Organize your Stuff (round 5):WOYWW 163

It has been another two week gap, but Happy WOYWW! It is another What’s on your Workdesk Wednesday, when we wander the world watching the wonders that others create, or peep at the places where they perform their craftiness. As always, the Fabulous Julia of the Stamping Ground is our hostess!

Summer is so busy! …and so is our desk!

We must confess that there is no new crafts though. Creative Me is getting ready to paint the kitchen and living room, and with The POW focused on football, PA Me has been runing the home show. So… it is just a desk shot today.

(**The POW warning: the rest is family stuff. Skip to the end if just here for the desk!**)

Now new pictures from The Front. Fabulous spouse is busy doing things of which he cannot speak, and actually preparing to come home in a few months! (As the POW often says, it is amazing how time flies while it is standing still!)

Illusive Middle Child and Girl Friday are still enjoying the sunshine of summer. Illusive Middle Child is wrapping up week four of sailing camp. He is enjoying the challenge of moving up to the bigger, two-man FJ’s that his big brother was sailing earlier in the summer.

Meanwhile, Girl Friday is at art camp. However, in their free time, there is still lots to explore in the Outer Banks, and here they are snorkeling…and discovering a hermit crab.

Oldest Child has started the all-consuming High School football season (#54 practice jersey). It is amazing to see how he is listening to the coaches and improving with each session. We are in the football camp phase right now, and he LOVES it!

However, as of Tuesday, he is also discovering that into every athlete’s life, a little pain must fall. He rolled his ankle, and the next couple days will see how good/ bad it is.

He also has some new Foreign Exchange brothers (well, for two weeks, at least). We were an emergency, last minute Host Family. We like them a lot, and it gives Oldest Child somebody other than his Xbox friends with which to hang out… when not at sports.

As for us, we made our annual pilgrimage to the Rails to Ales Festival in Cle Elum, WA. This year it was a Girls Only event (especially as Fabulous Spouse was half a world away). It was amazing to see old friends and faces (Fabulous Spouse- the guy from Sierra Nevada who stays at the B&B says hi!), and to make new memories as well!

Here is to hoping that we are more crafty next week!

Organize your Stuff (round 5): WOYWW161 & Independence Day 236!

Happy WOYWW! …and to those of us in the United States… Happy 4th of July a.k.a. Independence Day! So, you know about the 4th, but what is this WOYWW of which we speak? It is What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday. The day hen crafters (and those of us who like to snoop) hop around the blogosphere to see a world of workspaces and projects! (and make a friend or two along the way). As always, we are hostessed by the Fabulous Lady Julia of the Stamping Ground.

Our desk…again is but our laptop and hard drive and digi bits…

While the POW is uber happy to still be on holiday, Creative Me cannot wait to get home to her more tactile papers, paints and inks. That is not to say that Creative Me cannot whip up digi magic when the need arises. Here is a layout Creative Me snapped together from an event that happened just yesterday…over in Afghanistan!

Photoshop Elements and the internet are a wonderful thing! Who’d a thunk that pictures taken 24-hours ago, half a world away could already be scrapbooked!

(**The POW Warning: family stuff from here down. Scroll to the end if you are here just for the desk**)

For a treat, we have a picture of Fabulous Spouse’s desk. This was taken on his birthday last week (note that the cupcake has no frosting…stupid mail monkeys lost the frosting-mailed at the same time as the cupcakes-…until 2 days after his birthday). Big changes in the works for Fabulous Spouse on the Front as his boss is headed back to the United States… which means a new Major General. (Ok, Creative Me cannot help but breaking out into the Pirates of Penzance’s “I am the very model of a modern Major General” every time we see Major General, just because it makes milk come out of OCD Me’s nose. You cannot take us anywhere).

Oldest Child is learning to drive… the riding lawnmower. He actually got most of the grass…ok 75% the first go round. He is settling into teenager-dom in style, preferring to hang out in the house on his Kindle then with his family. Ok, unless food is involved or said Kindle is threatened to accompany us, he will opt out. I guess it does not help that it is between 90-100 degrees F (32.2-37.7 degrees C) here.

Illusive Middle Child is taking to sailing like…well the son of a Sailor! (and grandson of a Harbor Pilot). He is mastering the one man Opti, and he and Oldest Child took out Grampy’s two man sailboat. He has managed to not capsize yet (we were pretty darned sure that the two man boat was going down several times during her maiden voyage).

