HELLO

Hi. I'm Amanda...a happy wife and mom to three awesome guys. We've lived here in Fort Collins for more than 20 years and are proud to call it home. Before moving to CO, I worked at a city attorney's office, making use of my law and Master's degrees from Duke. After settling in Fort Collins, I homeschooled my three (now teenage and older) sons and was delighted to experience music classes, soccer, karate, swim team, archery, Science Olympiad, First Lego League, parkour, and climbing (not all at the same time!). From 2005-10, I was also a contributing editor for a national scrapbooking magazine, authoring a book and a couple of monthly columns. From 2009-10, I founded and ran the Good Grief Blog. I enjoy learning new things, spending time with my family, volunteering with The Matthews House, traveling and indoor rock climbing.

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Entries from July 1, 2007 - July 31, 2007

Monday
Jul302007

My sweet baby boy...

Turned TWO today! How did that happen? The other two insist that I can no longer call Micah my baby any more, now that he's all of two years old. I disagree. I'm sure you understand. ;)

We didn't do anything grand to celebrate, though I'm pretty sure that the rousing game of "follow your brothers around screaming and hollering and pretending to be planes and birds and rockets and various other things that fly as you jump off the bed and run through the hallway and then go back and do it all over again and again and again" was plenty of excitement for Micah. He seemed darn happy. He also had some birthday brownies. His big brothers thoughtfully decided we should make brownies or a cake or cupcakes rather than buy anything..."so that Micah can watch and help lick the mixing things" they said to me. So considerate. :) Micah appreciated it:

7-30-07micahbday.jpg
 

Life here is starting to resemble "normal" again...will update on that later, along with more pictures!

Oh, and if you haven't contacted me yet about winning one of my RAKs below, please do so! :) If you have already contacted me, I'll be getting those out tomorrow or the next day! Thanks! 

Saturday
Jul282007

And the winners are...

First of all, thank you for your patience! And thank you to all for guessing and celebrating with me.

Now, then, the important stuff. ;) Here are the winners. As I said before, Lauren guessed correctly first.

7-27-07drawing2.jpg 

With the three boys, I use a LOT of blues, greens and oranges and just happened to use pink on a few layouts (not normal for me) about me. Purple, incidentally, is one of my favorite colors. But I apparently don't use it too much. ;) It was suprising to me because, after so many layouts in such a short time, I'd gone through a LOT of cardstock. Love my cardstock (by the way, Prism rocks!). In any case, heaps and piles of way multi-colored scraps around here...I foresee some "scrappy" scrap projects soon. :)

So. After pulling Lauren's entry, I put the rest into Asher's dump truck.  

7-27-07drawing1.jpg 

Since it was his truck, he had the honors of pulling the random winner. But then Noah wanted to pull a name also. And they each wanted to do it more than once. And I *do* have a lot of stuff here. So. We picked a total of four winners beyond Lauren. Three were taken from the overall guesses, and one was pulled from the subset of you that actually did guess purple. Here are the names:

7-27-07drawing3.jpg 

7-27-07drawing4.jpg 

7-27-07drawing5.jpg 

7-27-07drawing6.jpg 

Yay! So, Lauren, Gloria Martens, Renee D, Lisa Mitchell and Andi D...would you please email me so I can get these RAKs out to you? You can email through the "Contact me" thingie over there on the left... ;) (And if you know one of these ladies, would you let her know? This system doesn't appear to track email addresses at all, so there's no way for me to contact any of you unless you contact me first.) Thanks again!

Look for more fun entries later...the boys have had some funnies lately and I have some pictures to share. But right now I need to sleep. ;) 

Friday
Jul272007

Almost.

I'm *almost* done with my deadline. I'm having technical difficulties. It's making me a wee bit crazy. I've thus far, though, restrained myself from hurling the computer through the window (having been told that it's not my computer, it's our network or something like that...doesn't make me feel a whole heap better but apparently excuses the computer). In any case, the more important thing is that I am 99% DONE with my deadline...67 layouts and 4 projects thus far delivered for review...that's what I've done in the past three weeks. Wow.

So, I promised some RAKs. I am going to now ask you to hang on just a little bit longer. I'm crazy tired. I've slept about a total of 7 hours since I woke up Wednesday morning. The color I was looking for in my question was purple...which means LAUREN wins the first RAK for being the first to guess it. As for the other RAK (methinks there will be more than one, though)...I'm going to do the physical drawing later tonight. I'm sorry to leave ya hanging but I have got to get some sleep. ;)

Wednesday
Jul252007

Out of the mouths of boys...

We went to the dentist today. Noah and Micah were just getting general check ups now that we finally have Asher's dental issues under control. Both boys did really well (course, Noah's been to the dentist before...just not this particular one). Both boys will be going back again soon. Sigh.

