Scrap Expo '07

This past weekend Liz and I went to the
Scrapbook Expo held at Pheasant Run in St. Charles. We signed up for two classes that Liz suggested and I must say they were a great suggestion. Our first class was with Chipboard, what in the world is Chipboard you ask? It's like pressed cardboard and is one of the latest trends in Scrapbooking. The class was messy but fun, we both had lots of white paint on us by the time we were done. Below are the two pages we made from the class.

The next class we took was Bazzill BasicGrey, that class was even better. We made 4 pages that are really neat and found out about a new set of tools for sanding so as soon as the class was over we headed straight for their booth. Pictures of pages and stuff I bought are below.

At most of the booths they let you take photos of samples to "Scraplift" (borrow the layout to make one of your own). I took a few that are shown below so hopefully I can use them to make a few pages of my own.

Flooding around the lake

The weather has been in the news all over, severe heat in the middle states, heavy flooding in the Midwest and many blazing fires on the West Coast and now even in Greece. I took a drive the other day and was amaized at some of the flooding around our area around the lake. I tried to get some pictures so you could see, it's hard not to just stop and look. The Chain of Lakes are closed around us which makes for a quiet Labor Day Weekend around our area. Be sure to look at the benches in the first picture, they are usually about I would say 3 feet from the edge of the lake and there are bleechers that were put out for a Cardboard Boat Race they had at Lake Front Park.

The Red house and store is CJ Smith's Bait shop, all of their boat docs are under water and you can see so is the parking lot and bait shop is also.

The first two pictures below are from a camp ground behind a pub and the third picture is the parking lot of Port of Blarney's (Local hot spot). The bottom photo is of a house that sits on the point that is on the way to Blarney's Island.

Jenna can Crawl & Scoot and You?

Finally a way to include video on my blog. Here are a few videos of Jenna crawling. They are so cute I couldn't leave them out. Be sure you turn up the sound for the second one, you can hear her skin sliding across the floor and no it's not gas either, haha.

Hey Boo Boo Let's go to Jellystone

Last weekend we suprised the girls with a camping trip to Yogi Bear's Jellystone campground. Jellystone is a great camping place for kids with a water park, pool, bounce pillow, movies, miniture golf and lots more. We met some friends, the Goldstien family up there who were camping right across from us.

Friday David took the day off so that he and the girls could get there a little earlier then usual. They started off with the bounce pillow then on to the pool and water park. The water park was really cool, there were I think 3 sets of water slides and a great big Pick-a-nic (those of you that have seen the Yogi cartoons will know how to pronounce it correctly) that filled up with water and about every 10 minutes there would be a wistle what would sound to let the kids know it was about to dump. All the kids (and adults) around would gather underneath and wait to get dumped on. Man does it dump on you.

Saturday morning we have a very sweet Breakfast of Cinnamon rolls from the Ice Cream shoppe, they were sure sweet.

After loading up on the sugar we went back to get ready to go swimming. I thought it would be fun to introduce Jenna to the pool but she had other ideas, ideas of sleep. So we put Jenna in her stroller for a little nap while the girls swam and had water balloon fights.

After swimming we started to head back to the tramper (for those of you who don't know that is Becca's name for the trailer, combination of trailer and camper) for a little r & r and some lunch but had to stop at the bounce pillow first (the little boy in the orange shorts and blue shirt is Max Goldstein in a few of the pictures). Becca and I wanted to go back to the pool so we left David and Kayla behind and went swimming with Jenna joining us again but this time she didn't take a nap.

Saturday night we had a yummy steak dinner then joined the Goldstiens by their campfire for some s'mores and some fun. Late Saturday night as usual we were greeted by a rain storm but luckily we were nice and dry in the tramper.

Sunday morning after breakfast we wanted to go back to the pool but thought it would be best to get the trailer ready for the road first. I thought it would be fun to give Jenna another try in the pool and this time she really liked it, we played in the pool while David, Kayla and Becca played basketball with the Goldsteins. We hated to get out of the pool but it was time to finish loading up and heading home.

Comments Welcome

Just wanted all of you to know to please feel free to post comments on our blog, we enjoy reading them. I have changed the settings so you don't have to have a Google account to post a comment.

It's easy and fun, just remember to keep it clean as other people can read what you wrote. We hope all of you enjoy our blog and also feel free to post requests if there is something you want to see. I am learning how to post video's so be sure to keep checking back.

Visit with some old friends

After being up late the night before (getting our bird) we got up to go visit some of my old friends. I have known the Slosar's for many years in California but a couple of years before we moved to Illinois Rob, Lisa, Elliott and Kyle moved out here and Rob's parents Bob and Joanne had a "vacation house" out here. After Bob retired they moved to Illinois full time. After we moved to Illinois is was so good to know that I had some old friends nearby, it is like a little bit of home out here.

We had a nice time visiting with Bob, Joanne, Lisa and little Katlyn, Bob and Joanne's granddaughter and a little bit later Janise joined us (sorry if I have any names spelled wrong). Katlyn wasn't to sure if she liked Jenna stealing all of the attention and definitely didn't like sharing her Grandma.

photos above left to right: Lisa holding Jenna, , Joanne and Katlyn, Bob and Jenna, Katlyn, and Jenna and Katlyn

A New Addition to the Russo Family Zoo

A few years ago we had a couple of birds but we really didn't have the time to spend with them so we found them new homes. We thought that maybe now was a good time to try again with a bird. David spent lots of time doing online research on different types of birds and we visited out local pet store and met a very sweet Blue and Gold Macaw who was just 2 months old but already sold and a Cockatoo named Charley. We really liked Charlie but he was a little to moody for our liking.

We did a little more research and found a bird store in nearby Rockford, about an hour away. Friday after David got home from work we decided to take a drive to go check it out, not really thinking we would find a bird to our liking. We got to the store to find it was a little crazy, a well know vet who specializes in birds was treating birds so we decided to wonder around and in the back behind some large cages we found some small green birds in tank type cages. We started talking to the owner, Gloria and met one of the green birds to find out it was a Hahns Macaw who was only 4 months old. Since it was a little crazy in the store the bird was a little timid.

David and I took turns holding the bird, talking to it and getting to know it. After a few minute with the bird we knew that was the bird we wanted to take home, not to big like the Blue & Gold Macaw. I think Gloria was surprised that we wanted the bird. We didn't know if the bird was a girl or a boy so while the vet was at her store we got the wings cut, nails trimmed and found out the bird is a little girl.

We finally got home 12:30am and David got her cage all set up and spent some time with her before putting her to bed. The bird is doing well but David is having trouble picking a name for her so if you have any suggestions just let us know. He is leaning toward Ripley for her name.