Girl Friday was amazed by the thunder and lightning storm that came through and the 85 mph winds that accompanied it (we do not have thunder storms in Washington). However, the Beach is her favorite (that and trying to convince us that a hermit crab needs to come home with us). We are convinced that half the North Carolina seashells will make their way back home.

Finally, seafood! We went to the Crab Claw for the bucket of seafood (crab, mussels, clams, shrimp)…and Girl Friday opted for dinosaur chicken nuggets. We are pretty sure that it is the first time in recent memory that the adults finished dinner before the kids!

Have a happy 4th of July! Thank you Fabulous Spouse and all the soldiers, sailors, and marines that sacrifice to keep our Freedom! Happy Blog hopping!

Organize your Stuff (round 5): One Little Word

Happy Sunday! …and Happy July 1st! Every first of the month, we share our progress with our One Little Word: Journey. What is One Little Word? It is a yearlong process developed by Ali Edwards over at Big Picture Classes where we pick a word for the year and try to live it and understand how it speaks to us, sometimes in the most unexpected of manners. Thanks as always to Margie at Nihao Cupcake! For organizing our monthly hop!

This morning as we write this, we have the most beautiful hazy view of the river at our parents’ house while the kids get ready for church. Right now we are on a Journey of the most literal sort… a trip back home. Creative Me is a little frustrated that PA Me never got around to scanning our 9-patch art homework for this month, we will have to share on August 1st, but it is three time zones and a very long plane flight away right now, so there is nothing we can do but have the POW pat her on the back and tell her to let it go (and shoot mean scowly, if-looks-could-kill faces at PA Me).

Oldest Child gets award at 8th Grade Assembly

So far, Journey has meant a lot to us. It is a big transition month when you have kids. We are now living with a Second Grader, Fourth Grader, and *gasp* a High School Freshman! It is the start of a Journey that we knew was inevitable, and yet it still seems like a massive Herculean challenge for which we are ill prepared (and yet, the POW reminds us, that if she and OCD Me can manage a summer time cleanout of the boys’ rooms…and THAT is more difficult that Hercules task of cleaning the Augean stables… the High School is definitely doable).

We have gone on a Journey by air (and the four hour layover in Atlanta), and for now we are at rest. We must say, there is nothing like a Journey back home. He who said that you can never go home again, was wrong. We love coming home. After six months of single parenting while Fabulous Spouse is on the Front in Afghanistan, it is SO nice to not have to be the one to plan the menu, set the pace, and be in charge. We even got to read more than 100 pages of the same book that we have been reading since Fabulous Spouse left…in December (we got a grand total of 6 pages on the plane down, as we were entertaining the troops ). (We are now on page 282).

It has been fun to watch the kids Journey. Girl Friday was fearless, and first to tackle “The Tube” towed behind Grampy’s boat… then once she was able to do it, the boys were ready to follow suit.

Illusive Middle Child is five days into sailing camp… about 12 hours of total sailing experience, and yet he and Oldest Child were confident enough to take Grampy’s auction find sailboat for her maiden voyage.

Sorry no project, but glad to share my word! If you are blog hopping, your next stop is Ruth. Here is the rest of the list if you get lost :)

Amanda http://scrappnbee.blogspot.com/
Ruth http://suburbansahm.blogspot.com/
Cheri http://cheriandrews.blogspot.com/
Naomi http://poeticaperture.com/
Lisa http://backtoallen.com/category/challenges/one-little-word/
Veronica http://www.veronicanorris.typepad.com/
Missus Wookie http://mrswookieswanderings.blogspot.com/
Kelly http://mindingmynest.com/
Nikki http://www.inkyart.com.au/
Jill http://jillconyers.com/
Brighton http://www.simplebrighton.com/
Tere http://terecontodomicorazon.blogspot.com/
Cynthia http://paperpapereverywhere.blogspot.com/
Donna http://holimess.blogspot.com/
Margie http://xnomads.typepad.com/  <---start of hop!
Monica http://scrapinspired.com/tag/one-little-word/
Jamie http://jmpgirl.blogspot.com/
Jenn http://www.studiojenn.blogspot.com/