She's Here

Mom & baby Shay

Aunt Randi gets to hold her first.

Grandma & Hunter are checking her out.

Mom and kids

Proud Grandpa and grandkids

Our newest grandbaby, Shaylynn Marie, arrived at 11pm Tuesday evening. Randi and I watched as she was pushed into her new world. It was a very easy delivery and both mom and baby are fine. Hunter and grandpa were there too and got to watch as the nurse cleaned her up and took all measurments. She weighed 6lbs 15 ozs and was 19 inches long. Such a sweet baby and didn't utter a cry. Just whimpered a time or two and went to sleep. When the nurse wrapped her in the blanket she was opening her mouth everytime the blanket touched her cheek. She was ready to eat. Her fingernails were very long and needed trimmed. Hunter is a proud big brother. The other boys came up to the hospital Wednesday night and I got all their hands washed so they could take turns holding their new cousin. I printed a picture of Hunter holding baby Shay so he could take it to preschool. His teacher told me this morning that everytime somebody mentioned it yesterday he would whip the picture out of his pocket and show them. She thought that was cute. I brought mom and baby home yesterday and they are getting settled in to a new routine. They went to surprise Hunter by picking him up at school. He was very happy to see them. I drove him to school today so mom could rest. I took a lot of pictures so I'll be scrapping on Sunday afternoon. Glad I have a couple of albums ready to just add pics.

Baby is getting closer

Our daughter went to the doctor today and had a "membrane sweep" done. She is 2 1/2 cm dilated and 60% effaced. The doctor said she probably wouldn't make it till next Friday. If she does they will induce. So I guess I only have a week left to get ready for a new baby in the family. It will be interesting to see how Hunter acts when he finally gets to meet his baby sister. I just hope and pray that labor starts in the daytime. I am stressing about getting a middle of the night call and making the 30 minute trip to the hospital. Can't wait to meet the new baby face to face. I'm going to guess a weght of 6lbs 10 0zs and see how close I get to the actual birth weight. It's been a little over 4 years since we had a new baby. They were arriving on a regular basis for awhile! It will be fun to see the difference between grandsons and granddaughters. She will have lots of protectors when she gets in school. Four boys will watch her like a hawk and make sure she is treated good by any boyfriends. She will probably hate it though. I'll update when she arrives and post at least 1000 pictures. (Just kidding!!) I already have the camcorder loaded in the car. My digital camera is always in my purse so this scrappin' granny is ready and waiting.

Grandparents Day

Grandpa, Hunter, Jared, Cole & Darrin

Cole is always MIA. He's the hardest one to get pics of.

Larry and I went to eat lunch at school with all 4 of the boys last week. It was nice to see so many grandparents showing up and being involved in their grandkids school activities. We try to attend all the kids functions and I even went on a field trip with Cole last year. I will probably go on Hunter's first field trip because his baby sister is due at the same time. This year we have Jared (7) in second grade, Darrin (6) in first grade, Cole (5) in kindergarten & Hunter (4) in preschool.

We celebrate 3 birthdays in September. Mine is on the 6th, our daughter-in-law's is the 10th, and our oldest daughter celebrates on the 22nd. We haven't been to a truck pull in the last two weeks because of the rain. That gave me a chance to do some cleaning in my basement. I still have a lot of purging to do though. Remember the Beanie Baby craze??? Well, Larry and I were crazed too and collected lots of them! Now what do you do with all those rubbermaid containers of McDonald beanies and the Ty beanies that have no value now???? I guess you just store them and let your kids inherit them. I don't even want to talk about how much money we invested in them. As my mom used to say "Live & Learn"!
I have been painting at Crystal's house and still have a couple more rooms to do but I'm taking a break this week. New carpet is the best excuse to paint. I'm trying to talk Larry into letting me have a room added to our house so I can have all my scrapping and sewing supplies in one spot. I'm not confident that I can talk him into it. He doesn't have the same passion for scapping and sewing that I have. LOL My sewing machine is in the basement right now and my scrap supplies are in the dining room. I would love to have a room upstairs for everything. Probably won't happen soon. But that won't stop me from trying to sway him to see my point of view. He just looks at the cost. Now if I could just sell all those beanies......

My new purse

Just a quick post. This is a picture of my new purchase at the State fair. I fell in love with the color. Imagine that!! I will have to carry it for a loooooong time to justify the cost. I am more of a $10 purse gal. It doesn't hurt to splurge once in awhile though.

