T-ball

I wanted to post some pics of Delaney's T-ball season this year. This was her first year playing and she loved it. The first (and only) practice was a little rocky but the games were awesome!!!

Tim was her coach this year along with Mr Shoop. Sometimes Tim was a bit more of a distraction to the kids in the outfield! If you know Tim you know that he maybe 33 years old but on the inside he is more like 10!

When they started the season Tim and Mr Shoop thought the girls were just going to hit off the T's but the other team in the first game wanted to pitch to the girls first so that is what they did for the season. The kids actually did really well!!!! Laney got a hit off the pitch her first time up. It was hillarious to watch them run around the bases though. They would forget to run and sometimes run the wrong way. I giggled A LOT!!!

Laney got annoyed with me because I kept saying to keep her eye on the ball. She kept telling me that she kept her eyes open the whole time. Then somehow I got this picture!!! Look at those eyes closed just hoping to hit it!! LOL!! I think she did though! So Ha to me I guess!

She had lots of our friends and family come to watch her play. Laney is so lucky to have such great support!!! Thank you everyone that came to see her!!! This is her grandparents and great-grandparents.

Brynn was there for every game too. She loved going to watch Laney and play with other kids. I really think she wanted to be out there too!!

Thanks for coming and looking! I think I will have a scrappy post next week!!

Some of our Adventures

Ya know, you just can't have a summer without seeing Dan Wardell. For those of you who do not know him he is the Iowa Public Television kid ambassador. He goes on a reading road trip every summer where he goes to Iowa libraries and does a story hour. He is just a blast and my girls love him! Every year they come away with a little gift. This year they got kazoos. We went to Clear Lake to see him this year. Some of our good friends came with us. Then we had a picnic and played on the beack.

This is Laney with Dan Wardell. Brynn refused to get her pic taken with him.

Here is Brynn playing in the sand. We have to go back when it gets a little warmer!! It was a little chilly that day still.

Laney was making cakes on the beach.

Our next summer adventure was to the Arts festival at the art museum. Every year they have a kids day and it is always so fun. We went with our favorite summer adventure partners the Squires! We made SOOOO many projects. The girls just had a blast!

Ok so this is my favorite picture of the day. The theme of the day was fiesta and the girls could dress up and get their pictures taken. We have one with them smiling but this is their mad faces. It makes me giggle every time I look at it!! This is Sidney, Laney and Brynn.

The last thing we did that day was stand in line to get the girls faces painted. The line took an hour!!!! The girls were such troopers ( Jack too). THey just played and giggled and rolled around the whole time, waiting patiently!!! Then when we got to the front of the line Brynn didn't want her face done. So she got a heart on her hand. Sid felt the same way. Laney on the other hand got a puppy face.

Once a week we go out for lunch with our fav family. Usually it is to McDonalds. I have a pic of the three girls from last summer in this same spot. THis year though there is a new addition of Jack! We love this addition!!!

The last couple days have been sooooo hot here. We just found out that the Sheffield pool will not be opening this summer! SO SAD!! We will have to find another plan for swimming lessons. But we did set up our pool. Not to big but just perfect for our little non swimmers. These are a couple pics of my little fishies!!!! The water looks brown in this pic but it really isn't!

I will post some pics of t-ball soon. Our season just finished on Thursday and Laney loved it!!!!

I hope everyone is staying cool and not super sun burned like me!!!!

A scrappy post!

I think I am gonig to do a little scrappy post today! I have not gotten Laney's birthday pictures back yet so I can not update you on that yet. So instead I will post my newest lo's!!!
I had a bit of a scrappy lull because of the new office but I have been able to get some stuff done lately! I have slowly been getting my mojo back!!!! So here are some of my latest!!!

I made this one for a challenge on the Kraft Girl Kit http://kraftgirlkits.com/category/blog/ blog last month. My friend Jakki http://imaginecreateexplore.blogspot.com/ created the sketch you had to follow. This is one of my favs! I really like how it turned out.
I was trying a simple style on this one. Ok...not so much my style! LOL!!

I used a Kraft Girl Kit for this one too. This is Brynn's 3 year old birthday cake that she decorated!!!

Us being daredevils in Cabo. SOOOO much fun!!! I wish I knew how to sew (aacchhmm...mom)bc I would have liked to sew along the bottom of the paper strips. That would look cool!

This is a very Brigid style!! LOL! I like this one a lot. Especially Kirby's nose shot! Another KGK LO!

I am really trying to refine my style, alittle messy and eclectic. I love this pic of Brynn! I used lots of my fav stuff on this lo. A little Hambly, thickers, Magistical memories chipboard, Jenni bowlin rubons and those little tiny letter stickers! I used them on everything! I just love them!

I love this pic so I had to make a lo of what Brynn calls Tim's grandparents. Grandma Ola (Viola) and that Harold guy!

This one is my least favorite of them all! UGH! So did not turn out the way I wanted. But it is done...right!

I saw that someone had used that Jenni Bowlin Home bingo card and put a roof on it so I stole that idea from them. I used LOTS of Sassafrass Lass on this one. It is my current obsession for paper! Don't you just love all the bits and pieces that you can cut of the the pp!?! We are going to be adding a big garage to our house at the end of the summer and I wanted to get some pics of what our house looks like right now. It will be cool to look back at some day!