Noah apparently has excellent dental health and good spacing...no cavities (yay!)...but...this bottom two front permanent teeth are coming in (one has very recently broken through even). He has yet to lose any baby teeth. You see the problem? Yeah. So, he'll be getting those bottom two teeth pulled. Micah, it seems, has a similar issue that Asher does...a rather small jaw, making for very tight spacing of the teeth...meaning lurking little cavities between teeth because, though we brush twice a day and all, have you ever tried to floss for a 2 year old regularly? Bleh. Yup, Micah's got two lovely little cavities right up front and will be getting those filled in about a month. Now, I ask you...how is it that Micah and Asher with their noggin size generally off the charts or at least at the top of it ended up with such small jaws? What's up with that?

Anyhow. We're home, right? Noah started getting a little worried about the pulling of teeth (until then, he'd been focusing on the tooth fairy coming TWICE). So, curious, he asks Asher, who's had a tooth pulled not long ago. Here's what I heard in the kitchen:

Noah: Did it hurt?

Asher: Yes!

Noah: But how much did it hurt? On a scale of one to ten, how much did it hurt?

Asher: I didn't get on a scale while I was there.

Bwaaahaaahaa! I was totally busting up here in my office. They still don't even realize it was funny. Just makes it all the more hilarious. ;)

Okay, I need to get back to scrapping...down to the wire here. Deadline for initial scans of everything is tomorrow. While I'm working away here, don't forget to leave a comment at the post below for my RAKs, okay? I'll announce winners Friday! 

Oh, and here's a picture of Noah and Micah at the dentist...they had Noah go first and we played in the waiting area for a bit then came back to watch the last part so Micah could see. Then, they had Micah climb right up in the chair with Noah and did a quick cleaning, fluoride treatment and exam right there. Noah was very stoic about the whole thing and a good sport. Micah clutched his little plane (that he hasn't relinquished other than during sleep since I bought it a few days ago) and only bit the dentist once. ;)

7-25-07dentist-withshadow.jpg 

 

Sunday
Jul222007

Checking in and a RAK!

Oy. I haven't blogged in a bit. I've been, um, busy. Swamped really. I've been scrapping up a storm, finishing up layouts for my book...deadline's in less than a week for the layouts portion. I'm definitely in the home stretch now and am mostly happy with how the layouts are turning out. Incidentally, I also think I should win a prize for deliberately *not* buying the Harry Potter book that released yesterday. I know myself well enough to know that I'd have to stop and read it from cover to cover...and I just can't afford that time right now. You can bet, though, that as soon as I get these layout scans sent off, I'll be heading straight for the bookstore and reading through the weekend. :)

Things? The boys are fascinated with rockets. Seriously. Nathan took all three on Friday night and they camped out at the site where the next day a local rocketry club had a launch event. They came home sweaty but happy. I haven't had a chance to go through the pictures yet. I, obviously, stayed home. I managed to get 12 layouts done in the 20 hours or so they were gone. My head hurt. Today, they all headed to our neighborhood park to launch rockets of their own using the water rocket system Nathan built a bit ago. Again, they came home sweaty but happy. I've only finished 5 layouts so far today...but will be up for another few hours.

Oh, and Micah discovered the harmonica. He's so freakin' adorable. I'll take pictures tomorrow. He's actually pretty good at it...enough that Nathan's trying to figure out a way to record some of Micah's "tunes" so we can link you up here.

Okay, I should get back to work. My office is a disaster area. At this point I don't think it's worth the time it'll take me to straighten up so I'll leave it for another four days. :) When I do clean my office, I'll be doing some significant purging. I figure if it's stuff I didn't even consider touching while making these 68 layouts I probably don't need to hang onto it. So...RAK time!

In the past 2-3 weeks, I've made roughly 50 layouts. Today, I used a color for the first time (not the first time EVER, but the first time in the past 2-3 weeks, you know what I mean). It rather surprised me to realize that I hadn't used it yet. Guess what color cardstock I'm talking about! (No, I'm not looking for an exact shade or anything that specific...I'm talking like red, orange, yellow...etc.) I'll give out two RAKs...one for the first person to post the right answer and one drawn randomly from all the guesses. Since I won't even be able to think about actually putting the RAKs together and all till next Friday, I'll leave this open until then...let's say Friday, July 27 at noon MST. Go ahead and guess all you want...I won't reveal the answer until I close guessing. What are you waiting for? Get guessing!

***ETA: Forgot to mention that though I don't know precisely what will be in the RAK, you can count on some awesome stuff...most, if not all, new in package! When I say "purging" know that I actually have purged lately, so the stuff I'm talking about now is mostly recent! Good stuff!***