The Kids and I

2011-11-19T07:26:00.000-08:00

Charli sings

2011-09-30T17:41:00.000-07:00

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Just playin' around

2011-08-07T16:17:00.001-07:00

I recently saw a baby picture of a baby in a little hammock and I thought it was so cute! I decided that I could easily crochet a little hammock myself and try to get some cute shots of Charlotte in it. I began crocheting and finished a decent hammock made from leftover yarn I had from an afghan I had made a LONG time ago. I then hung it on the towel rod in our bathroom, hung a sheet behind it and began snapping! After downloading them on my computer I tried some fun effects on photoshop and here are the results of all of that!

This one, I think, is my favorite.

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cell phone scrap book pages

2011-06-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

The pictures on these pages are not super great quality but I still wanted them scrapbooked.

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OLD pages

2011-06-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

So, I found some pretty old pictures and have decided to scrapbook them. So here is the beginning of a long line of old pages I should have done YEARS ago!

2011-06-15T04:11:00.001-07:00

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catching up today

2011-03-05T07:32:00.001-08:00

2011-01-18T11:41:00.000-08:00

2011-01-18T10:09:00.000-08:00

2011-01-18T07:23:00.000-08:00

Back in the Saddle Again!

2011-01-18T06:59:00.000-08:00

It has been SO long since I last did any scrapbooking so I am a little out of practice. My pages will probably not be as good for now but at least I am getting it done! I took some pictures that just HAD to be scrapbooked right away so now I am going to play the catch up game but I will be working backwards starting with the most recent pictures and working my way back to the summer (when I last did any scrapbooking).

2010-10-13T07:48:00.001-07:00

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Only 6 days later!!

2010-07-29T19:33:00.000-07:00

Here is an update on my little bro. He is progressing very nicely!! He looks SO much better! He is still in a lot of pain but not as much as he ha been lately. He even got up and walked the length of the hospital toady!! I am SO happy that he is feeling a bit better! In the next couple of days he will be transfered to a hospital that specializes in head trauma where he will be doing some intense therapy. Thanks so much to everyone for your prayers and thoughts!! I am certain they all helped!

2010-07-28T06:16:00.001-07:00

2010-07-26T13:52:00.001-07:00

Ok.... So I should have put this story on earlier, like when I posted the picture but better late than never, eh? Above is a picture of my 17 year old brother, Adam, after a pretty serious long-boarding accident. He likes to go long-boarding and always uses a helmet. This time; however, he had left his helmet with a friend and was on his way to go meet this friend when he crashed. He was going about 30 mph when he tumbled. Adam was knocked unconscious and the friends he was with called 911. The hospital found he had a fractured skull and for a while they were worried that he may have broken his neck. Luckily they have since found out (through an MRI) that his neck is not broken (thank goodness). Unfortunately they have also found (through various CT scans) that he has bruising, bleeding, and swelling in his brain. This picture was taken the day of the accident (I think), but apparently he looks a lot better now. I will hopefully be receiving a picture from my wonderful cousin today. I can't tell you how much my heart aches for my little brother. I want to be with him so badly that it physically hurts. One of the only things that made me hesitate in moving to WI is that I would no longer be closer to my little brother and little sister. I loved being near them and seeing them on a regular basis! I loved know that, should something happen, I could be by their side in a heart beat! Now when I want to be by Adam the most, I can't. All I can do is pray for him and hope he know the immense amount of love I have for him. He is an amazingly strong kid and I know he will be right as rain in a flash, I just wish I could be there as he achieves right-as-rainness. I was lucky enought to talk to him yesterday. He mumbled a couple of sentences but I can't express how lovely it was to hear his voice! He will probably have to go through some pretty intense therapy for his speech as well as other various skills. If you want more of an update on him, my facebook page is probably the place I will be updating the most.

