keeping busy

holy moly! the last month just flew by. i'm not exactly sure where it all ended up, but man-o-man... august is here and in full swing. while writing a crazy goofy permission slip for my husband to go through his chief's initiation process i decided to design a new blog header. about time? yah, i think so!

i've been meaning to tell you about a fun new company i have the unique blessing of working with. ella publishing! ella publishing will publish scrappy related ebooks & a monthly ezine. sign up now for their newsletter here and become a fan on facebook here, and you'll be the first to know when new books are published for instant download! i'll make sure to keep you posted on upcoming books & info as it becomes available too! check out this great article emilie wrote on tsr about ella! :)

so for our last few days... the in laws were in town all of last week. with stan super busy with his chief's initiation, i was the lone ranger entertainer. of course, the girls did their part to entertain by filling grandpappy's hair & beard with rubber bands and bows. on thursday we had a picnic and hiked at the state park. it was a perfectly wonderful sunny and 75 degree washington summer day. stan even got off in time to have a late dinner with all of us before they took off toward home.

friday we slept in and did our first real grocery shopping in a month! we visited with our favorite baggers at the commissary who have doted on the girls since they were babies. i'm a sucker for enjoying the people attached with a place. guess it just makes everywhere a special place to me. call me crazy 'cause i'm a little silly that way. anyway, after unloading the chunk of our paycheck manifested in food, i was beat. the girls played outside for a little bit, and i snapped a quick picture of the day. wanna know a little secret about this picture? while emma's looking all gussied up on the top half of this picture... she's wearing blue & pink polka dot too-small pajama pants on the bottom. that's my girl!

torrey decided that she wanted to start earning money by doing some regular chores... so we talked about what she'd like to save toward. she decided she'd like to work toward earning enough money to get a laptop. (mommy's girl!) we talked about the regulations that would come with a "grown up" purchase like that. we made a list of some regular chores to do, as well as some extra jobs to help earn more on the side. so far we've made it a whole week with the regular chores getting done. suh-weet! now i've gotta pay up.


ahhh sunday! family day at last. stan had a mostly free day from all of the initiation stuff. so we enjoyed a family day... church, lunch and a bike ride together. it was heavenly. we did a short 8 mile ride around anacortes before heading to pick up some "chief stuff" for stan. there's nothing quite like those fabulous family moments in the middle of a haze of a crazy busy time. thank God for sundays!

**side note** i'm in need of a scrappy challenge & would love it if anyone else would like to play along. i'm sure i could come up with a few prizes to boot. anyone have a fabulous idea they'd like to share??

coming in from behind

oi! i feel so behind on getting things posted. the day i got back from cha in florida, my inlaws came into town. two hours after i got back, to be exact! it's been pretty nonstop since the first of july! so friday when i landed, i plugged my phone in and got the news about stan making chief. picked up my sweet baby girls and came home.

i ended up crashing for a little bit, but woke up when the command master chief from stan's squadron called. now, i was pretty out of it due to the extended lack of sleep... so I didn't exactly catch who it was on the line. i did eventually figure it out when he was congratulating me for stan's accomplishment. i hate feeling like i've missed something really important like that. i think i might have given him just a small piece of my mind. i'm blaming extreme fatigue. lol. we're pretty protective of our family time, and the chief initiation is pretty intense. i may have mentioned to him, that i wasn't into sacrificing our family time with a deployment coming up for their little initiation... oops. good thing i'm not the one in the navy. i did meet with him on monday, and i'm pretty sure it was all ok. apparently even i need *some* sleep to function properly.

saturday morning we headed out to our annual town parade & fair. the girls marched in the parade for our good friend, john koster, with their cousins and several friends. then we headed to the fair with stan's dad for lunch & rides. the girls are tall enough now to ride all of the crazy fun upside down rides. woohoo! emma likes the upside down ones a lot more than torrey does, so her and i hit those together. torrey was more into the spinning ones that don't flip you around quite so much. there are a bunch more pictures here.

sunday was a little more of a lazy day. stan had to fly, so the girls and i headed off to church, then home for a family afternoon with the inlaws. nothing too exciting, just playing, relaxing and dinner. i caught a quick picture of torrey in the middle of an intense session of webkinz.

monday was stan's first day of chief's initiation. i headed to the base to meet with his cmc and find out why it was so important for him to go through all of this. i did leave feeling like there was a purpose to it all, and that really helps a lot. being apart a lot, we tend to keep our commitments lower so we have plenty of family time. i've heard, as crazy as it is, that this whole process is quite the moving experience steeped in tradition. i'm really looking forward to his pinning ceremony at the end of it. we're so proud of him!

while i was out meeting the cmc, stan got to take his parents & the girls on a tour of his plane. i can't believe it but i forgot my camera! nuts! it was fun getting to see him tell his parents all about what he does. i'm not sure they've actually had a tour of the inside of his plane before.

tuesday we headed out to a local farmer's market called snowgoose produce for some of their immodest ice cream cones (homemade waffle cones, that is). we sat out on their deck overlooking the skagit valley farm fields while licking the drippies off our cones. then we headed to laconner to walk around some of the fun little shops they have there. we stopped by one of my favorite stores childhood bliss. the girls are pretty much too big for everything in there now, but i just love the owner, and always love seeing all of the fun goodies she has stocked up in there. i've got a bunch more pictures, including some of our fun finds here.

today was another one of those lay-low type of days. i got a couple of scrappy project/assignments done this morning. we spent most of the day at home. torrey played scrabble with grandpa and emma played paper dolls with grandma. i quite enjoyed watching the whole process. something special about those magic moments that last a lifetime. they watched princess bride for the first time ever. i couldn't believe they'd never seen it. it's just one of those movies you never grow tired of watching. tomorrow is our last day together before they take off toward home. so we'll be living the moments up tomorrow to last us until next summer.

forgive the sleepy writing today, i'm still recovering from my trip... i wonder how long i'll be able to use that excuse?! :)