My Scrapbook Nook Contest and Sneaks

Our new design team is gettin' busy planning a fun filled month of classes and contest with a killer prize at the end...a 6 month kit subscription FREE! Come and join us in all the fun starting September 1. Sign up here

Do you want to hear for yourself everything that's going on at the Nook each month??? Then sign up for our newsletter! You'll get all the latest information on the kits, special contest, links to classes and get to know our fun community of people from all over the world. Click here to get started!

And last but not least, here's another sneak at the September kit coming up for sale. Crate Papers newest line, Restoration. I can't wait to get started. I'll start sharing my layouts as soon as I get this in ;)

These fun border stickers will be in the add on section.

Before Another One Starts....

Lets wrap up the last one ;)

The school year that is.

It's weird (bizarre!crazy!wrong!) that my girls only got out of school 2 weeks ago.

It really was a great year for both of them and they were sad to see it end.

They, of course had the traditional awards ceremony.

Being in 1st grade this was Samantha's first and she was pretty excited for her awards...straight A's and citizenship.

Kristen worked super hard and earned the Nevada Citizenship Award. It's a pretty big deal and there is no way I could do it! They have to memorize ALL the governors of the state, lots of map information, all the state symbols, songs, and a bunch of other stuff. They got a big gold medal for it. They also awarded for exceeding standards on the state testing. aaaaandd.....during the school year she participated in a nation wide online math competition and was one of the top students in the country!

The girl cleaned house!

(though she told me recently that she doesn't want to be labeled as a nerd so her plan is to not try as hard this next school year! wha?????) we had a little chat about that.

We loved the girls teachers this year...they were fantastic and I'll miss having them.

They wanted to look extra fabulous for the last day of school and both slept in sponge rollers.

Kristen got decked out in her new skirt I made a little bit ago...sadly this was the day the chin incident happened and this outfit ended up covered in blood.

This little one loved her teacher but is in no hurry to get back to school.

I, on the other hand....ready for school to start again.

Nathan and Jack have been home since June and are going a bit c.r.a.z.y.

Or maybe it's just me...but somethings gotta give people!!!!!

*******************************************************

on a side note: I went in and had my IV injections last week.

I am not cool with needles/IV and the such.

But I survived.

The medication left me with some yucky side effects and I felt horrible the whole weekend.
I was told it could take several weeks to know whether or not it will work.

ACK!!!! I'm SOOOO Excited!!!!!

So I applied for a design team position at My Scrapbook Nook (it's the best kit club around)

AND I MADE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I still can't believe it. I think I nearly had a heart attack when I got the news.
There were about 116 applications and 16 were chosen.
I am one happy girl. Besides having really fantastic kits that come to my doorstep every month they host the friendliest and funnest message board around.

Here is a sneak at the first kit I get to work with as a design team member starting in September. It is delicious!!! Can't wait to get started!

Here are a couple of layouts I've done recently with an old kit.

This is a really silly picture of my mom and I when we were in Charleston, SC. Our husbands thought we were ridiculous when we asked them to take a picture of us "hiding" in the bamboo forest! They aren't nearly as silly as we are.

Recognize this picture???? I told you I was gonna scrap those :)

Seriously!?!

So I had my big appointment yesterday.
Before I get into all the nitty gritty of that, I'm gonna tell you what happened in the middle of all that nitty gritty!

Doug and I have just started talking to the Dr. listening to all her explanations of my test...waiting on pins and needles for her to spit out the dreaded words.

My phone starts ringing and I ignore it.
It rings again. Ignore it.
Doug's phone rings, it's the office, he ignores it.
It rings again.
I said answer it already.

He does and steps out of the room.
I keep talking to the dr.
He comes back in for a minute as the Dr. decides to move me into another room.
Next thing I know he says he has to leave right now!

What?????
He said to call him when I'm done.
Excuse me????????????

So I do and he's racing back to the other side of town to pick up Kristen at school cause apparently she passed out outside and fell and split open her chin. She needs stitches.

Seriously.