2010-07-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

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Christmas pages

2010-02-12T23:40:00.001-08:00

and another

2010-01-30T20:49:00.001-08:00

A couple for now

2010-01-30T18:49:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of pages for now. In a few weeks we get a new computer and therefore, I will be able to scrapbook without the fear (or reality) of our computer crashing and erasing everything I spent hours doing (yes, that has happened a lot).

more!

2009-11-08T09:18:00.000-08:00

With the above page I am going to write the story of what was going on with these pictures on an adjacent page. Since I have not done that yet, I will just give you guys the story here if you are interested. I was busy upstairs with Desmond and Gabe was gone as well as Aaron. Scotland, Ezra and Landon were doing SUCH a good job just playing together so I never bothered to check on them. After a while I kept hearing a strange beeping noise and the kids saying, I think the batteries are dying. Finally I decided to see what they were up to. Apparently they were playing Dora and Diego and taking pictures of each other. The beeping noise was my camera saying the memory card was full. These are a few of the pictures they filled my camera with.

FINALLY!!

2009-11-05T16:02:00.000-08:00

I have been SOOOO busy lately with Gabe starting home school, me making Halloween costumes (pictures to come) and being a mom of 5 kids! I finally got a little time to do some scrapbooking done, so here are my few new pages!

The latest pages

2009-08-25T22:33:00.001-07:00

So these are some of my latest pages. This is the neighbor kids making Froot Loop necklaces with my kiddos on our back porch. They are all just so stinkin' cute! ALSO for anyone interested, I do my mom's scrapbooking too and you can see that work at scrapbook4heidi.blogspot.com. There is some pretty cute stuff there too.

Look What I Can Do!!!

2009-08-05T15:21:00.001-07:00

I am currently trying to teach myself more about Fireworks CS3 (the program I use to do my scrapbooking) and have learned some pretty fun things! I guess I am not really teaching myself because I am just reading different tutorials posted on the internet. So here they are. A few of the things I have created with my new knowlege!!

I think when I do this one next time (for a real page) I will use different colors. I want to make a page of Desmond's pictures showing how much he grows throughout the year.

I like how this one turned out for the most part. I am not sure if "Olivia" is too busy. the "l" kind of disappears. Eventually I will have some more good shots of just Scotland to make a page with this background.

So, what do ya think?!? I am having a BLAST doing this!

just a few pages

2009-07-23T07:55:00.001-07:00

More 4th

2009-07-09T20:18:00.001-07:00

Some 4th of July pages

2009-07-09T13:37:00.000-07:00

I will post more some other time.

The Spray Ground

2009-07-08T23:19:00.000-07:00

Beach fun!

2009-07-01T18:25:00.001-07:00

sniffle, sniffle

2009-06-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

Although in his later years, Michael Jackson kind of gave me the heeby-jeebies, I loved his earlier music and all in all am a little saddened by his death. I am a little confused how a person made mostly of plastic can die of a heart attack at the age of 50. I am surprised to say the least. His music has a lot of memories for me and is just plain fun to dance to.

Here is the link to the video

2009-06-20T15:09:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFXzYKgBpA

copy and paste it.

Why do I care?

2009-06-20T14:56:00.000-07:00

(Marian Call)

A little while ago I found out that a couple of friends of mine from high school got divorced. The started dating when they were like 15 or something and they were THE most amazing couple! They dated forever and were strong in their church and eventually got married and moved to Alaska. On Facebook the guy added me as a friend and I noticed his wife was not his "friend" and he had said he was single! I was so shocked!! Anyways... not that it is any of my business but I am SO saddened by this! He is a completely different guy (it seems) and I have even cried about their divorce. WHAT IS MY PROBLEM?!?! I generally don't care too much when people get divorced, it happens (a lot unfortunately) so it doesn't really bug me but these two really were so perfect for eachother and I really cared for both of them so much. They were both such amazing people and seemed like one of those couples that NOTHING could come between. Aparently something did. The female of this couple is now a perfessional singer and goes by the name Marian Call. In my next post I will post a You Tube video of one of her songs that makes me even more sad every time I hear it (why I keep listening to it, I don't know. Maybe I am a masochist at heart). Even if you never knew this couple, if you have ever gotten your heart broken, the song might bring on some tears. I know this is an odd post, I just wanted to get some thoughts out that have been running around in my head. Sorry.

