saturday . . .

"I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort.

You fight for it

strive for it

insist upon it

and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations for your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments." - Elizabeth Gilbert (from Eat, Pray, Love)

I found this on Elizabeth Kartchner's blog while doing a bit of surfing today & I liked it. I have been in a funk recently - don't get me wrong - totally happy that this pregnancy is going healthy - but I have been quite tired, missing scrapbooking as often as I used to, missing being a part of the teams I was on, nervous about being a mommy of two, trying not to allow myself to blow up like a balloon as I did with Ryan by walking 2 1/2 miles every day & attempting (most days) to eat healthy, worrying about some other things I'd rather not share, and the list goes on . . . I'm blaming some of this on simply pregnancy emotions - I can do that right ??? Just this past week I said enough is enough & tried to really work hard on being as positive as possible, not let myself get caught up in the funk, just really work on being happy. So far, pretty good - keep you posted :) Anyways - I am away again - here . . .

Okay - you might think an exotic island - water looks blue doesn't it - this is actually Lake Erie - can you believe it??? We are spending some time at my father-in-law's . . .

Here's Ryan & Granddad . . .

Ryan traveling the beach . . .

Gifts from Grammy Susan & Granddad . . .

Hanging with all the cousins . . .

Oh how I wish I had some scrappy pages to share . . . alas - many in the works - upcoming July work for My Creative Scrapbook & my Guest DT at Jillibean Soup - nothing I can share yet . . . because we've been traveling recently I haven't had time to do any other scrapping - however I have found a few (new to me) kit clubs that I am really enjoying just subscribing to for fun - I'll save that info for a post next week :) I do however have a fun sketch to share that I created for The Scrap Room - I really like this one & definitely want to use it myself. The DT at TSR did an awesome job with it :) Check it out below . . .

They are running a challenge with it on the blog right now - check out all the details HERE!! Have a fabulous rest of your weekend & be back soon!!!

ttyl - julie :)