on board.

What a fun time we had, Emma and Zane suddenly got brave and did all of the scary rides. There were hardly any lines at all, even for Wicked and so everyone but the little ones rode that at least 2 or 3 times, They did the Colossus a few times and Emma even did the Samauri. ( I know only people who have been to Lagoon know these rides, but they are some scary rides, let me tell you. Parker won't do the Samauri.)

Grey and Jane and Roe got brave and did the Wild Mouse and loved it- I hate that ride-- and The Spider. It was so much more fun when the kids weren't being weenies.

We did spend Friday night scrapping and Katie made this layout for her "Olson 9" album who pronounced me the Queen of Sunglasses.

More layouts

I did this one of Matt and Kate. Those who know what we are going through will understand why this made Matt choke up.

The picture is blurry but the layout has a decent beachy feel, can't feel any other way with a tan and pale blue color scheme. I was going to use a different picture on this to hilight my lovely farmers sunburn I got in California, but it looked wonky so I used this cute pic of grey. It was so stinkin cold at the beach that day but he just had so much fun. I think he and Roe liked the beach more than disneyland.

He's such a fun cute kid.

And he is the master of armpit farts.

He's awesome.

The weekend crop begins....

I started this layout in February and it sat there on my table waiting for me to finish it. I realized that the way I laid the pictures out, left me no real focal point. Bleah.

So it sat....sucking.

As I start off a weekend fo scrapping with Em and Kate, I know my first layout always sucks, so I may as well finish one that sucks from the moment I slathered glue on it.

So, it's not my favorite, but I think I did find a way to make one of the pictures the focal point by using all of those arrows by Scenic Route.

Scrapbook Expo

This weekend.
I'm going by myself today- I may take Roe because she has a cough and it's been awhile since we had some 1 on 1 time, and tomorrow I'll take the two older girls.
This expo comes twice a yeat and I'm due for a weekend of scrap crap. I haven't done squat since the LOAD challenge.

I have managed to get my whole house clean except the craft room and take about 3 loads of crap to the D.I.
The Dishwasher, however, I fear has committed suicide. We can't figure out what the problem is and it's really frustrating.
Anyway- I'm excited to head out to Sandy and just lose myself in glue and stickers and bargain bins at the Expo.

Fun Fun Fun

Well,now that it's a done deal and nobody can ruin the surprise for the kids, our top secret fun idea was that instead of going on the family vacation to see Mount Rushmore this summer, we bought Lagoon season passes for the whole family! We took just the girls today, as Romy and Grey's dad was in town visiting. There were no lines at all, so Matt, Kate and I did Wicked three times, and Em and Jane did that musical ride thingie they love. (It's late. My brain is fried. I don't remember the name) Normally the line for Wicked is a good hour. It was 5-10 minutes today which was awesome. We did Colossus twice and Kate and Matt did the rocket. I did that ride with Matt once and hell to the no. That was too scary. We all did the white roller coaster twice. Too cold for any of the water rides, but this summer we will go weekly, probably in some way or another. Matt and I both LOVE amusement parks and so do the kids, even the chicken kids who wuss out on rides love them, so we decided that was way more fun than a road trip into the middle of nowhere. As we learned from the many books & shows that have become popular lately about how the world would be without man, Mount Rushmore is the ONE thing on earth- the only thing that man made that will last forever. In 10,000 years it will still be standing, and I can always go visit it in the next life,lol. Lagoon won't be there, so we need to go as often as possible now.

Anyway- FUN.

Then we took the girls over to Mom and Dad Olson's for the evening while Matt and I attended the BYU Alumni Traditions Ball. I wore the blue dress, Matt wore his BYU tie and it was fun, too. Too many Nazi-swing dancers who didn't understand that if you really are a good dancer, you don't run into other people and take up the entire floor, but that's what 25 year olds do, I guess. I'm an old lady who just wanted to dance and look into my handsome husband's eyes. There was an acapella group there, they did a good job, I'd never seen an a capella group perform before. On the way home Matt did some of the beat-boxing like he did when he was a BYU student heavy into choir before his soul was sucked from his very body,lol.

We're beat, I'm only up because I'm starving and trying to get this protein drink down so i can sleep, no sleeping in tomorrow because Kate has a talk. 9 am church is a real toughie for us, and we're such weenies about it because the building is across the street from our flippin house. We're total weenies, I know.

a new blog to stalk

www.thepsychoexwife.com

I love

This picture. :)

It just makes me burst with happiness.

