Project Life: Week 3

We were out of town for the long weekend, so I was running a little bit behind with week three.  I also struggled with the pages since I wasn't real thrilled with the photos I had to work with.  Once again, I had nothing by photos from my phone... I need to do something about that!  :-)

 Anyway, the momentum is still going and week three is done!

 Credits are listed here.

Christmas morning...

This Christmas was a little light on photos.  First off, I have no photos of our Christmas with my parents.  Clara and I were still getting over the bugs we had and I just didn't get my camera out.  I took a few (and I do mean just a few) on Christmas morning and then the next day, I got sick again with a cold and my camera just sat around collecting dust.  I did take a few later in our trip, but not nearly as many as I would have liked to.  Hopefully my attempt at project life will help motivate me to take more photos this year!

The calm before the storm, our little tree at Bearski...

Jeff and I bought that tree at Target the Christmas before we got engaged!  I was hosting a Christmas party at my apartment and needed a tree.  I guess we've had it for 17 years now (or is it 18??)... yikes!!  It was in that apartment that year and then was in our condo we bought when we got married.  It didn't see the light of day for several years, until we moved down to Dallas.  There it was in the kids' playroom for a couple of Christmases.  Then it got called back into real service when we moved back here.  That first Christmas we were back, we pulled our big tree out of storage only to find that we only had the bottom 2/3rds!  No clue when and where we lost the top 1/3!!  So, the little tree was our tree for a couple of years until we found the perfect tall, skinny tree to fit in our city space!

We decorated it with some plain little ornaments that I bought for the tree when we first got it, but we've also been adding stuff that we've gotten locally.  Every Thanksgiving the resort hosts a holiday event where kids can go from spot to spot doing different activities.  There are usually a couple of stops where you can make ornaments.  Those are on there.  We've also picked up ornaments from local attractions that we've been to.  The star is one Alex picked out and bought at our church's Fair Trade Bazaar.  He put it up there himself :-) Very pleased with our little tree and can't wait to add more ornaments to it!

The kids were up super early... they were so excited!

Here they are going through their stockings...

 Yay!!  Toothbrushes!!!  :-)

Figuring out what to open next...

Yes... there is a box of Hungry Jack there.  Bearski got a present from Santa too... it got a waffle maker and mix, a kinect game and some family board/card games!

And the aftermath...

It actually doesn't look all that bad... does it?  We got up, opened presents, had our traditional breakfast of Land of Nod cinnamon rolls with sausage and Jeff and the kids were still able to get out of the slopes as soon as they opened!  They had a great day of skiing since the slopes weren't very crowded!

filling in gaps...

Last gap to fill in before moving on to Christmas photos.  Back near the beginning of December, Clara was in the Nutcracker production of the place where she takes modern (and an extra pointe class).  The week of the performance, they discovered that the high school where they would be performing had double booked their theater!!  So, that is why it looks like they're performing on a gym floor... it's because they are!

If you were able to attend additional Saturday rehearsals, you could have an additional role.  Clara was a party parent (her "daughters" are on the bench behind her)...

Their modern class performed the Arabian dance...

That's Clara with one of her best school friends and one of her best dance friends!  It's funny how circles constantly overlap here in such a big city!

Clara also performed Frosty with the performance troupe at the end of the show.  The girls had such a good time!

Project Life: Week 2

Okay... still loving project life!  I know it's only week two, but I seriously can't wait for the week to end so I can scrap my next set of pages!  This week I didn't take a single photo with my big camera... these were all with my phone.  Previously, this would have made me twitchy... but now with PL, I love it.  I have a whole series of glimpses into our everyday lives... not just the big "big camera worthy" events... but the stuff that makes up our days.  I think, if I can keep this up, we'll have a really neat record of our year.

 I'll post a link to the credits here once the site where they're posted is back up.

These are already uploaded to my Shutterfly album and I love flipping through the virtual pages!

better late than never...

I know I said I would upload this last week, but stuff happened :-)  First it was issues with our wireless modem (actually the extender) and then Saturday we had the great file migration debacle (trying to transfer stuff from my desktop to my new macbook pro).  So today I'm back in business and I have other things I want to post, but I'm getting this done first before I move on.

Here is the Russian dance...

I didn't do too bad considering I wasn't looking where I was shooting... just propped it up on my knee and hoped I didn't move it during the piece.  The lighting was tough, so the girls periodically turn into glowy angels... but that's okay :-)

Russian...

The last week before break, the dance school where Clara takes ballet and character had their winter show.  Clara and her friend performed the Russian dance from the Nutcracker.  She loves this dance (and the costume) and couldn't wait to perform it!

However, she wouldn't look at me for photos... sigh...

 A series of shots of Clara with her friend and partner for the dance...

Think she was tired of me taking photos?

 Clara and another one of her friends...

... they've gotten really close over the past year and now dance together three days a week at three different places!

And now for my performance shots of questionable quality.  Jeff was out of town and Alex was at a Christmas party, so I was on my own to either shoot still shots or take video.  I couldn't decide, so I attempted both.  I had my flip video camera balanced on my knee with my left hand and my camera in my right... but I shoot fully manual and wasn't able to make adjustments for lighting as I shot, so everything ended up overexposed.  My video turned out a little funky too (I'll post that tomorrow).  But I guess video and still shots of questionable quality are better than not having them, right?

Anyway... the girls did a FABULOUS job!  They were really good, strong partners for this dance... I just loved watching them...

as promised...

here's frosty...

