My Life's Ingredients

Today we decided to go swimming. Unfortunately, the weather in Germany is grey and overcast like at home, but at least the temperatures are higher!! So, indoor swimming instead of outdoor pool (doubt we’ll get to do that this trip at all), this time at the Rebstockbad as per suggestion from one of mum’s friends. The girls loved the kiddy pool with its slides. The temperature was nicely warm, and depth about 50 cm. They wore their armbands we got from Helga last year, which are round and you can inflate them. After a while, with me and hubby lying back in the pool, Supergirl got the hang of floating, she even put her feet up out of the water. Miss Martian followed suit soon, and because Supergirl was playing happily along with one of the other kids in the pool, Doug decided to take Miss Martian into the learning pool (cooler and deeper), which seemed a success, as they came back to get us. Both had fun in that pool, floating about, slightly trying to “paddle” around, so the next step ...

Arrival at the airport and being in the lounge were fine, the Hobbitses LOVE riding on the trunkies, and the amount of people who were looking at us and commenting was quite high. The girls did get a bit excited in the lounge, so we had to resort to an episode of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” on the Archos. The flight itself was fine, Supergirl and Daddy slept for a bit, Miss Martian decided to stay awake, needing to share my salad with me as well as my “Apfelschorle” (Apple juice with sparkling water – drink of choice for me in Germany). But the minute we touched down she was nodding off!! Fortunately, she woke up again once we walked into the main building (sleeping on my shoulder beforehand) and transferred the girls to the trunkies again (we’re soooo glad we asked Uncle Neil to get them as the girls’ Christmas presents, specially after the nightmare December trip to Germany! Got picked up by my mum and big sis as usual, the girls were a bit shy at the beginning but warmed very quick...

Have been checking older blog posts in the last hour while the Hobbitses are sleeping, and remembered how much fun I had doing Rinda’s Photo Scavenger Hunt 2012 !!  And while reading comments to my Scavenger Hunt blog posts and then blog hopping, I found the new link for the 2013 Scavenger hunt !!! YAY!!! Well… not the list just yet, but the reminder. The hunt will start 1. June, and Rinda will be posting the list and full guidelines the same day. I really had lots of fun last year, so will definitely take part again – and hope that lots of my friends will take part, too!  

Been battling with cold bugs again the last 2 months – I blame the girls, who always LOVE sharing cold bugs with me (such nice kids, aren’t they? ), and somehow the bug is always worse with me, like 6 months of dry coughs etc. The weird weather doesn’t really help either! Been otherwise busy, too, with prepping hubby’s comic & toy mart selling stuff (spending evenings ticketing comic books – 6 boxes of them!) and all in all just not having the urge to blog. BAD!! Right now in the “rush” to get things sorted for our family visit again, so just short note today while the girls are asleep – we have a PJ day for them (I really should have stayed in mine, too) as we all have runny/stuffy noses and I got headaches to go with it due to interrupted/short nights (Supergirl has nasty cough which *could* be croup – need doctors appointment tomorrow). I haven’t been doing much scrapping lately, apart from the layout for the Chinese Whisper we run at our crop right now. I bought some thi...

Mmmh… Interesting statement, that. I *thought* I’m a scrapbooker, but while reading Prompt 3 of Shimelle’s “Cover to Cover” (identifying gaps), I realise I’m not. Maybe a trainee scrapper, but not a scrapbooker. I’m good at taking PHOTOS for scrapbooking – yet fail to print them regularly to actually SCRAP events I WAS good at “journalling” when I was a kid (had TONS of diaries – still have them up in the loft), WAS good at blogging up to a point, WAS good at updating Facebook with info that could be used as journalling, or at least as starting points/pointers. I AM going to crops, just to end up making 1-2 layouts if at all, or a card … all that in about 4-5 hours… I HAD sooooo many plans for scrapbooking, paper and digital: Scrap the individual years of the Wolves from 2002 – 2010 (and I managed 2002/2003 fully, but with missing journalling). Scrap the photos I took of the Stirling Clansmen in a photo yearbook so the students/alumni could purchase their own copy. Same plan...

There we are … Hobbitses are both (!!!) asleep at the same (!!!) time, I’ve got some time to watch Shimelle’s videos on Youtube and play some ChefVille, and what happens? Shockwave happens – or not it seems!! First I thought it’s all due to Chrome, so I switched back to Firefox, but it seems it’s just crashing anywhere!!! I’ve been putting up with that for the last couple of months, have been disabling/enabling/updating Shockwave etc, but it really royally pi$$e$ me off right now!! Suggestions/help anyone?? Hoping to get at least some stuff working while the Hobbitses are still asleep, but with my luck they will wake up and demand attention the minute I get things working!!

