Happy Monday!

Hi all! Today has been great! John is on a 4 day pass so we've been enjoying some fun family time together. Today he labeled "MOM'S DAY OFF" and so basically I've done whatever I've wanted all day while he has taken care of the boys. So I worked out this morning... lounged around the house... of course scrapbooked and took a super long shower to just relax! It was great! Here's a picture we took last night after spending the evening having some wonderful spiritual disucssions with the boys and watching "Church Ball" together. I remember reading the scriptures as a family, looking around at the living room full of all these little boys and thinking how blessed I am! Life is GOOD! Enjoy this wacky pic from us :)

scrapping news...

ok.. so for those of you who frequent my SVdesigns site this will be a repeat... but I was so excited about this new technique I learned tonight that I'd thought I'd post my results here... isn't this look fantastic!? I created it in PSE4 and think this will make a great background to an uncomming layout! thanks for taking a peek! Ok.. I'm editing this to show the LO I just finished up using this fun "overlayed" technique.

Pokemon battles and such...

Wow... here it is Friday already and I see that I haven't kept everyone updated throughout the week! Well, August and Seth have been reenacting Pokemon battles (what esle is new, though??) They have taken it to the next level where August will be playing a Pokemon game on his Gameboy and Seth will reenact that pokemon's move that August (aka: the trainer) calls out. It is so hilarious! For instance, August will cry out "I choose you ________" and Seth jumps up and gets in a fighting stance. Then august will say "Leaf attack" and Seth will start waving his arms like he is a leaf pokemon! It is so fun to watch! Here is a picture of him getting ready to battle! Doesn't he have just the cutest face ever!?

Sadly, he's home sick today from school. So I guess no battles for him today! Truthfully, I haven't felt the best the past several days either... I've had a dull headache and sore throat since Wednesday. Oh, and Nathan has been the most ill out of us all. I took him to the Dr.'s on monday just to make sure he didn't have any fluid in his chest.... we got the good news that it was just a head cold. He had infections in both of his little eyes and his nose was like a faucet (yet stuffed at the same time so he couldn't breathe :( talk about a few sad days! Here's a pathetic little pic of him - the sad thing is that he hadn't even been crying, his eyes were just red like that all week! He didn't sleep very well for about 2 days but has since been catching up and sleeping quite a bit.

The other 2 soldiers from John's unit were burried this week. One on Tuesday and one is actually this morning. Still so sad for everyone involved.

Creativity

If you're a frequent guest here at my blog, you'll remember how my boys have like 5 days off from school! On Saturday we were at the park at they each made mud sculptures. Yes, you read correctly... MUD SCULPTURES! Then they somehow talked me into bringing them home to harden so that they could paint them. Lucky me, tonight was the night they were hard enough to paint! Anyway, by the time they were finished, paint was everywhere! But they had fun and were able to express a little creativity. Here's a shot of the aftermath!

John's First LO

Ok.. so for fun, I posted a challenge at Scrapgal to have your DH or SO create a LO and post it... John actually took me up on it and came up with this. The "rules" were that your Dh's can consult with you but they had to actually create it all by themselves. I think it turned out quite fabulous! Don't you??

Here's his journaling:

While on our Fiesta Bowl trip, we stopped off at Vegas on the first night which also happened to be New Years Eve. We hit the strip around 7:00 pm and by 9:00 pm, both Dad and Bill had had it. Brent and I went back to the hotel with them to get some warmer clothes and then headed back out. Come on! How many times are you going to get to spend New Years Eve on the Las Vegas Strip? Besides, how much trouble could two good Mormon boys get into, right? The night went well and the whole strip was closed down to traffic. It was one big party in the streets. Brent and I estimated that there were probably close to 200,000 people out on the strip. Despite the numbers and the obvious inebriation of most of the people, the crowd was still pretty mellow and just happy. As the time grew closer to midnight, I spotted this guy and his gleaming GRILL. The white boy from Idaho in me knew that I immediately had to get a picture with him. He was cool and posed ,while Brent snapped the pic. Everyone always knew I was down and now I had the proof, yo!