So I race back to meet up with them at quick care.
The poor thing did a doozy on her chin and had to have 5 stitches. She missed the rest of the last day at school and got blood all over her pretty little outfit she had dressed up in. :( It was heartbreaking. She's never done anything like this before and she's like me....a big fat chicken. But she survived the ordeal and feels like a new woman. I told her this was the bravest thing she'd ever done. She was proud of herself and seems to have some new found strength.

It wasn't until mid afternoon that I was even able to talk to Doug about everything the dr. said.

Which was this...we don't know.

Honestly, I went into the appointment braced for her to say it was MS. She had told us this 5 weeks ago after my brain scan came back bad. I've spent the last 5 weeks trying to accept the fact that this is what it would probably be. I have been tortured by it. Through both prayer and blessings we have both felt like this would be the outcome. I was certain. So for her to say she wasn't sure. Was kinda shocking. A good shocking, but still unexpected. The spinal tap was supposed to confirm it. It did and it didn't. The symptoms are their, but there are not enough of them. She thinks we are too early in the diagnosis to meet the criteria.

So this is the plan. We will re-do the MRI of my brain in October to see if there are any new lesions. Next week we are doing a round of MS treatments to see if it helps my symptoms. If it helps, that means we are treating the right thing. They are IV treatments that I have to do 3 days in a row. Get hooked up and hang out while it drips into me for an hour.

I have another dr. out of state (through my mom ;) who is also looking at my test results and basically he thinks the dr. here...is crazy. He thinks I need to see a specialists and have MS ruled out.

Basically I've been told I have carpel tunnel, MS, not MS, lupus, nothing...etc. etc.
Either way, I have test that are coming back bad and that cannot be denied.
I am confused and don't know what to think at this point.
My dr. here is still pretty certain that we are looking at MS. Only time will tell at this point.

During all the testing I've had done they found a mass on my liver.
Seriously, were we adding cancer to the list????
I had to have an ultrasound and ct scan on that to rule out a tumor.
It's a benign mass that I'm not to worry about.
Thank you very much!

********************************************************************

I'm feeling like I'm the brunt of someones sick joke on my life.
I'm over it.
I'm feeling good today and will just try to move on and not worry to much about everything right now. For what ever reason it is not time to have this resolved.
I'm definitely going to just have to trust in the Lords timing and I'm sure someday I will look back at all this and realize why things happened they way they did.

Someday.

Thanks so much for all the calls and thoughts that have been coming my way.
It means the world to me.

Love
Carol

Another Class

As I await this looming deadline about my life (aka...dr. appt.)

I'm keeping busy with another photography class.

I'm taking the advanced course with Maggie Holmes

Since the course I took last year was all about the technical, this one is more about the creative aspect and post processing. Our assignment was to seek out locations we might not think about using, and also to try out some props.

It's funny how last year Kristen was my willing participant for modeling and now this year it's Samantha. They have traded places in their desire to pose for me.

I took Kristen to my one spot location. This awesome old ratty bench is in my friends back yard. There isn't much else around it. I love how the colors really popped, but had to stick with more portrait style photos to keep the background looking good.

Samantha was a ham! She wasn't sure I was serious when I took her to the tunnels in the trails by our house. There were some cobwebs and gunk and junk around but she adapted pretty well.
This is her letting me know what she thinks of the place!

I've got a whole series of shots leading up to this spectacular face!

Here's our tunnel picture with a prop....S for Samantha ;)

I really ended up loving the ones in front of the gate.

Who knew cement and iron could look so cool!?!

For this last one we moved over to the grass and a quick wardrobe adjustment.

Used a fun umbrella here.

There are houses lined up along the trails and some kids were in their back yard swimming when they noticed us out on the trail. We could hear them talking about us and trying to figure out what we were doing. It was kinda funny...like they didn't think we could hear them ;) But it was totally annoying Samantha so we didn't last long.

It's ok though. These were the last pictures and we were melting to death! Humidity in Vegas is not a pretty thing when it's like 150 degrees outside!

I'm so pleased with how this assignment turned out and I've got BIG scrapbooking plans with these pictures and the gazillion others that I took ;)