Template 60, P365, and An Update

Once again, I am majorly behind on posting my Project 365 pics. But at least this time I have the excuse that both my kids were sick and I wound up having my gallbladder removed...right? Valid excuse perhaps? (For more info on that, please see previous post.)

In any case, I have a TON of pictures to post. And a template and an update. And, if you didn't notice, a new blog LO. But first, the update.

As mentioned, I had surgery recently. I feel absolutely great. It took a few days to be able to eat normally again, but now I can eat anything and everything I want:D Within reason, of course. I'm trying to have some self-control...but since now I know my problem WASN'T sugar-related, I've been eating WAY too much sugary junk food. Especially while my mom was here helping out. I'm surprised I haven't gained weight from all the junk I've been eating. I haven't lost any since having surgery either, though. Now that I'm fully recovered, I need to start eating better and exercising.

My mom came to help out with everything while I recovered. It was SO nice. Especially since I wasn't allowed to lift anything over 10 lbs - and Hyrum is already 13! While she was here, my dishes actually got cleaned regularly!! She cooked, cleaned, changed diapers, and more. It was awesome. I could seriously get used to that kind of spoilage!

We did a lot of fun things while Mom was here, too. Mom and I took the kids up to campus for lunch and a trip to the bookstore. We went on several walks since I was supposed to go on lots of little walks everyday. And we went to Walmart A LOT. We also went to the kids' consignment store. We got cute clothes for the kids and Emma found a kiddie digital camera for $2!! It's totally in her Easter basket. It didn't come with a cord, but it uses the same USB as my phone, so we're set there.

We also got a storage unit. We have so much stuff we want to keep (like the clothes the kids have grown out of) and no space to really keep it in our apartment. So we got a 5x6' storage unit for $16/month. Mom helped us put some stuff in it before she left. I'm currently sorting through things to put in storage.

As for the kids, they're doing great. They both recently got over yucky colds. Emma says more and more things all the time. LOL, today she knocked on the wall and said, "it's meeee!" And then right before bed, "I want eat cupcake tomorrow." She cracks me up all the time. One of her favorite movies these days is Sleeping Beauty. She loves to sing Once Upon A Dream and it's SO cute!! Now whenever we put a DVD in for her, as soon as the menu comes up, she says, "where's remote?" and insists on pushing the play button herself. Yes, she knows which one it is. This kid will be a pro at all things technological by the time she's 5. I know there are lots of other funny Emma-isms I wanted to share, but of course I'm drawing a blank. I try to write them down as she does or says them, but it's difficult to do while trying to juggle the needs of 2 kids.

Hyrum is growing like crazy. He's been wearing 3-6 month clothes for the last 2 weeks - and he's not even 3 months old yet! TOTAL opposite of Emma; she didn't start wearing that size till she was 7 months! Craziness. Obviously no supply problems this time! He only wakes up once at night to eat. So awesome. Sometimes he sleeps straight through, too. Now to get him to sleep in his OWN bed...but we're going out of town in about a week, so there's no point in starting that process until AFTER we get back.

Speaking of, yes, we're going on another road trip. The semester is almost over - hallelujah! - and we're going home to visit for a couple weeks. YAY! I'm apprehensive about driving 800 miles with a 2 year old and a nursing infant, but we'll survive. Thank goodness we have a DVD player for the car! We plan to spend 2 days driving. There's no way we'd attempt to drive the whole thing in one shot! But yeah, the trip should be interesting, to say the least...

That has me pretty much caught up. I've been preparing for Easter. Easter baskets are put together, plastic eggs are stuffed with candy for the hunt, hard boiled eggs are dyed, and we bought all the fixings for our share of the dinner. We're going over to Nathan and Jessica's. It'll be fun! Oh, and we're doing this awesome Easter story egg hunt, too. Click here for the link. I'm excited:D

And now for the pictures!

February 25

Emma climbing on Daddy while he and Hyrum nap on the couch.

February 26

Hyrum being cute:)

February 27

We had a scheduled power outage this day (lame), so the kids and I walked over to Nathan and Jessica's to hang out for the day (they had power). Emma and Noah sat together in the computer chair and watched Aladdin.

February 28

Emma leaning over Hyrum's car seat.

March 1

Hyrum being cute and smiley!

March 2

Emma loves to visit Hyrum when he's in the swing.

March 3

Crowning Princess Daddy!!

March 4

Hyrum sleeping on Daddy. 2 months old exactly!

