I have around 140 pictures from our beach trip this year. Now, you know I want to scrapbook them all but I had to force myself to only pick the important photos. That still left me with gazillion to work with.

I’ve been working on these templates for some time now but they are finally done… and I’m finally done scrap’n the beach trip too. Ahhh. I’m happy with the way they turned out. I didn’t add any elements because I wanted to photos to speak for themselves. I ended up with 10 pages total. It’s tempting to make a mini book but I think I’ll just stick them in my regular photo album and call it good.

The templates are pretty versatile. If you don’t have as many photos as I did you can put paper on the squares to jazz it up or make it less busy. I moved and transformed squares when I needed to fit certain photos.

If you like, download here. If you need a closer look, you can check out all the individual pages at flickr.

Here are a few of my pages.

This is my wedding ring.

No, it has not been run over by a car. Yes, it is suppose to be in the shape of a circle, not a hexagon. We were young, cheap, inexperienced jewelery purchasers when we bought this hunk of metal.

When we decided to get married, we went to the outlet mall in Leesburg, VA and stopped at a jewelery store there. I really could have had any pick of ring but I was looking for something unique. I was also afraid to buy a large, tall ring because I wasn’t too fancy of a person and thought it might catch on stuff.

So when I saw this dainty, previously owned ring, I thought it was quite the deal and just right for me. It had such a tiny diamond in it that the jeweler convinced us that we should buy an ugly solitaire with a larger diamond and swapped the stones. The total cost of both rings were sooo under our budget that we were quite proud of ourselves.

It didn’t take me long to realize that we had bought a lemon. I began to realize how small it actually was and felt some regret, but when the band started to become misshapen, I felt terrible. It was me that had picked it out and I’m sure Jer would have bought me something much nicer.

We took it to get reshaped a number of times and jewelers were stumped why the supposed white gold was so soft. Someone even said that maybe it was platinum. It was some mysterious cheap kind of something. That I knew. Either way it shouldn’t have bent so easily with every day wear.

At some point in our marriage I started to complain about it, especially when the prongs started breaking and the diamond became loose. I became naggy and would ask for a new ring for every birthday or anniversary. I wasn’t feeling too sentimental towards the beat up ring.

A little after our 4 year anniversary, I got a new ring. This time Jer picked it out and surprised me with it. It was gorgeous, sturdy and to this day is still shaped in a circle. Love it.

But that is not the point of my story.

Tomorrow is our 7 year anniversary and last night we planned a date to celebrate. The date was nothing fancy but perfect for us. We went rock climbing and grabbed a bite to eat. Jer told me he had bought me a little something and to look in the glove box. I pulled out this…

The picture doesn’t do it justice. It is the diamond from my first ring! I love it! I love it sooooo much. I can barely stand it. It’s such a beautiful, delicate little thing and I love it because Jer thought of it and did it for me. I never thought I would love something so much from him. It reminds me of the first years together… trying to be thrifty, learning how to love, not knowing much about anything. Not knowing how to communicate or make decisions. We’ve grown so much… together. It’s been great and I wouldn’t change it for anything.

Sometimes it feels like it’s been forever since I’ve become a Mrs. but other days it seems like it was yesterday that I was driving off to the east coast in a itty bitty Ford Festiva packed to the brim with our belongings. But here we are and I’m not quite sure how it all happened but it has happened… and it’s been lovely.

Thanks for the journey. Love you, hunny.

Yesterday, Isaac and I spent 3 hours at Primary Children’s Hospital. Don’t worry. It wasn’t anything serious. We went to see the  Ophthalmologist there. Isaac has an occasional wandering eye.

He has Intermittent Exotropia Strabismus.

To translate that: intermittent (sometimes) exotropia (wanders outward away from the nose) Strabismus (misalignment of the eyes)

I went in expecting to come home with eye patches but the doctor told us that it’s not a muscle thing, it’s a brain thing and patching the eyes wont do any good. Patches are only used when there is decreased vision in the eye, when it’s more of a lazy eye (amblyopia.) But strabismus can lead to amblyopia if not treated.