This is for the sketch challenge on KGK for this month! Jakki did the sketch again. She is so talented!!! THese are pics from Cabo again. The last one has our waiter that we thought was so funny. He kept making fun of us saying the "policia" were coming to get me for drinking too much!

Ok so this one I DIRECTLY lifted from a lo done by Emilie Ahern. It was on pg 101 in this months SB etc. mag. I used my KGK kit again! Don't you just love these kits?! I think she has some of this one left! I LOVE this one!!! I think it is my fav of all of them!!!

Ok this is my last one!!! I finished this one last night. I used some of my new Sass Lass stuff that I got from sb.com this week! I love this pic of my girls and my grandma.

Oh my gosh!!! That was a lot!! So if you got this far THANK YOU SO MUCH for looking at my stuff!!!!! I appreciate it!! I need to try and figure out how to get a slide show on the side somehow!

We are off on a weekend adventure to the zoo in MN and maybe the Mall of America!

Hope you all have a great weekend!!!

North Iowa Therapy Associates

Look at me posting two weeks in a row!! LOL!!!

So I finally took some pictures of my new office last night before I left. Some of them don't look great because of the lighting but here they are anyway.

These first pictures are from the lobby.

We are going to put some old pictures of Mason City up on this wall above the row of chairs.

This is the reception area where we have no receptionist because we are too poor!!! LOL!! These past couple weeks I have come to realize how much I depended on her!!!
This is the hall next to the reception area. My office is the first door on the left and Sue's office is the second door on the left.

This is my office. It has the same colors that were there when we first moved in. I think they work well for right now. THey are nice and bright for working with kids. I am not totally sure about the layout of the furniture right now. I thought I would live in the space for awhile and see how it feels. Then I can move it around to what feels right.

So that is it! I still have to get a file cabnant and then I can get rid of the rest of the boxes on the floor! That will be nice! They are supposed to be delivering those today. We still have some bugs to figure out but for the most part it is going well now!

I will post later pics of Laney's bday!!!!

IIII'MMMMM BAAAAAACK!!!

What a wild couple months! But finally as of last week I am a new small buisness owner! I opened my private practice, sharing a space with my friend Sue. I think we have spent the last month painting!! I didn't think we would ever get done with that. Then just when we thought things were great they put in the wrong carpet! LOL!!! Oh the drama! I keep forgetting to take pics but I promise that I will get that done next week. Then you can see the huge difference in how it looks. Sue is the decorator and I am the money police! LOL!

The girls are doing great! Delaney turns 5 tomorrow!!!! Can you believe it?!! That seems so old to me. She had kindergarten round up last week and loved it. We have been going to preschool in another town so she really does not know that many kids in her kindergarten class. There are only 21 kids so they are spliting them into two classes! Great for the kids not so much for the school. One of the helpers said that Laney is the quietest child! I just replied "I know and that is OK!"

We went to my mom's for Easter. That is our family tradition. It is definately my grandma's holiday. She is awesome! She is 99 and still lives on her own. She is the nicest grandma ever! We will keep going to Easter down there as long as she is around! Here is a pic of the girls with her a couple weeks ago.

this is the closest thing that we have to a recent family photo but I look like crap and the lighting sucks!!!

It had been a long time since I had taken any pics of the girls either, so I made them do a photo shoot the other day. It was finally a little nice out! Here are a couple.

Laney had her spring program at her preschool. They were so cute. The only problem is that we had to sit in those tiny chairs. And mom's with big butts don't fit that well in tiny chairs!!! LOL!!

We also had Laney's conference. It was really great!!!! The teacher told us that she is academically doing very well and her shyness is soooo much better! YAY! But we always new she was "advanced", right grandpa Gene?!

These are some pics from the program.

Ok I think that is all for now. I will post my new lo's and pics of the kitchen and the new office in my next post.

Have a happy spring day!!!!

Sam and my office

So first I wanted to post about our dog Sam. Many of you already know but Sam died over Christmas this year. He was very old and was starting to have a hard time walking but was a very sweet old dog. She came with our house when we bought it 8 years ago. The last owner tried to to have her move into town with them and she just couldn't handle that many people and cars all over. So she brought her back out to us. Sam always let us know when people were here. She was the best guard dog but never hurt anything. Well except the occasional racoon. She taught our other two dogs how to hunt and showed them around.

We will miss Sammy very much!

SO I also had some pics of my office that I wanted to post. This is my office at Francis Lauer where I do all my play therapy and work with kids, teens and families.
This is my super comfy recliner that I bought at a garage sale. Then my bookcases that have my books, the kids books, all my games and art supplies.

This is all of my puppets that I keep on a shoe rack so that the kids can see them and pick what they want.

This is my dollhouse that gets played with a TON! It is from like the 80's! LOL!!! My fabrics are also in this corner. So are my legos and blocks and feelings poster that I have many uses for.

These are my shelves of sandtray minitures. They are addicting I tell ya!!! I am looking for them all the time. I love finding perfect new ones. I think that the trees on the bottom shelf and the pretty things on the top left. This is my couch and on the bottom left you can see my two sand trays. One is plain sand and the clear one is red moon sand. On the other side of the couch is my treasure box that my friend Amy made me a long time ago. Kids get to pick a little toy from there at the end of the session if they followed all the rules.Last is my desk. It is usually not this messy. It was just a crazy day that day and I did not keep up with everything. Plus I needed to take out my garbage! GEEZ!!!

So that is my office. I will miss being there.It has been a really good space to me!

Ok that is all for now! Later everyone!