Mark is famous!

Recently had the chance to participate in an on-line article at creatingkeepsakes.com. Well, it's up now! Mark is now famous in the scrapbooking world (but certainly not his first time in one of my published pages.) Check it out!

"Follow-up" Article

Childhood photos

I have been scrapping a lot of my own childhood photos lately. It's really fun to take them and restore the color in my photo editing program. It's like they have new life. I need to go through my mom's stash of photos again and scan a bunch more.

Scrapbooking my photos and memories has been really fun. I have so many memories of growing up that I figured I should write them all down before I forget them one day. It's all still very vivid in my mind. Maybe it's because we moved away when I was 11 and all the growing up years were "fossilized" in my mind, connected to the place we lived and played. I hope my kids appreciate these memories and find them entertaining one day. Oh, and thank you to my parents for taking so many wonderful photos of us! Here are a few of the pages I have completed.


These are 3 of the 5 different houses I lived in before going away to college.


This is the field behind our house in Petaluma. We used to feed the horses that lived there.


This is my mom, sister and I on our bikes. It's the story that I heard over and over again about how my little horsey started rolling down our hill and all I could do was stand there and cry until my dad went and got it for me.


This is me when I was about 9 months I think. Wasn't I cute?

Weekend getaway

Last Saturday and Sunday, my sister Noelle treated us to a weekend away and a night off for our 10th wedding anniversary. We spent the night in Oxnard and then spent Sunday in Santa Barbara. We had a great time with the kids. We took them to the beach, went out to eat by ourselves, went to Stearns Wharf, looked at art along the boardwalk, and went to State Street to window shop.

Along the way, we discovered Jamba Juice. Mark had never had it before and I think the last time I did was when I was in college. Noelle introduced us to it and we all loved it, especially the kids. We split a small one for them and a large one for us. It was almost better than going out for ice cream, almost.

We also discovered something about Luke that I guess we should have already known. On the street there were some people who were draping snakes on peoples shoulders and asking for donations for their snake rescue program in the area. We passed by a few times and one of the snake handlers walked up to Noelle and just put it on her shoulders. Luke was fascinated. He kept petting it, feeling it's body and trying to look it in the face. When they took the snake off her shoulders, Luke said, "Want snake on my neck!" So, I asked one the handlers to put a small one on his shoulders. He was BEAMING! He was absolutely delighted to have that snake on him. We were so suprised, but I guess we shouldn't have been. He loves to touch living creatures. Oh, by the way, David wouldn't get out of the stroller. But, he did manage work up the courage to touch the snake on Mark's shoulders with the tip of his finger! Just so you know, I declined to be draped with a snake as well! Here are a few photos of our adventure.





Oh, and in case you didn't know, Santa Barbara is just gorgeous! Mark has decided that he wants to live there. Unfortunately an average size 3 bedroom home runs about, oh, a million dollars. Maybe we could live in a tent on the beach instead.

Summer Vacation Photos!

All the kids with their Great-Grandma Arnold

Great-Grandma Arnold with the youngest member of the family, her great-granddaughter Anna

David's first catch

The two birthday girls, Sarah and Grace, in their birthday princess outfits.

David and his cousin Rebekah

It's summer vacation time...

and I have come back with loads of pictures!

We just returned from a week in Indiana with Mark's family. An annual summer vacation tradition for us. Sadly, this will probably be our last weeklong summer vacation with the entire family. Next summer we will be moving to Indianapolis and we will see our family much more often then we do now.

Each year there is usually another baby (or 2) to add to the mix. This summer there were 12 kids, from age 14 all the way down to age 4 months. Not to mention Mark's grandmother, age 92, his parents, my mom (her first trip to Indiana), Mark's three sisters and of course, Mark and I. Yes, that's 21 people. Luckily, the neighbors offered us their cottages so we were split into 3 houses. That helped the sleeping situation a lot. The kids had a lot of room to play and we had 2 kitchens to work out of. Feeding that many people 3 times a day is hard! We took turns making meals and cleaning up this time and that helped a lot.

So, what do we do the whole week? We went to the Aunt Nancy's annual Luau pool party, we went to the beach and swam in the lake, we played at the park, we pulled out the kiddie pool and sprinkler, we had a birthday party for 2 of the girls, we played lots of cars, we built forts from blankets, we fed the ducks, we went fishing for the first time, we had a baby dedication cememony for Emma, we shopped, we watched movies together, we basically had fun as a family. We also changed a lot of diapers, we wiped a lot of noses, we cleaned up lots of messes, we gave each other our colds and fevers, we mediated lots of toddler "disagreements", and we spent a lot of time holding babies.

I really can't believe how much the kids have grown since we last saw them. I'ts been 8 months since our last visit. Baby Emma is now 9 months old, we met baby Anna for the first time, Grace turned 3, Sarah is turning 4, Cate and Luke are both 2, Rebekah turns 5 next month, David is 5, Michael is 7, Joshua is turning 10 this October, Mark is 12 and John David is 15! For those of you who remember our wedding, John David was our ring bearer. Yes, that cute 5 year old is now 15! I can't believe how fast time flies.

It's good to be home, but we sure will miss all those kids and the rest of the family. Hopefully when we move closer they won't grow up so fast.

I'm having trouble uploading images. I'll try again tomorrow.