my mother's day gift.....

we have been so busy that we just got this put up. we got this beautiful sculpture at the holland tulip festival earlier this month. it is a gorgeous copper sunflower made from copper tubing and copper sheeting.
the petals are hand cut and hammered and then welded to the base. it has a blue gazing ball for the center...

and little crystal beads representing water droplets attached to the hand cut and hammered leaves. i love it and it looks great in our yard. thanks honey. 

50 random questions.....

 
i found this on a scrapbooking message board...

Name and Nickname (if you have one)? cindy

Are you named after someone? no

Astrological Sign? libra

Do you have a journal? yes, a blog

Do you still have your tonsils? yes

Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? no

First feature you notice on someone you are attracted to? eyes

What is on your mouse pad? my mouse pad is a creative memories cutting pad!

Book you are reading right now? "100 simple secrets of happy people" and "encyclopedia of an ordinary life"

Do you collect anything? scrapbook supplies and picture frames

Favorite TV Show? any home decorating show

Do you wear glasses or contacts? glasses

Last movie you saw? over the hedge, yesterday

Favorite vacation spot? anywhere on the east coast

Shoe size? 10

Do you eat breakfast? usually

Favorite cereal? banana nut crunch

Favorite lunch meat? smoked turkey

Do you have any tattoos or piercings? ears pierced

What color is your bedroom carpet? oyster

If you could have a $10,000 shopping spree to one store, what store would it be? pottery barn

What celebrity(dead or alive)would you like to have lunch with? princess diana

If you were given a round trip ticket anywhere in the world, where would you go? paris

What time do you go to bed? 10:30pm

Favorite fast food? bk angus burger

Dream car? jaguar

Do you wear a watch? no

Fabric softner or dryer sheets? fabric softner

Dine in or carry out? dine in

Mystery or romance novels? romance

Early or late riser? early

Mayo or Miracle whip? mayo

Dill or sweet pickles? dill

Chocolate or vanilla? chocolate

Cake or pie? cake

Steak or chicken? chicken

Gold or silver? gold

Roses or carnations? roses

Croutons or bacon bits? bacon bits (real ones)

Disney or Warner Brothers? disney

Desk, messy or organized? messy

Coke or Pepsi? coke

Summer or winter? summer

Chinese or Mexican food? mexican

Rolling Stones or The Beatles? beatles

Baseball or Football? football

White or wheat? white

Action or drama? drama

Dark or milk chocolate? milk chocolate

MAC or PC? pc (dell)

he collects nutcrackers....

...it all started in a drugstore about 4 years ago. it was shortly after christmas and there were some clearanced priced christmas decorations on a shelf. he spotted a small nutcracker and just had to have it. since it was on clearance for a dollar, i got it for him. that was just the beginning of this obsession collection for him. he loves them.
it's fun to go shopping with austen when the holidays start because he is on a mission for more nutcrackers. he has one very strict rule though, they have to have weapons. each one has a knife, sword or gun "because they are soldiers, mom"
he has an army and a marine and is now looking for a navy and an air force nutcracker. they range in size from a few inches to 3 feet tall. we scan the shelves at tj maxx and target during the christmas season and i usually let him pick out a couple of them. santa usually brings a couple more every year.

he even has a nutcracker who has his own nutcrackers. daddy built him some shelves in his room and he keeps them lined up and in tip top shape. he knows when someone has rearranged them, and he doesn't like any of his friends to play with them. many of them have gone to school for show and tell over the years. he will tell anyone who asks that he has 44 of them now. pretty cool kid.....

the boys of summer......

i took austen to his second baseball game last night, dad wasn't feeling too well after having a root canal on monday and developing an infection in his jawbone. austen and i had fun but as this first picture shows, he struck out at his first at bat. he was not happy with himself.

the game proved to be a typical fast pitch game played by 8-10 year olds, lots and lots of walks and runs walked in.
and as they are only 8-10 years old, lots and lots of ducking and being hit by pitches.
they ended up with an 11-11 tie, most of the runs on both sides coming from runs walked in. we then watched the end of american idol when we got home. we usually just watch it at the beginning when all the idiots are trying out but we kind of kept up through the news. i think they made a good choice in taylor.