State Fair

We went to the state fair last weekend. The main reason was to see if Larry and Craig could qualify for the pull on Monday. We left at 9:30 Friday night. Larry had to be signed in by 10 am Saturday morning. He did qualify and the truck held together. (Yippee!) Craig also qualified in the diesel class but had a minor break. He worked on it and got it fixed before time to pull on Monday though.

Since the pull was on Monday that left us with a day to enjoy the fair. The boys had fun checking out the animals and exhibits. We walked as much as we could handle. Saturday night we bought arm bands for all 4 of them so they could have unlimited carnival rides. We got there at 9 and stayed until midnight. The all got to ride lots of times since there was only a small crowd and they didn't have to wait in line. Only one mishap in the Haunted House.....Michelle was going to take all 4 boys in by herself. Then she realized she needed help so yelled at me to come over and go in with them. I DO NOT LIKE HAUNTED HOUSES! I don't even watch scary movies or read scary books. But, being a good grandma, I didn't want to disappoint the boys so I bravely got in line behind them. We walked through the door with Michelle leading the oldest to the youngest boy and me bringing up the rear. Michelle called back and told all of us to hang onto the wall (it was pitch dark in front of her) so we'd know where to go. As she finished saying this I reached out and touched the wall at the exact same time she rounded the first corner and set off a buzzer that blared and shook the wall. Yep you got it.....I screamed bloody murder and scared the crap out of all of them. I thought Cole and Hunter were going to mow me down. I was backing up to get back out the door and they were running headlong right towards me. The other two boys and Michelle weren't far behind. Jared was scared and asked if we heard the screaming. I raised my hand and said "Yes, that was your grandma!". Needless to say, we didn't venture back in. Michelle and I laughed until we cried!! I still laugh when I think about it.

On Monday we did some shopping and hit some stores in town. After herding 4 boys all weekend we were exhausted. So, Monday night the three of us gals thought we deserved a treat and all got expensive purses at one of the booths in the fair. (I won't say how much I paid for 3 purses.) But since Larry said I could get one, I bought one for me and one for Crystal and Michelle. I have never paid that much for a purse in my entire life. But I sure do love it! The girls were excited to get theirs too.

Monday evening was the big pull event. Larry's class was before Craig's. He started out great but of course something broke and he didn't get to show the crowd what he could really do. He was so disappointed!! Later Craigs's diesel class pulled and his truck held together. He got first place and a huge trophy. We were all excited!!! After loading up we headed home. It was around 2:30 am when we pulled in the driveway.

Since we were gone, one of our emplyees had to supervise the delivery of my new washer and dryer on Monday. I was so excited to see them already installed and ready for me to use. I love them!!! After reading the manuals on Tuesday morning I decided to try them out. Hunter and I watched through the glass top on the washer. We were entertained by the way the washer worked. You couldn't even hear it spin! It uses a lot less water and the clothes come out much cleaner. The dryer was so fast that I had to wait for the second load of clothes to get done washing. Amazing!!

First pull with the new motor

Larry bought a new motor for his pulling truck. This is a video (excuse my shaking) that I did with my regular camera. He had a minor breakdown so he got third place. Hopefully it will be repaired by this weekend and he can try it out again.

My swap pages

Here are a couple of recipe pages I did last month.



Some atc's from the last couple of months. This one was a Black & White theme.


My "Nature" Atc's were a stretch. I didn't follow the theme very well.

12 on 12

This was a fun challenge by Martha that I managed to do. The instructions were to take 12 pictures of your everyday life on the 12th of the month. It just happened that the 12th was on a Saturday and I was at home all day.

1. The first thing I do each morning is check the rain gauge. Sure enough, we had a sprinkle during the early morning hours.

2. Next is my morning coffee.

3. Babygirl needs to go outside. She wasn't too happy having her picture taken.

4. I have an OCD thing about making my bed. (Even when I was a litle girl at home.) It gets made every morning. I was very sick one day last winter. DH commented that he knew I must be on my death bed because I didn't make the bed that day.

5. Laundry....need I say more?

6. On this day my clock needed winding. My dad made this Grandfather clock and I inherited it when my mom passed away. I love it! He also made the china cabinet next to it. He made 3, one for each of my sisters and one for me. Makes me miss my parents when I look at this.

7. A quick look out the door shows that the rain is still coming down.

8. Lunch time. Nobody here but me so this is what I fixed.

9. Time to watch a couple of shows that I recorded. There's usually cartoons on my TV so this is a treat for me.

10. The sun is out and it's playtime for two of the grandsons. They stayed all night and we shot some left over fireworks later that evening.

11. Grandpa is grilling hamburgers for supper.

12. A perfect ending to a rainy day.