Catching up

It's been awhile since my last post... Things have been pretty busy. The last few weeks of July brought a mix of great scrapping news my way, but life in general has been a mixed bag.

I am excited to say that I have SIX items being published in the month of August!!! All are in on-line magazines, but this is truly a record accomplishment for me. Two of my layouts will be published in Scrapstreet.com's magazine and three layouts plus my acrylic album will be published in Scrapbook News and Review. To top it off, I was selected as the Guest Creative Team Member for the month of August at Scrapbook Doodle! This is my first ever creative/design team selection! The kit for August that I received to create with is AWESOME - you should really check it out! A few of the things I was able to create using it are below. The best part is, is that I still have tons of goodies left to creat more wonderful pages!

Unfortunately, life in general has not been the greatest, but we are trying to look on the bright side... DH lost his job at Ford due to the cutbacks. He has a great attitude about the whole situation and has not been that happy in his job during the last couple of years. The fact that it is summer and there are so many things to do around the house/with the family (more time with the kids!) helps as well. If something else comes up relatively quickly, this would actually be a blessing! Let's keep our fingers crossed!

DS finished up baseball season... His team was eliminated from the playoffs in the first game, losing badly to a team they have beaten in the past. It really seemed that his team was half asleep on the field that night... There's always next year! The loss that night allowed the majority of his team to get together a couple of days later (when they "should" have been playing in the second round of the playoffs) for a pool party to celebrate the end of the season. DS was fortunate enough to play one more game - the all star game! He was picked as one of the top four players from his team... What a thrill for him.

DD is chugging right along in gymnastics class this summer. This week, she made it to the very top of the climbing rope for the first time. It's amazing how quickly she is learning things and getting stronger now that she has moved up in the classes. Only one more week of baseball and tennis for her... We won't know what to do with ourselves once all the activities have ended!

The month ended with bad news about a 9 year old little schoolmate of DS and DD who has been battling lymphoma for the past nine months. On August 1st, she lost her battle and has moved on to better things. These next few days will be difficult ones for our community. I don't think that anyone in our relatively small city hasn't been touched by her story and her life. Earlier in the year the city banded together and held a fundraiser to help her family with medical expenses and raised an incredible amount of money. There were nearly 100 items donated for the "Chinese" auction plus approximately 50 items in the silent auction. In the first hour of the benefit alone, $1000 in 50-50 tickets were sold. I think that every teacher from the school was there volunteering in some way. I know that today at the viewing and tomorrow at the funeral, the family will receive the same support. Please pray that her family can find the strength to make it through these days and weeks ahead that will be oh, so difficult.

Well, enough for today. Hopefully I will do a better job of keeping up next month!