Long post...

I've been so busy, that I've forgotten to post - so today, it'll be a very LONG and image heavy post :) Sorry - I hope you get through to the end anyway LOL

I've been also been busy scrapping and I love it!! I have so many fabulous CT kits to scrap from, I can't really believe my luck with my wonderful CTs!!!

First of all, Cali has a freebie kit for everyone from today until the 13th. It's called Vintage Mania...check it out in her Digiscrap Mania store!!

Here's my layout with it - it's a bit out of the box for me so I call it my Warhol moment LOL

It started out with this photo of my older daughter which I took this summer. I decided to use it because I felt she actually looked a bit "vintage" in it - if that makes sense LOL Then I started playing with layers and finally this was the outcome :)

Shabby Miss Jenn has a new kit out, called Soccer Time...it's fabulous!!!

This is my beautiful 5,5 year old nephew playing soccer. He was actually competing with my 6,5 year old daughter - and since he is very competitive and my daughter couldn't care less whether she lost or won - it was a soccer match made in heaven LOL They were both equally happy with the game, even though he scored a lot of goals and she only scored 2 :)

Penny Springman released a new kit this weekend at the Sweet Shoppe. It's called My Fair Lady, and it's just amazingly lush and rich and gorgeous!!

This is my three year old daughter showing off her beautiful face. The story behind the photos is that she just woke up from a surprise afternoon nap and she was VERY grumpy!! After having been teased a little bit - just to make her even more grumpy - her dad offered her a biscuit and chocolate milk. Now THAT made her life a whole lot easier and happier, and after a bit of contemplation, she decided to stop being grumpy and gave us her cute little smile :)

Kristin's ScrapDesign released a new set of templates in her store at Pickleberry Pop before the weekend. I love her templates, they just make it so easy to make your photos tell a story :)

These photos are from May 2008. We were in Reykjavik and decided to stop at the Pearl, which is a glass dome built on hot water tanks on a hilltop in the outskirts of the city. On the top floor there is a revolving restaurant (amazing to go there to eat on beautiful winter evenings + the food is good :). On the floor below the restaurant there is a café and from there you can go outside on a huge terrace encircling the whole dome. It's got gorgeous views. On the bottom floor there is a Viking museum - really interesting but not really for the faint hearted LOL
We sometimes take the girls there for fun and they always enjoy it. This time was no different. They get icecream at the café and then they get to run around on the terrace. This time we also took a walk outside to the little geyser which erupted while we were there - so this was quite the fun little visit.

The big photo is one we took in China on our adoption trip. We went to a small village outside of Nanning, which is the capital city of Guangxi in southern China. Our guide told us this would have been our daughter's life had she stayed in China - and that she should always remember that. She said it as if it was a negative thing if she had a life like that, but I always wonder. It's difficult to compare, our life is so much different than the lives of the people living in that village. But I don't know if we are any happier - they certainly looked happy enough. So I don't want her to remember this village only to be grateful that we "rescued" her from this life - I want her to remember this village as a place belonging in her history and her past. I am eternally grateful that we were allowed to adopt her - but we were definitely NOT rescuing her from a life subpar from what she has now.
Birgit Kerr just released this huge, gorgeous geneology kit. It's called Rooted in the Past - and while most people have a relatively known past. My beautiful girl's first 15 months of life are absolutely unknown to us, and it saddens me.

This is Lovisa Lin again, this time at the end of August while we were out on a walk. I used a fabulous kit by SherrieJD and Tangie Baxter, called Marie. It's a very elegant kit - nothing fall-y about it - but somehow I ended up with a fall layout that I really like a lot :)

This is another layout I did with Dawn Inskip's A Wild Adventure kit. I LOVE Dawn's doodles and her papers are always fantastic. I took this photo in July 2004 when Lovisa was only 19 months old. We were camping in southern Iceland and took a bit of a hike. She was a real trooper and hiked quite a ways up the mountain, but then she got tired and fell asleep in the pack on her dad's back. When she woke up we were nowhere near where we were when she fell asleep and she was a bit confused, trying to take this new place in. After awhile, though, she got oriented and loved it :)

This last one today is a photo of my little girl taking a bath. It's taken in February 2008. I used Soval Design's gorgeous kit, Natasa to scrap the photo.

Well, that's it for today :) I was going to share my 365 photos for September, but figured the post was already long enough LOL If you've already made it this far, I applaud you :)
All the layouts are linked for full credit - thank you so much for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful week!!!