poor don woke up at 3:00 this morning in so much pain from his jaw infection that he went to the emergency room. fortunately, no-one was there so he was home by 4:00 am. a shot of antibiotics and pain killer and he was able to fall back asleep when he got home. i haven't spoken to him yet today so i'm not sure how he feels today. more later. 

is it possible....

to smell a season? i think that i smelled 3 on the way home from work today. first of all, finally..a fairly warm day, warm enough to put the windows down in the car for the ride home. i don't know if it was the heat or just simply the season, but the heady smell of lilacs was heavy in the air. all the way down the road to the freeway and even then, the freeway had less cars than usual and i could actually smell that lovely spring smell of lilacs on the freeway. when i pulled off of the freeway on to the road that leads me home, someone was burning leaves {or wood, but it smelled like leaves} you know, the smell of leaves burning in the fall. about a mile further, someone had just finished cutting their grass. ahhh, i love the smell of fresh cut grass, one of my favorite smells of summer. so there you have it, the smells of spring, summer and fall, in one 12 mile drive home. and since this is michigan, {don't like the weather? wait an hour and it'll change} maybe i'll be able to smell winter tonight if we get a frost like we did last night.

the deer story....

most of my family and friends know this story but i had a request for it over the weekend, so ali, here you go... in june of 2000, the friday before father's day, we had only been in our new house for about 2 months as it was a brand new subdivision. i was working at a scrapbook store in rochester hills and worked late on tuesday and friday nights for crops. on tuesday's i usually got home at about 11 pm. on friday's i didn't get home until about 1:00 am. on this particular night in june 2000, i was coming home. unknown to me at the time, don had woke up at about 12:45 am thinking that it was tuesday and since i wasn't home yet, he thought something had happened to me or the car. he came downstairs to check the answering machine to make sure he hadn't missed a call from me. when he got downstairs, he realized that it was friday night, not tuesday night and i actually not due home yet. when i pulled into the subdivision in which many homes were still under construction, a deer ran into the driver's side door of my minivan. it happened so fast that i didn't even see the deer until it hit me. evidently it must have slid under the van and i ended up dragging it down the street. don had actually heard the crash of the deer hitting the van through the open window and thought i had blown a tire. about that time i realized that the deer was still under my van and i didn't want to drag it up into my driveway. i stopped in the middle of the street in front of my house and backed up and then went forward to try and dislodge it from the undercarriage (ugh). while i was forwarding and reversing don started hollering out the window "don't drive on the rim" while frantically pulling on a pair of shorts to come outside because he though the tire had blown out, he didn't realize i was trying to unhook a carcass from the underbelly of my car. i pulled into the driveway sans deer and got out of the car a hysterical mess. the deer was in the middle of the street shuddering and spasming (dying) in front of me. don came out of the house looking at the deer in the middle of the street in a moment of stunned silence. "WTF is this, i thought you blew a tire", he said to me. i just kept telling him to go and get a gun so he could put this animal out of its misery. that would have been hard since we don't own a gun so i went into the house and called the police. i really didn't know what else to do. i felt so bad that this had happened and the police said they would be here in about 20 minutes. while waiting for them i sat in my upstairs bedroom laying awake in bed. i heard a car coming down the street and thought it was the police so i went to the window and saw our new next door neighbors we had only met once (who were on the way home from their honeymoon) stop in the middle of the street in front of the deer and get out of the car staring down at it. i yelled out the window "i killed it" and started crying again. one hour later the police finally showed up. by this time i had changed into my pajamas so i went out to meet them {in my pj's} and had to sit in the back of the police car {in my pj's} and had the police officer write his report while i was in my pj's... i was really worried about it being in the middle of the street and embarressed that it was in front of my house, so the police officer told me he would drag it into the back part of the sub that hadn't been built out yet and was just a huge field. it was then that i heard austen crying from the upstairs window. apparently the commotion outside woke him up and we weren't in the house and he panicked. don went in to tend him while i finished up with the police guy. i went up to bed and was awaken the next morning by the sound of a dog frantically barking in front of my house. i looked out the window and saw our other new neighbors across the street from us staring at a dead deer on their front yard. apparently the deer was too heavy for the officer to drag very far so he dragged it out of the street up on to their property. i ran out of the house in my pj's mortified that the officer put the deer on their property. they had only moved in a couple of days earlier and their first thought was someone had purposely dumped the deer on their property because they had had such a bad closing on their old house and they thought this was revenge on them. again i had to admit that i had killed the poor thing. they were laughing and actually relieved that it was me and not the realtor from their old house. they suggested that we rename our subdivision (which was deer creek estates) to kill deer creek estates. this story actually gets better (can you believe that??). i had a family get together planned for austen's birthday and father's day combined the next day and had this deer carcass on the neighbors property (right near the curb) at the end of my driveway. since it was dead since friday night, and it was really hot, the fetid carcass started to bloat and stink. it was the favorite gathering spot for the boys in the neighborhood who had apparently never seen a dead deer close up. i had called the city to try and have the body disposed of but they were closed for the weekend. i called the city again on monday to have them take care of it but they told me it would take "a few days". a few days???? this was a subdivision with children running around. it was soon obvious that they were never coming to take care of it. because they were still building houses in our subdivision, don talked one of the bobcat drivers to scoop the carcass up and take it to the woods in the back of the subdivision's unbuilt area. after he and don struggled to get the thing up into the bucket of the bobcat he took it back and disposed of it for us. the funny thing is, we were talking to one of our neighbors about 4 years after this happened and he was telling us how while digging an area on the back of his property for a playscape for his kids he came across what his kids thought were dinosaur bones. you guessed it, it was our deer. incredible but true....and for months (years) i was known as the deer killer in our subdivision.