Isaac’s brain needs to tell the eye to focus. When Isaac’s eye wanders he needs to focus to snap it back into place. Doc said that we’d just monitor it, see him in 6 months.

If it gets worst, around the age of 7, we’d do surgery. If it wanders 50% of the time he’d need surgery. He said that 1/3 of kids grow out of it. 1/3 need surgery and 1/3 live with a mild case.

Surgery is only a cosmetic thing and doesn’t fix the vision. The child can loose total vision in the eye because his brain has been suppressing the double vision. Multiple surgerys may be needed. It just keeps people from saying “Hey, are you looking at me?”

So of course I came home and googled it. What the doc said seems to be right although there are a bunch of conflicting websites with all kinds of different stats. Doc didn’t say anything about vision therapy because of course he just does surgery. Depending on the severity depends on how aggressively it is treated. One site did say something about linking developmental delays such a speech with strabismus. Humm, sounds like Isaac.

Overall, the information seems a bit confusing. Do treatment. Don’t do treatment. It will help. It will do nothing or even make it worse. Hummm.

I went to bed with my eyes feeling quite achy.

ps. don’t look to closely at any of these photos of Isaac. His eye is not wandering in any of them.

This morning I sat down to feed Leah in one of the bedrooms. I could hear in the other room that Emma and Isaac were having a little tussle. Emma then called out for my help. Leah was peacefully eating and drifting off to dream land. There was no way I was going to startle her by calling out and revealing my location.

The kids then started searching the house for me. They needed a mediator. I heard them venture down stairs in hopes of finding me there. Isaac started to get worried and the tears and screaming began. “MOM, were are YOU?”

It only took one minute for them to find me. They opened the bedroom door and I quickly put my finger to my lips in a great big dramatic “Shhhhhhh.” They understood the message.

Isaac’s crying immediately stopped upon seeing me. They must have forgotten about their conflict and left me in peace. Just knowing I was home and around was comforting enough.

I’ve been thinking about my little job that I do every day. It involves hugging, feeding, washing, laughing, reading. I take if for granted that these little guys are all mine and under my care. I’m the most important person in their lives right now.

And for some reason, they need to know that I’m home.

This is what I wish I was doing right now.

We’ve completely worn ourselves out with all of our summer travels. Our summer has been a great one but I just can’t seem to catch up with sleep. Every morning I have a little boy voice whining in my ear, “Mommy, I’m hunnnee (hungry)” and I just want to roll over and bury my head in the pillows and say “Go feed yourself.” Besides feeling like a total slacker mom, I know that if I do that I will have to clean itty bitty bits of cereal up all over the floor. No thanks.

I’m finding myself looking forward to school starting.

Actually, I have pretty mixed feelings about it. Emma is starting first grade. Sending her off for a whole 7 hours seems a bit crazy. I wonder how long her excitement will last. I hoping that it’s last longer than 3 weeks. If not, I’ll be in trouble.

We went up to Lava Hot Springs last week and had a blast swimming until everyone was water logged. I’m officially crappy at remembering to take photos. I really wanted one of Emma coming down the curly slide but this is all that I have. Emma and her cousins made boats out of juice boxes. We had to make some major adjustments to the mass before they’d float but they finally worked.

Here is my wee one. She turned 4 months last week. She is such a squishy ball of fun. I can’t seem to kiss those cheeks and squeeze those appendages enough.

I told you I had the sewing bug.

I whipped up this car seat cover blankie thing that I’ve been seeing everywhere. It was pretty easy once I had a machine that was working. I’ve wanted one for a while now… I should have been on the ball sooner though because Leah is getting to big to lug around in the bucket for much longer.

Peek a boo. There’s a baby inside. I chose this fabric because my car seat has orange accents. I don’t know why I felt like I had to match the car seat. I’m sure a pink girly one would have worked too but I’m happy the way it turned out.

Emma wanted in on the photo shoot. Ahh! Cute sisters.

I made one for my sister in law too. She has a boy but we thought this fabric from the same line would work well with her baby too. We bought these fun button kits so her buttons are made from my orange fabric. Get excited, Wend, it’s done.

