Soul Surfer

Alli & I rented/watched this last night. I had wanted to go see it in the dollar theater, but it just never worked out for us. Really good....inspiring movie.

Soul Surfer is a 2011 American drama film about the life of surfer Bethany Hamilton. At the age of thirteen, Hamilton lost her arm to a shark attack. The film details the events surrounding this attack and her struggle during the aftermath. The film is directed by Sean McNamara, who based the screenplay on Hamilton's autobiography of the same name and on the filmmakers' interviews with the family. The title refers to a term coined in the 1960s to denote someone who surfs purely for pleasure, but the word soul has a double meaning as a reference to Hamilton's Christian faith, which helped her recover her surfing career after the attack. AnnaSophia Robb stars as Hamilton, and Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt star as Hamilton's parents.

I snitched this picture from Logan's facebook. The girls were on their way to the big Freshman Cookout Thursday evening. They have been having a blast so far!

My College Girl!

I love this picture! Clay took Ashley out to lunch at Red Lobster yesterday for lunch.....a special Daddy-Date for the two of them. The rest of us had lunch here & then headed out to meet them on campus. Her new home away from home.....Dorm 3

Ashley's top bunk & the corner of her desk. They'll get everything better situated & rearranged, I'm sure.

Michael, Alli & Ashley in front of her door.

I Need Thee, O I Need Thee!

I need Thee, O I need Thee;
Every hour I need Thee;
O bless me now, my Savior,
I come to Thee.

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


Isaiah 46:3b-4, “You whom I have upheld since your were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you...” (NIV 1984)

Love it!!

Prayer Walk

The Office of Student Leadership starts the semester with the annual Prayer Walk around campus. Student leaders pray at various places around campus and for their residence halls before concluding with prayer in the DeMoss Hall Grand Lobby. Photo taken on August 13, 2011.

Wow.....this is just amazing to me.....to know that not just my daughter's campus, but her classrooms & even her dorm & room have been prayed over for the upcoming school year! Such a blessing!!

4H, Entomology & Backpacks

This page was done for a sketch challenge & we were also supposed to use yearbook or school pictures. Since I couldn't readily put my hands on any of my own yearbook pictures from back in the day.....and neither Sarah nor any of my kids ever went to school to have yearbook pics, I decided to use what I had handy. I ran across this photo of Sarah with the Blue Ribbons that she won at the 4H show. Some of the fun learning experiences you can take advantage of when you Homeschool. The layout below, was done for an 'Entomology' challenge. We were 'collecting' fancy butterflies for our projects......meaning we were to create a pretty/fancy/extra-special butterfly to embellish our pages. I used a precut butterfly as the base & then fussy-cut another butterfly out of the patterned paper & stapled it on top of the other one. I then, painted the edges of both butterflies with crystal glitter glue & added some crystal bling to the wings.

For this challenge we were to use a backpack of some sort to decorate our pages.....or scrap photos or our kids with the new back packs heading back to school. Again, since we homeschool...I don't have photos like that so I chose to make these cute little 'Back 2 School' cards.

Reunited....

'Reunited & it feels so good!' Don't you just love surprises?! This past Thursday morning I got a message from Ashley Cates asking if it was ok for her to come up for a weekend visit this weekend. A SURPRISE visit. Anyway, between both Ashleys & myself we were actaully able to pull this off yesterday. Chris had absolutely NO idea who was waiting for him in Maw's kitchen yesterday afternoon when we got there. It was awesome!!

This was the first time they had seen each other in 3 long months.....since graduation day to be exact. I was SO glad that we were actually able to pull this off! That picture just kinda says it all, don't ya think!!

Purple Pumpkin

It's GIVEAWAY time again! Want to top up your stash, or maybe try out Purple Pumpkin embellishments for the first time? Well, here's your chance to get your hands on some goodies before our next sale in September.

So how can you enter? It's easy!

1. Be a follower of this blog.

2. Post about this giveaway on your blog with a link back to here.

3. After you've done that, just leave a comment after this post. For an extra entry, post about this giveaway on facebook, or on any message boards, and then leave an extra comment :)

This giveaway is open to everyone, no matter where in the world you live. Entries close at midnight AEST on the 30th of August, and the winner will be announced on the 31st of August.

Good Luck!

