Inspiration at the Ice Museum

The last layout from January is for the inspiration topic.  This is another hard one for me and I think it was the last layout I made for January.  One of the things we get on the first of every month is a set of PowerPoint slides with twelve triggers (gee, there seems to be a theme here, huh?  twelve topics, twelve layouts, twelve months, twelve colors...and on the twelfth day of the month we're supposed to take twelve pictures...I forgot to mention that one).  Anyway, one of the photos was of gray and white pattern papers with a pop of teal/aqua color.  That was the basis for this layout.  But I couldn't find gray and white pattern papers, so I went with black and white.  And then I decided pink went better with the photos than teal/aqua.  But I figured the inspiration was still the same...a pop of color.

We had a blast at the ice museum.  The husband and wife ice carving team is world class, and it shows.  There was a set of dueling knights, an altar for getting married, a xylophone, the coke polar bear, a Christmas tree, an out house (not functioning) and a BIG bed.  You can even rent out the ice museum to stay the night, although nobody has been able to stay a full night (and you don't get your $800 back).  Funny story, they used to call it an ice hotel, but the fire marshall said they couldnt' call it a hotel because there's no sprinkler system...HA!  And they sell appletini's served in ice carved glasses.  Of course I HAD to have one, and Jeff got one, too.  They were sooo good that we bought a second round at the aurora ice bar!

The best camp is free camp!!!

Erica is getting to be such a big girl...bigger than I'm ready to realize!  We recently went on a business trip/vacation for a night in Fairbanks and left her with friends...ugh!  She handled it much better than I did...but that's a story for another day (probably a February layout!).
Anyway, she is a Girl Scout, and what do Girl Scouts do?  They sell cookies!  And Erica does it with gusto!  She had a goal to go to camp for free last year...and made that goal.  She was the only girl in her troop to go for free!  And she was soooo excited because she's be away from mom and dad for a whole week!  And check her out in the picture below, walking ahead of me, not even realizing I'm still there.  Yup, she's quite the independent little girl!!!

On a side note, she was really bummed that we're moving this summer and she wasn't going to be able to sell cookies to go to camp for free.  BUT, we just got the camp schedule and we'll be here the first weekend in June, so she can go to the sneak peak camp for three days...YEAH!!!  But now she has to sell more cookies than we originally planned.  UGH!!!

She thinks she's soooooo cool

One thing Erica does NOT lack is personality...she's full of it!!!  And personality is one of the TWELVE topics.  I could probably do twelve layouts a month on personality and not have a hard time trying to find something to scrap about.  This story cracks me up...
I'm sure I've mentioned this before:  Cecile, Erica's God Mother, likes to spoil Erica.  She gave her the awesome jammies that Erica loves.  She also gave her this great snow hat.  Erica wears it all the time...and she gets lots of comments about how cute it is (I have to admit, it is pretty cute).  She even wears it inside.  The main picture on the layout below is her sitting on the couch after dinner.  She's already in her jammies and is watching tv before going to bed.  I snapped a picture of this and sent it to Cecile telling her it's a shame she doesn't like the hat more than she does.  Truth be told, she LOVES the hat.  I don't think she's cold, I think she just likes wearing it.  Sometimes I think she thinks she looks cool wearing it all the time...

Bribing Carolyn...

Oooh, this is another fun story!  Man, this TWELVE class sure is getting me to tell stories, rather than just scrap pictures.  I'm soooo excited!!!  Let's hope this continues...it's fun!!!
OK, I have a friend with a daughter that is absolutely terrified by any man other than her daddy (and maybe her grandpa).  She's around us often because Erica and Bella play soccer together, go to Girl Scouts together, and Nicole and I scrap together at my house alot.  You may not know this, but Jeff has this burning desire for kids to love him.  I remember Katie at daycare was very shy.  Jeff would come into the toddler room and twirl all the kids and they'd laugh and squeal.  But Katie was shy and didn't want to.  One day she she finally warmed up to him and let him twirl her, and he was sooo happy.  It's the same way with Carolyn.  She sees him all the time, but she won't sit by him unless he has candy to share (he's not above bribery to get a friend).  I was thrilled when I caught these pictures.  Nicole and the kids came over to scrap and play.  Erica decided to clean out her toy chest and offered Carolyn her Doodle Bear.  Carolyn was THRILLED, but Nicole asked her to make sure it was OK with Erica's parents first.  I said OK, but Jeff said he had to have a hug first.  OOOOOOH...she didn't even hesitate.  She jumped up on his lap and gave him all kinds of hugs.  Jeff was sooooo happy!  And I was happy that I had my camera so close!  It's like taking a picture of a rare bird!!!