Brilliant!!

2009-06-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

My cousin Melanie is amazing in so many ways but recently she gave me an idea that seemed so especially wonderful to me. For her husband's Birthday she gave him a cookie jar with 12 cookie recipes and a promise to make him one of those recipes each month. So now Robbie will be able to try a new cookie each month until his Birthday next year (she explains it better). I thought that was SO cute but Aaron (my husband) is not a HUGE cookie fan; HOWEVER, he LOVES pie sp for our anniversary I gave him a lemon meringue pie and 12 recipes for new pies to try throughout the year. Each month on the 14th I will make his choice of pie (from the recipes I gave him) until next year. HE LOVED IT!!! Isn't that a brilliant idea?!?! I am related to some pretty dang smart people. I'm just glad they all let me borrow their ideas. Anyways... Each month Melanie posts the cookie recipe that she made for Robbie and I will post the pie recipe I make for Aaron. All you bakers out there will have a plethora of new recipes but this time next year!I of course had to do all my recipes like my scrapbooking. Click on the recipe if it is too small to read.

And even more!

2009-06-19T17:17:00.001-07:00

Lots to add!

2009-06-18T22:35:00.001-07:00

Kids Gig

2009-06-10T19:47:00.000-07:00

Some Desmond pages

2009-06-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

Early Arrival!!

2009-06-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

Surprise, surprise!!! Desmond Vaughn Hooker made his appearance on June 1st at 2:22 a.m. The day before, I was getting some preperations ready for dinner and my water broke! I wasn't sure if it was indeed my water because nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Even with the twins, I had to be induced. I eventually realized that it was indeed my water and we all ran around like crazy people trying to get things ready to go. I had not yet gotten ANYTHING ready for the hospital or the kiddos. I frantically called my dad (my mom was out of town) and asked if I could drop the kids off with him and told him I would later get ahold of our baby sitter. He was happy to take them and they were happy to see him. We got to the hospital early afternoon and they started trying to get my contractions going (I wasn't really having any yet). After a few failed attempts, at about 1 a.m. they finally gave me a bit of Pitocin which took a very strong effect!! After that things went fast... painfully fast! Luckily we had no real complications. The cord was wrapped around his neck 2 1/2 times but luckily he had an especially long cord so it didn't do any harm. Here are a few unscrapbooked pictures of our latest addition. HE IS SO CUTE!!!

7 Lbs. 11 oz. 19 1/2 inches long! Not too shabby!

Gabe is such a good big brother and LOVES Desmond!!

Snuggle time with Daddy.

Ok... 2 more

2009-05-28T20:50:00.000-07:00

A reason for tears?

2009-05-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

I think so. My oldest lost his first tooth!!! WHY DO THEY GROW UP SO FAST?!?!? We actually had no idea it was even loose (I thought it would be for at LEAST another year) but he was eating an apple and kept saying that it hurt to bite into his apple. I told him to take smaller bites all the while thinking, "he better not have a cavity!" He informed me that it still hurt so I told him to show me where it hurt hoping it was just a little piece of apple skin stuck in his gums. When he opened his mouth, I noticed his tooth was bleeding and not quite straight up and down as his other were. I felt it and sure enough, it was loose. It came out easily and he was excited to get a gold dollar from the Tooth Fairy!His face is a little messy here (this was the same spaghetti night as Scotland's pictures) but you get the idea.

2 pages today!

2009-05-28T16:57:00.000-07:00

Here are page one and two of my little lady with her spaghetti! She loves the stuff and ALWAYS makes such a mess. It's kind of fun to have pictures of it to show any boy that may come her way.

