First weeks of school

 I've just finished my second week of school, as have my boys. Busy, busy busy!

1. Labor Day weekend we traveled to Two Harbors to wish my grandmother a happy 94th birthday. She looked gorgeous!
2. We've started taekwondo every evening for the boys. I have to pick them up from school, then drive them immediately there (so far, the boys have done their homework in the car). Rowan's TKD is two nights a week, Dominic's the other two. Me? I will use that time to grade.
3. This past weekend we took the boys to the Lions Parade in Osseo, where they marched with TKD. Gorgeous weather, though we did not get much candy for them. The floats don't really hand it out to grown ups. 
4. Sunday we went to the Renaissance Festival, where we had an awesome but dusty time (I'm ready for a week of rain). I splurged on earrings, the boys got swords, and Derick got a new wallet. 
5. I have really enjoyed teaching my students. I always teach the best in school.

This weekend we're looking at attending Dominic's violin recital--he's playing Bach's Minuet 1, and since he's getting his hair cut before that, he should have a nice spiky 'do for it. And the boys will help do some yard work to earn Lego money.

Now I'm just tired. I have worked on little bits of creative stuff here and there, but not finished anything. Right now, though, I'm inspired to do something I got ideas on from Pinterest and another page pairing an old and new photo, which I thought of while listening to the Paperclipping Roundtable while I was mowing the lawn last weekend.

How have your first few weeks of September gone?

Weekend on parade

We are in the midst of some gorgeous weather. True, my garden could use some rain, but it's hard not to be excited as we're entering into the longest stretch of 80 degree weather we've had all year--just in time for fall!

This weekend our family went to a parade. Derick, Dominic and I watched, scoring a ton of candy from paraders.


Rowan was in the parade with his taekwondo group (sorry for the blurry photo).


Rally day at our church was awesome, and the boys were natty dressers.


(Don't ask me how many threats went into getting semi-normal happy faces almost looking at the camera. You can still see how much they want to stick their tongues out and wrestle each other.)

And in between mowing the lawn and other 80-degree things, I scrapped.

Here's a few layouts I did from Studio calico kits from July and August. The first one is a layout I did about meeting mystery author Laura Childs:


The next two are layouts I made with leftover photos from our trip to Como Zoo this summer. I made a layout for each boy's album. And the title is different because of course, I ran out of E's. Typical.

Anytime I get a kit, I figure out how many layouts I must make to get my money's worth. With the two zoo ones, I reached my goal. The mystery one means I am three layouts away from my goal.