Happy, yet so Sad

In my last post, I was over the moon at the thought of Megan skating again. Well, my wish came true and 2 days before the Christmas school break, she decided to take lessons again. She was about 7 when she quit and was about to pass Alpha. So I signed her up for that class. Tuesday was the big day. I was giddy every time I thought about it. We got to the rink and it was obvious that Meg was the best and oldest one in the class. By the end of the 1/2 hour, she was bored. She's got some work to do on those cross-overs before they'll pass her. I just hope she sticks it out.

Tonight we met with the coach for Brianna 1st private lesson. I was a little worried how Brianna would take things. I could see the coach making comments to her on her elements. Brianna liked her and it was a big relief. She worked Brianna hard and I think B was glad when the 45 mins. were up. I was proud of her. She worked hard and was not intimidated by skaters doing axels and double jumps around her. We celebrated by me letting her get a venti Vanilla Creme with Hot Milk from Starbucks.

While I am happy to see my girls skating and enjoying it, I do miss our old club. It was so much more homey and friendly. No one was real competitive. Loved the laid back feel to it. Loved the friends I made there.

So this brings me to the sad part. Just as I get home a friend from the old club calls. She is trying to resurrect the club. Her DH (truly dear!) purchased 2 hours of ice and instructor time. She was trying to rally the troops to get the club back off the ground by inviting the freestyle girls to skate and having a parent interest meeting. I am so glad that she is trying to do this, but I am sad. I am thinking that it might be too late.

So now I am in mourning. Can't sleep. It really can't be over. How sad not to see this friend at the rink on Sats. I remember when I convinced her to let her daughter be in the ice show...her DD is a beautiful skater now. I remember when my friend was learning to do front cross-overs and now she is ready to pass into freestyle. My friend who said she would never do a jump or spin is ready to try.

My heart is breaking. I worked so hard for 2 years to keep the club going. I tried to leave it in good shape by hiring a director. Some of the old-timers ran her out, because she didn't do things like the founder. I couldn't be the prez and the director, too. I feel some guilt for leaving, but really there was nothing I could do. It died from neglect at the hands of the new board.

I am happy for my girls, but sad for my skating club.

This one's for Kellie

Since Kellie is the only one who reads this blog....even if she doesn't comment. Ha! Kellie this one is for you.

I finally figured out that I needed to reply to a google e-mail to get to post on my blog now that I'm on the Beta verison of Blogger. Whatever.

So I love figure skating. I skated as a kid and even got sucked into being Club Prez for 2 years...story for another blog. Brianna is still skating, but Megan decided 3 years ago that she didn't want to skate anymore. About broke this skating Mom's heart. I do realize that my loves aren't going to be there loves and I still had one daughter that skates so I was able to make peace with it.

So we are in the process of leaving the club where I was Prez, because it is too far away since we moved. I have Brianna taking lessons there and at another club closer to our house. The one closer to home is not working out as well as planned. Brianna is getting to the point where she is outgrowing group lessons and needs a coach. So I started looking for coaches at a 3rd club. I think I have found one. Yea.

But tonight, my heart had hope that Megan might start skating again. The close skating club had invite a friend night and Megan went with Brianna. She got a mini lesson and said she might want to take lessons this winter. Megan, don't get my hopes up - only to crush them.

So even though I'm not involved in the nitty gritty of the skating club....I'm still way involved in skating through my daughters.

Croptober Fest

Just got back from a weekend retreat in Wisconsin that my Creative Memories consultant puts on with 3 others. I had a great time. It was fun to connect with old friends and make new ones....holding hands around the bonfire singing the Girl Scout Friendship song was a hoot! Cool the connections and six degrees of separation. We were only 3 degrees away from Brad Pitt! LOL

Creative Memories it seems is getting with the times and has a new tag line - your photos - your memories - your way. I am happy to see that they are embracing the more "decorative" scrapper such as myself. I love many of their products and tools, but don't use them exclusively. It had been quite a few months since I'd been to any CM crops and seen the new stuff. The company seems to be making a shift to embrace all types of scrapbookers, not just the git r done type. That can only be healthy and great for the whole scrapbooking community.