wonderful weekend fun....

laura and i went to the scrapbook zone in farmington hills for a friday crop and saturday class by ali edwards. it was so nice to see ali again. i met her last summer in wisconsin at the two peas crop. i had always wanted to meet her because i admired her work so i made it my mission to get to know her in wisconsin. she has such a great easy going and friendly personality. we have passed a few emails back and forth in the last year so i was happy to hear that she was coming to michigan, mostly because nobody from the scrapbooking industry ever comes to michigan. she was at the crop on friday night and then laura and i took a class with her yesterday morning. i made an album for austen called "today you" and will post pictures when i finish it completly. thanks ali, i had a blast and it was really great seeing you again.

it was also nice to see some familiar faces, (hey torm) and meet some new people (hi lin and meera). i love scrapbooking, everyone is always so nice and friendly. i have been lucky enough to meet some really great people in this industry. laura and i try to get as much scrapbooking done but with 5 kids between us, it isn't always easy to find the time. that is why i cherish these little getaway trips. i have to admit that the hotel we stayed in was nice but very noisy and laura and i didn't get much shuteye. oh well, it was well worth the loss of sleep.

i did manage to get some pages done friday night. i haven't scrapped in a really long time. i need to get back to it because i don't realize how much i miss it until i start up again. i am going to work harder to get more done. these aren't the greatest scans but at least they're up on the blog.

p.s. thanks don and curtis for making this weekend possible for laura and i.

i found this old abandoned outbuilding.....

behind a house and on my way home from work one day. the house is boarded up and obviously unoccupied. the grass and vines are all overgrown. i want to take portraits here....i am trying to convince my friend laura that this is the most awesome place to take her family photos. i was met with a look and a "oh, that's cool" but i think it's going to take some convincing.
i think this wall is a perfect backdrop and....
while we won't be sitting anyone on this bench, i think it looks really cool.
the siding on this house is weathered and peeling. i think black and whites would be stunning against it. more later..... 

mornings with mom.....

last wednesday was mornings with mom at austen's school. forty-five minutes before school starts, we get to have donuts {muffins, cinnamon rolls, pop tarts} and coffee {punch} with the kids in the cafeteria. they have word puzzles to play together and it is just special time for mom and kids. of course, at almost nine years old , it's all about seeing how many of your friends you can holler to while mom is trying to engage you in meaningful conversation.