We have a top secret plan for this summer that also makes me burst with happiness.

Life is all about happiness bursts, something to remind myself on a rainy day when winter just won't go away.

Sheepish

We finished Romy's costume for the play last night, note the sheepy shoes.....

We also made a bunch of headbands with animal ears for the teacher and a funny bird costume, but Romy will be the sheep.

We spent the evening at the park and then took the kids out to eat last night to Bajio, Romy's least favorite place. She decided to take a stand and refused to eat her food, and it wasn't her best choice. I made her eat 5 bites and she got really upset saying she couldn't swallow it. Matt took over and patiently and lovingly got her to chew and swallow the amount of food she was required to eat and by the end of it, she was giggling. He is such a good father.

Romy is hilarious in this costume, she was prancing around the house making sheep noises and it was really funny.

my new baby

I picked this up at Joann's today- I don't NEED it, but it was on clearance for a steal. It comes with a starter shape set and a starter alphabet. I have looked and none of the alphas they offer are amazing, but we're talking to the woman who has about 500 bucks worth of QK dies and I have used them maybe twice.
I'm cleaning out the scrap room again- it is still a disaster after the LOAD project and with an expo coming up in 2 weeks, I want my room ready. I'm bringing Em and Kate to the expo this year, we'll load up our stuff and spend the day there like last time when just Kate and I went.

Tonight Romy and I are going to begin making her costume for the little play she and her theater group are going to put on, Romy is a sheep. We're also making a few other costumes to donate to the teacher because she is providing costumes, but her supply is really bad and she said if anyone wants to contribute, they can. We'll also make a bunny costume and a bird costume.

The class is really cute, lots of little kids and it's just a low key, easy little class where they learn theater basics and put on a small improvisational play. Romy has wanted to be in one for a little while, and when I reminded her last night she had play practice, she said "Yeah, so I can practice for when I'm famous." And I said "yep, sure.."

Roe said "Well, if I'm famous I can be on TV, right?"

"yeah."

"So wait...I don't have to be DEAD to be on TV?"

"Um, no. Why would you think that?"

"It's just the laws of physics, Mom."

She's such a funny kid. Weird as heck, but a freaking riot.

In this turmoil filled political climate....

One candidate stands out among the others.........

Here we go Grizzlies

Today was a busy day- Conference, we cleaned the family room totally (holy crap what a mess) and we went to a Grizzlies hockey game. I was taking Kate to the boathroom during the first fight where a guy on the other team was hit so hard they had a crew clean up the blood on the ice afterwards, and at the same time some drunk got in a fight with the mascot and was ejected from the game, but I was there when the whole team got in a huge brawl that left with every player except the goalies having penalties and it was right in front of us. The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever and I have to admit, I love when they slam into the plexiglass and start beating each other up as well. Something about brawls on ice skates that just doesn't quite add up in a very entertaining way.

The Grizzlies won in overtime, it was a great game and Greyson managed to escape without a black eye this time. :)

It's not the Prom, but close

BYU is having a formal alumni event and we're going. The dress is "blue tie" and Matt and I are excited to go to a formal dance together and spend the night being fancy. After looking every day forever for a dress that was formal, modest, and....blue, I found this number at Macy's. Blue satin and everything,lol.

At least we get to skip the pictures with the parents, the corsage and making out in my boyfriend's basement. matt and I will make out in our own basement and he'll get to first base, unlike my Prom date.

Springing

The spring cleaning bug has hit me. Hopefully it will last long enough for me to finish some of the bigger jobs I want done around the house. Yesterday I removed 4 large boxes of "get this junk out of here" junk in our bedroom and re-arranged the furniture, I also decided that Grey's days of bunking n the family room are over and he moved back in to his old bedroom with Zane and they had to help me clean out that terrible pigsty. Thank Heaven's Zane has a big closet to store all of his crap he cannot seem to part with. He, of all of us here, has the worst case of pack-rat syndrome. When we moved Grey's bed, we found that every time he has cleaned his room in the past year, he has simply shoved everything under his bed. This is an illness everyo one of the 7 kids seems afflicted with and no matter how much we talk to them, all 7 do this. Matt says he did it as a kid as well, I had some royally messy rooms, but I knew that when I was told to clean it- shoving stuff under the bed or in the closet was going to get me in big trouble.
Ergh.
Regardless, the truck is loaded with toys going to goodwill, and they family room is now minus one bed.