I have been working on my creativity lately.
What does that look like?
Well for me in has been spending way too much time on Pinterest.
Yes, I have joined the time sucking inspiration of Pinterest.
So that future generations will understand what I'm talking about let me quickly explain what Pinterest  lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan parties, home decor, food etc.
After everything I had read I decided to check it out.
Now the benefit is that my favorites list on my computer is going to much shorter, which in turn will make Rob happier because it is all kept somewhat organized on Pinterest.
This afternoon I made a shopping list for the projects that I want to work on. I have found great ideas for babies, birthday and holidays.
Now what does this picture have to do with Pinterest? Chelsea was sitting on my lap as I was scrolling along and she kept seeing women in these beautiful full dresses. Lately, Chelsea loves to dress up so she goes into the closet and pulls out on of Kelly's dresses, this particular dress Kelly wore to her Uncle Mikey's wedding. Next thing I know Chelsea is walking out in it and asking me to tie the sash. She looked so darling that I had to take pictures and right now our grass is a wee bit overgrown and perfect for a photo shoot. We had some fun and I trashed my newly polished toenails but it was very much worth it.
What else have I been up to? Last night we got a cool lightning storm and I, wait for it....went out and took pictures.

Surprising I know. I got 13 shots that are pretty good but this shot was one of my favorites.
I sent it out to our local station that is always asking for weather pictures and they didn't show it. This is the third time with no TV love.
Bummer.
At least I got some Facebook love.
What else has been going on??
I have been working on the scrap room which unfortunately is looking more like the crap room right this minute. After this weekend I'll be able to spend more time getting it organized.
I also want to start making the living room quilt and pillows next week.
You know, the project that has been on my list since last year. Yeah, I'm finally going to get it going.
Let's see...Monday night was our first Junior Girl Scout meeting. It went fantastic. This year is looking great. Monday night the girls got to make journals and I'll have to take a picture of Kelly's. Its all very simple, some chipboard covered in scrapbook paper and decorated with 20 sheets of card stock and then bound with my cinch.
this coming Monday we are doing a girls scout birthday party where each girl gets to decorate a giant cupcake. That is something I will take pictures of.
Another thunderstorm is coming in but it's still too bright out to take pictures, but for safety I should shut down the computer.
*Carrie*

*Warning* This is only a test *Warning*

A test that I for one hope works out.
The girls are now in bunk beds and sharing a room.
Scary I know but some of my reasoning is that they play with the same toys; LPS, my little pony, stuffed animals, dress up. So instead of them fighting over the pieces we will merge them.
Sounds good right?
We are giving this experiment 6 months. If by tax season they are continuously at each others throats then Chelsea will go back to what was once my scraproom.

Also Chelsea really didn't like to play in her room because it was so far from everyone else.
Really.
But if it doesn't work then the bottom bunk actually rolls so we would roll Chelsea back and move Kelly's desk under there.
Which in a twisted way I think is a cool idea, but I would really like to see the girls bond more.
Only time will tell.
So far the only down side is that Chelsea keeps climbing up to Kelly's bunk and you know Kelly doesn't want that so we are working on teaching Chelsea about space.
So what are we going to do with the spare room? What do you think? ;)
I GET MY SCRAPROOM BACK!!!!
But what if this test doesn't work?
Then the plan is to take some tax money and enclose our carport and make it our scrap/drum room.
For right now I'm happy to get my house more organized and to get all my scrappy stuff back in one spot. I have boxes, bins and bags in my bedroom, hallway and kitchen/dining area.
It's driving us all nuts.
I even took graph paper and mapped out the room to see if I can move it around some. My plan is to move my big Expedit to the west wall and bring in a farm table and then take a run up to IKEA to purchase Antonius. I want to use this for my color drawers. I hope it will work but I really won't know until I get to the store and check it out.
Also on my trip to IKEA I hope to pick up a desk and chair for Wyatt and some other handy dandy things for around the house.
I wish IKEA was closer but I'm willing to head to Phoenix for some shopping therapy, and to also visit my favorite scrap store Scrapbooks etc. and Hobby Lobby too.
Now I just need to save up the money to get it all.

