So Scott gave me a Cannon Rebel xsi for my birthday, and I have to say, I've never taken so many pictures in such a short period of time! He gave it to me on Saturday (a couple of days early) and I've been driving the kids crazy with it ever since. Today I spent some time getting some shots of Madison. Here are my favorites from today:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have some more things to post about tomorrow (have to share with you what the awesome PGD Creative Team did for my birthday!), but for now that's it for me! :)                  

Scott and I worked the last week of June to get the changes for PGD ready and pushed those out on July 1st. There was some more design work sandwiched in between that and the 4th of July weekend. The Friday of the 4th I twiddled around in PS, but didn't actually get much accomplished. That night we took the kids to see fireworks. Fireworks and Nicholas is one of my favorite combinations. He gets so excited and wears this expression of complete awe. It's priceless. I wanted to beat my head on the car dashboard when I realized that I forgot my camera at home. :(  I'm so not good about taking it places with me. You'd think the darned thing would be attached to my hand all the time, but it's not.

On the 5th we drove north to visit with some of my extended family. That was nice. I had the chance to see all of my aunts and uncles and some of my cousins. That doesn't happen much anymore. The young cousins are growing up and making me feel exceedingly OLD because I remember things like holding them when they were newborns. Now they're teenagers with girlfriends or like my youngest who's sprouted herself into a beautiful pre-teen who is now really taking an interest in boys. Where's the girl who pulled Madison around in a wagon just a few years ago and sneered if anyone with an Y chromosome came within 10 feet of her?

Yesterday I had the chance to visit with my pal Sandy. She came over with her little one, Isaac, who's growing like a weed. It cracks me up because he'll be 2 in December and I see that he's starting to test boundaries. I remember those days and don't really miss 'em.

I'm looking forward this weekend. I'm going with my SIL Lisa to girly stuff on Saturday. Kind of an early birthday present from Scott. He told me to take off, leave the kids with him and go do relaxing girls things. I know a mani/pedi is on the menu for sure. Haven't quite figured out what else we want to do yet, but I know I'm going to enjoy myself.

The last couple of layouts I made were done with 2 layout templates I made for the shoppe. One has a photo of Nicholas that I took just a couple of weeks ago and the other is of some up-to-that-point-unscrapped photos of Madison from last summer (they're linked to full credits).

 

I still have a layout to do for the AAM challenge that will be posted next week, so I'm sure I'll be back with that soon (I'm hoping to get to that today!).

That's all for me. Live, Laugh, Love & Scrap people!