Okay, so of course I haven’t felt like writing lately. I miss my cat. He was a good cat. Probably the best cat ever, in his younger years. We had Mogley since before we had kids, before we were married, and yes since before we even graduated highschool. We picked him out from a litter of kittens (from Don, Jason’s bro.) Mogley was the runt of the litter and boy did he walk funny. Kind of like a car with really huge back wheels and really small front wheels, or like the child Mogley in the jungle book. It was pretty funny watching him walk, but you probably had to be there to understand.

He lived with Jason until we got our own apartment together. He was a nice welcome home everyday at our apartment. He kept Jason company while I went away to bootcamp for the Air Force. He was the source of many exciting play sessions – wiggle a finger -dodge his paw or bleed! Yes, it was not abnormal for us to get an ass kicken many a night, by our precious, super cool cat! For many years, it was just us, me, Mogley and Jason. Several times we caught him just laying near our neice – you could just tell he was watching over her. Many years later, our own babies. You know, he even did this cool thing, he use to jump from the floor to our chest if we called him up, then sit on our shoulder like a parrot or something – sniffing around in our hair. Or, he’d jump up to Jason’s hair, wet from showering, and lick it dry as if he was a mama cat cleaning her baby. Funny. You could hear his meow from real far away. He could really belt ’em out. Sometimes he’d even pop his head up to your mouth if you’d say to him “kiss me”. He was a real cool cat. Always strong, always fun, always respected.

Three amazing things happened these last couple of weeks! First: The other day, my One year old went uckies in the toilet for the first time (same day mogley passed.) Yes, she’s gifted! Lol. Second: Yesterday my 3 year old dove all the way to the bottom of our 8 foot deep pool to retrieve a swimming weight at the bottom of the pool. Talk about impressive. We were all so shocked to see that she could do that. Third: Our backyard landscaping is completely done! Hallelujah. No more desert rock crap to look at. There’s actually some greenery!

Other than that, I have not been at the computer much. I have not scrapped hardly at all and I’m having withdrawals!! Ahhhhhh, what am I gonna do. I don’t foresee anything in the near future either as we will be hosting a bbq at my house for my cousins birthday party. Oh yes, one more amazing thing – My 3 year old is learning to read. She is sounding words out and reading them from this book called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Right now she can read: This, Mom, Rat, Ran, Man, Ram, Rack, See, Meet, is, The, a, Sad, Sam, Read and more. I thing that’s pretty amazing for a 3 and a half year old. And every day she is learning more. Some lady at the park told me about her 2 and a half year old reading and suggested the book. Amazingly it is working in a wonderful way. She is learning not to memorize the words, but to actually sound them out. It is still quite a lot of work and she really has to sit and concentrate, but I’m so proud of her. I know your not suppose to reward with sweets or food, but it is one of the only incentives, other than a reward chart that helps her to focus on pushing through when it gets difficult. I find gummy worms work well!

So, it’s late, I gotta go get some sleep if I want to survive tomorrow with these two kids, real estate, parents and puppy in town, grumpy overworked husband, plannning a birthday party for my cousin, doing laundry, cleaning up and keeping the peace….. Dozing off at the computer.. definitely done now! Night!

Mogley
Beloved Cat
May 1, 1994 – Aug 22, 2008

May you forever feel a spring breeze blowing by.
We love you.

Added later:

I don’t do these very often so I thought I would share. This is a layout of our cat Mogley. He died last October 22nd 2008 but he is with us in all of our memories. In his day he was a bad ass mouse and bird catchin’ cat. This cat was there when Jason and I were dating, when we got our first place together, when we got married, when I joined the Air Force, when we got our first house, when my Grandmother died, when I completed my tour, when my neices and nephew were born, when my kids were born. Anyway, enjoy this traditional layout, made it with his old poloroid picture.

traditional layout:

Yes two weeks has gone by already and it sure was fast. While it was a great vacation, it’s just nice to be home. Of course, now that we are home it’s back to the grind. I’ve got some real estate to catch up on and I have come home with so many fresh ideas for designing digitals. I’ve got loads of laundry and the girls… Well, there’s never enough time in a day… 

So, if only all of you could’ve seen the girls when we got home. My 3 year old was almost shaking with excitment shouting “yay” and my One year old was climbing on her toys and clapping saying “yay”. Talk about soo cute.  

You might notice that PicNic Parade kit is not for sale anymore. I’m entering a designers contest at the DigitalArts-Cafe and in order to be in compliance with the rules, I had to remove the kit for sale. Everyone wish me good luck, and if you like – go register and vote for your favorites all this month!