*Carrie*

  Back to school. Back to school, to prove to Mom that I'm not a fool. I got my lunch packed up, my shoes tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight. Ohhhh, back to school. Back to school. Back to school.

I'm slightly paraphrasing but this little song from Adam Sandlers movie "Billy Madison" has been running through my mind today because...

It's the first day of school!!

We have our lovely Kelly, who lost a tooth yesterday and started the 4th grade today, yeah!

Another little update on Kelly, last week she came home from grandma's house and her and Wyatt went to her room. When she came out a little while later I noticed something was different and it took me about 5 seconds to realize that she had chopped off her bangs almost to her scalp! To say I freaked would be an understatement. I just kept saying to her over and over. "What did you do?"

Rob kept saying it will grow back but why would she do this? The girl is almost 9 years old and has NEVER done this before, why now?

Anyway, now we move onto Wyatt, in the last week he has lost both his bottom teeth and now a top one is wiggly. I guess he is making up for lost time.

What is really funny is hearing his talk and seeing him push his tongue through the gap. It's comical.

Our dear Wyatt is entering the second grade and has one of Kelly's old teachers, Mrs. Herrera, formerly Ms. Murray.

Wyatt also cut some of his hair off that fateful afternoon but since he barely took anything off his bangs it took me a day to notice it.

All the rug rats were excited for the day to begin and were ready for school 20 minutes early. Yeah, I don't see that happening very often.

Before I would let the kids eat their breakfast I took them out front for our annual first day of school shots and head shots. Thankfully they're both good sports and didn't 'put up any fussing.

Chelsea of course did not want to be left out of the photo fun so I snapped a couple of pictures of her still in her jammies. Chelsea is getting so big and the interesting things that are coming out of her mouth can make me giggle. This afternoon I asked her to use the potty before we went to pick up the kids, she kept saying that she had already gone. Chelsea finally said to me, "Mom you gotta trust me."

I love this little tyrant. She is so fiercely independent and trying so hard to be a bigger girl.

We have survived our first day and both kids agree it went well. I think Wyatt was a bit stressed more than he let on because when I asked how his day went he told me about the bad dream he had last night where I was really huge and I ate him. Sigh...

Wyatt then proceeded to start bawling. Poor little guy, he has frequent bad dreams like I did when I was his age.

Besides being the first day of school there were other changes made to our household today...but I'll post about that tomorrow.

To top off our day we followed tradition and went to Dairy Queen after dinner. I'm still feeling the effects of the nutter butter blizzard I had. Wow.

I think I'll be heading to bed just shortly, I didn't sleep well myself last night. I still get excited too.

 Summer brain is affecting me badly.
I never posted about Kelly and my overnight visit to the zoo.
A few years ago this used to be the rhino exhibit but the zoo turned it into a place where they can have special events, one of them being able to spend the night and have night encounters with a few of the animals.
We had 10 girls and 4 adults camp out and we had an absolute blast.
We arrived at the zoo at 7pm and we picked out our tents.

 Then we went and visited with our local rhino in her night house. A shy, lovely lady who recently lost her mate to old age. When I asked how old do rhinos generally live I was told 40 years. The rhino at our zoo is currently 38 yrs old. WOW
We then walked through the dark with nothing but flashlights to the giraffes night house.
Here we met Eleanor, who has skinny stripes, Denver, who has bigger stripes and then to Ms. Texas who has some very wide stripes.
We were given carrot sticks to feed to Denver. Denver is our female giraffe that we almost lost to oleander poisoning. Sadly the zoo lost their only male Watoto to the poisoning.
Anywhoo, the night was very hot with little to no breeze so the night house was stifling, heading back outside we headed to the kitchen to see where the animals food is prepared.
In the kitchen/freezer the girls were able to see some of the Popsicles that they prep for the animals. We saw blood Popsicles, fish Popsicles, rat Popsicles, you get the idea.
The girls were able to see some of the animal hospital but we weren't able to see the 3 new lion cubs that had been born just a few days earlier.