Project Life: Week 1

Crazy... I know!  Two posts in one day!  What's even crazier is that I finally decided on my format for Project Life and have actually completed week one!!

I love the idea of the traditional PL as it was designed... however, Jeff and I have decided that this is the year of house projects... serious purging, painting, updating the kids' rooms and general maintenance stuff.  The last thing I needed to do was add more stuff before we had even started getting rid of the old stuff in our house.  So, I thought about going digital yesterday, today I committed to it and completed my week one layouts!  I'm so excited about them!!!  My main motivator for doing Project Life is to get my photos OUT of my computer and into some format that we all can flip through and enjoy.  My main fear of doing PL digitally is that my pages would just end up trapped in my computer like all of my other photos and digital scrapbooking layouts.  However, I have a plan.  As soon as I finished these pages, I uploaded them to Shutterfly and started a new 12x12 photo book.  These pages are already in there and no stuff is added to our house until my finished book (please let me finish it!) arrives around this time next year!

So, here are my first two pages...

 supply credits can be found here

Project Life is not meant to be a complete album of all of the photos you take during the year, but more of a snapshot... the week at a glance type of thing.  So, these photos are a teaser of posts to come with more complete sets of photos from our break. Can't wait until next week, so I can do another set!

frosty photos...

After You're My Only Shorty.... Clara and her friend performed Frosty the Snowman with the junior performance troupe!  Some of those little ones had some serious attitude on the floor... you can see it in the video I'll post tomorrow.  They were adorable!

 

I love looking at these photos and seeing the genuine smile on Clara's face!  She's having so much fun with dance this year!!

we're back!

Wow... the holidays were as crazy and chaotic as ever this year!  But they were completely wonderful as well (even after a bumpy start)!

On the last day of school before break, I got a call from the school nurse that Clara wasn't feeling well.  Apparently, she turned white as a sheet and started shaking in class.  Very strange since she was was perfectly fine and super excited about their Christmas party that day when I had dropped her off about three hours before.  I picked her up and she spent the afternoon writhing around in pain and wasn't able to keep anything down.  I called the doctor's office and given her symptoms, they sent us straight to the ER with a suspected appendicitis.  After five hours in the ER, they were ready to send her home... but then the pain came back and her temperature shot up so they admitted her for observation.  About this time, I confirmed that it was a stomach bug and not appendicitis by coming down with it myself... ugh.  Thankfully I was able to get a cab home and get settled in before it fully hit (and, thankfully, I didn't have it nearly as bad as Clara).  We were quarantined until Sunday and were able to have Christmas with my parents that day (we kind of messed up their visit with our stomach bug drama).

After that we headed to our place in Michigan for the rest of the break!  I have a few photos to post from that trip (I immediately followed up my stomach bug with a massive cold, so I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked).  But I'm going to try to catch up on my pre-break photos and videos before I move on.  I also developed a major itch to do Project Life this year and given that I'm already a week behind, I need to get that started ASAP or scrap the idea altogether!

So, for this post, I will leave you with the video that goes with the last post I did (prior to our Christmas card)... You're My Only Shorty from the DePaul Women's Basketball game...

Merry Christmas!

 

halftime!

On Saturday, Clara and her friend performed during halftime of a DePaul Women's basketball game.  They danced to You're My Only Shorty.  Clara was SUPER nervous since she had never done anything like this before!  They both did really well (they had a bit of a glitch mid-song when you see the video once I get it edited... there are usually three of them with some staggered choreography in this song, but the other girl had a conflict and didn't come that night and I think it threw them off a little).

But here are the still shots for now...

After this, they performed Frosty the Snowman with the little girls.  Those photos to come later along with the videos.  They had a great time!  They both managed to catch t-shirts that they were throwing up into the stands which just added to their excitement (Alex even ended up with one too!).  They ended the evening with dinner out and a sleepover at our house!  Very different from our serious ballet Nutcracker Decembers in the past.  Clara is having so much fun with her switched up schedule.  I think her favorite thing is having the time to do more fun things with friends!

More to come!

The Turkey Vulture Trot

On Thanksgiving morning we all got up fairly early so Jeff and the kids could do the Turkey Vulture Trot.  Our original plan was for Jeff and Alex to run the 5k and Clara and I walk it.  However, when it came time to register, Clara wanted to run and opted for the 1 mile fun run instead.  So, with that, I ended up as family photographer :-)

 First up was the 5k for the boys.

Alex sitting on our new bench on our new deck to tie his shoes...

The boys, ready to run!

Clara's race didn't start until about an hour after the 5k, so we hung around the house for a bit longer before walking over.

The girl ready for her run...

We got there in plenty of time to see the boys finish.

First was Jeff....

He ran with Alex most of the time, but then took off by himself near the end.

Then here came Alex...

It was a tough run for the boy!  Every 5k he's ever done before has been on flat ground, this one had lots of ups and downs!  But... he finished at his normal time!!  Great job by Alex!

Then, it was time for the 1 mile fun run.  I didn't get any photos of the start because Clara was in a clump of boys and she was determined to stick with them.  She can be just slightly competitive at times :-)

Here she is at the finish...

(Alex joined her near the end to cheer her on).

It was a tough run for Clara too...

The fun run started out going up a pretty steep incline and she was running a bit harder than she probably should have (trying to keep pace with the boys)... but she did great!

My family of Turkey Vulture Trot finishers!