Hunt Family Connection

December Daily Project: Preparation

It's our first Christmas as a complete family of four and I'm feeling compelled to document it. For the past few years I've been watching others do December Daily projects and it all just seemed so overwhelming to me given everything else that had to be done. It seems that doing prep ahead of time is the key and just plain making this a priority will also be important in getting the project done. The goal is to have an album in the end that documents our holiday season activities, feelings, and traditions.

So to prepare and get psyched up for the project I've been doing a lot of reading. I've been inspired by the following resources:

December Daily project by Ali Edwards - she's really the pioneer of December Daily and has been doing the project for several years now - you can follow her process and get TONS of info from her blog.
Holiday in Hand by Jessica Sprague - a free class that was offered this year - lots of good page prompt ideas and some great free digital goodies
Pre-Planning Digital Pages and Projects by Katie - a great post detailing how Katie is planning for her all digital December Daily album

Next step is to gather materials, so that's just what I did the other day. I did a search of Christmas goodies from Designer Digitals, made note of the products I might want to use for my pages, then raided my stash and made copies of those goodies to put into a dedicated folder to keep on my desktop called "December Daily Materials"  Here are the goodies that I've gathered so far, complete with links to the DD store in case you want to go grab some of these things yourself.

1. December Daily Template Package 2. December Daily Template Package Vol 02  3. Speed Byte No 122  4. Christmas Dreams Kit  5. December Magic Kit   6. Balsam Hill Paper Pack  7. Holiday Hand Drawn Brushes  8. Holiday Word Art  9. Krafty Cut-Ups: Holiday  10. Christmas Dreams Glitters  11. Krafty Cuts: Christmas  12. Posted Holiday Postage Stamps  13. Absolutely Acrylic: Festive Trees  14. StraightLine Stitch Red No 01  15. Stitched by Anna Borders Red No 01

I'm sure I'll add some things here and there, but to keep things as easy to complete as possible, I'm going to try to stick to these products for the most part.

I will be using this album for my pages (in the chestnut color), and in the window that you can see through on the front, I'm going to arrange some of these cute square stickers.

December starts tomorrow and I'm sure I'll be sharing my pictures and pages along the way :)

it was fun while it lasted...

My maternity leave has come to an end and I will be returning to work tomorrow morning (after I take Ellie to her ultrasound appointment) It's been three wonderful months at home with my baby girl and I'm very sad to see it end.

This has felt like an extended summer vacation since I never started work in the fall, and I feel very good about everything I got accomplished. I tackled many organization projects before Ellie arrived and feel like I was able to get a lot of things in place that will make working full-time with two kids a little more manageable. I was able to continue working on projects even after Ellie arrived - she has been very cooperative and flexible about how we spend our days together.

I will really miss the pace of our days though and just being able to sit and watch my little girl grow and learn. I will also miss my easy-going mornings with Graham - he's been getting up and crawling into bed with me to watch Sid the Science Kid and Super Why before getting ready to go to daycare. It's been a great way for me to get some cuddle/alone time with him amidst all of these big changes. I'm going to try and get up and ready early enough so that we can still have some of that time together - he doesn't do very well when I try to rush him out of the house in the morning.

I never thought I would be a good full-time stay-at-home mom, and I still don't. There are some things I am looking forward to about being back at work, but for some reason it just seems harder this time... I'm not a big fan of change, so maybe that's part of it. I think I'm also really worried about the amount of work I'm returning to - they have only had part-time help to fill my spot while away. I'm worried about keeping up with all of the chores at home after working all day, and still having enough time and energy for two kids. I'm sure once I get back into the swing of things it will be ok, but right now it just all seems really overwhelming.

I leave you with a page I put together a page for Ellie's book that talks about our time together these past few months.....it's all gonna be ok (I'll be reciting that to myself quite a bit tomorrow I think!)

click HERE to find out about the supplies used to make this page

Thanksgiving

Wil's Uncle Paul and Aunt Terry have been hosting Thanksgiving dinners for as long as I've been a part of this family and I would imagine long before that as well. We are very thankful to have been invited to spend the holiday with them again this year.

I was a bit bummed that it was raining so hard that we couldn't get pictures outside, so the lighting isn't so awesome and it's a little blurry, but I think everyone is smiling...

Graham had a lot of fun playing with his cousins Alisha and Luke, and was especially in awe of Uncle Scott, who is a firefighter. When Scott told him what he does, Graham went to the window to look for Uncle Scott's fire truck :)

The food was quite yummy - one turkey was done in the oven and the other was smoked. Grant did the carving honors (as tradition requires!)

Fun was had by all, cards were played into the night, and there was much to be thankful for.

So Thankful....

(supplies all found at Designer Digitals by Cathy Zielske, Pattie Knox, Anna Aspnes, and Katie Pertiet)

Wishing all of our family and friends a very happy Thanksgiving and a weekend filled with family, friends, and good food :)

We have much to be thankful for - wanted to list a few things....

• Graham and Eleanor - we are blessed with two happy and healthy children that make every day better
• LOTS of family and friends that love us and want to spend time with us - we always have somewhere to go or someone to turn to
• Technology - we can see the family and friends that we don't get to see on a regular basis - this blog, skype, emails....they all help us be closer together even though there are many miles between us
• Our jobs - not only are we thankful that we have them, but we feel very lucky to actually enjoy what we do
• Each other - it's quite a journey we are on and I think it's safe to say that we both feel very lucky to have each other along for the ride

Life is good - bring on the pumpkin pie ;)

OC Thanksgiving

This morning I got up early to make cheesy potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner at Wil's school.

