Everyday Moments...

When the girls where younger, I often wondered, "Is there more to life than being a stay-at home mom??" I must preface this by saying that when Anthony was 2 years old, I wanted nothing more than to stay at home with him and watch him grow every second I could. However, as Kyra and Nina approached 3 and 4 years old, my mind began to wander away from mission to stay close to the coop. Looking back to this particular day while Kyra was getting ready for preschool, I realized that I was right where I needed to be - with my girls, at home. I know they could've survived without me at home, but would I have survived without them? Absolutely not! I needed to be at home for me as much as I did for them. There was nothing more healing for me than raising my children the way I would've wanted to have been raised. I re-lived my childhood (in a healthy, nurturing way) through each one of them! Being able to take pictures of the everyday happenings in life such as this moment, makes me eternally grateful for my calling as a stay-at-home mom.

The challenge for the this LO was to scraplift another person's LO from the DS2 group and I chose my Prima pal, Rhonnie :-)

Hanging on!

My favorite thing to do on my LO's right now is to sew or embroider on them. You'll probably see me doing this A LOT! The LO challenge here was to stay monochromatic, add some bling, buttons and another embellishment, which are always Primas, for me!
One a day in April 08, I decided to go with Greg to Wauseon, OH which is a little over an hour away. While Greg worked at his facility, I took the girls to a nearby park so I could get some homework done. Having been stressed out from school, I hadn't had much time to enjoy with the girls. But this day the girls were begging me to come play with them. Luckily, I had my camera so I hesitatingly agreed to come play.
I learned so much about myself as I watched as my girls laugh and frolic all over the place. During a particular part of our playtime, Kyra climbed up some monkey bars shaped in an arc. When Kyra froze right in the middle, she started to cry, feeling scared and stuck. As I guided her across the bars and to other side in safety, I understood that even as an adult, I still get myself into those type of positions. For example, I was SO excited about going back to school at first but when the semester progressed, I became extremely anxious that I made the wrong decision and I became frozen - paralyzed with fear and I wanted to quit. It was then that I humbly turned to Heavenly Father in prayer and He guided me "across the bars" and down the other side, safely. I had an epiphany at the playground that day that Heavenly Father would always guide me through my education and help me balance family and teaching on top of it all.
Isn't funny what you learn through your children?

Anthony's First Date!

Anthony is growing like a weed. Here he is on his first date with his very good friend, Stephanie Campbell, from Cranberry, PA. This was Seneca Valley's homecoming weekend, which Anthony attended from Thursday night (yeah, he missed school Friday) to Saturday night when they had the dance. The game was against North Allegheny, SV's rival and sadly, SV lost. I will post a few more pictures at http://www.dropshots.com/marangi6#date/2008-10-05/11:22:56 if you want to see the whole Pittsburgh weekend.

The challege for this LO was to use 25 of one embellishment. Need you have to ask what mine was? I was tempted to do Primas since Heaven knows I have much to spare, but I opted not since they look so rad in my living room :-)

I am old enough to have a 16 year old...

"Do you remember...the 21st night of September..." blah blah blah...the song is called Dancing in September by Earth Wind and Fire and I love it so much I use it a Zumba warm-up song. Anyhow, instead of the old "sweet sixteen" SB title, I decided to go a little more creative. I still can't believe my boy is 16 years old. Where, oh where has my little boy gone??? Don't ya love Anthony's smile :-)

My first attempt at Hybrid scrappin'

This is one of my favorite shots of Nina! During one gorgeous summer morning the girls went outside on the backyard deck and started spraying each other with spray bottles...sadly it was the closest they came to water most of the summer! I guess you can get really creative when money's tight...anyhow, Nina got cold and put on her winter jacket - I thought it was definitely a "kodak moment"!

This is also my first digital LO (used Picasa 3)- which I didn't do much except add text to the picture and blew it up to 8 x 10. I noticed it didn't need much to complement it - so I used the challenge to use an old tool with a new tool; my new tool was my Bazzill In-Stitches templates and the old tool was my Dell printer (which I discovered it prints pretty dang good pictures after having it for 4 years now...).

Zumba anyone?

I saw this paper and I thought it'd be perfect for my picture from the Toledo Press article on Zumba. I'm just getting used to doing LO's on myself - it still feels kind of weird?

This challenge was to use one embellishment and mine was, of course, a couple of Primas :-)

This is a shot of my favorite flower, the Orange Lily...I know it's not much of a layout - but that's the joy of it all...simplicity. This picture was taken from the gardens at the Toledo Z0o (a favorite place of mine). The SB challenge was to create a layout of one of my favorite things...well, here's one of 'em!