Megan is so excited that it is finally Halloween and she gets to wear her Belle dress today at "school" and go trick or treating tonight.
Last night I took the girls to the Halloween Fire Safety House at the community center/ carousel museum. The girls had a good time and got to ride the carousel which they love.
Then we carved little pumpkins. Mommy did not do a very good job with the carving, but the girls had fun.
I had a post all typed out.. and lost it! So now I start again.
I love making gifts! This summer I made a gift set for my Aunt Rosie. I presented her with a set of 6 cards, a post-it holder, decorated pen and paperclip, nugget tin and a frame all in a coordinating gift bag. She LOVED it! She was showing everyone who came over (we had a BBQ that day) and days after she was still talking about it. It feels wonderful when a gift that you put so much time and love into is appreciated!
Please excuse the crappy pictures. I am working on finding a good location and better lighting to photograph my projects!
The Gift bag
The Post it holder, pen and paperclip
Her birthday card
The set of cards
The nugget tin
And finally the frame (though there was a picture of my Mom and my Aunt in it when I gave it to her)
All paper, ink, stamps and ribbon are from Papertrey Ink. I also used stickles, Martha Stewart butterfly punch, craft paint (from Wal-Mart), Heidi Swapp flower, Imaginesce Flower (I think) and misc rhinestone brads.
I love Gymboree. The clothes are so cute, and well made. we have outfits handed down from Alanna that Lauren now wears and will be handed to Marin. 4 kids.. and the clothes still look good. Though, Lauren is messy, so some of the clothes for Marin will be play clothes only. (Sorry Sarah!)
Here are the girls in some new Gymboree...Such cuties!
I decided to separate my "family" pages from my hobby pages. Some crafts stuff will still be on the family side.. but I want to start posting more of the fun stuff over here!
I finished the halloween treats for daycare this weekend. Matchbook style treat holders
Forgive the bad lighting. Hopefully this will be better when I move my craft room next month!
The cardstock is SU, Stamps PTI, and PP is Paper Studio (I think)
This is what they look like opened. The top of the fruit treat package has a glue dot behind it to keep it in place. The circle punches cover the staple holding the bottom tab up. These were super easy to do!
I have updated pictures from Deanna Rose and the Carousel Museum in the Aug-Sept and Oct-Nov folders to the right.
After being out of town for a week for some training, I came home to a very busy weekend schedule.
Friday we took the kids to the Deana Rose Children's Farmstead. The kids got to see some animals, catch their first fish, and bottle feed baby goats. Too bad it is so far away, or we would go there all of the time! We did take some pictures, but they are still on the camera.
Saturday Eric was over at my parent's house working on his car, and then Saturday evening we went out for our anniversary dinner at The Raphael. We have been married for 6 years, and yet it seems like it has been much longer. We have known each other since high school (though we were not HS Sweethearts) and were best friends before we started to date.
Sunday we took the kids to the Renaissance Festival. Mom, Billy and Amanda met us there and we all had a good time. Mom bought the girls crowns, so all day they were being greeted and called "Princess" by all of the actors. Megan loved it! One of these years we will have an "Adult only" outing to Ren Fest so that we can take our time in the shops and watch all of the bawdy shows.
So.. That was our very busy weekend. I am ready for a not so busy week! Too bad that it will not happen this week. Tue evening I have a Relay for Life Captains meeting (gotta get a sitter!) Wednesday after work we are all going over to my Grandparent's to help with some projects and celebrate my Bday. Thursday IS my Bday (I might take it off) and Eric is making yummy Chicken Marsala and we will celebrate with the in-laws. This weekend should be quiet atleast!
We had a busy Saturday this weekend. We had tickets for the Barnibum Bailey Circus at the Sprint Center for 3:00, we got there in time for the pre-show where you can go down on the floor, but so did everyone else. So we decided to go wait in our seats. We had much better seats this time (for the Disney Princesses on Ice Show we were in the nosebleed section) though I really should have gotten seats on the side instead of on an end. The girls had fun, but poor Lauren was so tired! She had missed her nap and fell asleep after intermission.
After the Circus, we had time to get the kids home, Eric took the dog for a quick walk while we waited for Dwayne and Carla so that we could go to Starlight for Les Miserables. The show was amazing.. and wet. It rained the ENTIRE time. Luckily we stopped by Cabelas on our way to the Circus and bought some ponchos, so we stayed mostly dry. It was the last show of the season and we loved it though.
I am uploading the circus pictures to the August-September album now!
