Home from Lake Powell!

HEY! I missed you! :D :D :D

I'm still getting caught up on everything here at home, but I thought I would take a few minutes and post some pics from our trip. I took all of my pictures the first few days and then got real lazy about it . . . typical relaxing-on-vacation syndrome. :D Fortunately, my paparazzi-of-a-dad also took some pictures so I'll swap with him soon and you'll see even more of our trip through future layouts. ;) (Thank heavens for him, or I'd never be in any pictures, . . . well, actually, I'm not so sure if I'm going to let you all see me in my white-leg glory when I do get his pictures! LOL!)

So here ya go! Enjoy and I'll be back soon!
Jana


The kids hanging out on the dock watching carp while waiting for the houseboat to be ready to launch.

Our gorgeous campsite in Navajo Canyon - We had the entire peninsula pretty much to ourselves for most of the week. It was wonderful!

Lots of swimming this last week!
The boys had sort of an obsession with building HUGE fires everynight. Here is my brother and Owen showing off their wood-hauling muscles. :D

Owen's other "pasttime" was trying to catch fish with a net. We thought to ourselves, "Oh, good! This will keep him busy ALL week!" Well, . . . he caught one the very first day! That boy has persistence!
And here is his little fish! Yeah, Owen! :D :D :D
Rainbow over Navajo Canyon -- Seriously! How beautiful is THAT! :D

Where? Oh, Where Has That Jana Gone?

Oh, Where? Oh, Where Can She Be?

Wowsers! Another week has come and gone in the crazy-August-Birthday-month household. Whew! Thanks for putting up with my absence and sporadic posting. This post will be a quick one, but I wanted to let you know what I have been up to . . .


Bowling for Owen's Birthday "Dinner" Out

Celebrating Maryn's Birthday - Here she is opening presents in the morning.

For her "Friend" party, she decided that she wanted to have a Swimming Party at the Rec. Center. Mmmmmm. Pizza! (I think this is the 20th time we've eaten pizza this week!)
Friday after school we drove to the southern part of Utah to St. George for a little getaway. Kevin had a speaking engagement, so we decided to make a family trip out of it and celebrate Jensyn's birthday.

Here she is on her birthday morning opening her presents in the hotel.

Kevin's parents are serving an LDS mission in St. George. This was the first chance we've had to visit them. Grandma & Grampa invited us over for Gramma's famous Sourdough pancakes. MMMmmmmmm!

Jensyn couldn't have asked for a better birthday breakfast! :D
Afterwards, we were off to the local Community Center for more swimming then lunch.

We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and then went out to dinner to our favorite restaurant in St. George (Jensyn's choice), The Pasta Factory. :D

That night, Gramma and Grampa had us back over to their house to celebrate the kids' birthdays with a cake. I love this picture of all three of them blowing out the candles together. :D


We packed up Sunday morning, made the drive home, rested for an hour and then went to my niece's birthday party.

It was a fun week, but an EXHAUSTING one! :D We still have Jensyn's "friend" party to do. But she has decided she wants to take her friends to a movie, so it shouldn't be too stressful. Whew!

I have soooo many scrap projects to post, but instead of doing them all at once I will do them in groups, starting tomorrow. I'll leave you tonight with my layout for Sketch This #64. See you then!

Jana

Winner!

First off, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for all your kind comments! I tell ya! I need to do Giveaways more often just because it's just so darn fun to read everything you say!!! Thank you for introducing yourselves to me and for making me feel so wanted and loved! ;) (((((((HUGS!!!!))))))

Second, I didn't mean to make you wait clear until the very END of Sunday to find out the Blog-iversary Winner of the kit. We came home from camping last night so that we could get our house ready for another realtor to bring a client through. Then last night the kids begged me to "sleep" in the trailer one more night in front of the house. Then this morning it was church and playing "catch up" with laundry, emails, etc. etc.

Soooooo, without further ado . . .



The winner of the Noel Mignon kit (either the Memory Lane kit OR the Picnic Basket Kit **Your Choice**) IS:
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Paper and Petals said...
Thanks for being a constant source of inspiration to me! You are amazing with a sketch, I just love to see what you create!

Julie

August 7, 2008 7:23 AM

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Congratulations, Julie!!!!

Please email me at jana.eubank@gmail.com with your kit choice and your address and I will have Noel ship that straight out to you!

For everyone else, I really wish that I could send a kit to all of you. (Wouldn't that be fun!) But atleast I can pass on a little tidbit for those of you pining after Noel's kits . . . she is having an AWESOME sale at her site this week! Everything is 5 to 55% off . . . including the new kits and the new arrivals!!!! WOOHOOOO!!!! I think I'm going to use this opportunity to stock up on all the new American Crafts Thickers. YES!!! (I'm such an addict!) Link to Noel Mignon.com HERE Have fun shopping!