March 5

Emma wearing the crown I made her for her birthday. Of course, she refused to wear it at her birthday party...oh, and she has jam on her face.

March 6

John doing homework, as always.

March 7

Hyrum hanging out in the swing.

March 8

Emma loves to climb on the couch so she can reach the counter next to it. You can see the under side of the counter here.

March 9

Emma and I had lots of fun with stickers!

March 10

Hyrum hanging out in his crib. We discovered that he likes to lay there and look at the mobile turn and play music. As long as he's not hungry or in need of a diaper change, that is.

March 11

Yummy fettucine alfredo for dinner:)

March 12

John and Emma making yummy fruit smoothies!

March 13

I totally slacked; this is the only photo I took this day and it's one of those horrible, out of focus, should-be-deleted pics. And it shows just how messy my living room is. Oh well; at least I still got a pic, right?

March 14

Yes, this is my refrigerator. We went grocery shopping the day before, so it's full of yummy goodness. Sadly, I ended up being too sick to get any of the banana cream pie:(

March 15

Emma woke up the day before with a nasty cough and a mild fever. Poor kid. So we had a sick week - or 2.

March 16

Hyrum napping in the swing.

March 17

I was so sick that I wound up in the ER! When my blood work came back, we discovered that I had an "evil gallbladder" that needed to be removed ASAP. This pic is of the 24 gallstones they extracted during the surgery. Lovely little boogers, aren't they?

March 18

Aw, father and son:)

March 19

I LOVE this outfit on him! It's one of my faves in this size. Oh, and Hyrum started wearing 3-6 month size clothes earlier in the week.

March 20

My mom came out to help post-op since I wasn't allowed to lift anything over 10 lbs (meaning I couldn't lift either of my kids). Emma picked out this bunny at Walmart and Grandma bought it for her. When we got home, Emma decided to ride the bunny LOL. My mom is talking on the phone in the background.

March 21

Playing at the park. I LOVE her expression here! SO cute.

March 22

Hyrum sleeping on Grandma's lap.

March 23

Grandma and Hyrum:)

March 24

Mom and I took the kids up to campus for lunch and to visit the bookstore. We met up with John while we were there.

March 25

Hyrum fell asleep during tummy time (aka crying time in our household).

March 26

Going out for lunch and errand running with Mommy and Grandma. Emma LOVES picking up the leaves that blow into our entryway. We sweep them up occasionally, but they ALWAYS blow back - it's a pretty pointless chore.

March 27

Our favorite grocery store had bunnies and chicks on display for Easter. Emma LOVED looking at them! LOL, before we went to the store, I told her we were going to see bunnies at the store but she couldn't touch them (there's a sign about it). So the whole time we were there (and when she sees the pics afterwards), she said, "I no touch bunnies" while shaking her head.

March 28

LOVE this!! Bwahaha. Total imitation pic here. My mom bought a tummy time mat with this little pillow at the consignment store. So, while I fed Hyrum, Emma picked up this pillow and one of her baby dolls...the picture says it all.

March 29

We dyed Easter eggs for FHE:) Can you tell which ones Emma drew on?

March 30

Hyrum in some adorable overalls I found at the consignment store. Of course, he later peed ALL over while wearing them (in his ear, his hair, the wall, the dresser...). I didn't see any pee on the overalls, but I threw them in the wash JIC anyway.

March 31

Aaaaw :D Blurry and out of focus, but still - aaaw :D

April 1

Mmm, yummy April Fool's treat;) Cat poop cookies on a bed of crushed up Honey Bunches of Oats and caramel syrup dribbled over the top. Yum ;) Actually, the cookies tasted pretty gross. But totally worth it for the effect! Looks pretty authentic, huh?

Aaaand that gets me caught up through April Fool's Day. I don't have any new pages to post (totally slacking there), but I DO have a template for you! It's based off my Feb 5-11 page. Template 60 (woah, I've made 60 templates!! Cool!) is a 12x12" PSD file. Here's the preview:



You can download it here.

Enjoy! I love hearing back from you and seeing your LOs:) Hm, I think it's time to go to bed now! G'night everyone, and Happy Easter!!

Template 30 and Easter

Woohoo, I've made 30 templates! But first, a few other things - including a LO and our Easter story.

