Hello again

It has been a busier March than usual here at the Monkey House. Over the weekend, however, I slowed down the pace and went to my favorite scrapbooking crop of the year with my girlfriends. I did very little scrapping. But I did make this:

Last week my friend Paula shared a gorgeous canvas from the Pottery Barn catalog. I decided that I would join her in trying to recreate the picture. It was a much more time consuming process than I expected but I like the end result.

I also made this. Ali Edward's fans will recognize this as a lift of a butterfly collage she made last year. I figured while I was making butterfly stuff for Grace's room, I might as well do one of these.

And I made this. Because when my children came to visit me at the scrapbooking crop (yes, I'm that kind of mom and have that kind of family... okay, they really came to take advantage of the hotel swimming pool)... anyway, when Charlie saw that I was making things for Grace's room, his face became a little downcast. I could see that he wanted to ask if I made anything for him but didn't want to cause any trouble.

I would say they are all a hit. Grace carries both of her pictures around into whatever room she goes into. Charlie set his up on his nightstand. That's all a mom can ask for.

So why pictures and not much scrapping? I'm so glad you asked. Three weeks ago Justin and I went skiing for our belated Valentine's Day getaway. It was 70 degrees that weekend and the conditions were less than ideal. I stopped to adjust my boot, fell trying to get back on the trail and broke my thumb. (The strange part of this story is that the last time I skiied at this particular resort , I fell in the exact same place and seriously injured my knee. That day I also followed my father too closely off a jump, he fell, I ran over his hand and broke his thumb.)

Anyway, for the first week the thumb was very bad. My doctor said she was going to get me into an orthopedist to evaluate whether it needed to be casted. (The referral finally showed up in the mail 2 weeks after I injured it and I figured there was no point in a cast at that point.) Last week it started to heal but was very sore and weak and I just didn't think I could manage most of my scrapping tools. I still can't write legibly. So I decided to work on those projects instead. It turns out that with my hand brace I could use most of my tools just fine so I did get a few pages done over the weekend.

At this point, I still probably need to go to the orthopedist because I suspect there is some nerve damage and it's definitely healing a little bit crooked. But it is healing and should be well functioning soon. You never realize how much you use your thumb until you can't use it!

March is normally the calm before the storm of baseball/soccer season but this month I worked full time while my father was out of town. It also happened to be a month where we had many more court appearances/hearings scheduled than usual. He is back now and I survived. But I especially enjoyed having the last 5 days off. Soccer and baseball start this weekend and it will be full on craziness until June.

After making it through most of the winter without getting sick, both kids came down with something yesterday and I am taking the morning off staying home with Grace until Justin comes home at lunchtime to relieve me so I can go to work this afternoon. His work has exploded over the last month (construction as a leading indicator of the economy?) but the good thing about being the boss is that no one will question you if you say you are going to work from home. Whether he gets any actual work done? That's a different story!