There was a broad range of scrapbookers at the retreat. Everything from those that did the traditional CM triangle strip to a gal who used non-CM albums and lumpy bumpy everything. Her page with the turkey die-cut (and nothing else CM) won the best decorated die-cut contest.

There were a whole range women at the retreat, too. Younger unmarried without kids. Moms with small kids. Moms with tweens and teens. Moms with kids that were gone. Women with lots of money and women with not so much. Working women and stay at home moms. Everyone got along. A healthy interest in people even if they aren't exactly like yourself is good. How boring life would be if we were all alike. I feel sorry for people who think they need to find someone exactly like themselves to be friends with.

I didn't get as many page kits done as I would've liked. I still managed to complete 26 pages over the weekend. Pretty darn good. I still have a bunch more pages to go to get caught up on the girls' books. So that gives me some hope that I may be able to use up more of my stash. 26 pages stash page so far in October. I had done 6 pages earlier in the month and did 20 using only my stash at the retreat.

Mall of America Scrapfest Review

I wasn't sure that I was going to attend Scrapfest this year. To be honest, attending events like CKU has made me picky. I am really only interested in big name teachers or manufacturer's classes. My local/regional events have been devoid of big names in the past few years. The only big name at Scrapfest this year was Tim Holtz. I had just taken a class from him at CKU Chicago in April. His classes fill up almost immediately. The other thing that had me turned off was the notoriously long make and take lines.

So, I didn't sign up right away. It wasn't until a few weeks later that I decided to sign up. Most everything had sold out the very first day. Luckily, they added a few more classes, but it was still slim pickins. There were 2 classes on Sunday that were acceptable to me. I thought I might try to pick up another one if someone cancelled that day.

I was surprised that the KI Memories class: Beauty in a Box still had openings. Love their stuff so I took that. Then there was a Birthday accordian album book by American Traditional Designs. Normally I'm not a fan of their stuff, but the project sounded cute and if I didn't like it a birthday book would always make a good gift. A week before Scrapfest. My friend Wendy needed to sell her classes so I picked up her Sunday one: K&Co. Flip Book for the Journey. I took an accordian album with them last year at the MWSA convention and was happy with it.

Sunday arrived and I tried to head down to MOA with plenty of time to get in some make and takes before my noon class. I forgot that traffic is always bad on the road I need to take to get to MOA and that day was no exception. Then of course, there is the walk from the parking area to the Rotunda. So when all was said and done, I got there at 11:30 a.m. one half hour before my first class.

Check in was a breeze - there was no one else waiting. I got my packet. The giveaway was some cute Harvest Daisy D's paper pack in 8x8 size....perfect for fall pix. I looked to see where my classes were. All 3 were on the main level with the make and takes...super convenient...no esculators or elevators. So I had plenty o' time. First, I scoped out all the make and takes. Lots of cute projects. Lines were semi-small. 6-8 people doing the make and take with lines of 8-12 people waiting. It was about 11:45 by the time I'd previewed them all. At the end, the Die Cuts With A View people had a Thank YouDaisy card with their self-adhesive cardstock. Cute card but nothing specatular. I made the card, but left of the Thank You. It was time for class.

My first class was the K&Co class. The teacher was Lynn....she sounded Australian. This was a cute flip book using new blue and green K&Co papers. Super cute project. Great instructions...she was obviously a pro at this. Nice color hand-out. Papers were pre-cut. We completed the cover and about 5-6 pages in class. She did a couple techniques like folding a pocket and cutting a tag with K&Co was very generous with stickers and chipboard letters and flowers. I ended up having to buy a couple more of the papers because there was plenty of pages left in the book to decorate. All in all a good class.

Since the classes were 50 mins. long, I went straight to the Birthday class. I haven't liked American Traditional Designs in the past, but the birthday stuff was cute. It was a 4x6 accordian album. The papers were cute and they gave a sheet of sparkly stickers, a sheet of vellum saying stickers, and a package of cute file folders to complete the project. The only thing they didn't include was the ribbon used to tie the book together(she had on her sample). This was pretty much a beginner project. We had to cut our paper - there were good color instructions, but some people in the class were getting confused by the odd dimensions. The class had a couple of simple techniques - a pull out tag and the file folder on the front. Overall, I thought it was a cute project. The only thing I didn't really like is that if you followed the literal example, there would not be much room for photos. I was pleasantly surprised by this class.

