Project Life 2014: Week 35, part one

And now for broken bone #2.  Three days after Clara's trip to the ER and just a few hours after grandpa and grandma had left, we got the call.  Alex was out downhill mountain biking and had crashed.  His wrist ended up broken in two places... but he had been having so much fun, he still had a smile on his face!

So with two broken kids, we had to get a bit creative with our activities.  The two main things to do around our place in Michigan during the summer are to hike or some sort of water activity.  Those were both out with a broken wrist and a broken toe.  We did a little back to school shopping in Traverse City on the day of Alex's appointment with the specialist on Monday.  On Tuesday, we decided to go to Frankfort to have ribs at a place we had just heard about and see a movie at the cool old movie theater.  Wednesday we finally made it to the Cherry Hut for lunch... we usually go several times a summer, but this was our first visit this year.  That evening we took a chairlift ride to the top of the mountain.  The rest of the week is a separate layout because of our big adventure on Thursday. We let the broken children (specifically the boy one) have one special request and we went to a place we've been talking about going to for a few years.  

Main kit used (links on pinterest)....

Project Life 2014: Week 34, part two

And now here's the rest of week 34...

The cousins left Thursday afternoon and grandpa and grandma showed up that evening.  A few hours later we were in the ER with Clara... sigh.

The first broken bone of the summer (yes... there's more to come).  The story is on the layout, but it's tiny on here.  So basically... back in June at Nationals in Myrtle Beach, Clara jumped into the pool at the hotel.  BUT, it was shallower than she thought and she smacked her toes on her right foot into the bottom of the pool.  Her second toe swelled a little, turned reddish purple and hurt some, but it was nationals, so she had to keep dancing.  We honestly did not think it was broken, just bruised and a little scraped up from hitting the pool bottom.  It was fairly quickly back to normal, so she just kept going with dance, tumbling and general summer stuff.  Flash forward to that Thursday night... she was just standing there at the pool talking to me and she leaned forward onto the toes of her right foot.  She suddenly turned bright red and big huge Clara tears started rolling down her cheeks (and those of you who know her, know what I'm talking about with the "Clara tears").  I seriously thought she was being dramatic, because she was just standing there!  But then she showed me her toe and it had doubled in size already and was dark purple.  So it was off to the ER.  Their diagnosis was that she had fractured her toe before in June, it had never healed properly and her small movement that day was enough to pop that piece of bone off.  Lovely.  Three weeks in her stylish new shoe and a recheck with an orthopedic doctor back home to determine the full course of action. Good times.

So, as you can probably tell, the photos in the layout are way out of order.  I really don't know what happened when I was adding them, but given that layout encompasses just three days, I'm trying not to get too worked up about it.  Something else I'm trying to let go on is including pictures of myself in my PL book.  That's something I really wanted to work on for this year.  I was doing better and including more photos than usual, but they were only ones I thought were pretty good photos.  Now I'm trying to take that a step further and include the not so great ones... the candids, the action shots, etc.  While we were playing bean bag one night, Alex decided to pick up my camera, switch it to auto and take photos while we played.  I'm not a huge fan of the photo I decided to use, but it's real.  It's me, playing bean bag with my girl being a goof in the background.  Being the primary photographer for this project, I don't have a lot of these types of photos but I'm trying to let go and use then when I do.

Main kit for this spread (links on Pinterest)...

Project Life 2014: Week 34, part one

Week 34 was a crazy week, so it's a two parter.  The first half of the week, Jeff's brother and his family were in for a visit.  The cousins were all together, so there were lots of fun adventures and lots of fun photos...

Here is the main kit for this spread (links on pinterest)....

Project Life 2014: Week 33

Week 33 was a week at home after our big trip, but before heading to our place in Michigan.

Here's the main kit I used on these pages (links on pinterest)...

Project Life 2014: the rest of week 32

I'm a little sad that I'm done with my travel journal posts... I really enjoyed that project.  But I'm getting over it by planning a December Daily album based on the same idea.  Let's see if I actually follow through or not as I failed at it last year and have a ton of other photo projects in the works.

 Here's the rest of our week in Missouri after our big road trip...

And the supplies (links on pinterest)...

Road Trip 2014: Day 11

The last day...

Just a lot of driving, so not many photos and no brochures :-(

It was torture!  We stopped at the Missouri welcome center to use the restrooms and they had these big, beautiful brochure displays!  We had gotten so accustomed to scouring those for travel journal material, that we just stood there staring longingly at them... wishing we were still road tripping.  I still haven't completely broken that habit.  It makes me want to do a regular smash book style journal so I can do this all year!

The last of the trip project life pages...

Road Trip 2014: Day 10

Okay... this day is a BIG one.  We did a LOT on day 10.  It was a crazy day, but we had so much fun and saw a lot of cool things.