5 months

This will be a quick post... I'm so tired my eyes are burning! BUT... since today is my baby's 5 month mark I thought I'd put up a little pic of him. Look how much he's changed over the months! I think it's always fun to see a chronological scan of growth like this. (you can click on this image to see it larger).
onto other news: All of the boys are home from school until NEXT WEDNESDAY! so we'll have to see if we can't plan something fun to do on at least one of the days. When I tucked them into bed tonight I told them that they'd better sleep in. That's when August (my 10 year old) said "oh no! I want to get up early and play video games and watch cartoons!"... I guess he's already got his agenda planned - LOL
Ok, really...I'm off to bed now. Until later --

Valentines Prep...

so yesterday my second oldest ds was home from school sick and Martha Stewart living came on and they were showing some different "quick" valentine ideas. They shared this one where you take a pic of your child and put in on a 2x3 card and fold that in half to become the "topper" to a little bag filled with candy. I thought - I CAN DO THAT! and that would be so cute. So when my other ds got home from school I asked them both if they'd like those type of valentines this year to pass out and they both thought that'd be pretty cool (yes, I STILL hadn't gotten any boxed ones yet - eeeks!)... anyway, so after they're in bed, I make some up in photoshop and they were adorable! -- as you can see from this first photo. Well... when they get up this morning, they see the printed out cards on the kitchen table and I hear them talking about how they are going to be SOOOOO EMBARRASSED by these Valentines day Cards! LOL But then Seth says - but mom worked so hard on them, I'm just going to pass them out anyway - even though I'm going to be so embarrassed! (what a good son he is :) -- Well, they didn't actually take all that long so I decided once they got home, we'd work on some nes ones that they'd actually like, which not surprisingly, turned out to be POKEMON ones! (of course, Ben didn't care and thought his looked cool with his picture on them!). So for 3 hours after school, we designed, printed, labeled and stapled these valentines together. They are so excited to hand these out and keep talking about how COOL they are. I DID talk them into handing one of the pictured ones to their teachers. We'll also use those ones for grandparents, etc... So here are the *new* and *not embarrassing* Valentine's!

Milestone

Another Monday is coming to a close... it's nearing midnight and I still haven't seen John yet. Poor guy, he's got to be exhausted! I'm sure this is how most of this week will be until after the funerals are over with. I'm just glad he's safe and not off in Iraq - so I will gladly take these late nights.

On to other news... Nathan learned a new trick today! He rolled over! I was snuggling with Benjamin on the couch and I happened to look down on the floor where Nathan was playing and saw that he was on his stomach - when I had placed him on his back! I hurried and grabbed the camera (certain that he wouldn't do it again) but he did! He'll turn 5 months old on Thursday. Here's the video (just click the little arrow on the screen - it usually takes 2 clicks). It's mainly for grandma and grandpa to see - but feel free to watch it as well (just ignore my voice in the background - LOL :)

Latest LO

Hi all! John rolled in close to 2am last night and... found me scrapping! hehehe.

Anyway, this up for a challenge at scrapgal.com. Click HERE for the credits.

Enjoy and I'm sure I'll be back later!

Shootin' Hoops

It wasn't too cold outside today so we took advantage of it and played outside for a bit. Seth was at his *real* basketball game (grandma Vogt took him) and the other boys and I played some H-O-R-S-E here at the house. Of course yours truly won! LOL

Benjamin wanted to make a basket soooo bad and August kept coaching him and giving him tips and FINALLY he made a basket. He was just so proud of himself. It also made me feel so happy to see August helping out his little brother. Here are a couple of shots I got during our play time.

Too Cute!

Just look at those eyes! I love how Nathan's eyes always have a little sparkle to them! I'm hoping to scrap this picture for a challenge at scrapgal.com (the challenge is to scrap an up-close picture). I had originally wanted this to be in color because his coat is a very vibrant red which I thought would be striking on a LO... but... you see the pacifier in his mouth? Well, what you can't see in this BW photo is that it is P.I.N.K.! It was the only one I could find (of course purchased before he was born - in the chance he was a girl)... anyway, so I really had no choice but to change it to B&W. After getting it *just the way I wanted* in photoshop, I think I prefer it without the distraction of color.... so enjoy the little pic of my cutie!

