Belly pics

Chris' travels - Rio de Janero

Chris' work travels took him to Brazil for the last 2 weeks.  (He just got back home on Saturday.)  He was going to spend the weekend in Rio de Janero doing some sightseeing.  So he took our camera along so he could take some pictures!  I was pretty excited to catch a glimpse of what he got to experience while he was away from me.  Enjoy a few that he captured...

Christ the Redeemer

scenic view with Sugarloaf Mountain in the background

beautiful beach

Casablanca Palace with Christ the Redeemer in the background

view of Christ the Redeemer from Sugarloaf

beverage of choice for the night

local surfing spot

one of my fav pictures from the trip. too bad those clams broke on the trip home...

Easter 2012

This Easter was a little different for Chris and I this year since we ended up needing to spend it apart. Chris was already scheduled to be in Ohio the day after Easter and so we had planned to spend Easter in Indiana with his family.

Then my dad had open heart surgery a few weeks ago. So I decided that since I had a 3-day weekend, that I needed to go see my family and spend the time with them. This meant that Chris and I would have to split up since it would have been very tiring for him to drive 8 hours on Sunday and then drive all the way to Ohio from home on Monday.

So Chris headed to Indiana (with Maggie in tow) and I made my way down to Missouri. I left on Thursday night after work (and a haircut and finishing packing...it was a later night!) and headed to my sister's house so I could carpool down with them on Friday.

Here are the few pics I took during the weekend...

pretty sunset while driving

We took the long way down to Joplin and stopped at the outlet mall in Osage Beach on Friday. We hit up Coach, Bath and Body Works, and Fossil. (I may have made my first Coach purchase :)

We stopped for drinks (and for gas and to air up our tire) on our way out of the lake area. And I found out they have Jones soda in a can! I used to buy these all the time in high school when they came in glass bottles.

Love the pictures on them :)

We had a good weekend. Saturday was a busy day of helping our parents run errands and lifting things that they can't lift since my dad is still on a 10-lbs. weight restriction and my mom is used to my dad doing the heavy lifting. It was great to see that my dad is doing so well. (And he's even lost a little bit of weight. I'm hoping he will be able to keep it off.) We just wore him out on Saturday since we had to go to several stores in search of a new tv for their bedroom - just a lot of walking for him. And I found out that my dad's heart now sounds like a ticking watch. That was pretty interesting!

We also saw the house that they are rebuilding at the site of our old house. It's different but a similar layout to what the old one was.

We also went to Kohl's on Saturday and I got to do some birthday shopping. That was lots of fun!

Sunday was a good day. I woke up early and ran before going to the 8:00 service. But it turned out to be worth it since I got to see the sun start coming up and that's always really meaningful to me on Easter morning. Breakfast at Immanuel was good as always. My parents had a break from it (for the most part) this year, so I know they enjoyed that.

I sadly didn't get a picture of all 5 of us together but I did get these...

(in front of mom's pretty roses :)

(thanks to my sis for taking my new favorite picture of myself :)

It ended up being kind of tiring weekend and I missed not being with Chris and Maggie and Chris' family, but it was well worth it to spend the enjoyable time with my family and to be able to help my parents out while I was there. I hope you all had a great Easter as well!

Playtime

Maggie and I were playing a little fetch with the tennis ball tonight...

Leap Day

Wednesday was Leap Day. February 29th of 2012. And apparently God decided I needed a day of rest on that extra day of the year. I started feeling crummy on Tuesday night and didn't eat much for dinner. I went to bed early.

My head kind of hurt, I didn't have much energy and was weak and stiff. I got caught up by 3 days on my Bible reading (because I was 7 days behind). I did some scrapbooking. I napped. I watched Walk the Line. I ventured out for a short walk just to get out of the house and try to loosen up. I watched Survivor.

