Too Busy to Blog?

Since it's summer, I should have all this extra time to blog, right? Ha! We are still working on school. We're done with some things, but all the stuff that has 180 days (mainly Sonlight stuff) won't be done until July. I am thinking I'll just begin the next levels then, so we'll have some breathing room next year.

I've also been working on some "big" projects that require more time. I've been catching up on my scrapbooks. I've been learning a lot about digital scrapbooking from my SHS sisters, and I am ready to take the plunge as soon as I finish the pages for which I have already printed out pictures. I'm getting close to that point. I plan to create 12x12 digital pages, then have them printed like a huge photograph to put in my existing Creative Memories albums. That way, I can still do regular 3D pages when the need arises (like studio pictures on the kids' birthdays) and when I choose. I am seeing the advantage to digital, though. Yesterday, I was scrapping the Spring 2008 page in all four kids' albums. I had purchase a Spring Page Palettes kit from Creative Memories. However, there wasn't enough of one particular thing to do four identical pages. So, I had to come up with two different designs. With digital pages, that wouldn't be a problem. I could just swap out the photos for each child's book.

Here's one of my first Smilebox creations. I intend to save up and have a bunch of these printed at once.



I am also busy in the middle of evaluation season. I used to do one evaluation each afternoon. This took up our whole summer last year. This year I decided to try something different. I am doing 2 evaluation days each month. I scheduled the evaluations one after another. I had my first day this past week, and I liked it. It seems like it is going to be a good thing for our family.

I am also in the middle of planning for next year's school. I just placed my curriculum order today. Now, I will start writing course descriptions (high school courses only), making new schedules for each child, planning any new curriculum, etc. There's a lot of work involved in all of this, but it makes the school year much easier!

Here's a picture of Chase and Carys all dressed up before Chase's choir concert. The girls choir is under the direction of my longtime friend, Laurie Dodd. They were fabulous! Greg took some pictures of the concert, but... well, Greg took the pictures. Two of them were fuzzy and the other had all the girls looking like aliens with white eyes. Oh well!



Finally, I have to include this video of Carys spinning. It's so funny! Whenever we hold up the camera, she says "cheese" and then wants to immediately "see cute?" which means look at the screen of the digital camera. This doesn't work for a video. It was all Landon could do to get her to keep spinning while he filmed!