Layouts, fun times & swimming lessons

Gramma & Grampa had bought this horse for us when my brothers were 4 +5, now they have created a place for it in their yard for my kids & hunter. they LOVE it. They even named their horse Blackie.

I'm a little cheesed that I wasn't ready to take a photo. Jenn was pulling the boys around last night in the wagon and they were squealing, so I just missed Riley's whole face. I still love it anyways.

It is funny how life evolves. This man, MY Grandfather was the strict military man my whole childhood. The full "children should be seen but not heard". I swear that my 2 brothers, my sister and I drove him nuts because we were so "full of life" (as I will politely put) As I moved onto my own I have seen him still tackle every issue with full force. (and the man has only a 1/3 of a lung. He hasn't had 2 lungs since his twenties because of tuberculosis) He never stops working and especially helping us grandchildren out. Now that he is a great grandfather to Riley, Jager & Hunter he has become such a gentle man, who I have seen smile so many times. He is having so much fun with the boys. Jager just adores him. He always runs to poppa first. I find this amusing sometimes as I remember being scared of him when I was little, now I can't picture him as anything but the way he is now. These are memories that I will capture, because I want my boys to remember their time with him!

My gramma just adores her great grandchildren. I am so fortunate that she helps me out with the kids. We have so much fun with her! When I was growing up she took us to our swimming lessons in the summer, and we biked for miles. She would always take us to the paddling pool, and now she takes my kids!

Swimming lessons are going GREAT! I have a little swimmer on my hands.

he loves to practise his floats. Today they were in the deep end so they needed life jackets!

This page actually has a lot of different things going on. The paper comes with all the awesome bumps on it. Then I painted areas with 2 different colors of paint, especially the green so that would allow the clear brown acrylic letters to pop. I wanted to continue with the theme of lot's of plant life like the dinosaur show had. So then I added the Basic Grey Urban swirl rub ons & Luxe flower rub ons. Then to stay with the magical theme of this show, I added different colours of glitter. I had so much fun with these dinosaur pages.

I really love dimensional items, so these KI Memories Alphabet soup letters totally rock!

The following 2 layouts are a 2page spread. this one is the left hand side.

pg.2 (right hand side)

Here is a close up of how I used UTEE on the entire background of the layout previous. I stopped embossing it just after it started to melt but before it became smooth. The reason being, the dinosaurs look so lumpy so I wanted to mimic their appearance. Used a lot of UTEE(UltraThick Embossing Enamel) but it was worth it.

So, since I have been stock piling for years, here is another layout mixing old with new product. I did more whimsical sewing on this layout, which was fun. I have a pullout area on the left for Jim to write some stuff to Jag. I do most of the journaling lately so I have been consciously trying to include Jim in that part more. He hates his writing shown, which is silly because it is nice but I don't want him to feel embarrassed so I tend to do more hidden journaling on his layouts. Jim's more private with his thoughts for the boys so he'd rather they weren't for anyone to read except for the boys anyways.

Thanks for looking guys!