i tried to get some self portraits of us but he wasn't too cooperative. there was a photographer from the local paper there snapping pictures but i guess we weren't cute enough this year. last year we made the front page of the local paper for this event. we just couldn't attract her attention this year so i tried self photos.


then my neighbor debbie and her girls sat down with us she got a couple of pictures of us..the top one and this one.
i got some of her and her girls too. aren't they cute??? we had fun, but the school bell rang too soon and i had to go to work. these things never last long enough. 

i have wanted to go here forever.....

the holland tulip festival on the west side of the state. we decided to take a day trip there. we had beautiful {but a little cold} weather but we were somewhat (very) disappointed in the festival. now granted we didn't see the entire festival but there really wasn't much to see. the gardens where these pictures were taken were beautiful and i got some great shots but it was a much smaller scale than i expected. we took austen and scarlett and she was less than her normal self. i think she was fighting a stomach bug so she was a bit crabby and uncooperative for photos. dang...
the flowers at the garden that we did see though, were beautiful. however, it cost us 6 bucks apiece to walk into their catalog. because then at the end we were suckered into buying dozens of these gorgeous bulbs. we had to be picky because they were expensive and there were hundreds to pick from. in another part of town, they had a craft fair with some pretty nice art. but as always it was expensive. i did talk don into a beautiful garden sculpture as a mother's day present. {there goes my camera lens i wanted...sigh}
we could not have asked for a prettier day. not a cloud but pretty breezy and actually pretty darn cold. we saw windmills, buffalo, beautiful landscape and of course, tulips, but we were disappointed in the actual town. we thought that there would be tulips everywhere but the fact is they were basically at the tulip farms and in a few planters on the main strip in town. we thought that they would be lining the highways and main roads and on every corner. after all, it's holland, michigan but there were only a smattering of them around other than the few gardens.
don actually got some pictures of me. austen is photophobic at the tender age of 8 so we had to bribe him with money to behave for some photos. scarlett was just plain grumpy so it was a crapshoot (ha) with her. all in all, i am glad we went because now i can cross this off of my "to do before i die" list. one last thing, who the hell makes the decisions to close....as in shut down.. close.. a freeway in the middle of the day on a saturday for construction. .....idiots. 

stanley school......

today was stanley school...a field trip where students go to a school from the 1800's and have to dress and act the part...down to the lunch box i had to pack today. i had a hard time getting austen to smile because he said people never smiled in old fashioned pictures.
he looked so cute in his knickers, suspenders and hat. he carried a tin pail for his lunch which included a chicken leg, two hard boiled eggs and an apple. since there was no plastic back then i had to wrap the chicken leg in paper and wrap the lunch in cloth. his hair was parted down the middle and gel'd down.
the rest of the class dressed up too as well as the teachers. alot of the kids were upset when they got to school because the other kids were teasing them on the bus or as they walked into school because of the clothes they were wearing. kids can really suck...one little girl was crying at her desk because of the teasing.




all in all, they were much more comfortable once they were in the class together because they were all dressed alike. they really looked cute. i really wanted to go to the stanley school with them but they didn't need chaperones so i just went to school in the am to take pictures.

pneumonia is in the house....

don started feeling crappy on sunday afternoon....he called me from work on monday and said that he would probably be in bed when i got home because he felt so bad. just a nagging cough with no congestion and general aches. tuesday morning he got up to get ready for work and i heard him coughing and coughing and coughing in the shower. instead of going to work, he came right back to bed. i had him come into the office but sent him for a chest x-ray first....pneumonia. massive antibiotics and rest for him, he comes back to the office thursday after repeat xray. he, of course, worried that cancer has come back is worried sick. he even went back to the radiology clinic where he got his xray to talk to the radiologist after his visit at the pcp office. they told him that they were almost positive that it was not cancer. say a little prayer anyway.

this is why i love my yard......

because it looks like a park. it will be even prettier when all of the trees have leafed out.
my handsome man
playing ball with....
equally handsome son..love these guys.