June 29- July 5

The picture scrap is dedicated to Mike this week. You see, one of the saddest things of being a new parent has to be growth spurts. The baby is very needy and uncomfortable for a few days and at the end- you have to retire cute outfits, knowing very well if you ever want to use them again you'll need another baby.

This past week Caleb grew A LOT, and out-grew one of Mike's favorite outfits: Caleb's car jumper. This made Mike sad, so I thought I would take some pictures of Caleb, take a few of them and make the following picture scrap.

Caleb is now wearing 3-6 month old clothing! It only took him 14 weeks to get there! It seems like it was just yesterday he could barely fit into his Newborn stuff.

Regardless of his size he is still our little buddy.

WHY I LIKE DIGITAL SCRAPBOOKING...
I consider myself a "crafty" person, not secret-combinations-crafty mind you, but I like to do cutsey stuff every now and again. The problem is- I MAKE MISTAKES, and mistakes take up your resources.
When using a program like Photoshop to scrapbook, I can make mistakes and then undo them without using white-out, wasting paper or ruining photographs. You can find free digital scrapbooking elements online like at shabbyprincess.com or other websites.

I'm creative alright, creative through trial and error. : P

Anyways...

Exciting things are happening this month!

• Shelly's Birthday was the 1st
• Fourth of July
• Brent is getting married on the 10th! To Andrea nonetheless, which is a big bonus! We really like Andrea! We were about to make a deal and trade Brent for her.
• Angela's Birthday is the 19th
• Angela's Rebirthday is the 20th- celebrating 5 yrs of being a member of the Church!
• Caleb will be 4 months old!
• Angela finally gets to visit the Boston Temple (that will be 8 temples I've been through!)

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

June 22- June 28, Lookie!

No, I'm not talking about CALEB (although he is quite a masterpiece). I'm talking about the blanket.
There we go. I made a tie-fleece blanket for Caleb to lay on. It is 4 feet long and O-SO cuddlily! It was really easy to make, it took less than an hour which is nothing compared to the 38 weeks it took me to make Caleb!

My mom actually made him a smaller blanket that we use for the swing and carseat- we call it the "poof blanket." He loves that blanket as well.

Newborn Caleb with POOF Blanket

Selecting the fleece for this project was very difficult. I was wandering around Jo-Ann's Fabrics trying to find that "Caleb" fleece, ya know? Ten mintues later, I gave up. The fact is, my son is almost three months old and he still doesn't really have a personality that I can rationalize a fleece selection on. So, brightly colored stripes and blue it was! : )

Don't get me wrong. My son does have quirks, he smiles, he babbles to us, but most of these things are pretty random. I guess the blanket's wacky stripes can represent that.

He loves to cuddle and eat the tassles, that's all that matters, right?

I made another blanket for someone in our ward and I plan on making another for Shelly (Mike's sister).

While I had the camera out, I thought I would snap a few shots of our living room since it is somewhat clean (we had the missionaries over last Friday).

So here they are:

Yes, that is a computer screen... and, yes, it is almost as wide as our bookshelf... and, YES, it was Mike's idea. : )

So, here is an interesting fact we learned this week about our ward- it has about twenty bapstisms a year. AND, we also learned that the Stake President over here made a "prediction" of sorts, he said that he sees the stake doubling in size over the next few years. And us moving here makes us a part of that- glad we could help out. : )

June 15- June 21

I hope everyone had a great Father’s Day!
Here’s what Mike got for Father’s Day:
From Angela-
-Men of Valor book on CD
-Of Lions, Dragons and Turkish Delight: C.S. Lewis for Latter-day Saints on CD
-All of the Borne movies
-Passage Way to Zarahemla movie
From Caleb-
-If You Give a Mouse a Cookie Collection and Activity Book
-A Caleb Coupon for clothing (because he spits-up on Mike a lot more than he does on me).

From Church-
a big cinnamon roll (oh, yeaaaaah!)

Congrats, by the way, to all my friends who got married or had babies this past month! YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!

Some Massachusetts Facts from the Desk of Angela:
FACT #1 Friendly’s is delicious.
Now, you westerners will not know what I am talking about, but trust me…mmmmm, mmmmm. It’s a restaurant that you to go to for the food and stay for the ice cream. We bought a new batch of Friendly’s ice cream at the Stop and Shop (ß----- this is the grocery store chain out here)… Mike got the royal banana and I got pistachio. On June 7th they give away a free scoop to every customer to celebrate summer.

FACT #2 GPS was made for places like MA.
Massachusetts does not believe in “signs” or “directions” and with all its thick woodlands here, there are no such things as “landmarks” like in Flagstaff where if you are heading towards the mountain you are heading north.

FACT #3 You can drive on the shoulder of the road. Legally.
I have no comment on this.

Caleb Bulletin:
Caleb has finally gotten down a routine… well… for now.
We wake up around 6:00, eat, and dance, eat, then he falls asleep in his swing.
Then he wake up, eats, plays, tummy time, talks, eats, lays in his play yard watching his mobile, eats, falls asleep in his swing.
Then he wakes up, plays with daddy, gets a bath, eats until about 9:00 then he sleeps in his crib until about 4:00, then I feed him and he goes back to sleep… until 6:00.
My favorite part of the routine is dancing with Caleb in the morning. He has his own playlist which includes four songs: Got My Mind Set on You, Walking on Sunshine, Don’t Pull Your Love, and Footloose. I’ve tried other songs… they just don’t work. I lay Caleb down and start playing those songs and he wiggles and giggles as he watches me dance.
He has gotten really good at talking to us. He goes “a-goo,” “naw,” “oOo,” and sometimes when you least expect it he does a “b” sound. I’ve been trying to teach him how to raz, but he hasn’t gotten it yet. (No, he is not crawling yet, Grandma.)

Here’s a summertime recipe for your ice cream!
Easy Hot Fudge Topping:
½ C sugar
2 T Cocoa
1/8 t salt
¼ C water
2 T butter
1 t vanilla

Mix first three ingredients together, put in sauce pan, add water, stir, warm mixture and add butter, once butter is melted add vanilla and boil mixture for 1 mintue. Remove from heat, let sit for two minutes. Serve over your favorite ice cream with whipped cream and chopped nuts. :)

Here are some scrapbook pages I’ve been working on for Ka-bob.

I've been using Photoshop to create the scraps on this site as well as elements from Shabby Princess.