if we do anything right in this family.......

we grow good looking kids...
samantha, at 12 going on 22......
and allison, 15 going on 16....
both incredibly beautiful...it's scary, really, just how fast they are growing up. it almost takes my breath away...

she is just about 30 weeks now...

the time is flying by...for her and for us.
she revels in her pregnancy....
feels good...
is so incredibly beautiful.....

and just glows.....

i spent last weekend getting my degree in.....

scrapbooking arts....no kidding....A Bachelor of Scrapbooking Arts. at the dearborn hyatt regency...at creating keepsakes university. a real degree with a mortarboard and a diploma and everything..(including tuition$$$). i went with my friend and hairdresser lianne shown with me as we show off our diplomas. we went from thursday to saturday and had a blast. three days of scrapbooking classes, shopping, crops and meeting up and reconnecting with old friends. we took classes like digital scrapbooking, photography, wicked scrapbooking techniques, etc.

i saw some old friends, some of whom i didn't expect to see....like allison who i met two years ago in wisconsin at a scrapbooking event. how fun it was to see her again. and ali edwards....whom i've met a few times and it is always great to see her too. love ya, girlie...our hotel room was very nice but in a perpetual state of chaos the entire weekend. we just kept collecting more stuff. every class we went to we got more stuff. every store we went to we got more stuff. and when i packed the car to go home, i had way more stuff than i left home with....but that's okay...in fact it was good. but what is up with hotel rooms and their price gouging........... c'mon...$5.00 for a bottle of water??? good thing there was a target and a grocery store nearby. we bought our own dang water. at least it was a very quiet hotel, probably the quietest i have ever slept in. and clean....i didn't get too creeped out about germs in this room.
i guess i should have gotten a picture of the room after housekeeping got through with it. it was really nice. i want to thank my wonderful husband for agreeing to shell out the $600.00 it cost me for this wonderful weekend of fun (and schooling) after all, i did earn a degree..........

oh, but they're weird and they're wonderful.....

we had dinner at ci ci's pizza today, a new little pizza buffet in town. the food is good, about 12 different types of pizza from cheese and pepperoni - to chicken mushroom and buffalo chicken to spinach alfredo. it's really good and we though we'd take austen and allison there after going to home depot for paint for the new den.

my hairdo is thanks to the extreme wind we had today....but at least we had sunshine the entire day. after snow for the past week...even if it's cold at least it is easier to bear with the sun beating through the windows. while walking my food to the table, i looked outside and saw this pink mohawk walk by the window. it took me a couple of seconds to decide if i wanted to do it but i bolted out the door and chased him down the walkway. there was an older man walking slightly behind him and i wasn't sure that they were together but i approached this young man and asked him if i could take his picture. the older man asked me why i wanted to do this and i told him that i was doing a documentary of a week in my life for a scrapbooking project and told the young man that i thought he looked awesome. i loved his pink mohawk and i told him so. he seemed so surprised that someone told him he looked awesome and i don't think that his dad (which the older man turned out to be) had ever heard that either. he told me though, that they were proud of his individuality, although from the way that he was walking behind his son, somehow i don't know if that was exactly the case...

he happily posed for me though.....and i got these great pictures.

ever the photographer, i had him pose for me in so i could see all of him...he ended coming in to ci ci's with his dad and grandparents to eat and as we were leaving, i thanked him again for the pictures...i never saw such a big smile.....

this boy.....

got one A, four B's and one C on his report card this semester. we couldn't possibly be more proud of this great kid. he has come so incredibly far this year. last year we had actually talked of holding him back in third grade because of his progress (or lack thereof) in school. he was doing terrible and was working at a second grade level or lower in most of his subjects. he hated getting up in the morning and would whine and tell me he didn't want to go to school. he was frustrated when it came time to do his homework and he would lay his head down on the table and sob. he was required to read for 20 minutes every night and we made him read out loud to us. his face would get red and his eyes would start tearing up and usually would collapse in a heap because he just couldn't read.

teacher conferences were a nightmare. grades going down every semester and she told us of lack of participation from austen. it spilled over into his home life as he was so unfocused that asking him to simply clean his room brought a torrent of tears and temper. his teacher finally asked us to have austen tested for ADD. we did this toward the end of third grade and after months of waiting (and through the summer) we finally got a call from the school social worker who informed us that austen did indeed have ADD. we got this news about two weeks into his fourth grade school year. i took him to our doctor who started him on concerta for the ADD. we decided not to tell his fourth grade teacher that we had started the medication as we wanted to see if there would be any difference in his school work. about 4 weeks later we had his first teacher conference. while we were waiting for the parents ahead of us to finish their turn, my stomach was sick. i felt for sure that there was going to be no change and he was just going to struggle through the rest of his educational career. but when we walked in the room, his teacher greeted us with "i cannot believe the change in your son over the past month". i almost started sobbing with relief. we let her know that had started on concerta over that last month and she told us that he was on the perfect dose...not sleepy or lethargic and had a healthy appetite. she told us that he was participating in every aspect of the day. he volunteered to read to the class and raised his hand when she asked questions of the kids. this also spilled over into his home life as he readily reads to us daily and can clean is room in 10 minutes flat (without crying). he comes home from school and doesn't need to be told to get started on his homework, he just does it. and he gets good grades to boot. he still struggles in math some but we are working on that. we had a conference with his teacher last week and she tells us that he continues to improve in all of his subjects. we are beyond relieved....and so proud of our son.....

science fair time

last week was austen's science fair. he and daddy decided to do a really cool project, a levitating train which glided (is that a word??) over the magnetic tracks as the magnets repelled each other. you can see in this image that the "car" is actually floating. it was pretty cool.

daddy helped austen build the box using wood and plexiglass and austen actually did a lot of the cutting and nailing as well as painting.
we had to do a display board and i had austen do all of the typing so i could edit it for him. he arranged and pasted the pages and pictures on the board (with a little help from mom). this is what it looked like when he took it to school. we were very proud of him and for all of his hard work and research he did on this project.


final grade---A+