Megan loves princesses, that is not new. While "Beauty" (Belle) is her favorite, Sleeping Beauty is a close second. At bedtime lately she has started asking to "play Aurora". She will act out the spinning wheel scene. "Touch the spindle, touch it I say" and then fall on the floor in a "deep sleep". Then we have to carry her to bed like a princess. It reminds me when I was little and would sneak into my parent's room at bedtime and pretend to fall asleep so that my Dad had to carry me into my bed. Like a princess. Do all little girls do that?
I need to take a picture of her "asleep" on the floor so that I can scrapbook it!
Did I use qoutes enough in this post?
I was pretty busy this weekend.
I decided that since Eric had dressed the girls in jeans and long sleeve shirts Thursday, that meant it was time for me to decorate for fall. I love fall.. the crisp air, warm colors, Harvest Yankee candles (my absolute fav!). Eric wasn't convinced, but he didn't really have much of a say since he was heading off to work!
Saturday night I watched Jason and Kendra's kids so they could go out for her 21st birthday. The kids were pretty good all night and Megan and Lauren were excited to have a sleepover.
Sunday morning Eric made French Toast (yummy!) before he left for work. I took the kids out back to play, and Justin slid in dog poo, so I gave him a quick bath and got him changed. Jason and Kendra showed up around 1230 to get the kids. After that I got busy cleaning and re-arranging. I moved the glider from the girl's room and put it downstairs. Not quite sure where it will go yet, but I don't want to get rid of quite yet. The reason for this change is that I wanted to get the HUGE barbie house out of the living room. So the glider had to move, the bookcase was moved in it's place, and the Barbie house where the bookcase was. I also moved the toy chest in the living room into another corner, and brought a bunch of toys downstairs to the play room.
Then I vacuumed the upstairs, swept and mopped the kitchen and bathroom, gave the girls a bath, shampooed the carpet where Lauren pooped after her bath (poor thing has the runs.. and didn't have a pull-up on yet. She was so upset!) went ahead and shampooed a spot in the living room that needed it as well.
I got the girls in bed, took a shower, did all of the dishes, cleaned out the fridge and took out the trash, folded 3 loads of laundry and then sat down with a glass of Eric's port and watched the Bones season premier that we had on the DVR for almost a week. It was nice to sit there and enjoy my drink, looking around at the clean living room with all my pretty fall decorations up. I just hope that it is all still clean when I went home since Eric stayed home with the girls today (Lauren can't go to daycare with the runs).
And that was my weekend! This week I have a final due (Thursday), dinner with a friend of Eric's and his 2 kids (Friday), and the circus and a starlight show (Saturday). Hopefully I will be able to relax, and maybe play in my scrapbook room on Sunday!
In the morning, as we are getting ready for school (daycare) Megan tells me what pictures she saw in her eyes the night before. That is how she describes her dreams. A couple of times lately she has told me that she saw " The Grandma that is in heaven" leaning out of a cloud to give her angel kisses. This morning she said that her thumb and her finger were broken and then they were ok. And she also had princesses in her eyes. The first dream I get, but broken fingers? Not sure where that came from! I want to remember the "pictures in her eyes" so that I could scrapbook it.
Tonight is her "family" Bday party at Mom and Dad's house!
I can not believe that Megan is 4 years old. Time really does fly. We had her "friends" party at the carousel museum in town on Saturday. Of course the theme was Disney Princesses since she is all about the Princesses lately. She even got a new Aurora dress just for the occasion!
All of her "best friends" were there and everyone had fun. Tomorrow night will be the "family" party at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I made the cake.. yeah, I know it isn't pretty, but the birthday girl wanted a strawberry cake and neither of the grocery stores in town do strawberry cakes. Unfortunately we do not have a real bakery in town anymore so that left Mommy. I tried!
After her friends party she got her big gift from Mommy and Daddy. A new bike!
I have a great craft room in the basement, right next to a decent sized playroom for the girls.. and yet I never get down there. A couple of weeks ago I saw this:
at Walmart and had to get it for the girls. Since I have had it set up.. we all get "craft" time! Lately I have been making gifts with my Papertrey Ink stuff.
I made this set for Eric's cousin Sam and his girlfriend Meghan when they had their new baby.
On the right is the lid to a gift box that held some baby washclothes (In the same colors as the papers) and a gift card to BabiesRUs. The metal tin in the front holds chocolates. 
Sorry for the glare!
I also made a gift set for my Aunt RoseMarie's birthday.
The nugget tin:
Post-it holder, pen and bookmark/paper clip:
And a set of 6 cards (all different sentiments) for her to give. This one was my favorite.
The rest are in the Craft Central folder to the right. I also decorated a gift bag and picture frame to all coordinate. I had so much fun! Now I just need to start scrapbooking again. I am so glad that I bought that table!