The staff makes and then serves the meal to the entire student body. I would imagine that this is the only Thanksgiving dinner that many of these kids get - it was pretty great to see them all there together. With every event that I go to at Opportunity Center, I become more and more impressed with the staff there and their dedication to what they do. They don't just teach these kids, they make connections with them and give them so much of themselves. Wil is very happy there and I totally understand why - they really are a family.

This picture is such a great example of what makes this group so special. Working together here are current staff of OC, a retired OC teacher, a frequent OC substitute teacher, and the spouse of the one of the teachers. Everyone is welcome and everyone wants to help out and be a part of what's going on there. In fact, the secretary (who is new to the staff this year) brought along her parents and her daughter to help with the cooking!

I had to leave early to get to a meeting, but I'm told my cheesy potatoes went over pretty well :) I'm just pretty happy to have been part of this OC holiday.

Public Service Announcement: Joe's Garage Rocks!

On Monday morning it was a bit chilly and the windows on the Trailblazer were fogged up. I started rolling windows down and back up again so I could see out of them, but the front passenger side window got stuck about halfway down. I couldn't get it back up or put it down any further...it was just stuck in the middle, making a horrible grinding noise.

I wasn't terribly excited about spending one of my last days of maternity leave at the garage, but something had to be done in a quick hurry. I called my very favorite garage (Joe's) and they had me come in at 1:30 for an oil change and to check out the window.

After the oil change was finished they gave me a call to let me know it was done. They also let me know that they had done some research and it looked like the window problem would still be under warranty - they had actually called the dealer and checked on this!

The fix would have been about $300 if Joe's had never bothered to check and just went ahead with the repair. This is exactly why I've been taking my cars to Joe's Garage for many years now - I trust them! They really are good people and I have always felt like they are telling me the truth and looking out for my best interest. They take the time to build relationships with their customers and I have always felt quite welcome (and remembered!) there.

Of course when I went to the service center at the dealership, I got a lecture about why I should be getting the Trailblazer serviced there.  I wanted to tell him that it's these kind of lectures that actually keep me from wanting to do business with them.

So just to recap:

JOE'S GARAGE IS AWESOME - if you're in the Eugene, Oregon area, you should definitely check them out.
Joe's Garage - 888 West 1st Ave. - Eugene, OR - 97402 - 541-343-1814

Pictures and ABCs

It took me a couple of days (never enough time to get it done in one sitting), but I'm finally done sorting through, editing, and backing up the pictures from September and October. You can find them by clicking the links in the previous sentence, or by clicking on Hunt Family Photos over there on the right -------->

Just a reminder - the Hunt Family Photos page has links to our picture albums at Snapfish. You can order prints from their website, and you can also download the full resolution photos from their site so you can  put them on your own computer if you'd like (it does cost to download the pics, but it's really cheap!) I've  added a little tutorial to the bottom of the Hunt Family Photo page to help you figure out how to download the hi-res images to your computer - go check it out if you're interested.

It's always fun to go back and look at the pictures - once in awhile I find something that I had completely forgotten about. For example....

 

This picture was taken while my aunties were here visiting in October and just got lost in all of the excitement of their visit. Our friend Craig had stopped by and it was the first time he saw Ellie awake. Looks safe to say that Ellie is a big fan of Craig's, just like the rest of the family :) 

I also have some video to share. Graham has been doing a LOT of talking and also singing lately. I got some video of him singing the ABC song (his version of it) last night. He's singing really quietly so you have to turn the volume up a bit and listen closely as he's singing to Ellie. He misses a few letters here and there, but you get the idea :) G gets a lot of practice with the ABC song because they sing it at daycare while they are washing hands (to make sure they are washing long enough).

I think that catches us up for the moment - it's my last week of maternity leave to I have thoughts on that to share in an upcoming post. I also have a public service announcement coming up after a bit of an adventure that Ellie and I had today. For now though, it's time to get Miss Ellie her last bottle so I can get some sleep....night night!

Pictures found...

It really does seem they were able to retrieve all of the data that was on the bad hard drive - yay! I had just uploaded some pictures from my camera when it crashed, so I'm just now finally getting them edited to share....a little leftover from Halloween :)

Auntie Linda gave us this onesie when she came to visit and the pants (hand-me-downs from our friend Anna) were a perfect match! I give you 'Ellie the Friendly Ghost"....

I also wanted to try and take a better picture of Eleanor in her Halloween costume - between bad lighting and all of her sleeping on the night of Halloween, I never got a good shot. So here's what we ended up with....

 

Fun family fact about this costume - I originally got this for Graham to wear on his first Halloween, but he grew too tall so fast, that his little legs came busting out of the bottom!  Luckily it fit Eleanor perfectly :)

I'm working on a special Halloween album, inspired by Cathy Zielske, that will document their costume choices each year. You can find out more about her album and get templates to make your own on her blog here: BOO ALBUM

Here are the pages I have done for my album so far....

Putting it all back together

I finally got my computer back on Wednesday - that was quite possibly the longest 1 1/2 weeks ever! It's amazing how dependent I am on my computer and how lost I would have felt if I had lost all of the data on it. Lesson learned - no matter how new your computer is, the hard drive could crash at any given moment - back it up! I will be backing up more frequently from now on...

I've been spending a lot of time putting my computer back together - putting files back where they belong, downloading programs like Skype and Adobe Reader, and re-loading software like PSE and Lightroom. It's like starting all over again with a new 'puter so it's definitely taking much longer than I thought it would.

I'm also unloading pictures and movies from my cameras - should have some "catching up" posts coming soon!

from this past weekend...

I couldn't wait for my computer any longer - I had to download some pictures from my camera onto my back-up 'puter. I wanted to share this shot of me and Ellie from this past weekend - LOVE that strawberry hat (thanks Gwen!)

We were doing a little work outside - here's Graham helping Wil do a little digging...

Love fall.....love hanging out with my family....good times.