Fun times

This is how we roll!

Our Christmas Nativity

A few years back (4 to be exact) The Williams family made a special book for my mom.  We put the Christmas Story according to Luke in a book along with photos of our interpretation.  I just stumbled upon these photos and they put such a smile on my face I thought I'd share.  The kids ages in these photos are:  Alorah (7), Isaiah (4), Alaina (2), Micah (10 months)

1:26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,

1:27 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.
1:28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
1:29 And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

1:30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.

1:31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.
1:32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:

2:1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

2:2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
2:3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
2:4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
2:5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

2:6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

2:7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger;
because there was no room for them in the inn.

2:8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

2:9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
2:10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
2:11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

2:13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

2:14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
2:15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
2:16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

I don't know where in the story this photo is supposed to go or if I just snapped it cuz he was cute.

I hope the season doesn't get away from you and that you remember the reason for the season.  Happy Birthday Jesus.

Wow, I won!

One of my favorite digital scrapbook stores is Catscrap not only cuz my FAVORITE designer Creashens is there :) But because I love all the different styles there too.  It's a smallish community and everyone is quick to praise you.  Love that.  They also have really cool challenges that make you scrap outside your box.  One of the recent challenges was to scraplift another scrapbooker.  The scrapbooker they chose is one of my FAVORITE scrapbookers Scarletsierra (sara), she has a very distinct style and her work is simply gorgeous.

Here is her original page:

Here is my scraplift:

Mask from Any Given Day kit by Creashens at catscrap.com

Everything else from Love Story kit by Something Blue Studios available at catscrap.com
 
I won the challenge and a $10 gift certificate for catscrap.  Sooooo cool!

- MVI_0465.AVI

Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody

This is so wickedly awesome!

Big Baller

Here's a bit about my oldest boy Isaiah who just finished up his first season of football.  He fell in love with the sport.  He LOVE, LOVE, LOVED it!  He's played basketball, baseball and now football.  Neither basketball or baseball did he respond to as much as football.  Poor guy cried when Ev & I were too sick to take him to practice :(  Can I tell you again how much he loved it.  When we did tryouts he could have gone in either of two different age levels 5-7 or 8-11.  He turned 8 midway through the season so they decided to put him on the 8-11 year old team.  He was the littlest guy in the age division by far, and wasn't as developed as a player as the other guys on the team, but overall I'm glad that's the level they put him on.  I think if he had been with the littler guys he wouldn't have been challenged as much and probably would've been bored.  He picked a few things from the bigger kids that I wasn't too thrilled with but mostly they were so sweet with him.  One of the kids in particular really took him under his wing ~ telling him where he was supposed to be on plays, putting his arm around him & high 5ing him for encouragment

Isaiah's big job throughout the year was on defense. His job was to rush the quarterback. He was a bit too small for offense. The quarterback would throw it was over his head on passes and he got to play runningback a few times and did well, but again there were bigger players that were a bit more effective. He rocked in his role of rushing the quarterback. He put pressure on him and caused quite a few turnovers this year, but it seemed like he was always a second too late for the sack. 

Don't know who this kid is but I love the expression on his face:

This last Saturday was the championship game against the 49ers.  Isaiah rocked it with the SACK!  In the picture below you can see they quarterback's flag in Isaiah's hand and the ball still in the quarterbacks hand.

On the left side of the picture you can see Zaiah holding up the flag.  The whole side line was yelling for him, his teammates ran up and congratulated him, it was so cool!!!  Ev said, he's like Rudy.

Here's the championship team for 2009 with their gold ball:

One last picture because I love the way it turned out.  The kid with the ball is TJ, one of Isaiah's teammates.  This kid was REALLY GOOD!!!  I'd say he was 50-75% responsible for them being the champions.  He was REALLY GOOD!  He was also the one who was so kind and encouraging to my Zai.

Missing him.

All Papers & Elements from Bugga Boo kit by Creashens catscrap.com & twolittlepixels.com

Template number 4 by fizzypop designs catscrap.com

I'm not sure what triggered it today.  I don't think the feelings of pain and loss ever, ever go away and today I miss him badly.  Sometimes a song on my Ipod will find me washing dishes with tears streaming down my face, or a picture of him will flash up on my computer, or my kids will ask about him.  Most days are good and I remember him fondly, but every now and then I remember that I'll never see him again.  I'll remember the pain of the phone call telling me he was gone.  I remember racing to his house in the dark of the night, the flashing red & blue lights in front of his house and wrapping my arms around Tom, not even trying to fathom the horrors that he saw.  I'll remember the anger that he chose to leave us.  Then all I feel is loss . . .  It's nothing that can ever go away.  If there was a pill I could take to numb that pain I would.  It hurts in a way no one else can understand, unless they've lived it.  But even then it's different for all of us.  Today. I'm just missing him.