Hee, hee...and I was soooo excited to scrap this layout at our January crop.  Nicole was gone for an afternoon meeting, so I put it on her table as a surprise for when she returned.  I should've scrapped a second one for her (cuz this one's MINE!!!)...maybe I'll do that this month.

Is this too much fun?!?!?

One of the topics in the TWELVE class is Fun.  You'd think this would be an easy topic, but I struggle with it.  Truth be told, I struggle with lots of them.  As I mentioned in the father-daughter layout, I can't tell whether something should go in People or Family Stories or Fun or something else.  I guess I should learn to let go and just go with the flow...but it's hard!  In working on my January layouts, I finally sifted thru some of my Vegas pictures and saw our temporary tattoos, but I didn't see any of mine.  Then I remembered I took a picture with my phone and sent it to Jeff.  So I decided to scrap that story...I thought it was pretty funny and it had "fun" in it so I figured it would fit.

The morning I left for Vegas with "the girls," Jeff told me to have fun, but not too much fun.  I was probably the most conservative of all the girls, so that wasn't really an issue.  While we were there, we decided to get temporary tattoos (because permanent ones were too scary...after all, what would I get and where would I put it that I wouldn't be totally embarrassed as I got older?  See, totally conservative!!!).  And even though it was temporary, I still agonized over what to get and where to put it.  I finally decided on this cute ankle thing with hearts...totally me, right?  When we were done, we took a picture of it and I sent it to Jeff asking if it was too much fun.  He responded: "prolly."  But when I talked to him that night, he knew it was fake...I guess he knew I couldn't get a good tattoo for only $20..hrumph!  But it was fun to have for a week...

How do you make homemade fish sticks?

This is one of my favorite Erica stories.  Erica will eat a hot lunch at school when she likes two of the three options (just in case one is gone when she gets to eat).  When she first started school, we couldn't just ask her what she did because she'd just say, "I don't know," or "nothing."  We had to ask specific questions like, "What was your special class today?"  And "What did you have for lunch."  One day she told us she had a fish melt.  Not fully knowing what a fish melt was, we asked her what it was.  She said, "it's fish with chicken nugget skin."  And she still says things that are breaded have chicken nugget skin.  Just the other day I came home from the gym to eat dinner (Jeff and Erica already ate) and Erica said we had homemade fish sticks.  Knowing we had Van de Kamps in the freezer (or something similar), I said "Really...how do you make homemade fish sticks?"  Our third grader said, "You chop up chicken nuggets, throw away the inside chicken, put the skin on the fish, and cook it."  HA!  She still calls it chicken nugget skin...what a hoot!!!

I don't have any cooking pictures I haven't scrapped already, so I used these cute pictures from 18 months ago when Erica took our orders for dessert...it was as close as I could get!!!

Our Math Star

It absolutely warms our heart that Erica loves math as much as she does...and she's really good at it.  She talks about her teacher doing "around the world" in class...where two kids go up against each other to do multiplication.  If you win, you stay up and go against another kid in class.  If you beat everyone, you've gone around the world.  Erica is one of the few kids who can go around the world...it's between her and one other kid on who can beat who on a given day.
And her teacher does a really good job at fostering the love of math.  Erica's homework one day was math bingo.  You use certain cards on the deck.  Each person draws two cards and multiplies them together.  If the number is on your card, you mark it for bingo, if it's not, you pass to the next player.  The first to get five in a row, or eight on your card wins.  Jeff beat Erica one day, and Erica beat me the next.  What a great game!!!