Cooling Down

During these hot summer days, Kathy Martin's new Digital Doodle stamp 'Double Scoop' will help you cool down (mentally at least!) Even better, the top scoop of this adorable little cone is separate, so you can add as many additional scoops as you would like. Here's my card using the 'Double Scoop' stamp:


Fortunately for us, we are cooling down literally as well as mentally. The girls and I have been in Colorado for the past week and a half visiting my parents. It has gotten up to 90 a couple of days, but compared to 115, that's cool. This week, we are really cooling down up in the mountains, where the highs are in the low 70's.

We discovered during our visit that Colorado has a professional soccer team, so we had to take Charlotte to go see her first major league soccer game. On our way up to the game, we stopped at the Colorado Department of Transportation's 100th anniversay celebration, where they happened to have face painting as one of the activities. It just seemed natural to have Charlotte put on her 'game face':


We really enjoyed the game, despite the fact that a few fans had the infamous vuvuzelas that were such a annoyance at the World Cup games. This is my favorite shot of the game action. The goalie was unsuccessful in blocking the free kick, as you can see by the ball in the lower left corner of the net:

Sports Photography

Since we're the parents with the fancy photography equipment, always out there shooting pictures at games, we have become the unofficial team photographers.

Here's one of the items we will be giving the girls along with their trophies at the end of the season: a "players card", similar to pro players cards that are traded among fans:



Now I've got to put the individual and team composites together, and decide if/how much to charge.

This and That

It's a little early for Mother's Day, but since that is what I have been scrapping lately, I decided to share a couple of favorite pages from a recent "Things I Love About You" mini album I made for Heritage Makers:

The mini album will be appearing in the Heritage Makers catalog and template gallery in February.

Here a few shots from Sophie's birthday and Christmas day, including the perfect present for a soccer girl, her very own backyard goal: :

Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking

Charlotte was the 'Timex' soccer player this weekend -- she "took a licking and kept on ticking". Her team was in a tournament this weekend, playing four games in two days. And boy did she take a licking.

One team especially had huge players -- some as big as me. The goalie for our team took one looked at them and wailed, "THEY'RE NOT 10!"

You're always biased when it's your child, but I'm positive Charlotte hit the ground more than any other player in the tournament -- often flying through the air first. We weren't able to get any pictures of her actually in the air, but here is one of her just after she was hit by a "10-year old" on the other team (nicknamed 'Tiny", with great irony).

But her team managed to come in second in the tournament. I was most proud of her in the final championship game. Most of her team's offensive line got tired and discouraged and just gave up. But Charlotte stepped up and was all over the field, supporting defense and offense, like a good midfielder is supposed to.

She did start falling apart once we got home, however. She was tired, bruised and sore. It's a good thing tournaments are only a couple of times a season.