Coming Up For Air!

Finally feel like I'm digging myself out of this hole I've fallen into. What a life changing even this whole job thing has been for my family. First I'm away from home every day for three weeks, which sets my almost two-year old into fits of separation anxiety, then I have scheduling stress with the airline, then the company (that I thought I was working for, but really wasn't!?!?!?!)shuts down operations overnight without notifying any of us. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT? After all that I was sent a schedule by my scheduling department that had me leaving tomorrow for a week long trip to Fort Lauderdale. Wait a minute!!!! That's a long way from Bellingham, WA and being home every night. Add to that the terrible twos, a house that is half finished, money that is running out and a husband that is stressed to MAX as well. Needless to say I've been stressing more than usual lately.
So with flight suspension since the beginning of the month, (my last flight was on the 5th), I've spent some time getting back into a weekly routine of housekeeping, going to the gym and cleaning up our home. My goal is to have our place de-cluttered by the time we move into our new home come July.
As part of my catch-up strategy I've been working on getting up to date on the BIG Picture Scrapbooking classes that I am taking online. One of them is the "Library of Memories" by Stacy Julian, my scrapbook Idol. It is supposed to help me sort through and organize all my mounds and heaps of photos. Yeah right. Well, I started sorting yesterday, (I'm only 6 weeks behind the class!), and I already feel the relief. Her class is all about keeping it simple so that you can enjoy your time scrapping. The other course is an all year round class with Heidi Swapp the organizer of the Creative Escape Scrapbook retreat I went to last September and will be at again this summer. Her class is "A Year To Remember" a weekly thing where each week you get a certain challenge to complete and each month you finish a page for the calendar provided with the class. Here is my January page, which I finally completed this past week. I really love how it turned out. Part of the challenge was to use a target, a goal and some patterned paper outside of your comfort zone.
So I went all out. What do you think?
On Friday I will be going to a local scrapbook event called the 27-Hour Crop. Some gals host it at their church and we have a bunch of us from the Bellingham Scrapbook Fanatics attending. It should be great to get some uninterrupted time for scrapping and spending it with my friend. Looking forward to that. Now I better get back to packing some stuff to take, or else I won't have anything to work on.