Anyone that knows me knows that I am not into sports. Yes, I will watch the occasional game if we have friends over, but sports really isn't my thing. So why is it that I keep getting sucked into the Olympics and end up going to bed way too late? I just HAD to finish watching the Ladies Gymnastics Final (though I did not stay up for the medal ceremonies) and WOW. Even with the mistakes the USA Team was amazing. And China... again WOW. I did not realize that they are chosen at a very young age (around 3) and literally grow up training for this. They only get to see their families once a year! Those are some talented young ladies.
I also watched the swimming finals. Michael Phelps is amazing. (I know... way too many "amazings" in this post) Makes me wish I had taken swimming lessons as a kid. Not that I would be anywhere close to motivated enough to be that good.
Swimming and gymnastics are really the only events that I am interested in, so maybe I will get to bed at a decent time tonight!
Road trips, reunions and home maintenance have been happening in the Boettcher household the past 2 weeks.
Every 3 years Eric's family has a reunion. His paternal grandmother's grandfather is the patriarch (Wilhelm Hein) and the reunion is for all of his descendants. The picture at left is all of the surviving grandchildren of Wilhelm Hein. There were 170ish attendees at the reunion, and 3 entire branches in the family were not represented. While the majority of the family still lives in Wisconsin (Dairy farmers), there were "cousins" from Canada, D.C./Maryland, Nebraska and Kansas as well.
On our way up to the reunion we stopped in the Wisconsin Dells for 3 days. Megan was sick most of the way up there (not sure from what though) so that made the first day of our vacation go by very slow. I was so glad to see the signs for the Dells letting us know that we were almost there! We spent a day at Noah's Ark (America's Largest Waterpark according to the advertising) and Lauren loved it. Megan did ok, but was not as adventurous as Lauren. The girls loved seeing all of the animals and got to feed deer and even a giraffe!
When we got home we took a couple of days off, did some yardwork (ok, Eric did the yardwork) cleaned the garage and got some other home maintenance items checked off the list. Not as much as we would have liked, but oh well! There are more pictures in the July 2008 Album to the right. Typepad is not letting me format my pictures in my blog post the way I want them so I will just let you look at them in the album!
Last week Eric brought home a book of bible stories for the girls. He got it at the grocery store of all places. It is called 100 Bible Stories, 100 Bible Songs and includes 2 cds with (you guessed it) 100 bible songs. This book is great. Each story is only 1 page, and the facing page has a picture and a 2 line wrap up of the moral of the story as well as an affirmation. The girls love this book and we have read a couple of stories out of it every night for the past week.
The weather could not have been better this weekend. We went swimming at Mom and Dad's Saturday and everyone had a blast. Mom, Amanda and I went to a Starlight show Sat night (The Drowsy Chaperone - hilarious!) and it was a beautiful evening. Sunday was spent cleaning, doing yardwork, watching the girls play in their little pool etc until it was time to head over to Sarah's house for Marin's 1st birthday party. I can not believe that she is 1 already! It was a little sad for me, the fact that Judy was not there to share it with us, but Marin was surrounded by friends and family.
The Booz Allen Hamilton team raised over $5500 for the Leavenworth County Relay for Life this year. The total for the county is over $64k (the final totals has not yet been released). I wonder how much we will raise next year?
The Frymire's are on a roll! Mom and Jason were both promoted this week! You both deserve it!
Also, tonight is the Leavenworth County Relay for Life event! It is not too late to donate! http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RelayForLifeHighPlainsDivision?px=4805361&pg=personal&fr_id=5888
Don't you just hate it when you have a full post written out and you lose it?!?! Ok, I will start again! There are new pictures posted in the May-June 08 folder to the right. ome Birthday party pics and other randomness.
Things are going well in the Boettcher household. Eric built a retaining wall with landscape bricks around the front yard and it looks fabulous! Now we are just waiting to get some rock and dirt to backfill and then we can plant. I need to find some low maintenance, hard to kill plants that like mostly shade. Any suggestions?
Lauren has started to chat up a storm, and is our resident copycat. Anything that Megan says Lauren has to repeat. Megan is still into anything princess and insists on wearing a dress (or skirt) every day. She has decided that instead of being a doctor when she grows up she wants to be a dancer and dance like the princesses. She knows every word to almost every princess song (from both the Disney Princesses and Barbie Princess movies) and loves to sing. They are growing up so fast!
We looking forward to our trip to Wisconsin this summer for Eric's family reunion. And Mom and Dad's pool should be ready for use this weekend, Megan has been asking about it for a month now!
