MSU v. Iowa Game

back in october, we took a trip to MSU for our “we hope it can be annual” MSU football game. last year, we didn’t take zo the game because 1. she was little and really didn’t dig loud noises, 2. we were given 4 free tickets. heh. so this year, we definitely wanted zo to be with us.

the MSU v. Iowa game was chosen because it was on a weekend that the kids had friday off. turned out to be a night game under the lights. kinda fun. would’ve been even more fun if the spartans hadn’t lost the game in the last 2 seconds…but never mind that.

here are a few shots from the weekend. it rained ALL.DAY.LONG. and it was cold. but luckily, the skies cleared right before game time so we did not have to sit in the rain…just the cold.

this was taken in the hotel room and i absolutely loved it….but it’s a bit blurry. oh well, i used it on a sb page anyway. love the kids’ expressions.

seriously…it was freezing (and misting). think this would make a good christmas card pic? no?

we made sure to hit SBS (the student bookstore) and a new place to stock up on green gear and then we met up with chris’ best friend kevin and hit one of our old stomping grounds for lunch. of course, back in the day, the place was called “Dooley’s” and was an irish pub (um i use this term loosely considering it was an off campus bar that served mainly pitchers of cheap american beer) and underneath in the basement was a dance bar called “Sensations” (which most of the boys called “Frustrations” if you get my drift…). anyway, the building is still there and on the front porch of “Harper’s” was an inflatable sparty (see blog banner) and well, we just figured that was a sign. it’s a microbrew now and the beer was pretty good (but we laughed because it was served in plastic cups) and the tables and floors were appropriately sticky. ahhh college.

we parked the car on campus and walked almost the entire length of campus (it’s 2 miles) to get to the Breslin center where we could watch the annual green and white basketball game for free.

love this basketball arena. see how close the fans are to the floor? it’s sooo loud!

love the way they decorated the key.

there really isn’t a bad seat in the house. hope we can make a real game this season, but my guess would be we’d be up in the upper deck. course that’s where we watch the football games so what’s the big deal?

after the green and white game, we walked past the stadium and ran into the band. the tubas were warming up or making sure they were all uniformly shiny or something. but it was fun to listen to the fight song as we passed.

zo preferred to walk campus on kevin’s shoulder’s (really, who wouldn’t?). and i am bummed this is blurry. i’ve been messing with camera settings but the trouble is i forget to PUT THEM BACK when i’m done messing. this is the only proof i have the kevin was with us.

once again we were up in the nosebleed section. but this year, we were AT THE WALL. yep. i managed to buy 6 tickets at the back wall of the stadium. it takes 10 minutes of hard hill climbing to get there and 20+ minutes of moving like cattle to get back down and out of the stadium after the game. but the view is great and no one is kneeing you in the back.

this was as close as i could get with my telephoto.

at halftime, the girls insisted on staying to watch the band (even though they were freezing and wanted hot chocolate) i’m glad we stayed it was a lot of fun to see the band.

and when they weren’t on the field, the band is in the end zone. student section is to the left of them. ahhh i remember those bleachers…..sigh.

the weekend was not the best as not only did the spartans lose but my FIL was gravely ill with legionella pneumonia. thankfully, he is finally on the mend but it was a scary weekend. we were just grateful that we were in michigan already and could all make the trip to see him at the detroit hospital before coming home on sunday.

here’s the first page from the weekend.

supplies can be seen here.

DD 4th Quarter Sale

The final Designer Digitals quarterly sale for 2009 is just around the corner! It means 30% off EVERYTHING in the ENTIRE store!

The sale begins tomorrow, 5th November, and runs through the 10th
November, with a full day of chats on Saturday 7th November, Digital
Scrapbooking Day. Join me at 7pm EST
where I’ll be talking about random inspiration with an exclusive freebie for you designed by Katie Pertiet.
You can see the rest of the schedule here.

And it just so happens there’s a brand new e-book in this weekend’s sale!

There is a LOT of great inspiration in this book and I’m very excited that it is out! Hope to see you at the chats on Saturday and have a great time shopping!

Tying up the Loose Ends

i don’t think it is actually possible to start a new year completely fresh. there are always loose ends that need to be tied up. but for me, there are lots of loose ends. because by barely existing the last few months, i left a lot of things undone or partially done. and what i found was that the thing i was worst at was finishing. so my focus is on finishing things. checking them off the list and then throwing out the finished list.

so this week is a week of loose ends and project wrap ups. such as:

putting together the yoga calendar (this is not exactly a loose end….this project has just finally gotten to the point where i can do my part of it but it needs immediate attention)

getting chris’s expense credit card account cleaned up. forgot to transfer money from his first expense report 6 months ago (probably spent it on groceries or socks) and so we owe the account. finally figured out how much.

get 2 new toilets. this is just a project that we’ve been waiting to have the money to do. we’ve got a guy coming over this week to take care of this for us. just as soon as i pick out my bowls….

putting the laundry away. can’t remember the last time i did ALL the laundry all at once. now i need to get the rest of it sorted and put away. of course, tori just cleaned her room and found an entire bin of dirty laundry for me…..so maybe i’m not so caught up.

need to make a check list of little home projects. nothing big (like toilets) but things like WD-40 the master bedroom closet door, the pantry doors, new lightbulb for the deck light, re-hang the quilt over the couch in the family room, put our smoke detectors back up…they’ve been off the ceilings for a couple years now due to a short that kept making them go off all the time. should probably fix that.

so here’s to tight knots.

and just so this post isn’t all words…here’s my latest page…

supplies can be found here.

