Rambling Thursday and Some Scrapping Pages

I'll tell you - the older I get, the longer it takes me to recuperate from wild, crazy weekends! Not that I had one of those, but the kids had company this past weekend and I was wiped out! 2 of their friends that we've known for over a dozen years made the pilgrimage across the state line for a weekend of fun and dancing. The annual 4-H Valentine's dance brought in a good crowd on Saturday night. DH and I always have a date night when the kids are kicking up their heels and although neither of us enjoy spending time in town, we have come to enjoy our date nights. We had a gift certificate for a trio of restaurants and as we had a hankerin for a sizzling plate of fajitas, we ended up at Tia Juana's. We always share a plate. Seems as if portions are way out of line these days and sharing a plate fills us up without making us miserable. After supper, we always make our way to the bookstore to share a coffee and peruse the shelves. Then we make our way to the dance for a little two-steppin and visitin. The kids stayed up until 3:30 am on Friday night (Saturday morning) and then visited until 4:30 the following night! Guess they had a lot of catching up to do! Sure was a good weekend though. I love these kids and it did my heart good to hear the laughter shared amongst good friends into the wee hours of the morning. I did my part by providing heaps of homecooked food and sent the bachelor of the bunch home with a batch of cookies and promises that they would make the trip back here more often.

Hmmm...what else? Well I've been working on Christmas gifts, but I can't show you those.

I've also been cleaning our tired, pitiful office which was in sad, sad shape. Poor room is really a multipurpose room and it struggles with too much to do. It's a home office, the computer room, it houses all the homeschool books and we've been homeschooling for 9 years, and it is also home too my scrapping and sewing and quilting supplies. I think it's feeling a bit over-extended. So this morning the piles practically shook with fear as I entered - a woman on a mission and the dust did fly - literally. When I finally emerged, the room had been tackled and I felt a great sense of accomplishment. The next person that sneaks in there and tries to hide something that they don't want in their room had better run - and they had better run fast! I wonder whether I can borrow someones front yard in town for a garage sale. Surely some of this junk will be someone else's treasure!

Our friend from the other ranch brought some cattle today and he stayed for dinner. I made a yummy apple crisp for dessert and had plans to share it with y'all, but alas, I forgot to take pictures and only an empty plate remains, so no recipe today. Sorry.

I've also been working on scrapbook pages a bit each day and although I hate the mess that is my scrapbook table when I leave stuff out, it seems to be the only way I can actually get pages completed. I can just wander by when I have a few minutes and add some paper or mat some photos or design a title. I'm such a slow scrapper, but I love the creative process and everything about this hobby so I have learned to deal with the mess. Actually, I like to think of it as organized chaos! I am getting extremely tired of working on Christmas pages, but we treasure the memories and it's just so much fun to flip back through the years and reminisce. Here are a few of the pages I recently completed. They're pretty simple but they fill my sense of order and quench my need for creativity and give me a reason to keep on snapping pictures!

This was the year Santa brought DD her puppy. I've got lots of journaling on the facing page. Nothing like getting a puppy for Christmas to make you feel the magic of Christmas! The kid was speechless and I don't think that's happened since! LOL!

This was a fun picture to take. We were on our way to the Christmas gathering in town and stopped to take this photo. The pretty yellow flowers were the most awful smelling things you ever smelled and we all had to take our boots off and toss them in the back of the truck while we made the drive to town.

Baking a cake for Jesus' birthday is one of our favorite traditions. I love that last shot where the kids are blowing out the candles.We took this picture in the middle of the creek. At times, we had so much rain that that huge boulder was rolling under water.

I think this is just about my favorite Christmas picture ever! I journaled about it on the facing page. The kids heard sleigh bells and spotted a red light outside Granny's living room window and they we're SO excited! Talk about having a hard time going to sleep on Christmas Eve!

I have an entire page of outtakes from this photo shoot! The goats were being goats and that means they were anything but cooperative! LOL!

So, not very exciting, but that's what I've been up to. We cut bulls recently and I'm working on pulling out some pictures to share so stay tuned for that riveting installment.