Our Vacation to Ohio!

 

For weeks I have been counting down the days until our trip to Ohio and it's finally come and gone. The first week of Ohio we visited Mr. 246's family and celebrated Luna's second birthday. (Can you believe it?!) I won't bother you with the hundreds and hundreds of pictures that were taken but I will share some!

We actually left the night of June 30 to take an overnight. I was weary about how taking a almost two-year-old on an overnight would be but it turned out okay. She only slept a little over two hours but was such a little trooper and very much well behaved. She was just excited about all of it. The pictures above are from the drive to SFO and the really neat hands on science playgroup thing that was right near our gate at SFO. (A genius came up with putting playgrounds in the airport!)

Hours and hours, and one layover later we landed in what we determined was the world's friendliest airport - Dayton, OH. A McDonald's breakfast and a quick drive lead us to Mr. 246's hometown and childhood home where this was waiting for Luna:

LUNALAND! My mother-in-law is the queen of details and niceties. They had so much stuff set up for Luna! And enough birthday presents for five children. Not pictured: the full size Christmas tree covered in pictures of Luna and origami ornaments made out of dollar bills (for Luna of course!).

Luna could barely walk right when we got there since she was so sleep deprived. (On her birthday no less!) We laid her down for a nap pronto because had to get rested up - it was the beginning of her unofficial birthday week! Presents were opened wherever she went and there were so many that she ended up opening presents on a daily basis. I joked that she probably thought that's just what strangers did now - meet a "stranger" and they give you a high five and a present to open.

The first night we went to Mr. 246's paternal grandparents. (Luna's GREAT grandparents! I wasn't around my grandparents growing up and I don't recall any great grandparents but now Luna has two sets of grandparents and two sets of great grandparents to spoil her. Hehe. How awesome is it to have that much family?)

An amazing dinner was made with no less than four casseroles....I was in midwest cooking heaven. I had seconds, then I had thirds. (I may or may not have gained five pounds in one week while I was there...)

We had a nice evening walk after dinner. Luna fell in love with this little car my MIL borrowed for her. Check that birthday girl out! Well, maybe not the second picture...

Then there was the house in the country:

Another afternoon we visited Mr. 246's maternal grandparents. Delicious cooking again but my favorite part was the perfect weather in the country and a HUGE yard for Luna to run in.

She loved every second of it and my heart tugged a bit and began yearning for a house of my own instead of the apartment life. All she wanted to do was play with stone birds, collect rocks, run in the grass and frolic about.

The next day, for a change of scenery, we went to Columbus area. We ate at one of our favorite restaurants, The Claddagh, which isn't on the west coast. It was just as delicious as I remembered it. Then, thanks to my almost brother-in-law, we were able to have prime rooftop seats to watch the fireworks over Columbus for the 4th of July. Totally felt VIP to me to be able to go up on the roof of one of the big buildings. It was one of those perfect nights where everything fell in to place. We couldn't have planned a better night.

We stayed at my sister-in-law's apartment, stayed up late, played board games, enjoyed each other's company. So much fun. Then the next day was the best part....the zoo!

The weather was perfect for the zoo and Luna had a blast! She quickly became obsessed with the kangaroos and we got the VIP treatment again from an old high school friend of Mr. 246 and his sister. She works at the zoo and got us into a special area to see the giraffes and African savannah area.

Another awesome night of hanging out together at my sister-in-law's apartment and sadly we were onto our last full day. We ordered some pizza and had some campfires and it was the perfect ending to our trip.

Conclusion: This post is greatly lacking in detail and emotions....if I were to include and describe the awesomeness of our trip and my in-laws it would be about five pages long. They are all such wonderful people and I am so blessed to have married into such a loving, fun, and supportive family. I don't know how I got so lucky. So, speaking of which...

Here's my somewhat big (not-so-new news): We're aiming to move back to Ohio toward the end of next year!

