Pictures pictures pictures....

I had my interview for the Marriage and Therapy program this week which allowed me to be able to spend some time with Brenda and Addison!! It was sooooo wonderful to be able to spend time with her and not have an agenda and places to be!! We were able to just hang out, take pictures and talk!!! Addison is a beautiful baby who is soooo good! She was such a trooper as I took 300 some odd pictures of her!!! We experimented with a lot of different things and some of them turned out pretty good! Here's a few and the rest are on my flickr page (link at the left) We had to be creative with lighting once the sun wasn't there but we learned a lot and had fun--which was the point!
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Hopefully I'll be posting at the end of the week if I'm accepted into Grad School and I'll be starting January 17th if I am!! WOW!

I'm an "aunt", I'm going to grad school, lots going on!!!

I just haven't posted anything in a long time. It's been a very busy couple of months and it's only going to get busier because....

I'm applying for Grad school!!!!!!! I'm applying to the Marriage and Family therapy program at Argosy University in the Cities. It's a weekend cohort program that takes 2 years plus a year for my practicum. I couldn't be more thrilled. I need to just get all my stuff done and in so I can get in for January!! So very sadly, this is my last month on the Design Team at Treasured Scrapbooking. I have LOVED this past year working for Leslie and playing with her kits every month!! I just know that I need to focus on school and I really have no idea how much I'm going to be able to scrap at all! I'm planning on using my scraproom for homework or we're converting the guest room into a homework room, we'll see!

I'm an "auntie"!!!!!!!!!!!! Brenda had her baby girl last Tuesday and I went down Wednesday to go see her. I can't wait until I can go see her again in a few weeks!!! I plan on staying with her for part of a week but with the creeping holidays and not much vacation time I'm not able to go for another couple weeks :( Brenda was GORGEOUS when I saw her--she didn't even look like she had given birth!! I hope it goes that easily for me!!!

Here's Addison!



I've also been practicing doing some digital scrapbooking. I haven't got the journaling part down just yet but I'm really enjoying it and I may take a digi scrapping class this winter if I have ANY spare time with school. Julie from Treasured Scrapbooking has been helping me with any questions that I have and it's been a HUGE help!! Especially since she's completely my inspiration for wanting to try out digital scrapping! Check out her digital stuff on her blog See Julie Scrap She's got some amazing stuff on there!!!!

Lots of goings on...

Well we're busy lately and we're continuing to be busy but it's all fun stuff!! I had my best friend's baby shower this week and it was awesome!! It's so VERY SPECIAL to me to be able to spend time with her while she's pregnant!! it's so weird to feel the baby in her tummy now!! Here are some pics of the diaper cake I made and of the shower.

Diaper cake (backgrouns) and the cake Kelly got for the shower--we were so excited thinking the baby was made of fondant...but nope--"made in china"...darn..but we got a good laugh out of it!



Brenda and I...



Me, Brenda and Kelly...


The dirty diaper game...it was hilarious watching everyone sniff the diapers!!!


Molly got a little "overly grossed out" by the idea of the game....





We also went to a crop fundraiser all day Saturday which was fun too! It was VERY organized which I was quite impressed with. I also won a few prizes! I made a few layouts but most are reveals for the 15th so I can't post them just yet! The other two I need to take pictures of and I'll post them then.

A great thing happened today though....Tim said he would go to an Alpha Marriage course with me at church that starts next week! I'm quite excited for it! We need something to get us back to "center" and making some decisions. The weird part is I've been very hesitant to get close to people at church because I feel like God wants us to leave Duluth so I feel torn but I'm feeling like this is what God wants for us and me so...there ya go!

I'm exhausted from all the running we're doing lately but winter's coming and we'll be not doing much of anything again....I'm hoping we're a LITTLE more active than last year...my snowshoes don't like sitting on the shelf! I have in the past actually been MORE active in the winter than other months and I hope maybe this year will be like that!

We're off for a cabin trip this weekend with a few of our friends and then next weekend is our annual GIRLS TRIP!!! WOOO HOO!!!! We're just base camping this year and doing fun little trips each day so it should be fun!!!

Randomness....

First of all I keep forgetting to do this....Kelly from Treasured Scrapbooking was a DOLL and gave me this:



I need to tag 7 more blogs for this....I'm really having a hard time choosing JUST 7 though!!! So I may just be revisiting that part later....

It was the first at Treasured scrapbooking and we're doing our reveals and challenges!!

My challenge is an ad inspiration, and it's definitely hunting season around here cause this is my inspiration....You can find all the challenges HERE




And here's my layout...




On another note--I went to small group for church tonight and it was VERY encouraging! It's the first time I've felt like I "belonged" at any of the groups at church. I think the fact that it's all women and they're all different ages and life stages that is so wonderful. We're studying intimacy with God and we studied Psalm 25, 111 and 112. I have some additional stuff that I brought home to meditate on and I can't wait to!! I probably should be doing THAT right now rather than typing on here. I also finally asked for prayer about a lot of the stuff I've been struggling with regarding Tim and I's path in where we're going from here. I desperately need patience for waiting on God so if you have any prayers you could send my way regarding that--I'd GREATLY appreciate it!!

