Maya Road and Me

Father's Day

So it has been a little over a week since Father's Day and our first one withour my dad. My sister and I were discussing how it feel a bit odd without him. Perhaps the day was a day of happiness with a touch of sorrow and understanding too.

My family spent the day together - we swam:

We ate out:

And just enjoyed our time together.

What I most enjoyed was seeing a "dad" document that my son put together. I love how Noah sees his dad as larger than life:

And looking back when I was my son's age, my dad seemed larger than life, too. I think that is one reason it made saying goodbye so hard.

But I made a layout of some happy times with my dad last year when he was done with his chemo and feeling pretty good:

Lots of little details (and hidden journaling). I made this layout late one night so I grabbed whatever supplies I could find on my desk to do so:

And we know it gets easier each day and each month and each year. And so we wait and we celebrate our time with our families together. 

There are things which will happen in my week which makes me think of my dad and 95% of the time in a happy way so that brings a smile to my face. And my dad being one of the jolliest men around, would be happy to know I am smiling too.

 

Is It June Already?

The month of May was a chaotic month for me. I don't think I travelled as much as I did this past May. I counted up the days that I was hope and it was less than 13 total days. That is usual for me but with some classes I was teaching, heading to Asia to finalize our tradeshow products and the Memorial Service for my dad, I was packing and unpacking suitcases all month.

And now June is here (and almost gone) as we settle into Summer and gear up for our tradeshow in July and I am preparing for my son's birthday party this weekend. My dear son turned 6 not too long ago and at his request, we are having an Angry Birds Space Party. Last year, Noah asked me to do an Angry Birds party for him and I spent a of time sewing some fun Angry Birds for Noah and his friends. Here he is posing with some that we ended up using for an invite last year:

And Noah still to this day sleeps with the entire set of Angry Birds I made him. 

Of course this year with the new Angry Birds Space release, Noah decided he wanted us to do an ABS theme for his party. And lucky for me, they had changed the birds enough so that I couldn't really reuse what I had for his party last year (birds were different colors, etc) so I decided we would do some things different this year.

We went to the Angry Birds Space website and printed off each of the birds and then laminated the pictures. These will be used around the table for his theme:

We also printed off some coloring sheets so kids can color and we will have a little laminator so they can make some ABS placemats to take home.

We also made a bunch of ABS baskets for all the food:

And then we made lots of cups for each of Noah's friends:

I cut the birds out of self adhesive vinyl to decorate each cup. Each friend will leave with a little cup, pencils and an egg goodie.

And my little gal insisted that she needed a pinkie bird cup and the bird had to be pink so I made her this special one (and for some reason she insisted the tail be where it is):

I finished up the cups this past weekend and the menu is planned. I will share more photos as soon as we finish the party.

With my travel schedule, I kept it more simple this year but with lots of fun things still. We are going to have an amazing time celebrating Noah's fun day. I cannot wait. Neither can Noah and that is what it is all about.

 

A fun summer activity I like to do with the kids is to make freeze paper t-shirts. Who would have thought that freeze paper makes amazing stencil paper? All you need is a couple of supplies and you are ready to go. Here is a quick visual tutorial on how to create a perfect shirt for your kiddos.