I had an hour between classes so my I joined the make and take lines. My goal was to get as many as I could in between my last 2 classes. I got 4 in. Since it was Sunday, a lot of people who traveled had headed home. I averaged 15/mins per make and take....wait and project completion included. People in line told me they had waited 55+ minutes to do make and takes on Sat. I did a cute tag at the K&Co booth, a Happy Mini CD holder book at the Daisy D's booth, a very cute Halloween Card with a folded no glue envie at the American Traditional Designs booth, and a ok card at the Chatterbox booth. The Chatterbox booth gave you a card, a coordination piece of pattern paper and then let you go...they had boxes of stickers and rub-ons. Most of it had been really picked through by the time I got there so I just found the first suitably saying and slapped it on.

The last class of the day was the KI Memories class. They were very generous with a lime green plastic tote bag full of their new tins...gotta love that. We covered a mini hatbox with stuff from their POSH line. They were generous and gave us stickers, gel candy, hip chip, and chipboard monograms. We cut out circles from the paper and stuck that along with chipboard flowers and monograms on the box. We cut some pattern paper for the sides of the lids. Cute project, but would have looked better on a brown hat box...the white with the paleish papers seemed washed out. Not too much instruction...kinda do your own thing, which was probably good for the end of Scrapfest.

So in conculsion, Sunday seems to be a good day if all you have is one day at Scrapfest. The crowds have died down. You can get a couple classes in and move fairly quickly through the make and take lines.

My strategy for next year is going to be to come early on Friday and devote it to doing all the make and takes. I am curious to see how long it would take to just do that.

Attended A Crop By Myself

For the first time in literally years, I attended a crop alone. I didn't know a soul. I planned to go to the Crop Around Town for the Scrapfest with my friend Wendy. A couple weeks before the event she had to cancel. But I decided to go anyway. It was my local Archiver's and close to home so I thought why not and didn't even give it another thought...until a few days ago.

Probably the last time I attended a crop totally alone was in either 1999 or 2000. Since then I have made a number of scrapping friends that I go to crops with. I also have a fully stocked scraproom so I don't have to go out if I don't want to. In the back of my mind, I started remembering all those crop horror stories on 2Peas. I was a little nervous. I packed a fully charged iPod just in case along with some page kits and my tote-ally cool tote packed with tools.

I got there fairly early and no one was at my table. There were only a few people there. I got a little nervous when a group at a back table started complaining about having a singleton that they didn't know at their table. They seemed like a little clichey and one of them had an annoying ring-tone that kept going off every hour like clockwork. Any worries melted away as I met my first tablemate. She was going solo like I was and we chatted a bit. Found out we had both been to the Minneapolis CKU and had worked at the same place( but at different times). Our other 2 tablemates came in about 2 hours late. They got lost on the drive up from the Mall of America. Very nice gals. We all chatted and got along well. It was a very fun mellow evening. My iPod stayed in my scrapbag.

I ended up completing 4 pages tonight and meeting some nice people. Reminds me why I love this hobby. Not only is it a creative outlet, but a great way to connect with others. Most scrapbookers are awesomely nice people!

I am taking tomorrow off, but will be attended Sunday classes at Scrapfest at Mall of America. It will be interesting to see how different a Sunday is from the Friday and Saturday classes I usally take. I am going to check to see if there were people that dropped classes and see if I can't pick up an extra class or two.

Update

Wow! Almost 3 months have gone by. Summer soccer has ended and fall has started. The girls are back in school for a week now. We're getting ready to start skating and swimming lessons.

Joined an Exhaust Your Reserves challenge on 2Peas and got 50 pages done in the last 2 months with only my stash. Pretty awesome feeling. 4 pages done this month so far...but only one was done with just my stash. In other scrapbooking news, I am getting ready to go to Scrapfest this weekend, but had to decline on the awesome Wisconsin retreat my friend Jody is putting on. Shawn will be in Arizona for work. Can't leave the girls all alone....plus there is the fall soccer schedule. I was also excited to see that my trip to Myrtle Beach is the weekend before the MWSA scrapbook convention so I can attend that, too. And the break is over for Stacy Julian's Library of Memories class at Big Picture Scrapbooking...too cool. Plus, I am also taking Beth Proudfoot's Power of Ten class. Heard nothing but awesome things about that class the first time it ran. So excited to be taking it. Love the first project already.