Mr. 246 will be finishing up with his masters and I'll have enough money saved up by then. Ever since I had Luna I knew I wanted to move back to the midwest. The west coast has a different vibe and somewhat different values. I want my child(ren) to have a somewhat similar environment to what I had growing up and you can't get that here in California. Plus we have a ton of family and lots of support in Ohio, it'll be fun for Luna to grow up around grandparents and cousins and friends. It's also cheaper to live there - maybe I'll be lucky and we'll be able to afford to homeschool. Hmmm...

Yes, anyway. So I'm super excited. And super motivated to save up my money. I even found my dream home already! Chances are it'll be gone by next year but I can dream. Haha. This seems a bit different then when we moved across country the first time. Anyone ever made a big move with children? How did that go?

Thanks for letting me share!

-Mrs. 246

Project Life Catch Up: April 1-6 2014

EDIT//06.03.14// A lot of people really liked the calender I used for this page and I did too! This calender in this post is from a PL kit buuuuut I just made a bunch of similar free printables for you to use! Check them out here: Project Life Calendar Printables.

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Hey guys! I haven't posted about my Project Life pages since this post back on April 2nd and since I've been on a Project Life kick lately I'm even more motivated to share my most recent pages. I've been looking at a lot of different people's pages and getting lots of ideas.

Sometimes when you do this kind of project it's easy to use your old stand-by techniques without a second thought but I was relying more and more on just adding extra elements in the photo editor instead of actual embellishment. That's fine and all (especially if you're doing digital pages!) but my aim wasn't to do digital pages. It was a bit silly just to do everything digitally, print them out, cut them up, put them in pockets with the occasional embellishment. It is time for me to shake things up a bit in my scrapbooking. 

Here are my pages from April 1-6 that I just finished this past weekend:

In what I'm calling my signature style of "mish-mash-anything-goes" I love this page. Lots of bright and happy and fun memories.

The "April" Title card was a bit more muted then I'd like and it was hard finding elements that would go together to fill up the space. Don't you just love those letters though?

Holy moly. This calendar is probably my favorite part of the whole page! I think it'll be so neat to look back on this years from now. I didn't keep track of what we did or anything. I just kind of looked through pictures to jog my memory of what we did and for days I didn't have pictures  and didn't know I just kind of filled in whatever. (i.e. "Mommy working" and "TGIF" Lol.) I think I may use one of these every month. And actually keep track of things better for it. I love it! *The card is from the 5th and Frolic Edition Core Kit by Dear Lizzy. I think it's a Michaels exclusive. I love this kit.*

I had more journaling I wanted to do on this card so a little pull tab worked perfect. I love including some hands-on elements too. I think it's neat!

Before if I wanted to jazz a picture up with some text I would do it in the photo editor but I'm trying a bit more to use handwriting on my pictures. I definitely need a better pen for this but I like the way it turns out. And yes, that's me and little Boo Radley cuddling in bed. (Cell phone pic quality for sure. But thank goodness for cell phones because if not, I'd have a lot less pictures.)

This page was kind of "eh" in my book. But the memories are documented and that's all that matters, right?

Here's the neat part though! I came across this Flip Flap pages by Close to My Heart somewhere on the internet and I knew I just had to have them. They have all sorts of different sizes and there's an adhesive strip on one side to attach them right to your PL pages and you have a fun little way to add extra pictures or journal. You can even layer them for a little mini album within your album. Ahh! The possibilities! (This is perfect if you have one to two more pictures you want to add to a layout but not enough to justify adding another whole insert. Plus, it's a fun hands-on element!)

And moving on....our day trip to Big Trees State Park!

I used a Becky Higgins Design H Insert for our Big Trees State Park pictures. We didn't take a ton of pictures since we've been there a fair amount before, just not with Luna!

I forgot I had this too so I had to put it in. We had bought Luna a sticker book full of bear stickers at the gift shop. I needed to entertain her a couple days later and asked her to make mommy a bear card for my scrapbook. She happily obliged. This girl LOVES stickers.

This picture didn't turn out so well since I had a lot of glare on the photo pocket but how freaking cute is that picture? I had a mini running theme for these pictures of words on stop of that clear and green striped washi tape, as well as black handwriting/stamps.