Michael's New Bow

Michael wanted a new bow for his birthday this year because he had kind of outgrown his old bow. For a couple of months now he & Clay have been shopping around.....both in actual stores & online. Pricing & watching numerous bows on ebay. The whole process is really such a cool learning experience for the boys. Again, it's just one of the 'Unschooling' aspects that I really love!! Well, he finally came home with his new birthday bow day before yesterday. They bought it at a shop somewhere between Charlottesville & Richmond.....they came across it while searching for bow shops in our area online. Just look at that form! While in the shop, Clay said Michael was trying out the different bows & the guy was REALLY impressed with Michael's form when he drew the bow back & asked if he had ever shot before. Clay laughed & told him about the bear Michael killed last year & told the guy how both boys practice ALL the time! Another benefit of homeschooling. I told Michael that his teacher just gave him an A+ in archery after hearing that guy praise him the way he did!

The new Bear Assault Bow. He is one happy camper!!!

I'm so thankful that they get to spend time outside doing the things they are passionate about!

One Week

One week from today we'll be moving our precious Ashley-Girl into her dorm at Liberty University. I'm sitting here typing through the tears this morning asking y'all to pray for me...for us (this is going to be real hard for daddy, I'm afraid)...as we walk through this door into another new chapter of our lives.

I was sitting outside this morning reading Stormie Omartian's The Power of Praying for Your Adult Children & I Just wanted to share this part with you:

"Lord, I rededicate (Ashley) to You. I pray she will serve You all the days of her life & that she will glorify You in every way. As long as she lives, I pray she will be uner Your watchful eye. I again release her into Your hands. In Jesus' name I pray.

Then worship God, as Hannah did & give glory to Him who is greater than anything you or your adult child faces now or will ever face in the future. Thank God for all the great gifts He has put into her. Praise Him for the wonderful tings He is going to do in her life through your prayers.

The only way to have peace about your adult child is to know that you have covered her in prayer. When you can say as Hannah did, "For this child I prayed!!"


**And just a little side note, but that's the VERY verse that we used on Ashley's birth announcements when we sent them out almost 18 years ago. What an awesome feeling to know that for 18+ years "For this child I have prayed!"**

Bone Collector Seminar

MY pictures from our day Saturday at King's Dominion.

Kings Dominion's Intimidator 305, a 305 ft (92.464 m) tall gigacoaster. The ride features a cable lift hill, an 85° first drop and a maximum speed of at least 94 mph (145 km/h). The ride, is themed to the late NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt.

That's my kiddos there heading up that steep hill. This was Alli's first time riding it.....brave girl!!

And here they come......it's almost over. Believe it or not this was the first time ever that Clay & I neither one rode the first ride. I'm just so over it all now.....it's funny. I don't mean to be an old fuddy-duddy, but I had NO desire whatsoever to stand in those awful long, hot lines to ride rides that were going to absolutely terrify me. I used to LOVE it, but not so much anymore. So............ this is how Clay & I spent our afternoon...............He had heard that they were having a hunting seminar at the Bass Pro shop which is just down the road a bit & he really wanted to go. Now, I will admit that I wasn't all that overly enthused about a hunting seminar, but hey we would be
sitting in a nice air conditioned store as opposed to the hot steamy theme park, so off we went...leaving the kids to ride to their heart's content. ;-)

This is who we went to see.......Michael Waddell's Bone Collectors. The boys love watching all these guys on their hunting shows. Michael would've LOVED to have gone & we even asked him if he wanted to, but King's Dominion won out for him.

Travis 'T-Bone' Turner & Nick Mundt

Nick & Clay

'T-Bone' & Clay.

I must admit that I totally enjoyed getting to meet these guys. They are so real & down-to-earth! We got autographs for the boys. We were really wishing we had thought about getting Michael's bear picture blown up & taken it to have them sign. Michael would've been thrilled with that..........he thinks T-Bone is awesome!!

Off to Pizza Hut for some supper......a nice ending to a fun family day together!

King's Dominion

Saturday was the 2011 Frito Lay company picnic at King's Dominion. We had a super fun day even despite a little rain. All of these pictures were taken by Ashley......I'll share my pictures in a seperate post.

Waiting to ride the 'Flight of Fear'

A little rain shower passing through

Wet but still having fun!!

Starbucks.......Fairy Tale style. We said it looked like something from 'Shrek'.

In the van, on the way home Saturday night.