A little late

2009-05-22T10:30:00.001-07:00

Here is my page from our primary Easter egg hunt. It was a lot of fun! They did the bunny hop (I was surprised that Scotland participated) and each got to find 15 eggs filled with treats. Note to Bethany: I told you I was going to use your idea!

2009-05-19T20:45:00.000-07:00

I just recently figured out how to download movies from my camera to my computer so that is why you all are blessed to get 2 vidoes of some of my little ones in the last few days. This is Landon singing his favorite song. He sings this ALL THE TIME around the house and I just LOVE it!! One thing I esspecially love is how may of the words he knows and says correctly! Keep in mind that less than 2 years ago he was saying, "mama" for the first time!

Hey Jude

2009-05-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

Here is a video of Ezra singing his faorite song. I think it is precious! He is such a cute little preformer and does a pretty good job even though his throat is still swollen and he has a funny voice right now as he is still getting used to having no tonsils! What a love!!!

Scrapbook pages

2009-05-07T20:16:00.000-07:00

Here are the latest scrapbook pages I have done. Obviously they are of Ezra's surgery. I REALLY like the last picture! Aaron actually fell asleep holding Ezra while I went to the bathroom. I thought it was so sweet!

We survived (so far)!!

2009-05-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

On May 5th, Ezra had his ginormous tonsils taken out along with his adenoids. The surgery went well and was over rather quickly. He was such a little trooper! The hospital was a children's hospital so everyone there did VERY well dealing with such a young guy. Everyone that was going to be in the operating room came in one at a time to meet Ezra and, more importantly, let him meet them. They told him about the gas mask they would be putting on him in the OR and even had a sample one for him to play with as we waited to go in. It was funny, they told him that it would get stinky and that he needed to growl the stinky air away (thus causing him to take deep breaths of the gas to knock him out). He hesitantly growled for practice into the mask. I then suggested that he sing "Hey Jude" into the mask which he was SO much more excited about. He sang it over and over again and loved the attention the nurses were all giving him! When surgery time came around he was all ready to preform for all in the OR. He sang and everyone LOVED it. After the surgery the doctor even said, "I have been doing this a LONG time and that is THE cutest thing I have EVER seen!" THAT'S MY BOY!! Ezra is now recovering and refuses to ever go back to the hospital!

"How to avoid swine flu"

2009-05-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

DON'T DO THIS!!!

My sister Rachel sent this to me and I thought it was SO funny! I can't stop looking at it thinking, "Oh my gosh!! That is SO gross!!!!" It does make me feel better about what my kids have put in their mouths.

Yard Work

2009-04-15T16:34:00.000-07:00

These are obviously pictures of our day of yard work. We are tearing up the yard to plant a new one. Our yard has been completely taken over by moss so we are kind of starting over. The kids loved helping; however, Scotland's clothes did not. Her shoes are completely filthy with no hope of ever looking nice again. O'well... we had fun!

Simple but cute!

2009-04-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

These are pretty simple but I thought the pictures were so cute and they needed to be by themselves. If you can't read it, click on it and it will enlarge. The quote is pretty much perfect for Scotland.

Tosils, and ankle, and window, oh my!