 

I didn't have a ton of room for journaling so I included a insert card and used lots of tiny writing. The card is from that same 5th and Frolic Becky Higgins Core Kit. I slipped in our parking pass from the day as well.

 

Another Flip Flap page! The typed sticker saying are from various Cosmo Cricket Tiny Text packs. I LOVE these packs. Easy cute embellishment on the cheap. I have 3-4 different sheets. I'm making it my goal to get them all. Lol. Note the journaling right on the picture. I'm liking it! I used to not want to do it. What if I'm ruining the picture, I thought. Well, it's the digital age. Print another one. Problem solved.

I forgot to take a picture of the whole back of the insert but this is in the top spot. A mini collage of us and the HUGE trees. I used a combo of letter stamps using Staz On ink (a new favorite!) and handwriting for the embellishing.

A new favorite!!! QR video codes!! I've thought about doing this for a while but I couldn't help but thinking that it was a bit silly. QR codes haven't caught on much and in twenty years will I even be able to scan them? What will the next technology be? Then I figured it can't hurt if it's not around anymore or something happens to the links. It's pretty neat for right now.

I was sold on the QR video codes once I was reading someone's blog this past week that their 4 year old loved looking through the PL books and her favorite part was scanning the QR codes and watching all the home videos. I think I should still be able to scan them in a couple years and I'm pretty sure Luna will get a really big kick out of it. (And so will I!) Expect more QR codes in the future!

The last picture of the insert. Luna and Ryan at the warming hut after our hike, having some hot chocolate (Luna's first taste!) and Luna playing in the snow.

That's it for now! What I've learned on these pages: I love journaling/writing right on the picture and I love QR codes. Expect more in the future.

Thanks for taking a look! Let me know if the comments if there's any fun little "techniques" you've come across for Project Life. I'm open to anything!

-Mrs. 246

Nature! Big Trees! Yosemite tomorrow!

"Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand." - John Muir

Ever since spring has come I've been full steam into getting active and craving some nature. Last weekend we went to Calaveras Big Trees State Park which I love because it's a close-ish drive and so neat to see such enormous trees. Just look at the top picture...that's me standing on a fallen tree! Look how huge it is! (For reference, I am 5'6".)

We were surprised that the recent rains meant snow even at that elevation (approx 4000 ft) and there were still some small patches of snow on the ground during our hike even though it was 70 degrees out.

The park even has a "warming hut" near the trail heads where they have a fire inside in the middle of the room and they offer you warm drinks to warm up after your hikes. This weekend was the last weekend they had it open and it was pretty neat but almost a bit silly because it wasn't cold out. I did find out, though, that they have snowshoes for rent in the winter so you can wear snow shoes to go hike the trails. Maybe we'll have to do that sometime!

Why am I reminiscing about last weekend's trip this Friday night? Because I am getting pumped up! The car is packed and we are going to Yosemite tomorrow!!! I haven't been since I was eight months pregnant. (I got quite a few looks hiking about, lol.) Yosemite very well may be one of my favorite places on the entire earth. I feel so amazing about life when I am there. It really is the best getaway from life. It is the kind of place that "resets" you and refreshes you. The quote at the beginning of this post is from the second chapter of Meditations of John Muir (which I actually picked up at Yosemite two trips ago). When I first read this passage, I immediately stopped reading and just re-read it again and again because it spoke to me. (I'm not doing any "dangerous passes" but I never fail to feel "cured" and my apathy killed.) John Muir's writings repeatedly liken the beauty and greatness of the Sierra's to being it's own religion and it's they only temple you'd need. So, as some people are freshened each week by going to church, I am reset and refreshed by going back into nature.

I will be sure to take lots of pictures and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I'll leave you with just one more passage:

"So abundant and novel are the objects of interest in a pure wilderness that unless you are pursuing special studies it matters little where you go, or how often to the same place. Wherever you chance to be always seems at the moment of all places the best; and you feel that there can be no happiness in this world or in any other for those who may not be happy here." - John Muir

- Mrs. 246