I stayed home with Maggie all day. She's such a goofball. A couple of different times throughout the day I sat down on the love seat in the living room to read. I stretched my legs out to be more comfortable. Well, Miss Maggie wanted to join me on the couch like she has been recently when I read. (Normally I don't take up the whole couch.) But I was taking up the whole couch. She didn't like this. So she decided that she needed to nudge all 70 pounds of herself up on the couch even though there wasn't much room. I did sort of move my legs so she could join me, but it was still quite funny to watch her try to fit. Had to capture this the last time this happened...

Where did February go, anyway?

all about Miss Maggie

I just wanted to post some pictures of Maggie that I've taken in the past few weeks. It ends up that she is one of my main objects to photograph. And I need a reason to use my new camera and fill up my Project Life album (which is going wonderful, btw)!

Each one has a bit of a story to go along with it...

Maggie with one of her favorite toys, her stuffed dinosaur. Chris won this for her at the 2010 white elephant gift exchange and she's hardly put it down since (as evidenced by the fact that it's ripping apart). In fact, she even carries it up and down our stairs and has come very close to falling multiple times.

Caught red-handed sleeping on our bed while we were at work. This has become a more common occurence (her still being on the bed when we go upstairs) as she's getting older and loves to sleep more.

Maggie really, really, really wanting Chris' milk cup. I don't know why I ever started this when she was less than a year old, but it has stuck ever since. She has this sixth sense about when you have a glass of milk, especially around bedtime. She will literally come from another part of the house if you are having milk and sit like a perfect little angel, just hoping that you will let her lick your cup when you're done :)

Project Life

This year I decided I wanted to try something a little different with my scrapbooking.  I heard about this system called Project Life - basically just a simplified, back-to-basics approach to scrapbooking.  After following Becky Higgins' blog for some time, I convinced myself that I needed to try this out for myself!  It's so simple and fast, which sounds right up my alley (because I'm definitely not fast when it comes to scrapbooking)!

Becky's focus is to capture everyday life.  To capture those moments that wouldn't necessarily end up in a traditional scrapbook.  And this sounded awesome to me.  How great would it be for our kids to look back at how our lives were when it was just the two of us?  What did we fill our time with?  What was life like in 2012?  How was technology different?  And it would also have to be great even for Chris and I to look back and remember our everyday life because those are the memories that easily slip out of our minds years (or even months) later.

So with this system you basically just print out your pictures, write some notes/journaling, and stick both into photo sleeves.  You can get as complicated or as simple as you want.  I decided to order the Clementine edition (of the core kit, which has all of the cards you need to put in an album) because I just love the designs in that set.  And I just ordered the Signature Black Album last week to put it all in :)

Here's the first week of January that I (almost) completed last week - I still have one picture to print out...

I'm not focusing on taking a picture-a-day but just filling the two pages with pictures and stuff from the whole week.  This might slip as the year progresses and I might end up focusing on a month at a time instead of a week.  I'll just have to see how it works out but I'm gonna be flexible about it.

Oh, and this first week I started was Sunday thru Saturday since January 1st was on a Sunday.  I think I'm going to make my second week Sunday thru Sunday so I can get into a pattern of my weeks starting on Monday.  I just think this might flow a little better, especially for the times that we do stuff on the weekend (which would include Saturday and Sunday).  That way I wouldn't have to split pictures from those weekends into two different weeks.

I've only completed one week and I'm already loving it!

great start

We had a wonderful Christmas! It was a great time to see family and friends. And we even got to bring in the New Year with a small party at our house :)

Our year is off to a great start! But it's always tough to get back into our routines again after having a lot of days off for the holidays.

We got a new camera (finally) this week! Our old one has been on its last leg for a pretty long time and it's almost 5 years old. (I guess that camera didn't ever start off too well since Maggie got ahold of if when she was a young puppy!) Wow, has technology changed. I'm already absolutely loving it! It's just a point and shoot (Canon Powershot) but it's so easy to use. I can't wait to play with it some more and to use the 1080p video! Here are a couple of my favorites from just the last few days...