First of all, Kasie requested that I set up my download links so that they don't navigate away from my blog. LOL, I didn't remember how to do that, so I pulled out the textbook from the web design class I took 5 years ago;) My html skills are pretty rusty;) I couldn't find it in the book, though. Sooo...I hopped over to Kasie's blog and stole it from her source code^_^ Hope you don't mind, Kasie;) I did it JUST for you^_^

Barb made a gorgeous Vegas LO using template 27! Check it out on her blog. I've never been to Vegas, but looking at her page makes me want to go. I'm anti-gambling, but I know there are plenty of other non-gambling things to do there. Barb, thanks for sharing your page! It's beautiful. I LOVE seeing pages with my templates^_^ It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside:)

Barb also asked me a question about printing double page LOs. I haven't actually printed any yet, so I'm definitely not an expert on it. The only thing I've printed so far is Emma's ABC Book, and it's a 6x6 board book. But I think what most people do is crop them into 2 12x12 pages and THEN print them as 12x12s. I know Kimi of Kimi's Kreations printed several 2 page LOs in a book through Shutterfly, and I'm pretty sure that's what she did. She might have further tips for you:) She also has awesome templates up on her blog. And she just happens to be one of my closest IRL friends;) We were pretty much inseparable in high school.

Those of you who said the book in my self portrait is one of the Twilight books are right! And Kimi hit the head on the nail with it being Breaking Dawn. Ironically, she gave it to me;)

Now on to other things. I still need to write about our Easter this year. I know, I'm several days behind most everyone else. I'm also waaaay overdue for an Emma update. I like to post these things in multiple places because my reader list varies from place to place. Anyway, on to our Easter.

We had a great Easter. We woke up when Emma did and she got to see her Easter basket. She had soooo much stuff in it. I bought her some things, and then my Mom sent 2 different packages full of stuff for her. (Mom has a tendency to go overboard...guess that's where I get it from;)) Oo, and Emma's ABC Book was in it, too. And, of course, some candy. John and I had Easter baskets, too. I bought John an action figure and a CD. "He" got me picture frames that I picked out a few days before;) LOL, he didn't know what to get me, and I didn't know what to tell him (other than digiscrapping stuff), so when we saw the frames at Walmart I said, "hey, that can be my Easter present."

After we played with our Easter baskets, we started prepping a few things for dinner. I made a super yummy honey glaze for the ham and put the rolls out to rise. I'm sure we ate breakfast in there, too. Nothing fancy; just cereal. Then we got ready for church. Mom sent Emma a gorgeous pink eyelet dress. It's a 2T and Emma wears 12 month dresses (and 6-9 months in most everything else), so it was a little big on her, but it was sooo cute. The fact that it was too big wasn't noticeable with her cute white sweater on:)

Then we went to church and it was really nice. I had to take Emma out into the hall a couple of times, but it was fine. LOL, I brought my camera to church, so I snapped a few photos in the lobby;) I got some adorable shots of Emma looking and pointing at a painting of Jesus. I plan to scrap those soon:D I had to lead choir practice afterwards, since we're singing in church this week. Of course, there weren't very many people there. Thankfully, we're just singing a hymn from the hymnbook, so I'm going to ask people to join us from the pulpit right before we sing. It took us a looong time to go home after church.

It was a gorgeous day out, so after we got the ham cooking in the crock pot, we walked around outside a bit. We just walked around the grass median by our parking lot. When we went back inside, I decorated the cupcakes we made the night before. They turned out super cute! We got all the rest of the food ready and finally got to sit down and eat dinner. We watched The Lamb of God while we ate. And of course, dinner wouldn't be complete without dessert, right? We then ate our yummy cupcakes. Then we got Emma ready for bed and vegged the rest of the evening.

We'd planned to do an Easter egg hunt and decorate eggs, but we just didn't have time for it. Oh well. Maybe next year. I DID take a toooon of pictures, though. I took 374! I then narrowed that down to 90 with potential, which got narrowed down to 60 scrap-worthy photos. But I can't use AALL the pics! So I cut that down to 30, and that's STILL a lot! But, I made a really cute page using 19 of them;) I still have a few more pages to go till I'm satisfied with our Easter documentation. Here's the page:







Credits:
Paper - me
Glitter stylesheets - Kimi's Kreations, BCC2
Font - Scriptina

And that brings me to template 30, which is the above LO. Template 30 is a 2 page LO in PSD format. A word of warning on this one: a couple of the photos are on the seam, so be sure not to put anything you care about in those slots (like, your child's face or something). I put cupcake pictures in there on my LO. As always, I'd love to hear back from you and see your pages with any of my freebies. Feel free to leave a comment with a link:) Anyway, here's the preview:



You can download it here.