Geometry

This past Thursday's Blue Plate Special at CUC was posted by the lovely Nicole:

I love Math... and always thought that I would be a math teacher until college when I fell in love with history and it just stuck. Today's challenge is all about Geometry. Dont get afraid, I'm not going to make you find the degree of an angle or the area of a circle... but we are going to learn to do something super fun with circles.

As many of you probably know I am a total junky for the manufacturer's blogs and galleries... I found this circle tutorial at Crate Paper's blog back in Feb. and now I get to share it with you.... but instead of me writing a whole new tutorial I am going to give you the link... have you pop over there and check it out.........Tutorial

And here's what I came up with for this challenge. A photo of sis & her family from this past Christmas. First of all, I used the woven circle template that I've been dying to use.....you can find the pattern HERE. Then I just started splattering paint & cutting/layering flowers from patterned paper. The above pleated circle tutorial was used to create that little flower directly under the chipboard heart. I did the pleats & then added another cut-out flower & finally a decorative brad in the center. This was definitely a FUN challenge & I'm so pleased with how it all turned out!

Back to School

Welcome to the new challenges for August!!! This month at Cookin' Up Creations we are focusing on Back to School! And the first challenge was to use paint on our project. I chose to add some white acrylic paint to the edges of this fun summer layout. The pictures are from Aug. 1990.....where Chris was trying to get a drink from Maw's garden hose. It made me think of that song 'A Different World' by Bucky Covington........'No bottled water, we drank from a garden hose.'


Today's challenge had to do with getting NEW school supplies & so we were challenged to use our new or most recently acquired goodies. I chose to scrap some of my yard sale 'treasures' & I thought that went along perfectly with these new papers that I bought Friday with the 'treasure map' feel to them.

I cut all the cool arrows from on piece of paper & tore the map paper, crumpled, distressed & YES, I actually burned the edges of the paper to make it look like a real treasure map. I also used my little compass stamp too. Nothing like using your NEW stuff......no hoarding......just jump right in & USE it!!

Baker's Twine

One of the last July challenges that I worked on at Cookin' Up Creations was a challenge to use Baker's Twine on your layout.


Here are a few links that were provided showing how to make your own Baker's Twine...

Foothill Home Companion
Between the Lines
Life Sweet Life



And here's my layout showcasing my very own home-made baker's twine. I used the white cotton thread & a red sharpie for mine. Turned out pretty cool & I'll definitely be using this technique again!

Saturday, School-Shopping & my new Swiffer

I know I'm behind in posting this, but.....well......I'm just now getting around to it, ok. Saturday morning the girls & I headed in to town. I dropped Ashley off to meet up with Logan so the two of them could spend the day doing some clothes shopping for school. I think they had a really fun day of shopping & enjoying lunch together at La Carreta. Ah, the memories made........... After dropping Ashley off, I headed to McDonald's to meet up with Ella so Alli could go spend the night with Cori. We had a nice lunch/visit together at McDs. We also had a good laugh about a call I had gotten from Sarah a little earlier. While dropping Ashley off, my cell phone rang....I answered it totally expecting to talk to Clay.....no one else ever calls me. So, I was thrown off by the woman's voice....plus I was having a hard time hearing. I then, thought it was Ella calling me.....wanting to know 'Where was I?' I thought.....good grief....I wasn't even late yet to meet her......& it was then that I realized it was Sarah. She was all excited telling me about finding something at a yard sale for a dollar. When I didn't quite catch what she said, I asked again. I STILL couldn't quite get what she was saying......all I could think was that it sounded something like a 'flipper'. I didn't ask anymore because I was trying to hurry off the phone, as not to be rude to Becky & Logan who were standing there waiting on me......but my curiosity was getting the best of me. I wanted to know what she had found for me because I could tell she was excited about whatever it was. She had also told me she had run into Ella while yard-saling. So..........when I caught up with Ella, I asked her if she knew what in the world Sarah had gotten for me for just a dollar. Come to find out she had gotten me this cool 'Swiffer'.....not a 'Flipper'! LOL!!

The more I thought about the whole cell phone deal, the more I laughed about it. She was so excited because we had just been talking the day before about how I really wanted a swiffer because I had a crochet/knit pattern to make the little dust covers for the swiffer......with those you can just pitch them in the washer & use them again. And so she had said she'd be on the look-out for me whenever she yard-saled. That's why all the excitement over my lovely new swiffer.....for only $1. Oh the little joys that Jesus sends our way!