(Dana, do you want one for your almost-here-wee-one?)

Sorry ya’ll about the private post. I was wanted to share a bunch of photos with my in-laws and uploading them to the blog was the easiest way to do it.

The busy summer continues… Our latest adventure was, yet again, another family reunion. This time it was Jeremy’s mom side. His cute grandma gets us all a nice condo up at Wolf Creek. It’s basically like the Park City of Ogden. There is golfing, swimming, lots of eating and a day at the lake. We had a great little trip. Here’s some pictures of us enjoying the lake.

This is my attempt to get a cute picture of Leah. She is such a doll but just wont cooperate for the camera.

Another big thing that has happened around out house is that Emma had a birthday and turned 6. It’s amazing how exciting it is for kids to turn one year older. Emma could barely stand it. I got tired of hearing the question “How many more days until my birthday?” The day I was able to say “Today!” was a wonderful one as she went screaming all about the house.

I threw together a little swim party for her. It turned out perfect and I think all the kiddos from the neighborhood had a blast.

For my mother in law’s 60th birthday gift everyone chipped in to send her sky diving. It is something that she has wanted to do so we were all excited for her. What a great way to celebrate 60, eh!

Jer kept saying to me that I should go with her and I kept saying that he should go since it was his mom. We were sure she’d like the company up in the air at 13,000 feet. I didn’t have a reason to go except Jer kept saying it was my 30th birthday and it also seemed like my kind of thing.

So the night before, somehow it was decided that I would go.

We went to Sky Dive in Ogden. While we were signing the papers we were trying to decide if it was worth paying the 90 dollars for the cinematographer to go with me and take pictures. After thinking about it for a while, Jer figured if he was going to spend that much money for a 2 min DVD and a few photos that he’d rather put that money towards his own jump. Jer asked if it was too late for him to join in on our plane and they said if he hurried and filled out his paperwork he could go. So at the very last second he decided to jump with us.

Here we are getting ready.

Here I am just about to climb into the plane. The butterflys were starting to turn about then.

My mother in law got the video and the pictures so here she is! I was the last one off the plane so I got to see her and Jer jump although everything was happening so fast. These pictures barely do justice for how it feels to leap out into the air like that but you’ll get the idea.

While we were ascending in our little rickety plane, Jer asked my tandem guy if I could do some flips out of the plane. He said sure and I wasn’t quite sure what to think about that. I just said Ok. I wondered if jumping was going to be freaky enough but he seemed confident about it. He told me to cross my arms and tuck my legs and he’d tap me on the arm when it was time to open. He said we’d do 4 flips. Weather or not that actually happened I’m not exactly sure. All I know is that the blue sky and the white plane flew past my vision a few time and then I opened up to something like this.

If I have the stats right, we free fell for 60 seconds. I think we dropped about 6,000 feet and were going about 120 miles an hour. The wind sure made my cheeks flap in the wind. I had to let out a few hollers but I’m sure not even the guy on my back could hear them because the wind is so loud.

This is Jer with the reddish parachute. He went right before me so I could see him in the air. It was so fun to have him jump with me. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous or not but he did tell his guy not to do any spinning. My guys was pretty cool because when we were free falling he held out my arms and showed me how to steer in the wind to do circles. He also let me pull on the parachute handles to steer it. It really gave me butterflys when we did a ton of spins. Woo!

This is Jer landing.

And me coming in with the blue and pink chute. You have to lift up your legs because to land coming in at 40 miles an hour there is no way to run it out. You have to sit down and slide on your bum.

Here we are back on the ground. My legs felt a bit wobbly.

Emma and Isaac greeted us happily but I’m not sure they realized how great of a thing it was to have both parents back down on the ground.

We had a little crowd there to cheer us on. I think the 89 year old grandma was pretty happy to see us all on our feet.

I’d recommend sky diving to anyone. It’s not as scary as you’d think. Super fun and a chance of a life time. I can see why some people get addicted to it. It’s an amazing feeling. What a rush!

Humm, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to go again… Dad?