Girls Night

Kurt left today for South Dakota and a conference. He won't be home until Sunday night. The girls have been waiting for this night as it has become a tradition on the first night that Dad is gone to have a girls night. We traditionally order Chinese from Yen Chings, yummy, watch a movie or two and have a picnic on the living room floor. Tonight was no exception. The girls have been given gift cards for movie rentals so instead of watching one of our movies, we rented five movies for 2.00 and good for 5 nights. Wow. Kristen wanted Matilada. This is a very cute movie about a little girl who has horrible parents and her teacher. I would recommend this movie to all. After Kristen's movie Sarah wanted to watch Sky High. Have seen this movie a lot lately on the Disney Channel. It is a good show, but I am getting a little tired of watching it. We all love having these quiet nights at home with just the three of us. Okay, maybe it is the five of us as the cats both like to join us for these quiet times.

Ebony and Ivory

Ebony and Ivory live together in perfect harmony. Or so says a song that I remember from my childhood. While somedays I wouldn't always agree, today they made beautiful music together especially with the help of a certain 8 year old girl that I know. Kristen has been taking piano lessons for almost a year now. After 2 earlier starts that ended up being stopped for many different reasons. Today was her first piano recital and she did a great job even if she did trip and fall on the way to the piano. She played two pieces. One was a duet with her piano teacher's daughter. I will have to admit that part of me missed hearing Sarah play also. I have long had a dream that the two girls would play a duet together. Hoping that maybe that will take place next year. Anyway this was Kristen's day to shine, without being in the shadow of her older sister. Kristen takes piano from a different teacher than what Sarah did, so no one can compare the two. She looked so grown up as she introduced herself and the names of her pieces. Currently she aspires to become one of the pianist for the church during the summer service at camp. I am sure that she will be playing at church before we know it.

Found: My old monkey.

I recently saw the cutest new scrapbooking paper and embellishments. It had sock monkeys on it. I wanted to buy some, but knew that they only way I would probably be able to use it, would be if I could find my old sock monkey that my Grandma Steinhagen had made for me many years ago. I thought that the monkey was gone for ever. Well today, my mom wanted us to come down and help move things out of her basement so that she could have some work done and what did I find? Not only my monkey, but also my brother's and my sister's elephant. Mom couldn't understand at first why I grabbed them out of the toybox and took them upstairs. Thankfully I had my camera with me and was able to take a few pictures. Now, lets just hope that the store still has the paper in stock next weekend when I get down there. Of course I need to look for a picture of my Grandmother also. I so can't wait to tell the story of my sock monkey. I may even dig out my daughter's sock animals and take a picture showing the old and the new. The girls sock animals were to cute to play with much, but my old monkey was well loved and made with love not mass produced. Can't wait to get this early childhood memory recorded.

Sarah's confirmation

Now that I am able to use the photo editing program that came with my computer, I took the time today to create an announcement for Sarah's upcoming confirmation. I am so excited to be able to do things like this even if it did take me 6 tries to get it right. I can't believe that my first born will be getting confirmed in less than a month.

A Digital Layout

I took a digital scrapbooking class yesterday. Actually it was part two, I had taken the first part the week before. Even though the instructor used a different program than what I have, I was able to follow along and created my first digital page. It is not super elaborate but I am happy with the results. Now the only question is now that I have a digital layout what should I do with it?

luxery in a hotel

Yes, I know, how weird can I be. I took a picture of the shower head in the hotel I was staying at. I am sent to Des Moines for a conference held at the Embassy Suites. Since it was a two day conference I get to stay at the hotel in a room all to my self. Let me tell you the suites are luxery. Two rooms and a mini kitchen all for little old me. But the best part was the wonderful shower massage. I could so see having a shower massage at home, I could come home from a stressful day, jump into the shower and let the water pressure beat and relax my stiff and sore neck muscles away. The only problem is that I probably wouldn't get out until the water turned ice cold.

More white stuff

Today, April 3rd and Tomorrow April 4th, I am in Des Moines for the annual Alternative Educator's Conference. I left home this morning at 4:30 so that I would be here in plenty of time to register and check in before 8:00. No such luck, due to several minor issues I didn't get registered until 9:00 and missed the first part of the opening keynote address. The speaker was really good, so I wish I could have heard all of the speech. Any way after sitting in meetings all day, I came out around 4:00 to get the car and head for a scrapbooking store and am greeted with a not so pleasant site. Yep, it had turned white out again. This makes 6 months with snow. I just had to let everyone know that even though the calendar says April, the weather still says Winter. Please spring come soon.