Rachel's Bachelorette Party!

Last weekend Rachel had her bachelorette party, and Nicole and I surprised her by showing up in Detroit!  I am so glad we were able to celebrate our lovely bride to be.

We hung out with Rachel and her friends, took a ceramics class, and had a lovely dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant.

We ended the night sipping some fantastic wine at a wine bar.  It was a fun weekend!

Happy Easter!

I had an adventurous weekend (more on that in a bit), but I returned home on Sunday in time to go hunting for eggs with Nathan.

He really enjoyed the hunt.

(Obligatory "cheese" picture)

Nathan really enjoyed opening all of his eggs to find out what treats were inside!

He also really liked the bunnies he got from his Grandma and Grandpa Bock!

It was such a nice day that we stayed outside and played with sidewalk chalk.  Of course it rained today so Nathan said that we are going to have to recreate our masterpiece!

Plumeria Layouts

I have been hoarding Basic Grey's Plumeria for a long time and I am so excited to use it for these layouts of our 2016 trip out east.  For this first layout, I was inspired by the three columns in Scrap Our Stash's sketch, and I used purple and flowers from the purple Care Bear.  

My 2nd layout was inspired by the Scrappy Friends challenges.  I used Rochelle's sketch as a starting point for this layout, and Stacy's photo inspired me to use garden pictures.

I created my 3rd layout for CSI's Case File 278.  I used the color palette (I also added gold), a solid color background, and used a travel theme (Nathan's first trip to the Chesapeake Bay).

My 4th layout was inspired by More Than Words' April challenge.  I used pictures of my "baby" boy's first time visiting family in Connecticut, and used plenty of soft pastels on this page.

Soccer Season

Nathan has started playing soccer again for the spring season.  He is a little more comfortable on the field than he was last fall, and seems to enjoy it!

Nathan is 4!

We continued celebrating Nathan's 4th birthday this weekend.  We went to Lowes to pick out flowers for Nathan to plant in his new garden, and he has enjoyed watering and taking care of them.

Nathan loves the play house part too, especially the functional sink!

We went to the zoo yesterday with some of Nathan's (and our) friends.  

We had a lot of fun, and squeezed in both a train ride and a carousel ride.

We were also able to set up Nathan's new bed tent he got for his birthday.  He thinks it's pretty cool!

Celebrating Nathan's Birthday

We celebrated Nathan's 4th birthday this weekend!  We had a cute Finding Dory theme and lots of presents.

Jesse spent most of the weekend putting some of Nathan's biggest presents together (and playing with him of course!) 

The sweetest part of the day was diving into this charming under the sea cake.

Nathan's Nana and Grandpa Butch celebrated with us and he had so much fun playing with them.

Nathan is such a big boy, and now has a desk and space in our office to do his "work" on his new computer and complete "projects."  

We had lovely weather perfect for trying out his new scooter!

Wacky Weather

Over the past month we have had snow twice and then tons of warm sunny days.  Definitely inconsistent early spring weather!  During our last big snow we took Nathan around on a sled, and he even raced down a couple hills by himself!

Jesse was also able to make it to Santa Fe to ski!

Nathan and I stayed home (and warm), played, and worked on "projects" that we are proudly displaying at the moment!

Last Maui 2016 Layouts

I have a couple more Maui layouts to show you.  This layout is inspired by CSI's Case File 275.  The position of these pictures are inspired by the art in the inspiration picture, and the tropical theme of this layout is inspired by the bright flowers and greenery.

The last Maui layout is inspired by CSI's Case File 276.  I used the red, light blue, navy, yellow, and white color scheme and I also used pictures of us outdoors.

Home Decor

We have been (very slowly) putting up decorations in our home.  We put together this fun gallery wall in our living room for our cute family pictures.

Now that we mounteed our new TV on the wall, we transformed our TV stand into a decorative console.

Here is a look at the overall space!

Making Waves Layouts

Almost three years after our first vacation to Maui with Nathan I am finally working on scrapping this amazing trip using the fun Making Waves collection by Fancy Pants.  I created this first layout using the left side of Scrap Our Stash's February pick your side sketch challenge.  I also used some striped paper and two different fonts on this page.

I used Sketch~N~Scrap's sketch 170 for this layout of our trip to the Maui Ocean Center.

We love snorkeling, and this next layout features underwater pictures we took during our trip.  I was inspired to create a row of circles and other embellishments by the pretty rose garland in Stacy's photo inspiration challenge.

I created this fun pool layout based on Sketches in Thyme's sketch 359.