Band caroling and some rambling

I'm working on this post in a waiting room. Mom is getting regular blood work appointment right now. She made the comment before she went in of me being one of the youngest people in here who weren't in the pediatric area. Yes, I quietly rolled my eyes. But, the majority were around her age. Of course, yesterday I saw a cardiologist for the first time who was surprised at my age and that I was young to be there, especially with what I was experiencing. So far, everything looks good, so we are waiting on tests. I have to be honest and don't like going to doctors if I can avoid it, which is why I ignored it this long. Finally, it scared my kids enough that I am doing something about it.
On a fun note, my boyfriend and I get to have an overnight getaway coming up. I am looking forward to it. Mostly we will be driving, but it is time just the two of us and hopefully not much stress. Other weekend plans look like they are being cancelled because the older girl is busy with being a junior in band. The banquet is ran by them for the seniors. I want to figure another time to get a family picture at the holiday lights. I have until New Year's to get it done. Was wanting a picture of them with Santa also, but suspecting that won't happen. I have a Santa and Me picture frame with a picture of my oldest as a baby. That is the last time anyone got Santa pictures. Easter bunny, more because I had a family friend who dressed as one professionally, there are more of. But, this also is the first year I have tried to push for more family holiday events. We will see how it goes.
Last week, the band had their annual caroling in town. Both girls are in band, but only the youngest went. My older girl is known, even by the band, as the freeze baby. She decided it would be too cold to play. Hot chocolate and pizza would not change her mind. This is the same child who got out of marching the last few games because of how cold she got. Of course, people after were surprised just how cold she physically was even with hand warmers. Luckily, this performance was volunteer only. The social butterfly jumped at the chance, of course.
She tried to get both her brother and me to join in, but we declined. Towards the end, he was ready to. They quit at that point. It's been too many years for me, so I had no intention of playing. Instead, I took a few pics of them playing and hanging out. The boy took some videos on his fancy, special ipad. It was fun, cold, and not snowy.

This is another layout I am submitting for a challenge site. For me, these are teaching me new ways to build pages. It also is getting me to make reasons to take pictures and make it possible for me to document the stories behind the stories. I've discovered that as the family pictures get older, the kids don't recognise people or know why the picture was taken. This is a double page layout. I'm not certain which layout I like making most yet. I could see the benefits to both, though I also can see myself possibly doing more single because I feel nervous taking pictures at events. To explain, I feel like I am paying less attention when I am taking pictures than just observing. 

 This is the right side of the layout. This has the photos of the entire band, my youngest getting one of her THREE slices of pizza, a picture of some of the town lights, and one of the other band members dressing up as Santa. The paper in the background came from my paper pads. I also used more dollar store stickers. The black stars and the outer phrases were from my Tim Holtz rub ons. My outlines on some of the pictures are Elmer's glitter glue. The last set are commentary, statements made and a couple songs they played as outline on the pictures.

This is the left side. I used more of all of the same on this side. With this side, I put the title of Hot Cocoa in Dollar Tree lettering. For the purple cardstock, I rubbed the edges with my silver stamp pad, which made a smoky look. I drew silver on the one tree and added an attempt at a mercury glass tree topper. On the other purple tree, I put lines of red glitter dots. My middle tree had a hand drawn star topper. The top picture was from when she was trying to get her brother to play by sticking the first reed in his mouth that wasn't chipped. He had multiple that were chipped and was pointing out that those were from the last purge we made him do: in high school. The bottom picture is her with both the hot chocolate and her last piece of pizza. After that, everybody who was performing went back out for a last round of songs.

Stick It Down

This is the sketch layout that I went from. Once again, all constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. This site has multiple sketches running, and I plan on making another layout for this month for them. I so greatly appreciate all these people who run them because I am learning so much.