The first two weeks of summer vacation started out that we had to get up at the crack of dawn each morning. Football camp starts early! I actually have to get up earlier than when we're in school. But at least it gets us up and out the door.......and out of our pajamas!!
Unfortunately, my friend Mary's husband needed open-heart surgery the day after the last day of school. Although the procedure went perfectly, a day later he suffered a massive stroke. Things were quite scary for a while - I've spent some time with her at the hospital and fielding all emails from Brookdale staff. She's such a good friend that I wish I could do more! I'm happy to report things are starting to move forward in his recovery.
So far, I've taught three professional development classes at the district's professional development center. (Photo Editing, Voki, Novice Blogging). The Novice Blog class was FULL - of course, there were many technical difficulties and many inexperienced bloggers but I made it through (with a little help from Ryan!)
We have a couple off weeks from football camp, so we've been taking advantage of sleeping in late! (My favorite part of any day off!) Ryan continues to work at Jewel - he's currently still being schedules for Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, which leaves the weekdays open. Although we haven't done anything special, we've enjoyed shopping, going out to lunch, cleaning out closets and the rafters in the garage! I've even caught up on Ryan's scrapbook and washed MOST of the windows.
My friend, Carolyn, made an appointment with her friend who is a photographer to have her daughters photographed for the 4th of July. Ryan and I tagged along and had his picture taken. It's the first time we've had professional pictures taken outside. Here's a couple of my favorites:
After the photographer left, I took my camera (which was the same exact model the photographer used) to tryout my photography skills:
We celebrated Father's Day at my brother, Dan's house - unfortunately, I have no pictures to share! Ryan and I bought Bill his work radio and personalized gift card from Dunkin Donuts.
For my dad, I made a record album bowl, found an Elvis T-Shirt and purchased the traditional Sears Gift Card.
I also found this unique gazing ball and stand.
Speaking of gifts, I was able to finish up all my teacup bird feeders that I was giving as gifts for the "end of the school year". They were a BIG HIT! I even got four orders for more. I wasn't sure how I was going to wrap all of them and transport them to school. I found plain brown bags - but thought they needed a little embellishment - they turned out so cute and I was able to make matching cards!
The teacher I worked with all year LOVES animal print - so I put together this gift basket - and made a matching card!
These are the gift bags I made for the kids - I put together a slide show DVD and burned a copy for each students - along with the DVD the girls got pastel pens, lip gloss, a personalized bookmark and candy - the boys got a hacky sack, Toy Story pen, personalized bookmark and candy. I love how their bags turned out too!
Well, I think I'm all caught up with the past month! Now you can see why I haven't had much time to blog! Thank goodness school doesn't start up again for another 7 weeks!