2009-04-08T12:04:00.001-07:00

The past few weeks have been anything but fun for Ezra. He got over a cold and started snoring A LOT which I thought was kind of funny since he had just gotten over his cold. I assumed he was just getting another cold and didn't think much about it. His snoring got worse and turned into periodic gasping for air while sleeping. Needless to say he was a grump during the day because he was not getting any real restful sleep. Eventually I decided to look at his tonsils and sure enough they were pretty much taking up all the space in his throat. In the mean time, we decided one day (a Tues.) to take the kiddos to Seattle for the day. While in Seattle Ezra fell and sprained his ankle . He had to be carried everywhere for the next couple of days and a week later, he still walked with a limp. On the Sun. after we went to Seattle, Ezra and Landon were playing on our couch together. Landon came to me in the dining room and told me he needed the door open. I told him that he is not aloud to play in the front yard but could go out to the back. He said, that he needed the front door opened. I told him once again that he is not allowed to go to the front yard. He then told me that Ezra needed the front door opened. I told him that Ezra was not allowed in the front yard either. He stayed very persistent that I open the door for Ezra. I ended up following him to the living room to tell Ezra that he was not allowed in the front yard. As I walked into the living room I finally heard Ezra crying and saw that the screen on the window had popped out. I yelled for Aaron who came running and went outside to get Ezra who had fallen onto a rosebush in our front yard. Luckily, all he got were a couple of scratches. A couple of days ago I took Ezra to the doctor to look at his tonsils. The doctor looked in his throat, gave a little chuckles and said, "yeah... that's about as bad as they can get..." He told us that he will probably have to have those and his adenoids removed. He referred us to an ear, nose and throat doctor who we will go see on Mon. Unfortunately today Ezra has decided it is too tough to eat anything so he will be on a diet of Ensure until then. I feel so bad for the poor kid but hopefully after the surgery he will be sleeping a lot better so he won't be so grumpy or clumsy for that matter.

The 2 ball type things you see are his tonsils and believe it or not, they look worse then that now. They are actually touching eachother and coming up on his tounge. POOR GUY!

I never thought I would have to say...

2009-03-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

Lately Scotland (my little princess) has decided that plating in her own poop in a very effective way to get me to change her diaper in a hurry. Although this is true, it is still disgusting! So the other day she had an especially bad diaper which she wiped all over her legs and shirt. I came into the room, smelled an awful smell and knew immediately what had happened. I looked at Scotland and in a very frustrated voice said, "SCOTLAND! Playing in your poop is NOT aloud!!!" I kind of had to giggle in my head after hearing what had just come out of my mouth. After this I started to think of all the things I have to tell my kiddos that I NEVER thought I would have to tell anyone! Here are a few examples. "Gabe, don't pretend to eat your brother..." "Landon, don't hit your brother with a hammer, that's not nice..." "Landon, finish your cookie and THEN you can have more salad..." "Gabe, don't lick the mirror in the bathroom..." "Scotland, PLEASE stop sticking your finger in my belly button..." "Ezra, don't sit on your brother's face..." "Scotland! Stop eating stuff out of the garbage!" "Landon, don't eat popcorn off the floor (at the circus)..."
Yeah... who would have thought! I'm sure there will be many more in the years to come. If my boys take after Aaron at all it will be things like, "Don't steal all the balls from the Dairy Queen ball pit even if you ARE going to return them..." "Don't open your car door and hang out while driving on the freeway, that's just not safe..." "PLEASE don't jump out of a moving train..." etc.

Any ideas?

2009-02-26T10:46:00.001-08:00

This is my most recent scrapbook page but I kind of feel like something is not quite right. I'm not sure if it is the background or the font or if it needs more embellishing, or what. You can click on the page to view it larger to get a better idea. I know some of you out there are great at scrapbooking so give me some suggestion. Thanks in advance!

A little too much!

2009-02-16T12:30:00.000-08:00

I love this bed and would LOVE to get it for Scotland but I think it might be a little out of my budget. The price of this bed STARTS at $47,000. Yup, almost $50,000. Can you imagine spending that much on a bed! I guess you can get it all upholstered to your liking but the price goes up. My little princess will just have to deal with not having the nicest bed in the neighborhood.

Good Clean Fun!

2009-02-13T15:31:00.001-08:00

Here is another scrapbook page. To view it closer or read the story behind it, click on the picture.

Guess what it is!!