My cat Mowgly isn’t doing so good these days. He’s 14 years old. That’s pretty old for a cat. His coat that was once a beautiful shiny black is now scraggly black and grey and so thin you can see his under fur. We’ve had Mowgly since he was a baby. He can hardly walk on his back legs, he can’t lift his tail up anymore. He is all skin and bones. I have to make him special rice and chicken meals just to get him to eat. We’ve had him since 1994 and the thought of losing him makes me very sad. I think back and remember how he was when he was young. What a wonderful companion. He always seamed to know when we needed a buddy to quietly sit with or a friend to play mouse with. He use to lovingly bring mice and birds to Jason’s feet, what a hunter he was in his day. Soon, very soon, we will have to put him to sleep. He is terrified to go to the vet. We don’t want his last moments in life to be spent in terror so we will probably have to have a mobile vet come to the house to put him down. It’s a struggle to figure out when to put your cat down. His hips and back legs are definitely in pain, he looks like he’s starving to death, he throws up anything other than chicken rice, but could he maybe just die of old age? That would be a better way to go. It’s definitely a mental struggle. On this sad note, I will go. Until next time –

Blessings to all,
Vivayne

Okay, finally the pics are posted and we’re still on vacation. How do you like that? Well today and tomorrow we are going to Sea World again to catch all the stuff we missed the first day. Yes, I’ll try to post those pics too! So today we are getting a late start. We’re going to do Sea World at Night. I hear they have some spoof shows etc. Also, we wanted to let the girls get some rest this morning (and us too!) That being said, I better go get ready. We’ll leave as soon as the little one wakes up! Catch up with ya later!

So here we are in San Diego California. We spent all day yesterday at Sea World. All that walking, in the heat – I guess it takes it out of you! What were we thinking when we bought 5 day passes? Today we went to the Wild Animal Park. That was a lot of walking. But we did feel like we were on Safari 🙂 Oh my goodness, we have 3 more days of this. We leave in the morning and come home at night. Tomorrow is our visit to the zoo. Then it’s back to Sea World to see everything we missed the first day. Wow. The kids are having a blast though. We are giving them all of our attention and spending the day out in nature. Today they rode on the most awesome carousel ever. It had every wild animal you can think of. My 3 year old rode on an Opaki (cousin to the Zebra) and a Rhino and my little 1 year old rode on a giant Rabbit that looked like a Jackalope. It’s really refreshing to be spending the days with Jason, rather than him working every day. I see great things in him. He’s really a sweetie pie and pleasant to be around. Spending this vacation together reminds me again, of how lucky I feel to have him and to have him as a father to my girls. Sometimes we get caught up in everyday life and forget to have fun. How important is it to have fun everyday? It’s hard to even think about that when you’re just trying to get through the days with two little ones and raise them to be right. But, what about fun everyday? If we focused on having a little more fun… well life could be a lot better! Well, I’m tired, gonna turn in.

Wow, how can it be August already! Time sure flies and I’m having fun. Yahoo, we’re on vacation! Right now I’m hangin’ out in Sweetwater California enjoying the weather (much better than the normal 106 degrees at 8:30 pm, that I’m use to.) I just got the digital purchases up and running and the Freebie is there for all to enjoy.  Now, with all things new, I’m sure there may be some minor set backs in transfering said files, but we’ll pray for everything to run smoothly instead. And of course I’ll be watching closely to make sure everyone is taken care of. If I get enough response to these digitals, I’ll be setting up file downloading to be much faster and easier. I just don’t want to put out a lot of expense unless or untill I know that the digitals are actually popular!

Plans for this week, relax a little more and enjoy the weather, go to the beach and stick my toes in the sand with my man, play catch with my 3 year old play ditch the wave with both of my girls, go to Sea World, the Zoo, and the Wild Animal Park and take walks around the trails and beautiful scenery here. I should have plenty of great pics for scrapping by the time I’m done and of course, as usual, never enough time to scrap them all. I’d like to start working on the next kit design, already have a color palet in mind, but I really need to pull myself away from the computer and spend some memory making time with my family. So maybe I’ll make time to update again later, but for now, bid me happy vacationing and take care.

Finally I have finished my first full Scrap kit. Just in time for August. Yikes! Well, I hope you all like it. As you can see my inspiration was Fourth of July pic nics, parades and outdoor fun! Here, take a look at PicNic Parade! There’s a freebie right below it too!

http://www.scrapbooksgonedigital.com/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=16