Some photos, since I’ve been a slacker

First, thanks Steve for the sweet post about my awards. That was nice since I didn’t actually get to go to the award ceremony (still have to put out a paper!) And if I can find some samples of the work I’ll post them since one of my newspaper friends requested. In the meantime, here are a few recent pics, since I really haven’t been wanting to write much …

Ella with her cousin Rylan a few weeks ago. He was so funny. He was so excited to see her he immediately sat her down and took her shoes and socks off so she could go play.

Ella enjoys the hotel bed in Ludington.

Oh Denny’s, thank you for having rocket ship cups that made our trip home more enjoyable.

It’s really hard to get a good picture of a Christmas tree, in case you didn’t know.

Ella has some thumbsucking wounds on her thumb, but nothing that a million Hello Kitty bandaids won’t heal.

Erin’s Work Shines in State Contest

Hi – it’s the husband, Stephen. My brother-in-law hacked his wife’s site to compliment her Thanksgiving cooking, so I thought I would hack my wife’s blog to brag about her award-winning design talents.

She truly is an amazing designer, which is one of the reasons I got out of it and went into web design instead. Anyway, here is a story about her awards:

INDIANAPOLIS — KPC Media Group newspapers earned praises in the annual Hoosier State Press Association awards presented Saturday in Indianapolis.

The News-Sun’s presentation editor, Erin Doucette, won three awards. She took first place and second place in the best feature section category in the News-Sun’s circulation division. Her winning entries included Sunday Life sections on topics such as vegetable gardening, local coffee houses, traveling to Chicago baseball stadiums and a trip to China by tai chi practitioners. Those Life sections appeared in all three KPC daily newspapers.

Doucette also took first place for best use of graphics.

Doucette’s work helped The News-Sun to a first place for best newspaper design. Judges said, “There are papers larger than this one that don’t get good, clean, functional design like this paper does. … Excellent.”

Pass the tylenol

Ugh. I can’t seem to shake this cold. Dripping and sneezing and stuffy head and aches. I sound like one of those commercials don’t I? And of course Steve’s got it too, and even worse as usual. Then Ella still has a bit of runny nose, and developed a virus over the weekend. She acted OK, but let’s just say her poor little bottom was really sore and red.

Oh well. It could be worse. A friend emailed today to tell me 34 people were cut from his newsroom yesterday. Ouch!

On a brighter note, we attended London’s Christmas pageant Tuesday night. She couldn’t have smiled bigger. As Sara said, she was the best one. And she did do really well. It seemed like she sang most of the words. She was so much younger last year at it. One year makes a big difference.

It’s Thursday already and my weekend to-do list is piling up. But it’s fun stuff. I need to

1. Get my Christmas tree up.

2. Decorate tree and house.

3. Breakfast with Santa on Saturday morning

4. Online Christmas shopping

5. Upload a bunch of photos (I promise to post some soon)

6. Christmas shopping on Monday

And of course there’s grocery shopping to do and my monthly Saturday night shift. That’s OK with me though. I kinda just want time to fly between now and Christmas. With Ella a little older this year, I think she’s really going to have a blast.

I almost forgot, BIG NEWS. Ella peed in the potty last night. Steve left her alone on it for a minute, then came back to her pointing to it. Major victory!

And just in case you’re still bored with this post, here’s one cute recent photo. Also, you may see a hint of why I want new carpet.

Sleepytime

Thank the lord for naptime. I love Ella, but I also really love that two hours I get to catch up on some things that are hard to do with her or just relax. During her nap today I’ve already unloaded and put away groceries, put away two loads of laundry, watched an episode of Desperate Housewives, and now I’m blogging. Pretty productive.

We had a nice Thanksgiving. And I really appreciate the fact that my mom has it at her house and does all the cooking! She made an awesome meal.

Friday was a short day at work then since we then headed up north to see my husband’s family.

The whole trip went really well. Ella was really good in the 4-hour car drive. She napped half the time, then was mostly content.

We spent most of our time then at Steve’s sister’s. Her three-year-old was really excited to see Ella. He sat her right down and took off her shoes and socks for her. He couldn’t wait to play. And Ella was also really interested in the new baby Jayden. There was a little too much poking, but mostly she was really nice to him. Way nicer than she is to the cats, so that’s a relief.

We stayed in a hotel which was also a nice luxury. There was no way Ella would have slept in this house with fun toys and little cousins to play with. So Ella and I spent naptime at the hotel. I read while she slept. And everynight she and I went back to the hotel at 8 to go to bed. And since we’re in one room I just layed in bed with the lights out and fell asleep myself both nights. I’m more rested from this weekend than I ever am. It feels pretty good!

We swam twice in the pool too and spent plenty of time at the breakfast bar and the little kids corner in the dining room. They actually had a little table and a shelf full of crayons, puzzles and other kids toys. Little things like that for kids make such a huge difference.

OK, well now I need to get on top of some online Christmas shopping before naptime ends …