Ten on Tuesday

1. This past Friday, Marty, Abby and Claire came over and Abby and I took Emma and Claire to the pool. Check out Claire relaxing in her float. With the naked baby doll. Love this.



2. It was the pool's Christmas in July party. There was a DJ playing both Christmas and non-Christmas music, Christmas decorations everywhere, games like limbo and ahula hoop contest. And Santa. Claire was fascinated.


Until she sat on his lap.

Then, not so much. Love that Santa is in swim trunks and sandals.

Emma, wouldn't go near him. I wasn't surprised, she refused to sit with Santa at Christmas, too. She just watched cautiously from a safe distance.

4.Sunday was my sister's birthday. We actually got there first. On time. When we called to see where they were, they were just getting on the highway and completely surprised we beat them. Obviously, I need to work on my punctuality.

It did give me time to take some pictures. Like this one.


Sadly, no good ones of Emma as she wasn't really into it. Again, not a surprise. Anymore when I get the camera out she tells me to stop. She did get my hopes up at one point when she sat next to Michael but that lasted all of 2 minutes.

5. We went to the park after dinner that night.


Crutches and all, Michael was able to help Emma climb this:


6. I had the munchkin climbing all over me. I'm sure I've mentioned this, but you cannot sit next to her without her using you to stand up. And it hurts. She pinches and scratches and yanks on your shirt until it's all stretched out. Michael has started calling her leech. :) But I did get this. A sweet little baby kiss.


7. Malachi, my soon-to-be-new-nephew, turned one this month. They threw him a pool party in Uganda. He's adorable. Just pretend there are pool party pictures here, because I don't have any of those, but I do have these. He's so cute.

8. Have you tried the blog readability test? Just go

here and enter your blog's address and it'll let you know its level of readability. Mine's junior high. Could be worse, could definitely be better.

9. I'm thinking about changing my blog address. I'll post about it before I do it, wouldn't want anyone to be traumatized when they couldn't find my blog. ;)

10. You should check out Simple Scrapbooks new special issue:



In it, you'll find this:


And a bunch of other fantastic ideas for making super cute mini-albums without spending days on them. I have numerous pages already marked with albums I want to make. You can get it here