Today...

Hosted by The Simple Woman

(FOR TODAY - July 21/08)

Outside My Window... the sun is shining. I hear birds chirping and can see my neighbor hanging clothes on her line.

I am thinking... what I can plan for today -- maybe a picnic on the beach. I challenged myself to have at least one picnic a week this smmer :-)

I am thankful for... family that can visit. My sister and her children are here. My two youngest children and her two oldest have so much fun together!

From the kitchen... nothing is happening. Only two of my children are awake yet and they are playing before breakfast.

I am wearing... jeans and grey t-shirt.

I am creating... good memories, I hope :-)

I am going... to get breakfast and then for a walk.

I am reading... Crimson Eve by Brandilyn Collins.

I am hoping... we can go somewhere this summer as a family. We need some time alone, I think.

I am hearing... my nephew coming down over the stairs. One more person awake in this busy household of eleven!

One of my favorite things... scrapbooking :-)

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week: I need to bake bread, make some Molasses Buns and I have four cakes to decorate this weekend. Somewhere in there, we will be sending our two oldest boys off to Air Cadet camp.

Here is picture thought I am sharing..

My brother let me try our his Rebel with a macro lens. I love it! The thing I love about a macro lens is that it makes one notice the little details.

Reveal day at Scrapbook Heaven!

What an awesome kit this month at Scrapbook Heaven! I loved all the red/white and blue :-)

Here are my layouts:

Check out what the rest of the DT made with this kit!

some layouts...

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.... but I've been very busy! House full of kids and lots of summertime fun :-) That's cuts into my computer time.

Fishing trip

We went fishing yesterday. Fishing is one thing dh loves to do (even though he doesn't like to eat fish!) and he wanted to take all of us along on a trip. We left around 4:30pm and didn't get home until almost 11 pm.

We first drove to an out-of-the-way place where someone had told Devin there was a great pond for trout. Had trouble finding the pond, but just decided to try this one spot. We ended up walking about halfway around the pond (good thing we were wearing rubber boots). Benjamin had a fish on his hook but lost it while trying to reel it in. One of the kids - Jessica, I think - caught a small one in this pond.

We saw LOTS of Pitcher Plants, Newfoundland's floral emblem. They are carnivorous plants -- how cool is that! Here are some photos we took:

This is looking down into the "pitcher". It is filled with water, and has fine hairs lining it. Prey fall in and can't get back out.

We also saw these beautiful pink flowers. I need to look up and find the name of them.

Anyway, this first pond wasn't yielding much trout so we walked through the woods and back to our van. Traveled about 15 minutes to another pond. Nothing there, so we went looking for another spot. This was about 9pm by now. The trout were starting to bite :-) We all caught at least one fish except for Timothy. He did have several fish on his line but wasn't able to hook them and reel them in. Jessica caught the biggest one.

Here is the one I caught :-)

We saw some wildlife -- a couple of bunnies, lots of birds and also a toad. Oh yeah, this little guy, too :-) Can you see it?

Benjamin let it walk around on his jacket for a while.

All in all, a GREAT evening. We'll go again one day next week. Hopefully, we'll find a good pond and catch LOTS! My grandmother is thankful for a feed of pan-sized trout.

Five Random...

things and photos. Deanne challenged us on Sisterhood of Scrap to try this journaling challenge.

1. My kids thought this was the FUNNIEST! We saw this sign outside a shopping mall.

2. Mr. Squirrel playing hide and seek :-)
3. Youngest son and I on the go-cart track.
4. Our Flowering Crabapple has bloomed. Shortly after I took this photo, it rained really hard and blew off most of the blossoms.
5. My mom is home for the summer. For the past 3 years she's been teaching in northern Manitoba. This is the cake my 13 yo son made for her.

Happy Canada Day!

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!

We're heading out shorthy to Canada Day celebrations. We were worried everything would be rained out, but the weatherman said it was supposed to clear up. We had a big thunderstorm last night and hopefully that cleared away the rain.

Lots of fun and games here at our local stadium, then off to an inn for a family scavenger hunt. This evening is for music and singing, ending it all off with a huge fireworks display!