Front Page News

This was the front page of the Idaho Statesman today. John doesn't think that's the best picture of him. I like it. But I know we're always most critical on pictures of ourselves. He said it was much more fun making the front page for being a rowdy BSU fan at the Nevada game! He got home about 1am last night and was back to Gowen at 4:30am. He did stop in at 8:30pm for about 20 minutes to tuck the boys into bed. He thought he'd be home around midnight. We've had several friends call to check on him. I thought that was quite nice. This picture even made the Southern Idaho Press (from the Burley/Albion area). Grandma Edie called me today and said that she was looking at a picture of John in her newspaper.

Nightly Ramblings...

another long day has come to an end. 2 of the boys are spending the night with grandma. the other 2 (August is sick and Nathan being too little to be away) are both in bed. I still haven't heard or seen John. He wasn't sure he'd make it home tonight and if he did it would be quite late. He said that the most aggravating thing was the names getting released prematurely - which has been a nightmare to deal with. He was all over the news on all the local networks with little snipits from the press release. I got several calls afterwards from people telling me they'd seen him on the TV.

On to other musings... I've found a passion for designing. Yes, I know that I have always been designing in some way or another... BUT creating digital elements for scrapbooking has totally got a hold of me! I just *barely* started (like, as in 3 days ago! LOL) but I think I'm pretty good! I've had over 350 downloads of each of my 2 paper packs (and I just uploaded one of them last night!)... Personally... I think my designs are classy and very *realistic*. I haven't been creating layouts since every spare moments (insert: when boys are sleeping or playing X-Box) I immediately start designing another element. Speaking of which... I've got some ideas running through my head so off to start designing - so if you haven't checked out my other blog (where I house all of these "ideas") go check it out. The link is at the upper right hand area (and says "click here for SV_designs -- or something like that). Good night.

Sad Times

Most of you know that John is the Rear Detachment Commander for the 321st EN BN out of Boise. Well, they got very sad news yesterday. 3 of their men were killed and 2 were wounded. He spent most of yesterday notifing the families (something he absolutely didn't like doing).

He did a press conference today and this picture is the picture posted at the Idaho Statesman website (that's probably illegal to link here, huh?? - actually I saved the pic to my computer and then uploaded from there - is that any different?)... anyway all of the TV stations were there and he had to answer all of the questions. I believe it will be airing later today.

He just called me and said that we (the family) probably wouldn't see him very much in the next 4 days. I feel very sad for the families, and the young widow. You can see the sadness in John's eyes in this picture. No, today is not a good day.

Click Here for the whole story that is being released on the Idaho Statesman Homepage.

First Foods

Nathan will be turning 5 months next week (next Thursday to be exact) and it was my plan not to give him any baby food until he was about 6 months old. Well, all o that went out the window today. He was just having a fit while nursing and not really eating, yet he was crying because he was hungry and after a bit, I decided I'd try to give him some baby food. The problem: we didn't have any. Not only that, we don't have a high chair, no bibs, and no baby spoon. Do you think that stopped me? No. I got a little bit of unsweetened applesauce, sat him on my lap and used the smallest spoon I could find. He did amazingly well and gobbled it up! Since August was home from school sick, I had him snap some pictures.

Nathan's New Toy

Here's little Nathan in his new toy. We got this for him at Christmas time but just barely brought it out this week. He LOVES standing and jumping so this was right up his alley! It was definitely a hit in his mind. He was absolutely adorable bouncing around in it.

let's see... he's getting very close to rolling over too. In fact, August says that he saw him roll over this morning but I haven't seen it yet. And who knows... maybe that was with a little "help" from August... but I'm sure it won't be too long until that is his preferred choice of mobility!

Let's GO!

so I have another blog which I thought would house BOTH my daily life happenings as well as my scrap-happenings, but the more I thought about it, I think having them seperate will be better. So here I go... making the first post in the VOGT FAMILY BLOG! I'm sure John will want to put things in as well, but I'm thinking that I will probably be the primary writer. Hooray for you, right? just kidding!