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Lately I've been drawn to these pictures on Facebook. I have a strange cumpulsion to "fine the face" in them, but at the same time I'm scared to death to find it and realize there's someone staring out at me. It's like a horror movie... he was right in front of you the whole time.
Brady sees the face every time. I'm pretty sure I could look for days and not see it. Once I see it, I can't not see it.
Can you find it? (P.S. If not, ask your kid.)
Day 9 was a rough one for me. I don't think I realized how emotionally draining it was until I was home in my own house. Day 10 was the day I needed to recover.
I'm finding that every weekend seems to have one day where I have 2 pages of pictures. I have plenty of filler pages I can use to make the book flow well, so I'm using two pages if I need them. And if later in the book I need 3 or 4 pages, I'll do that too.
Ha. I just realized that my journaling for every day this week starts "Today was busy." Not planned, just opened PSE every night and started writing. I guess it really was a busy week. Cracks me up. I thought about going back and changing it, but it's genuine and authentic and it feels better to leave it.
Hopefully if you click on the photo, you'll be able to read the journaling. Just a typical week at our house... along with some holiday stuff mixed in...
Our baking day was originally scheduled for this past Saturday... and then I rescheduled. I just was not prepared to do it this week and there's always next Saturday, right?
I did find myself wanting some cookies to have around the house, though, and while I was doing my shopping I found the perfect solution.
I bought 2 tubs of peanut butter dough (like the butter tub on the right). Then I took them, rolled them into balls, rolled them in colored sugar, and baked. Mykiah was in charge of sticking a Hershey's Kiss (dark chocolate) in the cookie while it was still hot.
Yes, it's lazy. But really... it's a peanut blossom. The beauty is not in the cookie itself, but in the mix of peanut butter and chocolate in one simple cookie.
And here's some photos of our warm-up for baking day:
Days 3 and 4 were our weekend days. I wanted to show what I did here -- wrapping and relaxing -- along with what my girls did in Branson with their grandma. And then on Day 4, I wanted to show a lot of their reactions to their new room. The photos aren't the best because the room was dark and I didn't want to use flash, but they capture the emotion and that's what's important to me.
I just love that photo on the bottom right of day 4. It's actually a photo I took while we watched a DVD of Chesney's first ride on Wildfire. If you look closely, you can see that my girls are holding hands. I know she looks terrified -- and likely is -- but she's ready for more. First Wildfire, then the Disney/Universal world.
And Brady and I breathe a collective sigh of relief because if Chesney's riding, that's a little less pressure on us...
I ended up changing things around a bit with my December Daily. I decided to do it more "A Week in the Life" style and take pictures of every day things to add to my book. I decided I'd do photo collages instead of single photos or photos with borders. I altered some photo templates included in my Family:Defined class for this purpose.
I changed the journal pages. I love Nettio's templates, but I wanted something that screamed clean and crisp. I created my own journal pages, and love them.
So here's Day 1 and 2. I took some screen shots of text messages my girls sent me while they were gone. I also included some cell phone shots Mykiah sent me. I added some of my own photos. Just made it my own.
I'm not great at keeping secrets. But I did it.
A few weeks ago, Dan and I spent a day Christmas shopping. I'd been thinking aloud for almost a year that we needed to get our girls some new beds.
That's what they had. We bought it before Chesney was born and the girls had long ago outgrown it. They're 15 and 11... almost 12 and 16. They needed real beds.
Dan didn't understand why we needed to purchase new beds. The bed they had wasn't falling apart or anything.
I finally convinced him and when we went to pay for our purchase, they told us they needed to order one of the mattresses we'd purchased. It would be a week before it arrived.
This put us in a pickle. Dan was working every day up until Thanksgiving and I wasn't willing to take time off in order to wait for a furniture delivery. December 2 was the first day we had when Dan would be off, so I scheduled it for that day... and then realized that the girls would be gone that weekend with my mom.
So I kept my mouth shut, which was difficult for me, and the big surprise was hatched. I swear my girls weren't out of the city limits before I was stripping their beds and taking posters off walls.
Brady thought I'd gone mad.
And then he helped his dad break down the bunk beds. The new day beds arrived Friday while I was at work, and that evening I put the room together.
Dan insisted that we needed to wrap their door...
And then we waited. I'd walk in the room just to see how pretty it looked.
The girls finally got home Sunday afternoon and Mykiah went trucking right for her bedroom. And stopped short at the wrapped door. Then she opened it and yelled, "I don't have to sleep with you coughing above me anymore!" and then she loved.
And Chesney loved it, too.
Best. Surprise. Ever.
I asked Mykiah what I should blog about, and she said, "How much of a genius Mykiah is."
Yes, our grammar is horrifying.
And so I typed the title of this blog thinking I would blog about Mykiah and now I realized that I typed ... because I think of her as Kiah and that does start with a K. Her actual name does not.
And now, ha, I realize that I did plan to blog about Kiah today.
This is Mykiah a few weeks ago on the evening she was inducted into National Honor Society. She almost didn't apply because she didn't want to mess with getting the required letters of recommendation, but thanks to a friend, we got them and she was selected. Since she has a 4.0, she earned it.
In addition to being a much better student than either of her parents, Mykiah is a huge help to me at home. She's not obligated to help me organize things or cook dinner, but she enjoys those things and it really helps me out. In fact, I've come to depend on it... probably a little too much when I realize she leaves for college in a couple of years.
I'm very proud of my daughter. Have a great time in Branson this weekend!