Well… more the girls sharing with me … their viral infections that is. I’m really feeling ill, have a racking barking cough, stuffed nose and a headache to boot. Of course can only take the usual for it, and I hate it that I always seem to get the colds worse than the Hobbits! WHY?!?! They have been “carted off” by their daddy to the grandparents this morning, and I mostly sat on the couch, catching up with my TV shows etc, putting files in the printing basket for Lidl photos (and deleting the basket again, as I want to sort through the photos first). So, that’s so far it, just a quick update, although I am going to do some back dated blogging for the last 2 weeks I think. Just to keep the blog alive… Decided to stay away from the crop tomorrow, too, as I probably wouldn’t get much done with the cough, and I don’t want to pass on whatever I have to others (some of which are like me very susceptible  to picking up colds etc). Let’s hope having a couple of days without the g...

With Google getting rid of yet another of their programs (really getting fed up with their updates, I for one liked both Reader and iGoogle!!), I had to made a decision, which blog reader to use in future … and decided to go for BLOGLOVIN. So… if you want to follow me in future and you have a blog reader list, you may want to click on the link below (unless you use Feedly or other). Follow my blog with Bloglovin   PS: Back full strength … that’s 3 blog posts for the day.

1) Wedding album (09/2001) – original photos printed 2) Honeymoon album (09/2001 – 10/2001) – printed photos (35mm) in boxes + some photos in CM album, need reprint from negatives 3) Orlando/Florida/Disney albums (several, from 1999 until 2009, printed and digital photos) 4) Chicago/Minnesota/Green Bay album 2002 (?) 5) Several Edinburgh Wolves albums (2002/2003 done, 2004- end of 2009 to be done) – most likely digital album 6) Clansmen albums (2010 – 2011) – Digital 7) Twins first year album – digi photos 8) Germany trips album/s – several, digi and paper photos 9) UK trips – London & Bath plus Scottish destinations 10) “Road to baby/s” album 11) Our Eastern Med cruise in 2007 album And that’s just the stuff I have so far by skimming through my MASSES of digital photos!! Annual albums – have to sort through existing layouts for that (from my photos of layouts I realise that I must have an album with layouts somewhere that I haven’t found yet since moving scrap area from now nur...

My photos are all over the place, not really the best system. Not for back-ups, either. Got photos on my laptop (which are about 95% on either my big PC or the external HDD as well though), lots on my big PC, which are about 75% backed up on the external HDD. And the photos from my new mobile are now on Dropbox, too. I’m currently looking into getting a photo library software (hopefully free) which lets me add comments to each folder with info as to where/what/who is on the photos. So far I’m not lucky though, shame really. I’m partly using Windows Live Photo Gallery and the other part is Picasa – which software are you using? Also – while I’ve not been scrapping much in the last 1.5 years, the only layouts I’ve done is about the girls, so getting a bit “fed up” of baby photos (and I haven’t even scrapped much of their first year!). Now had a look at some photos I’ve taken pre-twins, like ALL Florida photos (several trips), our wedding/honeymoon, our cruise in 2007 … unfortunately f...

Yes, we’re all still alive. Yes, I am planning to take up blogging again. No, I can’t promise regular updates on here. …. I blame Facebook.     Back later this week.

Hubby is off this week, and we’re tackling the house “a bit”. The twins are at the grandparents yesterday and today (2 nights instead of the usual 1 night), so we’ve tried to make some inroads in our new study. That room used to be our box room (and that’s literally that!) since we moved in, housed several things from American Football stuff over paperwork to hobby stuff from me and lego and boxes of comic books from hubby. You definitely could NOT step into it, and new stuff was just added to it in the front of the room. Which happened when we needed to empty our old study upstairs for the girls’ nursery at the beginning of the year. Now … I’m a bad scrapper given that I haven’t taken photos of the “before” situation, and I should have taken a photo yesterday evening of our “beginnings” to clear things, but that’s the situation now: Several things that lived in the hall is now back in the study, so it’s not as much space as I had earlier, but it’s CARPET we can see, we can walk...

Ok, here all in one go, so Rinda can make sure I’ve not made any errors or left anything out.   1. A pier 2. A clothesline 3. A border 4. A roadside stand selling something 5. A train 6. A historical landmark 7. A person playing a musical instrument 8. A person dressed as an angel or a statue of an angel 9. A fountain                   10. A horse 11. A shadow 12. A maze, labyrinth, or trail. 13. A library   14. A person playing with a ball. 15. Someone dancing.   “Miss Martian” having a wee dance with Daddy at the Bo...