I'll leave you with a few photos from our quick little getaway!
See you soon!
Jana

Our Camping Spot at Wasatch State Park

Fishing at Wasatch State Park Golf Course & Fishing Pond
Owen was tooooooo busy to look at me for a photo . . . "Mom! I'm fishing here!" LOL!



After lunch at Dairy Keen in Heber we went swimming at the Homestead

Camryn was pretty excited and ran way ahead of me to the gate. I mean, who wants to wait for their scrapping mom to take a gazillion photos of the beautiful Homestead grounds. :D

Reluctantly Home

We had a gorgeous time up in the Uintah Mountains. It felt wonderful to get away to some peace and quiet and just be together as a family. Life is so busy lately with building the house, that this was a much-needed getaway, a chance to reconnect with each other. The kids actually cried when it was time to come home. (I almost did, too! It's too much fun to be at the cabin!) :) How sweet is that!

We were lucky enough to see some wildlife up close and personal. These two moose were literally 20 ft. away from the cabin patio. One was a little bit bigger than the other one, but didn't seem big enough to be the mom. I've seen a mom once before and I remember being terrified of her, she was so large and protective. This one didn't seem to care much about staying close to the smaller one, so I'm thinking they were both "toddlers." They grazed in the woods for almost 10 minutes before my kids startled them. It's always fun to watch such amazing creatures!

Apparently, you can't take a nature walk with out your Nintendo DS. Hmmmmm. Who knew?
Now Maryn had the right idea! Collecting pine cones and sticks . . . now THAT is what I'm talking about! ;) Alright, I have to give Owen credit . . . his main goal of this vacation was to find the perfect hiking stick. He was quite proud of this find. :)
Jensyn is at an age where she won't let me get a "normal" picture of her. It's either a mopey face or a goofy one. LOL!
I know it's hard to tell from the pictures I get of her, but Camryn actually does smile in real life. She's just not too fond of me taking pictures of her and puts on the "indifferent" act whenever I point her way.
Mmmmmmmm! I LOVE the smell of campfires!
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In honor of my little getaway, how about a layout using the Noel Mignon Getaway Kit? (How's that for a segue? LOL! I know these kits are disappearing quickly, so if you are on the fence about one, I'd act fast.) I did this one for Sketch This #55.


I'll be back tomorrow with more layouts! See you then!
Jana

Home from Mexico and Sketch This 47

I'm Home! The Cruise was soooo much fun! We arrived home Sunday night, but it has taken me a few days to get used to being on land again. I've been dizzy and have had headaches. It's weird not to feel "grounded", but I think I'm finally starting to find my land legs again! LOL!

We had a great time visiting Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas and had the chance to get to know so many fun people. Here are a few snapshots and quick captions from our trip.

Kevin convinced me not to drag my new camera around on our trip. I was sad not to play with it, but on the other hand, I think it would've been cumbersome to take it the places we ended up going.

Believe it or not, this is the only picture I took on the ship! I thought it was so cool the way the ship's backend disappeared into the morning fog.
Our first stop was in Puerto Vallarta. Kevin and I had been there before, so we decided to rent a Jeep to cruise around in and visit a few of our favorite places.
Gorgeous view of the Puerto Vallarta Coast!
We went to Chico's Paradise for Lunch and ended up trying out the Canopy Zip Line Tour.

See that little speck in the sky? That is a person riding the zipline across the canyon. Yep! I did it and it was a blast!




That night we went to Los Arbolitos for dinner with Wayne and Kelly, our new friends. :) Gotta love that Kevin and I ended up with completely cheesy expressions in this one! LOL!

Mmmmmm. Fresh Guacamole!
Small town near Mazatlan. This was the REAL DEAL. Such a cool little Mexican town (I wish I'd written down the name of it!) with an amazing, old church.

Kevin and Jana

We had never been to Cabo before, but I tell ya! After going on a drive and seeing these gorgeous views, we're ready to go back and spend more than one day there!
Check out this gorgeous Public Beach! I'm thinking the kids would love to spend a day here playing in the sand and trying to catch crabs. :)
On the last morning we were greeted home by this beautiful sunrise on the coast of Long Beach, California. Perfect ending to a Fabulous Vacation! :)
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Just before I left for my trip I found out that I made Janelle Richmond's Sketch This Layout Design Team! I am so thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Janelle's AWESOME sketches each week! And here is the first one! For this I used Noel Mignon's TreeHouse Kit. (I added the orange patterned paper and journal tag) I experimented a little bit with a heat gun on the Hambly transparency. I really like the way it turned out even though I'm not quite sure how it's going to lay in a sheet protector! LOL! To see the sketch and how the rest of the team interpreted Sketch 47 click HERE. Not only do you get to see several layouts using the sketch, but you see several cards, too! How awesome is that!!!