Madison Photowalk

a couple weekends back, the boys were camping at the boy scout illinois jamboree with 1500 other scouts so the girls and i decided to take a road trip to madison, wi. my girlfriend katrina had flown in from california to watch her little brother compete in the ironman. the race was on sunday so we went up on saturday to go out to lunch with them and then do a photo walk with katrina (complete with ice cream of course!) prior to the big event.

katrina is an amazing photographer and she even teaches classes at Get It Scrapped where photographic neophytes like me can learn new tricks. i must admit, i was hoping she’d photograph the girls and then send me the pics…but she did one better. she made this photo collage page for me instead. and i love it.

Tori ran into her 5th grade teacher up there as well. Her husband was competing in his 4th ironman. so amazing!

Justin did a great job and finished 400th out of over 2100. it was very fun to hang out with him before the race and then see some of katrina’s photos. what an amazing accomplishment.

all in all, a great road trip.

She’s Going to Be an Actor

she already likes being on stage. she can sing  and it seems to come naturally to her. and of course, she keeps faking me out when she’s not actually sick…..oy.

supplies can be found at designerdigitals.

Plans and pages

The visitation and funeral are tomorrow and weds. so nik and i are flying out tomorrow morning. she’s going to go thru chicago so we can make the trip to cleveland together. it’ll be a quick trip as we’re coming back home on weds, but a necessary one. we both want to go.

while we are there, we are actually going to be staying at grandma’s condo. and we’ll get to see our cousins danni and beth. i can’t remember the last time i saw beth. danni we get to see every couple of years. it’ll be good to catch up even if the circumstances aren’t ideal.

this weekend i ended up doing a lot of scrapping. most of it i can’t post as it’s for an upcoming project but i did manage to do a couple pages that i can show off. i haven’t made 7 pages in 3 days in a really long time. it felt pretty good.

all products are from my favorite digital store….designer digitals. they are having a contest for another ipod nano by the way. you can check out all the fine print here. free stuff is always fun!

it’s tough to get photos of a 13 year old swimmer…hence the back shot. but at least i could record his 2nd year of swim team.

this page was a saturday scraplift at DD. which means we were to be inspired (in my world that means COPY!) the pages that is chosen. i played around with the crop of this photo and then did very little else. i just love it.

Divine

had 9 people in the house for the past 6 days (on and off) and we’re
getting ready to head to mammoth cave so a big post is not in the
cards…but here are some quick highlights:

nik and chris walked the rock n roll half marathon in chicago on sunday. nik’s 2nd one, chris’ first one. both can still walk although it was pretty funny to watch them move on monday…..

connor just got registered for 8th
grade. football starts up next week and then we are balls to the wall
when school starts. i always look forward to school starting but as the
schedule gets more hectic, i don’t get AS excited for the start of it
all….

tori and zo are in swim lessons. tori just passed into
level 10 (the highest level) by swimming 8 laps of freestyle, 2 laps of
breast and 2 laps of butterfly. her butterfly is getting better, but
it’s still rough. zo will HOPEFULLY get into level 3 tomorrow. send
brave girl vibes to her at 12:30pm tomorrow please.

my sister
taught me how to work my new blog…..i won’t link to it yet. still
needs tweaking but i’m excited to have my own site.wheeee!

and
i haven’t had much time to scrap with all the people here but i did
manage to whip out this page with some new products that are coming to
DD soon…..

just love how this girl is growing up. simply divine.

40

dessert is brownies with walnuts, raspberry sauce, raspberries and french vanilla ice cream. i’m sooo not a cake person. this was perfect (came along with a rousing rendition of ‘happy birthday to you’ sung free of charge)

A Tidbit

until i can wrap up my may blog post with all the pics….these pages will have to do….

journaling reads: i'm not going to tell you this was the safest thing to do with your little sister, but it was sweet…she loved it. [and for the record, i didn't see this until he was coming home...i stopped them for a photo and then stopped them from doing it anymore!]

leave it to tori to take glue and socks and end up making $36 from selling crafts in the front lawn of tim's house. the two of them are quite clever!

school's out and the days are filled with swim team practices, vbs preparation, playing with friends and reading for the summer reading program. it's all good.

Drive By Post

zo and her best friend sarah. love this pic. and i love that the template allowed me to make this page in 10 minutes. credits here.