Circle Journal

Early in 2006 a group of nine scrapbooking friends got together and organized a circle journal swap. Each one of us was to buy a scrapbook - any size - determine a theme, and prepare an instructions page, sign-in page, and the first layout. Then we passed ours on to the next person in the list. Ideally this would have taken us about 10 months to complete. Here it is, the end of 2008 and Mickey and I finally got ours back yesterday. It was such fun to see it again and to see all the different layouts our friends had added. I still need to get Emily to do her layout in it, and then it's complete. Here's what it ended up looking like. If you click on each picture, you'll see a larger image and can read the journalling.

The cover

My instruction page and sign in page - I had made a tag for each member of the group to sign and date, which tucked into two pockets on the page.

My page - interesting to note that when I did this 2 and a half years ago we only had 12 grandchildren. There are 17 of them now.

Elsa's Page

Elizabeth's page

Kelly's Page

Mickey's page

Renee's Page

Tammy's Page

Terrie's Page

A Quist-y Day

Jenn, Anders and the boys were in town today so we spent some fun time with them. The little granddaughters refer to their five boys as the "Quisty boys" and since they're the oldest of our grandchildren (at least the first 3 are) the younger kids tend to look up to them.

We went to Swiss Chalet with them for dinner - quite the experience with boys ranging in age from 11 months to 12 years. It was a fun time. It's also difficult to get a good picture of the whole crew.


I did manage to get a nice shot of the five of them earlier in the day. They are Jonah holding James (Jammers), Sam, Micah and Nate all blue-eyed blonds. Lucky for us they just live ah hour south of Edmonton so we see them quite often.

Sweet Treats

I saw six of the grandchildren in their Hallowe'en finery today and took pictures to mark the occasion. Here in Edmonton we usually are knee deep in snow by Hallowe'en but this year we're a balmy 8C (45F) and dry. That makes for a much more pleasant and bearable trick or treating evening.

Charlie was Wonder Woman, although I'm sure she has no idea who Wonder Woman is/was. She wore that outfit to school today and was so proud of herself.


Max was an astronaut (I called him Buzz) - a very elaborate costume Sara bought on line. The helmet has a speaker and sounds - very cool. He wore his costume to pre-school yesterday and was the best dressed 3-year old there.


Aidan was a shark - note the eye and the dorsal fin - it still seems odd to see him walking. He went out for about 10 minutes tonight - trick or treating wasn't very important to him.


This is Elly the Elephant. She wasn't crazy about her costume - kind of hard crawling with that trunk in the front. She sure looks cute though.

A better view of the costume.


Max, with the helmet visor up.


Kenzie - always a princess - she loves to dress up and looked sweet. She wasn't too pleased when her mother made her wear her winter jacket under the dress (not pictured here) but decided it was better than wearing it over the dress. It's her first hallowe'en to go out without her parents - she went with her friend and her friend's mother.

Sydney looked sweet with her hair done in a flip. She's some kind of super hero - Invincible Woman I think. She was just eager to get out and get candy.


Front shot of Aidan and his shark costume.

I wish I could have seen the other 11 grandkids in costume - maybe their parents will send pictures. I'm sure they all had fun.

Fall Garden

The prettiest flower first - Charlie and I checked out the remain of their garden after school today, and then she drove her bike around to the back yard.


We found this bird wing beside the dragonfly stone. Charlie didn't know how the bird flew away with only one wing.

The crocodile pond, with lots of rocks and pine needles floating on top.

The Inukshuk - he's pretty strong and will over-winter well. I want one in Arizona.

The last purple flower (aster?) in the bunch.

Rosebuds that will never open and live up to their potential - so sad.

Rose hips - from the roses that did live up to their full potential.

This yellow flower started it all. I saw it among the rocks at the base of the large rose bush - all by itself, strong and beautiful.

Play Day

Although I love my pretty pink Samsung flip phone, and used it for over two years, I felt it was now time to move up the techie ladder to something more...challenging and/or fun.


So, after watching Lloyd play with his BlackBerry for the past couple years, I decided I'd like to join the berry bunch too.


And mine is nicer than Lloyds..na na na na na! It has a camera! So I've been playing with it all day, trying to figure out how to use all the different features - like texting, and emailing, and browsing the internet, and taking pictures. I'm quite pleased with the quality of the pictures, although the BlackBerry will never replace my Canon Rebel or even my Fuji camera for my 'good' pictures.


This is the almost-empty glass of Diet Pepsi from Swiss Chalet, where we had lunch today.

This is my sweetie driving around as I exercise my thumbs on the BB keyboard. Isn't he cute!


And this very Canadian sign was just there as Lloyd was filling the car up with gas (for 97 cents a litre!!! - the economy isn't all bad!)

I hope you had a good Monday too.

Happy Birthday Papa

Lloyd's 59th birthday was yesterday. We had his family party tonight...fun time. The grandkids love birthday parties and the little girls especially like helping with the candle blowing. Here Sydney, Charlie and Kenzie take four or five tries to get the candles blown out. It was a fun time - five of our kids were there along with assorted spouses and grandkids.

Cinderella???

Yesterday Charlie decided she wanted to clean the kitchen floor, so after sweeping it she soaked a dishcloth in water, poured lots of dishwashing liquid on it to build up a healthy layer of foam, and got down on her hands and knees and began 'scrubbing'. She did a pretty good job on the areas she washed, but the 'ugly stepgrandmother' had to get the mop out and rinse all that soap off when Cinder-Charlie was finished. Good experience for Charlie though - she loves to help out around the house.


And then later in the day she had to provide the horsepower so the 'spoiled stepsister' could go to the fall ball!