DIVA's Depot for JULY

Hello Diva's! I will be bumbling along, scrapping whenever I get a chance. Have lots of cards that need making, and still have unscrapped photos. As far as organizing goes, I need to pick up the rest of dgd's pages from the printer and finish assembling her grad album, then return all of the original pages back to their original albums.

Still no large gatherings here. Restaurants are allowed to serve indoors if every second table is kept unoccupied. Two of our local restaurants had been take out only, but they have now closed for the summer, rather than take on wait staff for half capacity seating. Not sure what others are doing. Our "bubble" has been ourselves and our dd and her ds. Hoping that we can get together with our son's family as well in a couple of weeks. They would be coming here. I have really missed seeing them. Even if dd & dgs are here at the same time, that would still be at the limit of ten people gatherings.

Looking forward to hearing from everyone, and seeing what you create this month. If you haven't already posted your challenges, you still have one more day to do that.

Other than that, summers usually mean working in the garden and (hopefully) harvesting and eating fresh produce. And when you are retired, it's hard to take a vacation from that! .

Hello Divas! Probably not scrapping to be done for some of the same reasons as kitbop . Although I have windows in my room, still many chores around a 6 acre property, and a 1,800 sq ft veggie garden. Potatoes are doing fantastic in grow bag experiment, corn is ankle high, beans have some kind of critter eating on the leaves(?), carrots, peas, lettuce, cucumbers are all on their merry way to making us food.

Bible Journaling for my soul and peace of mind will be my main outlet . . . for those who don't know me, both of my boys were adopted from Russia almost 12 years ago at ages 10 and 4. They are the surviving siblings of a group of 4. Middle two children did not survive their birth home. Extreme developmental trauma that leads to depression and substance abuse for both.

DS21 told me via text he was kicked out of the substance abuse program for missing meetings. It's his adult problem and we will let the pieces fall where they may, he's not hit rock bottom yet. He has been there for 10 weeks and is on their Step 4 (Think AA steps).

DS14's stay at Wilderness Therapy will come to an end sometime this month. There have been some major lapses in communication of things about his therapy, etc. For example he removed the rubber bands on his lower brackets of his braces and the wire came out on JUNE 21st! I find out about it yesterday? There are a few other issues. But the hardest part is we did get his full psychological evaluation report from someone who specializes in meeting kids in WT. He is on the FAS spectrum, we always suspected, but now there it is in writing. Measured IQ of 78, in need of a great deal of therapeutic treatment. We are hiring an attorney and will attempt to get him placed in a therapeutic boarding school for next year, especially because of Covid and how SpEd kids in our state are underserved.

Prayers and encouragement is appreciated!

Australia Day falls on 26th of January. It's a very contentious issue here. I actually did a layout about it last month, for the Black Representation challenge, using the photos from when the kids and I attended an Invasion Day rally. The date is when the First Fleet arrived in Australia, which then led to tens? hundreds? of thousands of Aboriginals being slaughtered. Australia Day is therefore also known as Invasion Day or Survival Day, and there are calls to change the date. "There's No Pride In Genocide." So no, I do not celebrate it. There are plenty of people who think Aboriginals should "get over it" and are vehemently opposed to changing the date. Hence the contentiousness and division.

I'm sorry to hear about your grandma, schroema . Have you found out yet what the plans are yet for her funeral?

And angel97701 I'm sorry about the issues with your boys too. That's a lot for all of you to go through.

Thanks all for the thoughts about my grandma. We had a small service this week.

I’m having a hard time getting my scrapping groove back. I’m a preschool aide at an elementary school and there is so much question as to what this year will look like and I’m really dreading going back(in whatever form that is) I’m trying to just enjoy this last month of summer break.

Can't join you this evening to scrap.  Might drop in to chat after dgs goes to bed, but that will be after 9:00PM your time.  Have no energy left by end of day, and since I haven't scrapped for awhile, it takes just a bit more drive to get started.  Dd plans to leave on Monday, and I hope to start playing with paper by Tuesday.  I have a couple of cards and a page planned, and I need to create a bd card for ds and a bunch of anniversary cards for July 31st to August 4th:  apparently, the August long weekend was a popular one for weddings in our family.

Glad you had a fun sunny day, even with the resulting sunburns.  Dd and I plan to get out to the lake tomorrow.  It will be pretty relaxing for me:  they will kayak and I can find a shady spot to sit and wait for them.  Dh plans to drop off the kayaks and leave us there, then come back for a wiener roast later in the afternoon.

Well, we finally heard our school plans so my kids are sorted out. I’m a preschool aide in their district so I should be the same, but our preschool is run by the county within our districts building so there are always little quirks. What will be will be and I need to let it go. DD takes her driving test tomorrow so any positive thoughts for her would be appreciated. I just realized if all goes well, I won’t have to drive her to tennis practice later this week!

I'm not sure where everyone is, but living real life and making memories I hope!

DS14 is doing well, and DH and I have a much better understanding of his behaviors and how to parent with the FAS diagnosis, and the training we received while he was away at Wilderness Therapy. He's had two sessions with his therapist and the therapist has dug right in to some key issues. Makes us happy he's not "trying to build a relationship" before digging in the issues we've already spoken about. DS14 is doing well and is very happy to be home. His mentor friend has been over several days, and they've started on clearing the sprinkler heads on our ballfield in ground sprinklers. They've also been building on legos and on RC trucks modifications. Another day on the river was in there too on sister's party floatie.

I will tell you what kicked my creative mojo back into gear . . . I needed to make 17 (yes seventeen) sympathy cards. DSD24's maternal grandfather (79) passed away two weeks ago with congestive heart failure, DH's aunt (87) passed away Friday morning from a massive stroke, and my uncle (79) is hospitalized and not expected to recover. He has Parkinson's and developed shingles in his right eye and across his forehead that went into his brain causing encephalitis. He has not come back to consciousness and they are doing only comfort care. Between these three and another of DH's uncle's by marriage, I needed to create cards.

It took me several hours about 7 or 8 I think, and all are clean and simple. But I am pleased with the results. I did 7 different designs, so people in the same family did will not get a card that is the same in the family.

So next week I may be going to Tacoma to keep the ILs from driving. They are Okay to drive around town, but 6 hours then to try to negotiate Seattle area traffic we just don't feel safe letting them go on their own. We can also take DS14 up to see his sister's house (he really wants to do that). We will have a masks along!

Also next week, my flooring will be demolished on Monday, and then replaced on Wednesday. My greenhouse (which was order months ago, even before DS14 went to WT) is supposed to be delivered and put up. On Thursday the plumbers came and installed the replacement water heater, so all my bathrooms have hot water now. The pack out crew from our construction company came and packed my China cabinet and moved all the big furniture out of the dining room. It's pretty empty in there right now.

I might will need to find a house sitter to do the watering, the cat, and possibly the dogs too. But we don't know when the service for DH's aunt will be. Even if we aren't allowed to attend, we will still probably make the drive for reasons listed above.

That's all for me now.

Congrats to your dd, schroema! Hope you get to make a page about it. One of my dgd's passed her Learners' test last week and texted to tell me. I texted back asking for photos, but none have yet popped onto my phone .

Don't forget to sign up for August teams today, Diva's. Hard to believe we got to the end of July already, but we have. I need to quickly put together a LO using the photos of the Peas. And add points for the pages I completed this past ten days. WHY don't I don that when I post them?