Down Candy Cane Lane - 1st Dance Recital

Anna had her very first dance recital on December 9th. She's been taking ballet, tap and tumbling once a week for a while finally made her debut. She did a tap dance to "Teddy Bear for Christmas." She did pretty well on stage, although not as well as she does during class. I think the whole experience was pretty shocking and nerve-wracking for all of them! I have to say she did better than I expected, and even smiled a little while dancing. I had visions of her just standing there and freaking out. My favorite part was when the dance was finished, she skipped off stage waving! (Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of that part, we were on the wrong side of the stage!)




(Anna is the third from the right)

Let It Snow!

Well with all this snow we've been getting, the kids are certainly enjoying it, and taking advantage of it! We ventured out in the middle of the snowstorm Saturday evening and hit the slopes! The bunny slope to be precise. The kids got an early Christmas present...new skiis! (Well, we bought them used, but they are new to them!)
Anna skied once or twice last year while we were in California for Christmas. Ethan obviously has never skied. (am I spelling that right??) Both of them did fabulously, especially for how cold and snowy it was! I think we have a couple of daredevil athletes on our hands. My photos turned out horribly. It was too dark, the snow was coming down hard, I didn't want my camera getting wet, and my hands were full with kids on skiis.
The second we let go of them, they started taking off down the slope. We just ran along beside them and caught them at the bottom. Anna managed to even stop herself once or twice! When Ethan started picking up speed, he started to panic, but then just laughed as he went faster and faster! Niether of them fell once!

We took a ride to see our friend's new baby girl, Lilly. (Congratulations Tom and Cathy, she's a beauty!!) Tom is a firefighter for the Arlington Heights fire department. He was on duty that day and was nice enough to let us bring the kids to the firehouse for a tour! ETHAN WAS IN HEAVEN! Trucks are the love of his life right now, and to sit in a real live fire truck must have been the highlight of his life. Can you tell by the big smile?? He was SO excited. Thanks Tom for letting us visit!

The kids enjoying the first snowfall of the year. We just got a dusting last week and they loved. Then yesterday we got hammered with about 8 inches....pictures of that coming soon!

Yummy snow!

Anna and Ethan playing after our first snowfall last week!

Merry Christmas - a gift for you!

I decided to put together a little Christmas kit to share! I've been designing my own papers and elements here and there for a while, but never packaged anything up to share or sell. I am a professional graphic designer so I've been designing for years, but never for the scrapbooking industry, it's a little different! And pretty fun! I don't really intend to try to become a digi-designer at this point, I just don't have the time, but I think it will be fun to do freebies every now and then! I really do wish I had the time for this, but I am already working freelance graphic design 2 hours away from home once a week, and working at night on custom invitations and announcements. Oh, and a "spirited" 2 year old and a 4 year old at home with me adds to the chaos! I even had to step down from my spot as a contributing artist at Digital Artist Magazine because I just couldn't find the time to commit! I wish there were more hours in the day!

Click here to download.

Definitely share a link to any layouts made with this! And if you download, I'd definitely appreciate a comment, but of course it's not neccessary. And if there are any problems with it please let me know!! Thanks and I hope you like it! ~ Amy

The kit contains:

- 6 - 12x12 300 dpi papers
- brush set
- 2 paper Christmas trees
- 3 paper snowflakes
- 3 frames
- 1 ornament
- 2 rub on flakes
- 1 journaling spot
- 1 word art
- 1 12x12 border overlay

Scrapbook Page

A page I did using a photo from our weekend downtown.

Five Years!

It's our wedding anniversary today! Happy Anniversary to us! It's been a wonderful 5 years and I look forward to many, many more! Thank you Eddie for being such a loyal, loving, and hard-working husband and daddy! XOXOXO



I'm looking forward to our weekend away in NYC to celebrate next weekend!!!

Nice shot of the kids from Grant Park.

We had a great weekend downtown spoiling Anna and Ethan, and ourselves a little bit! This is the view we had from our hotel room at The Drake on Michigan Ave. As you can see, we had some nice weather...60 and sunny all weekend, perfect for walking around all day!

Friday afternoon we had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. The restaurant is inside the John Hancock Building. It was fun to watch them straining their necks to look at the top! Ethan kept saying "cliiiiiiimb building!" They couldn't wait to go to the top!

The first day we just walked around Michigan Ave. by our hotel. Spent some time at the water tower, checked out the Hershey Store, and the American Girl Store.

Friday night we met up with Auntie Megan, Uncle Jacie, Vish and Amanda for dinner and fun at Dave and Busters. The kids of course LOOOOVED the place. Ethan napped through dinner and then was ready to go for some games. He got a kick out of the virtual snowmobile race. Anna rocked at all the games she did and won enough tickets to pick out some cool prizes...the girly girl that she is picked out some lovely Hello Kitty jewelry and some glittery nail polish.

On Saturday we decided to hoof it all the way to the Shedd Aquarium. I never would have agreed to this but I was too freaked out to drive in a cab without carseats for the kids, so we did it. We walked ALL the way there and back! It wasn't too bad though, we got to see some cool stuff. We liked seeing the "bean" at Millenium Park. It's pretty cool how you can see the entire city skyline reflected in it. And the thing is SO shiny!

Here's the Shedd that we hiked to. I thought it looked so pretty with the bright blue water and the changing leaves. The kids were happy that there was a 4D show going on there featuring their favorite character...Sponge Bob! Anna said she was "a little freaked out" by it, and surprisingly Ethan enjoyed. He tends to be a scarity cat, but he liked it! He even kept his 4D glasses on more than Anna did. After that show we tried seeing the dolphin show, but it was packed and standing room only by the time we got to it...and quite honestly, it was b-o-r-i-n-g. They talk way too much, not enough dolphin action! We were bored out of our gourds so we moved on after a few mins of seeing nothing. We checked out a few of their regular fish exhibits and then hit the sidewalk for our walk back!















Saturday night we had a quick dinner at Water Tower Place, then headed up to the Observatory at the Hancock after dark. The view from up there at night is beautiful! Darkness of Lake Michigan to the east, and bright lights in every other direction. Anna was super excited to be up there and kept running around like a maniac.

Notice the little stinker is not wearing shoes or socks at both the Hancock and Shedd Aquarium! The kid won't keep them on no matter where we are! I must have put them back on him a thousand times over the weekend.

We were all sad to go home on Sunday, but we were all super tired and ready to get back to normal life! And THANK YOU Auntie Meggie for dropping us off Friday and taking the vomit comet (our car) home, AND for coming to get us Sunday! And THANK YOU Jacie for cleaning our vomit comet. And here is a fun picture of Uncle Jacie dressed as a bear. A fun way to end our weekend in the city!

Anna turned 4 on October 28th. I can't believe my baby is FOUR! It feels like yesterday that I was pregnant with her. Now she is this beautiful little girl! Happy Birthday Anna and you'll always be my baby!

These photos are from her birthday over the weekend. We decided instead of having a party, that we'd take her downtown for the weekend. She loves going to the city! That will be this upcoming weekend starting the 2nd of November! I already gave her her present from us, that big dollhouse you see in the second picture. Grandma gave her a Disney Princess karaoke machine. She is quite the little performer...there she is singing in the last picture.

Scrapbooking

As some of you know, I like to scrapbook "digitally" when I have time. It's like regular scrapbooking, but everything is done digitally on the computer, instead of with real paper. Right up my alley! Here are a few recent layouts I've done!