Spooktacular Crop

Mom and I began our girls' weekend this morning! We had a peaceful drive to Gaylord and checked in for three days of cropping, shopping, eating and relaxing. I decided to bring nothing but my computer with me on this trip. They are holding two digital scrapbooking classes that we are scheduled to attend. I'm excited to see what knowledge I might be able to gain. In the meantime, I'm working off the self taught skills I have. Here is my first page of the weekend. I hope to finish ALL of 2010 before heading home late Sunday afternoon. Challenge on!

Emotional

I absolutely love my daughter, but she has been stressing me out quite a lot lately. She is stubborn just like both of her parents, but her emotions seem to be running wild. I pray that it is just a phase... that she's developing new hormones... but I'm truly worried about what this means about the years to come. This particular picture was taken at the playground behind our condo. She wanted a ride in the baby swing and stomped off pissed when I told her that she was too old for the baby swing but could go on the regular ones. She didn't care that I offered to swing next to or push her. It took a good 15-20 minutes before I was able to get her to snap out of it. Monday night was my breaking point. I took the kids with me to Meijer in order to get groceries before heading home. Lauren has lost her respect for authority and has become spoiled. I know the part I have played in it, which is probably why I cried the entire way home. She was upset that her brother was allowed to pick out gum as he was paying for it with his allowance. As she had already spent hers over the weekend, she was not allowed to pick any out. She stomped through the store and constantly reminded me of how "mean" I am. She cried the entire time we were checking out and the entire way home... it didn't stop as soon as we pulled in either. We must have been a sight! The driver is crying along with her daughter in the back seat, and her son is annoyed with both. I just had a rush of emotions. I was upset that being a single-mother was NEVER how I'd envisioned raising my children. That led to being pissed at my ex-husband for putting me in this position. And it ended with disappointment in myself for giving in too many times in order to take the easy way out. Now it's time to reverse the effects, but that's going to be a painful process.

Clash Day

Today was Clash Day at school. As this is Homecoming week, the kids have "special days" to look forward to. Monday was Hat Day (although neither one remembered to wear one), yesterday was Favorite T-Shirt Day, tomorrow is Pajama Day (quite unfair that their father gets to take advantage of that easy morning haha) and Friday is Purple and White Day. The kids have been looking forward to today more than any other. Of course, you have more options for mixing and matching with girls, but we tried our hardest with Zack too.

Besides the stack of jeans in his closet, these new camouflage pants were the only pair with pattern available to us. Of course all of his shirts tend to have those same color tones, so this red and gray striped shirt was the most mismatched we could find. You can't tell since his pants cover them, but he is also wearing two different socks (one navy and gray striped, the other white). And being the boy that he is, his creative brain picked two different shoes of the same color; but they are different nonetheless.

Lauren really had fun preparing her outfit for the day; especially since this is her first go-round. Her navy and hot pink dress clash quite nicely with her brown, light pink and yellow striped leggings. She is wearing one purple sock and one blue. To finish the outfit off, she has on one twinkle toe shoe and one brown mary jane. But being a girl, we couldn't stop there. We decided to have fun with her hair too and gave her one pigtail. She was quite the happy girl walking out this morning! =)