2009-02-03T17:10:00.001-08:00

Imagine you are a chair and this little baby is sitting on you. This is what you would see. I'm sure you can all tell what the little arrow is pointing at. Yup! We are DEFINITELY having a boy!! My vote for names is Jude Sullivan (after Gilbert and Sullivan) but Aaron is not so sure about it. I think I will hypnotize him while he is sleeping tonight! Another first name we are considering is Pierce. I think it is a cute name but maybe not cute enough for my little guy!

Playlist

2009-02-02T18:41:00.000-08:00

I have gotten a few comments about my play list. All have been positive of coarse but I wanted to just give a information on my play list. I love all the music on my play list which is why I put them on there but more importantly, each and every song on this particular list reminds me of someone, either from my past, or my present. Some are old boyfriends, some are family members, one person that some of the songs remind me of is my wonderful spouse, some songs remind me of old friends, and a few are for my kiddos. Guess which song reminds me of YOU! It's amazing to me how music can resurrect feelings that you had kind of forgotten. Some feelings I can't even describe. Music is amazing to me, I just wish I could put a little caption with every song to let you all know why I picked that particular song for my list. Anyways... that kind of lets you all know one reason I have a bit of variety in my music. I hope you all continue to enjoy my music and if you don't like a song, skip it and you may find one you do like.

Three Times a Charm?

2009-01-23T19:44:00.000-08:00

My dear Gabriel has an issue with his eyes and I swear he is going to blind before he gets to his teen age years. When he was about 3, Ezra poked him in the eye with a straw which actually cut his eye ball. We went to the eye doctor and she gave us a prescription for an antibiotic to prevent any infection from happening. His eye healed fine. About 9 month later Gabe was swinging around a plastic container and hit his eye. I looked at it and saw that he indeed cut his eye ball again. Since it was Sunday, I took him to the emergency room where a doctor looked at it and prescribed an antibiotic to prevent an infection from happening. His eye healed just fine. Well... About a week and a half ago Gabe was climbing onto my bed holding a piece of card stock and bumped his elbow with his knee causing him to hit his eye with the paper and cutting his eye once again. I called the doctor and pleaded with him to not make me come in for an appointment since we had been through this before and knew the procedure. He wrote a prescription for an antibiotic to prevent an infection from happening and called it into our nearest pharmacy for us to pick up. I thanked him and we went about our business. That night Gabe woke up screaming worse than he did when he initially cut his eye. I told him to just go back to sleep and we would worry about it in the morning. He made a big fuss but finally went back to sleep. In the morning he was screaming again so I called and made an appointment with the eye doctor again. She put some numbing drops in his eye and some dyed eye drops that help her see the cut. She turned away from Gabe to throw the eye drop applicator away. When she turned back to him she said, "Oh my!" Apparently, he cut a flap off his eye and when he fell asleep his eye lid acted as a suction cup so when he opened his eyes his flap was torn more. The doctor said that most grown men come is crying and on their knees from the pain that a cut like this causes. She put a contact "band-aid" on his eye, gave him some super cool sun glasses to protect it from bright lights, and gave us lubricating drops to prevent callusing on his eye ball. I seriously have no idea why my little guy has such bad luck with his eyes but he does. I can only pray that his eye problems only come in 3's.

All I can say is, "WOW!"

2009-01-22T14:35:00.001-08:00

Read The Caption on the first photo then look at the second photo

Look at the picture above and you can see where this driver broke through the guardrail, on the right side of the culvert, where the people are standing on the road, pointing. The pick-up was traveling about 75 mph from right to left when it crashed through the guardrail. It flipped end-over-end, bounced off and
across the culvert outlet and landed right side up on the left side of the culvert, facing the opposite direction from which the driver was traveling. The 22-year-old driver
and his 18-year-old passenger were unhurt except for minor cuts and bruises.

Just outside Flagstaff , AZ on U.S. Hwy 100.

Now look at the second picture below...

If this guy didn't believe in GOD before, do you suppose he believes now?