First stop of the day was Wall Drug.  I'd heard about it for years, but had never been!  We had originally planned to go past it and go to the badlands first, coming back for lunch.  But we decided as we approached the town of Wall, that we would just go to Wall Drug first.

It was so much fun...

So much to see and do... all of it a bit cheesy, but that's what made it so fun!  So many things to choose from for the travel journal!  I ended up buying a postcard, the "where the heck is wall drug" sticker and a Wall Drug sticker book which included stickers for lots of other attractions in the area (the Mount Rushmore sticker from day 9 came from this book).

I journaled on the back of the postcard this time.  We also picked up Wall Drug brochures/maps...

It had lots of good information, so I wanted to include it in a way that you could see it all...

This was the one brochure from the trip that I didn't want to lose the information on the back when I attached it to the page, so I took a second one that I had and glued it to the back of the page.

We thought we were just there for a quick stop, so the kids got maple frosted donuts for a snack.  But then we decided that we weren't sure where we would find lunch around the badlands, so we thought it would make sense to have an early lunch at Wall Drug.  Their cafe menus were printed for you to take as souvenirs, so I took one and included our lunch selection on a page.

Second stop... Badlands National Park...

It was so amazing there!  I really couldn't believe the scenery!  No photo could do it justice, but this vintage postcard came the closest, so I bought it!  I also bought the badlands sticker on the left.  The cute little prairie dog came from my Wall Drug sticker book.

The third stop of the day was a surprise stop!  We pulled in to a gas station and there on the side of the parking lot was the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site.  The missile silo wasn't there (it was a little ways away, but the information about it was there, plus it was where you would get your ticket to see it if you wanted to).  So, while my dad filled up the car, the kids earned another junior ranger badge!

I bought a post card for my book.

I decided to put the passport stamps on the back of the postcard this time.

They had two there... one for the information center and one for the missile silo.  I got them both even though we didn't go to the silo.

I also picked up a brochure...

Last stop of the day was the Corn Palace...

We got there late in the day, so we didn't stop for too long.  I picked up a brochure and a post card.

I journaled on the back of the postcard and added a photo to it as well...

This was the first time that I put a photo on a postcard in my book, but I like how it turned out.

And finally, my project life page....

Road Trip 2014: Day 9

Day 9 was a day of sightseeing around Rapid City.  We were staying two nights in the same hotel, so it was really nice not to have to pack and load up that morning before heading out.

First stop of the day was Bear Country U.S.A.  It was so nice not to have all of the luggage in the car for this stop.  Lots of room for everyone to move around for the best view of the animals as we drove through the park.

Here I picked up a brochure/card and a post card for my travel journal...

Next we were off to Mount Rushmore...

These pages are a bit sparse, because I accidentally flipped two pages instead of one when I was working on my book.  My original plan was for three pages of Mount Rushmore stuff.  But when I flipped too many pages, I had to stretch it out to four pages.  I bought the big sticker above and the post card below from the gift shop for my journal.

The Mount Rushmore sticker above was added later.  It came from a sticker book that I bought the next day at Wall Drug.

And to fill the page more, I used some of the stickers I printed out...

I picked up a brochure too...

Just a shot of how I included it so it could still be read...

Last stop of the day was the Crazy Horse Memorial...

A couple photos above, you can see the postcard I bought.  I did part of my journaling on the back of it.

I included the brochure from here as well.  And attached it so it could still be opened up...

The last Crazy Horse page...

After we got to the hotel that evening, I sent my photos to print at the Wal-Mart next door.  I will admit, that we were never working current on our pages for the rest of the trip.  We had missed a few days due to late nights and then started working again on this night once the photos were printed.  But we were never current again.  I really loved being current, but I'm very glad we didn't give up after we got behind.  We did well on continuing to collect stuff and keep it organized.  That's something I may plan for differently if we do this again.  Maybe a small accordion folder to put stuff in each day, so if we do get behind it's all properly grouped together.  We actually did ok though... so maybe it's not really an issue.

And the project life page for the day...

Road Trip 2014: Day 8

Not much to say as an intro to this day, so let's just get to it!

This was the place where it finally dawned on me that we could still get the passport stamps at the national parks even though we didn't have our passports with us.  I wish I would have thought of that earlier so I could have included the stamps for Grand Teton and Yellowstone in my travel journal.

I didn't take a separate photo of it, but at Little Bighorn, I also discovered the sticker sets that they sell at most (maybe all) national parks.  There was a photo sticker and an information sticker in each set.  I'm guessing they were meant for some specific purpose, but I'm not sure what it was.

And then, since I was printing pics at Wal-Mart, I printed a bunch from our mini-golf game...

I also included the brochure for the minigolf place.  I just folded it over so it fit in the book.

Here is my page for that day...