So at about 10:30 we headed for out tents and got ready for bed, knowing how little girls at a sleepover are we actually didn't begin to doze until about 1am also, it was so hot that it made getting comfortable almost impossible.
Rise and shine at 5am we heard the peacocks crow and the lions humpf. I should clarify that I was up at 5am we didn't get the girls up til 6. Trying to get exhausted girls to hustle because breakfast was ready is like trying to get them to clean their rooms.
Saturday morning was filled with our main purpose at being at the zoo.
See our brownie troop earned money from our cookie

sales back in March. The girls decided that they want to help some of the animals at our zoo. Lynn, our leader, did the research and found out that we could spend the night ($40 each) and we could buy some toys for the animals to play with.
We had $800 to buy enrichment toys for the exhibits.
We bought 2 large balls that had holes to add snacks into, we purchased 3 extra strength circles and one disc and something else that they gave to the lion that we didn't get to see.
Anyway, one large ball was given to the gibbons and they filled it with lettuce and goodies inside that the gibbons had to figure out how to get out.
Then the girls got to spread peanut butter and pick out scents that went on the circles and other ball. Two of the tires and the disc were put into the warty pig exhibit. The one exhibit that all the girls felt needed some love.
Then the last circle and ball were prepped to go into the elephant exhibit. Out of all the animals the elephants had the most fun.
We learned that the toys we purchased should last about 10 years, we also learned that the toys will be rotated throughout the zoo to the different habitats. So we made sure that we told the girls and their families that next time they come to the zoo to keep an eye out for the various toys and see who gets to play with them.
Spending the night at the zoo was a great experience and hopefully one we'll get to do again. Who knows, Chelsea should be starting Daisies in a couple of years.
*Carrie*

Wyatt lost his first tooth!

My little guy has lost his first baby tooth!
Last night Wyatt was complaining about his teeth hurting and I figured just great he has a cavity or it's an excuse not to eat his dinner. This morning he comes out and shows me how wiggly his tooth was.
The tooth to the right is just a bit wiggly so I expect that it should be out around the time school starts.
I better make the call to the tooth fairy and give her the heads up. Unfortunately I won't be home tonight when the fairy comes by. Kelly and I will be camping overnight at the Reid Park Zoo with her girl scout troop.

For official records: Wyatt just turned 7 and is about to enter the 2nd grade.




*Carrie*

Last night was one of those awesome, fabulous, spectacular, phenomenal lightning nights.
I took over a hundred photos. Which is actually very low except that there was lightning everywhere. The great part though was because it stayed mostly on the mountain I didn't have to worry about being rained on.
The lightning was so constant that I was even willing to try longer exposures on my camera to see how she did.
AND SHE DID AWESOME!!
I think this photo was a 3 minute shot. I think it's one of my favorites from last night.
I started out taking photos from the east side facing the Rincon Mt's, when that petered out I headed south where it was going crazy. I set up facing the Wilmot Prison and did some one minute exposures but then I drove to the end of the road and set up.
I even tried to do a panoramic that I need to stitch together in photoshop.
About 10pm I headed home and on the way it started lightning right around my house. So I set up in my driveway and took some shots. I finally headed to bed at 11 and the lightning was still going.
Heck, I woke up at 4:15am and we still had lightning. I took one shot and then went back to bed.
I posted my best shots on our local Channel 4 and the AZ Daily star newspaper. Who knows I might be seen at noon or I could be in the paper again.
I'm not gonna hold my breathe though because a lot of people got great shots last night.
It was one of those nights that sustain me the rest of the year.
*Carrie*