1 Year Ago

One year ago on May 31, 2013 at 9:26pm this wonderful man went home to be with the Lord. 

It has been a very hard year. Hard to imagine life has continued even with out him here to be a part of it.  You are missed daily. I love you Daddy. 

Lil Momma Strouse

The Documented Life Project Week 13-16

Playing catch up on sharing….

March 22, 2014 Challenge - Week 13 - 

Ask someone else to draw on your page - finish it!

Super D drew a tree and an owl. I took that and created this weeks tip in.

March 29, 2014 Challenge - Week 14 - 

Write your name and embellish it.

Used my favorite letter stencil, water colors and pens to create this weeks tip in. 

You can tell I am learning more and more as we go. 

April 5, 2014 - Week 15 Challenge - 

Monochromatic: use shades, tints and hues of one color!

Pinks/Purples where the monochromatic color of choice, water color and pens helped create this tip in. 

April 12, 2014 - Challenge -Week 16 - 

Add a cardboard food box in a creative way.

I took the words from the Flip Sides cracker box added some eyes and used a favorite saying in my family. "See you on the Flip Side" On the back of the tip in I used my favorite stencil to create daddy! Cause I will see him on the flip side in heaven. 

Lil Momma Strouse

GOODBYE 2013

Lil Momma Strouse

Life in the past week.

Looking back on my blog over the past few post it looks like all I have done is doodle. I promise life has been filled with lots more then that. 

We have had game night with the PPEA (Pinellas Parent Educators Association) 

We have had co-op for 2 of the 3 kids. Noticed this below... Must be a mom to a boy...

I have also driven up to Live Oak, where my Daddy is. We, my mom and I, got stuck in a horrible accident traffic. I pray for those involved and their families. 

No traffic coming the other way... Not a good sign. 

Sitting at 0 - 4 mph for over an hour and a half.

Traffic behind me moving at snail's pace.

This explains the back up for miles. Again pray for the people that where involved. 

Once we got past that traffic. My mom and I stopped for breakfast. 

We finally got to the cemetery to see the new headstone that was placed for my Daddy.

Isn't it beautiful! 

We have also done school during all of this time, too. Learning about force and motion for kids, algebraic expressions and reading the Scarlet Letter to name a few things we have done in school. 

As you can see we are busy, busy, busy. 

Lil Momma Strouse

Doodling samples

Lil Momma Strouse

Random Doodling

Lil Momma Strouse

Doodling Away the Stress

One thing my Daddy used to do when he was stressed or needed to think would be to doodle. You could find doodles all over the place. I decided to get a journal type book and do some doodles on a larger scale to help my own stress. I figured I would share some here. I will add a few every so often. These are just my freehand doodling. I got some of the ideas off Pinterest. How to create the letters, flowers, and other stuff. Enjoy...

Lil Momma Strouse

Pin (or Button) Collection

I want to share one of my Daddies collections. I don't know what his rhyme or reason is on how he put these on his board. I don't think they are in alphabetical order. But they are really neat.

As long as I can remember my Daddy collected a few different things. One was coffee mugs. I have pictures of those but for some reason my phone will not let me send them. Another collection was pins. Any kind of pin. Back to school pins, election pins, work pins, silly pins you name it he collected them. Some people would call them buttons. What ever you call them he had a LOT. In fact this is only a picture of one of his boards.

Lil Momma Strouse

Levi Strouse

Everything has been so busy around here I have not introduced our newest family member.

Meet Levi Strouse

Levi is a shorkie. That makes him half shi tzu and yorkie and down right cute as can be. 

You will notice his name is Levi Strouse. There are many people who wanted us to name our last son Levi. But I just could not pull myself to do that to a child. A dog on the other hand is a different story. He has really helped the balance of nature in our home.  

He was born on March 17th and came to be part of our family May 18th. He is very spunky and fits in just right. The reason my husband got him for me is to help me with the loss of my father. A way to have a good distraction. He is very helpful in that. Here are some more cute beyond cute pics of this little guy.

My Daddy did get to meet Levi. See that curly tail? My Daddy loved that tail. He said it was to cute and loved how spunky Levi was.

Favorite place to lay is Mommies shoulder. 

Levi does great at work. Well, at least he makes a great paper weight on my desk. 

He loves to play with my bosses new kitten, Tinker Bell.

He does serve time in his kennel for potty accidents. It is hard to mad at that cute face.

And of course he tries to help my write my blogs. I think he needs a special eduction for that. Levi is a great addition to our family.  He has really fit in, well. 

Lil Momma Strouse

Look what the littles did!!!

Last week I blogged about stress. Each of our family is dealing with lots of stress right now as we are preparing for the going home of my father.

I was at the hospice center sitting with Daddy.  I get a call from Biggun, 13yr, and he tells me he has a bad headache and the littles spilt something and it smelled. He asked me to come home and clean it up as his head hurt so bad he could not. I figured with all the stress that Biggun might really need help.
Boy was I right. When I got home I found a HUGE mess.

You guessed it my two littles, 6yr and 4yr, decided that while their big brother was laying down with a headache instead of watching TV like they told him they where doing chose to "Make" something to eat for themselves and the dogs. A few of the items you see in these pictures are, olive oil, cumin, vinegar, instant vanilla coffee, rice, dog food, pepper and lots of other things. Boy that could really build a child's reading vocabulary if we choose to turn this into an vocabulary words. Wow! Was I shocked! 

My friends at Orange Rhino would be very proud of me. That even with all the stress of what is going on with my Daddy I did NOT yell! Instead I walked in the house and told my littles to go to their room and I got to work cleaning it up, crying the whole time, but I did not yell I cleaned. I then told them they where grounded from TV and left them with their Nana and went back to my Daddies bedside. 

I know they are just trying to get attention. We are all dealing with this stress in our own way. 

Lil Momma Strouse