Some recent pages

It's been awhile since I've posted my LO's.  Doesn't mean I haven't been scrapping, just haven't been posting on the blog :)  I'm still LOVING my gig scrapping on Creashens Creative Team.  Still not sure how I got the gig as the talent on that team is through the roof.  I'll keep at it until Shen realizes I'm not in their league :)

All Papers & Elements from Count on me kit by Creashens and K Studios @ www.catscrap.com

Template Sidekicks no 1 by fizzypop designs @catscrap.com



Everything from Frankie loves Hollie by Creashens (October Digital Artists Magazine)




Everything from "Anne with an E" kit by Creashens at Catscrap.com




Inspired by this LO by Kayleigh: http://www.myscrapbookart.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=204921&cat=all&limit=last1




Papers:

sweetness by Creashens (catscrap.com & twolittlepixels.com)


Staple:

sweetness by Creashens (catscrap.com & twolittlepixels.com)


Stitches :

lulu & rocko by Creashens (catscrap.com & twolittlepixels.com)

sprung by Creashens (catscrap.com & twolittlepixels.com)

sweetness by Creashens (catscrap.com & twolittlepixels.com)

Journaling:

these pictures of you were taken when you were 3 years old and a chubby little thing looking back I am amazed at how much you’ve changed with those roundcheeks and arms. I just want to go back in time and squish you.

Now at six years old you are just as tall as your brother TWO years older than you. You are a bean pole with LONG skinny legs. Almost no fat on you. I am daily amazed by the changes.

Oh no he didn't!

Ev has this crazy relationship with his lawn.  He loves the way it looks and goes to GREAT pains to keep it looking perfect.  He spends 3 hours on Saturdays working on his lawn and has a process that he follows every time.  He fertilizes,aerates (sp?) etc at specific times of the year, and when we hear neighbors or people walking past commenting on what a beautiful lawn it is, Ev swells up with pride. 

We had a friend (a perfectionist friend mind you) that offered to mow the lawn for Ev once when he was out of town.  He politely refused. 

So imagine my great surprise when Ev asked me to take a picture of Alorah's first time mowing the lawn.  He had her mow the whole back yard (not the front because it's a big hill).  That told me in not too many ways that he still wasn't feeling well after his bout of illness.

He was feeling well enough to ham it up a bit :)

Halloween

Halloween was a not so great time for the Williams household.  The parents were down sick, REALLY sick.  Ev had 5 days straight of fever & I had 4.  It was bad and unfortunately it fell on Halloween.  We couldn't let the kids suffer though :(  Thankfully we were able to call in reinforcments in the form of Papa D.  He was a lifesaver.  He took them to McDonalds for dinner and then home to get costumes and then out trick or treating.  THANK YOU POPPY!!!  I had a super high fever but was able to snap a few photos ~ sorry that half of them are blurry, I was so out of it I didn't even notice :)

Alaina the fairy (Alorah & I made her AWESOME skirt) :

Isaiah as Darth Vader:

Micah as Thomas the Train

Isaiah again:

Alorah as Hermione Granger:

Ev's race

We spent the morning yesterday out at the four bridges half marathon.  My husband, the stud, pulled off 13 miles after 7 weeks of training.  It was all a friends idea, but that friend got injured a week b4 the race so poor Ev had no running partner.  In my humble opinion he still rocked it.  I told him he'd get an A for effort just for trying.  But I knew full well that my stubborn, darling husband would power through and do it.

Apparently it was a pretty tough course with quite a few hills (my dear trash talking friend and you know who you are *smiley*, Ev says you couldn't have done it in less than 2).  Ev had a goal in mind and pretty dang near nailed it.  He averaged 11 minutes a mile which was a bit higher than his goal, but again, I think he's amazing.
While he ran, the kids did a 1 mile spooky scamper.  Isaiah my speed demon finished up 5th (out of a TON of kids) and Grumps ran with the girls.  I didn't get any shots of Isaiah at the finish because the finish wasn't where I thought it was and by the time I made it over there he was done.  I caught all the kids mid-course and then the girls at the end.

The kids before their race:


Then we waited around for Ev to finish.  The kids stood along the fence and high fived runners coming in to finish.  As he came around the last turn in the race, Grumps put the kids over the fence and they ran across the finish with him.  The announcer said everyone's names as they came across the line and when Ev came across they said "Evan Williams and his posse" (sp?)  My kids were the only kids to run across the finish (it happened so fast I only fit Alorah and half of Zai in the frame).  Pretty cool idea, Grumps!



Then, I'm assuming because they crossed with dad, they got medals. 

Here's a pic but for some reason I was distracted and didn't get the medals in the photo.



Lastly one of Ev's clients ran Four Bridges as well.  It was cool to meet one of his clients and put a face to the name as I rarely am involved with his day to day and the people he works with.  I am after all in my busy homeschooling, mommy world.  One that doesn't lend itself to a ton of freetime or workout time which is probably why I won't ever run a half marathon with or without Ev. 


I might start training for a sprint triathlon though?! He inspires me. I am up to a mile in the pool at a quite respectable time! Running just isn't my thang ,  I'm not too coordinated on land.  However, I think I might have gills :)  Enough about me, this post is about my hubby and how proud I am of him.  He's a stud!  Can you tell he floats my boat?