Mothers Day and Layout Share

I have to start this blog post with something that Eliza said to me on Monday - the day after Mother's Day.  Both Eliza and Jasmin had forgotten to give me the cards they had made at school for Mother's Day - and Eliza being in Year 2 had also made me a bunch of crepe paper flowers - as she has given them to me she has said "Mum, I love you more than I love playing Minecraft!".  LOL - this is quite the compliment in our household.

I had a lovely Mother's Day - Dave managed to work out how to make me a coffee using the coffee machine (something he does very rarely), and I got to drink it in bed whilst I read (and waited for the girls to get up, wrap my Mother's Day presents and make me some cards - using my scrapbooking supplies of course). Nothing like leaving it until the last minute (only because they hadn't had time during the week without me being around!).

I got to open my pressies in bed, and then we got up - went to the mall, where I enjoyed Sushi Train with the girls, and then we went to "Star Trek: Into Darkness" - loved it. What's not to love with all that sci-fi goodness, action and eye candy on the screen!  I didn't even have to cook dinner (I point this out as I am the one that makes all the dinners) - we ordered in Crust pizza, and I even got to pick the pizza :-)

We managed to squeeze in a visit to Goulburn on Saturday to catch up with our own Mothers (I also had to pick Dave up in Goulburn as he had business meetings in Sydney to attend with Julie and Leslie, while I held the fort up at home).  I managed to snap a couple of pictures - one with my mum (which Jazz took), and Dave with his mum (which I took). When I look through my albums, there is not a lot of pictures of me and mum, or Dave and his mum, so it was an excellent opportunity to do so.

I have only managed to do a handful of layouts over the last two weeks. Better some than none though!  I have been trying to do a couple of layouts to put in the girls albums of their trip to Fiji last year (when I have completed a couple I can move on to doing some NZ layouts for them). I normally do a family photo book, but I like to include a couple of layouts in their own albums, of them on their holiday.

This layout is of Eliza at the Sheraton Resort on Denarau Island - just a few of the things she did around the resort:

This one is of what Jazz got up to around the resort at Denarau Island:

These pictures are of Jazz snorkelling on Mystery Island - about 40 minutes from Denarau Island - she had such a great time, and so happy that she had the courage to snorkel!

Over the last couple of weeks we have also had a couple of birthdays to go to.  The first was my nephew's 18th birthday.  Where have all the years gone?  He just had a quiet family function at home, and then afterwards had a couple of friends over for the night and some quiet celebrations. He is a nice quiet boy, who loves to watch movies, game - not the going out partying type of guy.  He is just such a good kid, a real credit to my brother and sister-in-law.

My sister made the most excellent cake - made in the shape of a gaming controller!  I put together a photo board of photographs of him from 0 to 18.

I had a few too many pictures to put on one layout, so tucked them into a pocket on the top left of the layout, and tucked the journalling behind the main photograph at the bottom.

We also had my Mother's 71st birthday to go to.  We had a nice BBQ at my sister's place, and we all brought along salads, and other BBQ stuff.  Hellie of course made another excellent birthday cake - a cake like a chocolate box and it had roses chocolates in it.

On the layout I mod-podged some birthday banners onto the background, and added plenty of other banners and pennants for a celebratory feel. I converted the pictures to black and white.

I have managed to keep up with Project Life as well, completing all my April layouts.  It's fun looking back on what we have done over the month.  My memory really must be going with old age as I've forgotten what I've done this week, let alone what I have done a couple of weeks ago.  These pages help me remember all the great things we have been up to.  Here is my April summary page an a couple of the Weekly pages for April.

I am still keeping up with my reading goal.  I am at 49 books for the year and according to the goodreads web-site 9 books ahead of schedule.

I have enjoyed almost all of the books I've read (pics are below). The ones that were a disappointment were "Armour", "Nine Princes in Amber", and "Crystal Gardens" was no where as good as some of other Amanda Quick books I have read.  "Reamde" was a pleasant surprise - a little slow at the start, but a satisfying read by the end.  I loved "Indian Hill" the Mark Tufo book - I have found both the books I have read of his very entertaining and his sense of humour just clicks with me.  Diana Gabaldon's "Voyager" continued the Outlander series and was an excellent third book - so hope that the company who has purchased the option to make a movie/TV Series actually does something with it!

I completed reading the "Infernal Devices" series by Cassandra Clare - specifically so that I could read "The Mortal Instruments" series, as the first book is released as a movie in August.  I am looking forward to seeing "City of Bones" on the big screen.  The other book worth mentioning was the "Mongoliad" book 1, which was co-authored by a number notable authors - including Neal Stephenson. It certainly wasn't what I expected - with a tale set in the times of Genghis Khan.

Well - that's it for this week!