Well I should really be getting to bed because I have a big day at work tomorrow. I have to turn in all my quarterly paperwork--this stresses me out to no end every quarter to the extent that I get sick. So I'm definitely excited to be done with it. Then, if all goes as planned, I will be done with ALL MY CATCH UP work on Friday and be able to freaking RELAX!!!! Which will be good because I have a baby shower for my best friend this weekend!! I made a ROCKING diaper cake for it and I'll post it up AFTER the shower cause I want the actual cake to be a surprise and I don't know how often she checks this!!

I can't believe I haven't posted this yet....

So a few weeks back I posted some pics of my little bro and I playing guitar hero and playing with guitars when we were tots....I did the layout of it and it was sooooooo super fun to do it!!!! I may actually frame it and hang it up and make a duplicate for my bro...(so matt if you're reading this--let me know if you'd dig having a copy of it). I made this with the Treasured Scrapbooking Kit #1 which had a ton of really yummy stuff in it!!!

I've really been having fun using old pictures that I got at Mom and Dad's last time I was there (I always want to say "home" rather than Mom and Dad's but I technically own my OWN "home" but regardless--it's still "home").

But...with those old pictures I did a fun layout for a contest we're having at Treasured Scrapbooking to scrap an old school picture....it has been a BLAST to see the results that people are coming up with for this!! But I'll stop typing and just embarass myself....

Getting personal...

So here it is, midnight, and I've been in tears all evening. At first I thought they were "bad" tears and now I'm realizing they're good tears. You see, God's been putting his finger on me for quite some time. Lately he's been putting it on me quite hard...to the point that I couldn't ignore it anymore. He was "poking" me whenever I was pushing aside anything that had to do with my emotions, feelings, thoughts etc....I was trying to just "do it all on my own" yet I felt like I was somehow doing what God wanted me to do. When, really, I'd just become bitter and resentful. After another fight with my husband over absolutely nothing, I did A LOT of soul searching.

I take care of people and their very large problems on a daily basis for a living. I also have been working through some stuff with Tim and being supportive of him and also being supportive of my other friends. What I WASN'T doing was seeking support for ME. I was trying to do it all on my own and getting frustrated that I didn't have anyone to talk to. All I needed to do was ask God for help and then I would feel at peace enough to ask other people for help! I didn't want to "bother" Tim with it because we were dealing with other stuff, I didn't want to "bother" Brenda or Mom with it because, well frankly, I knew the minute I'd start talking about it the floodgates would open and I'd start bawling and I was still not sure what about. I hate crying. Especially when I don't know WHY I'm crying. I knew this was coming and I've been avoiding it like the plague. It took the ever so subtle "prodding" of God through my dear friend Kim to make me finally see what was going on. The funny thing is, I don't know if Kim knew she was doing it--but I'm sure God did. I just continually became frustrated that I felt like no one was listening to me. It's because I wasn't asking them to.

I still know I don't have "it" figured out (whatever "it" may be) but I'm hoping that now I'm on the right track and I'm going to start asking people for help for myself too. I sat and tried to poke Tim to wake him up to tell him about it (which is near impossible). I think he heard some of it but probably not all of it. So here I sit at my computer, blogging about this. Why, I'm not so sure. I don't usually put things "out there" like this. But then again, didn't I just say that's exactly the problem I'm having??? LOL I felt like I needed to blog this because maybe it will help someone else that God is "prodding" ever so subtly to just stop and pay attention to what he's "prodding" about for a minute.

Either way--It feels good to get it "out there" and now I can go to sleep. Thank God.

Mom and Maya weekend

This is the weekend that happens once a year where I get to have the house all to myself with just one dog....it's called grouse opener to tim but Mom and Maya weekend to us!!! We decided last night to take off and go sleep on "the beach"--(a place just out of town pretty special to Tim and I) with my friend Katie.

I was feeling desperate for waking up on Lake Superior in the morning to breath that AMAZING air and to see the stars. We had perfect weather last night and this morning and as soon as we packed up the fog rolled in (God knew that's what we needed for our souls last night).

I really wanted to just see stars and the milky way and the sunrise. Well, the moon was so bright last night you couldn't really see too many stars to start with. BUT at 4:30 am I woke up (there were some VERY loud coyotes) and looked straight up and there was the Milky Way and SEVERAL shooting stars!!!! It was PERFECT!!!!! Then at 6:03 am I woke up with a start and the sun was coming up and I started shooting away....

I'm sooo proud of these pictures!! The ONLY photoshopping I did to these was bump the contrast a tiny bit to "pop" the clouds. So all I can say is.....THANK YOU RHEA!!!!!!!!!! (My photography teacher)

Rather than posting them all again over here on my blog...PLEASE take a look at my Flickr account HERE
Or click the slideshow in my sidebar and you will see them too!!