Looking forward to attending more Friday night crops now that my days at the rink don't include Friday nights. Oh, happy scrapbooking days ahead!

Defensive MVP of the Game

I keep reminding myself that no one said it would be easy being a soccer mom.

We've been struggling this year to get Brianna's exercise induced asthma under control. She was just diagnosed with it last year. Last year, the abuterol helped. This year it doesn't at all. It is breaking my heart to see a kid that loves soccer struggling for breath. I don't have asthma. No one in our families has asthma. None of our friends's kids have asthma. A couple girls on the team have asthma, but albuterol works for them.

So we were in uncharted territory. 3 appointments at the U Medical Center. It is confirmed that she indeed has a mild case of exercise induced asthma. Mild? Doesn't seem mild when the child is gasping for breath and has bloody noses. We are trying Flovent in the morning.

It is torture to watch her have such a hard time with this. This kid has always loved soccer. Up until 3 years ago....she would have this humougous grin on her face whenever she got out on the field to play. She even played rec this year just for the love of the game.

So tonight was good. [WARNING: Bragging Mom alert] Brianna played awesome tonight. She didn't let anyone get past her. On them like glue. The game winning goal was scored on her shift. She blocked the opposing them and sent it up to the offensive player to score.

But that wasn't the most impressive thing. The ball was either kicked or thrown in over her head and she had to run to get ball away from a player on the other team. She got it and they are still running toward our goal end. The player pushed her. All the parents gasped. The ref didn't call it. The player pushed her again. The parents gasped again. The ref didn't call it. Brianna turns the ball back toward the other end, dribbles past the pushy girl, and kicks it up in front of the other net. Totally awesome![80's much]

It was so great to see her do well tonight. I am really hoping that Flovent is the answer. She said she didn't need to use her albuterol inhaler tonight. That is great. It deserved the Venti Starbucks....her fav. So that's what she got. She deserved it!

Library of Memories and caught up

I am one of the lucky 375 enrolled in Stacy Julian's Library of Memories class. We are in our second week now. In week 1, we chrono organized our pictures. I had all mine pretty much organized except 2005 and 2006. So that didn't take too long...but I'm breaking from her class and not putting them into working albums. I spent too much time in the 90's removing them from the harmful affects of the dreaded magnetic album and putting them into photo boxes. I'm not moving them back to albums....too much work. Besides, I've scrapped a lot of those photos anyway.

Something has been bugging me about the current popular view of "caught up." That caught up is boring and bad. That all my current albums arranged neatly on the shelf in chronological order are nice, but boring. It's almost like a waste of scrapbooking time. Somehow, scrapbooking the events are not quite up to par with the moments. In the making of all those books and books of events, there was no joy or fun or creativity. There was just too much pressure.

Well, I guess that all depends upon what your view of caught up is and what your rules are. For me caught up is working within 6 months of the event. It doesn't mean completely finished. That's just wrong and if you have that view of caught up, you'll never make it. Life keeps happening until you're dead.

Let's just suppose that you are actually caught up - every event you want to capture is scrapbooked. How is that boring. Maybe boring in that you won't have anything left to scrapbook, but you have another gift. Completed albums to look through. Precious memories recorded. If I never scrapbook another thing, I have 8 chronological albums with many memories recorded in them. I feel good about that.

There has got to be a happy medium somewhere. So, I am taking Stacy's class. Because I feel like I am missing some of those moment pages. But in doing my page tallies this week, I have found that I have done more than I have thought. I am hanging in there. I'm going to see where she's going with this and how I can adapt it. Stay tuned.

This page is an assignment that we were to make about a page type that we did least. Mine is in the people we love category. It's a page about my sister and I supporting each other through our skating seasons this winter. Yeah, Stacy! This is what I wanted to get from you. Thanks for the inspiration to do this page.