Girls Camp – The Lord’s Amazing Air-corps

Posted on July 1, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Girls Camp Logo

I’m in the midst of planning a prepare for the girls camp that our church does for 12 to 18-year-old girls every summer. So I thought I’d share some of what I’ve put together for that. Our main goal is for the girls to realize how amazing they are and how much they are loved. The theme we picked is “The Lord’s Amazing Air-corps.” We are making a flag, bandanas, and Berets. We also found some alligator looking cell phone cases at a local thrift store for $.25 each so we are using those to little thoughts and notes about how the girls are amazing. For the 6 weeks leading up to camp we are doing a newsletter to “train” the girls before the report to “Camp Brighton” for their last training to become part of the “Lord’s Amazing Air-corps” along with two or three midweek emails on things to think about.

One of the things I’m really excited to see how it goes is the stories. We have asked all the girls and their leaders to come to camp prepared to share a story from their own lives or their family. We are hoping to put this together in a little book so all the girls will have a copy of the stories they heard. It will be interesting to see what kind of stories they pick and how the girls respond to each others stories.

We have our final big preparation activity before camp on Tuesday night. I’ll see if I can get some photos and post them here. Here are the cards for the cell phone cases I have designed for camp. After cutting them out, I punched a hole in the corner and put them together on one of those loose leaf binding rings. The blank ones will be used at camp to share with the girls ways that they are amazing. I still have more to design for the next three weeks of “training” before camp. Feel free to use them for any non-commercial use if you find them helpful.

cards for cell phone cases

Pupdate – Zodiac

Posted on June 28, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Zodiac has always been attracted to sounds and somewhere along the way he learned that the doorbell usually meant something interesting was about to happen. When Zodiac hears the ding-dong, he gets all excited, barks a couple of times and runs to the door. I then ask him to step back from the door and wait calmly for me to answer it. With maturing he has made progress and the last few days he has done much better than average. Hopefully he is out growing this behavior.

Zodiac is still in phase 1 this week. I can’t help but be a little disappointed. There are three reason I can think of why he is still in phase 1:

he is have trouble with something in the training
he is sick
his trainer didn’t update his status

Next week’s report will probably give us some clues. There were two other dogs who stayed in phase 1, which might help the theory that the trainer didn’t update their status. I’d love Zodiac to be a guide dog but even more than that I want him to have a happy life. If being a guide dog will make him happy, I all for that. If he wouldn’t be happy being a guide dog, I’d like him to find another career.

Our Days at Adams Mill Road

Posted on June 24, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Our Days at Adams Mill Road by Roommates at AMR | Make Your Own Book

I put together this book for group of women (one of them is my mom) who had been roommates in the 1950’s in Washington D.C. They are a fun group and have stayed in contact for more than 50 years. Many of them contributed photos, letters and stories from their days at AMR. It is kind of amazing that 10 young women could get along so well in one household. But they did and formed a kind of family.

Do you have friends or roommates from you young adult years that you still keep in contact with? I have a few but not very many. Keeping in contact with people is not one of my strengths. Those I’m still in contact with is because they are good at in not me.

Pupdate – Zodiac

Posted on June 21, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Zodiac is very zealous about life and sometimes it comes across as stubbornness. I’ll never forget our first day together. He was exploring his new house and decided he wanted to go into the spare bedroom. This is our cat’s territory and off-limits to the dogs, so I picked up his puppy leash and stopped him. He didn’t like that and pulled harder to go into the room. I think we spent 10 minutes with Zodiac trying to go forward into the room and me preventing him. To his credit he learned his lesson and we never had that battle again.

Zodiac is finally in phase one! It seems like it has taken him forever to get there. He has been gone a month now so it has been awhile. But he is finally moving. If you want to know more about what he is learning go to this post on phase one. I finally got around to ordering Zodiac’s official portrait for our wall today. I’m excited to add his happy face to the other five pups that are already up there.

“My Grandma Mary” update

Posted on June 17, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

I’ve been trying to finish things up on “My Grandma Mary” for several weeks now. Because I want to make this book available to more than just my extended family, I decided that we needed another printer than Blurb. Blurb is still great for printing a few books and their quality is wonderful. But to get “My Grandma Mary” into more distribution channels there needs to be some room for wholesale and retail mark-ups.I looked at:

I’m trying to jump through all the hoops to use Lightning Source. There are lots of new stuff to learn and things like ISBN numbers to deal with. Today I stumbled across a new option that is coming in July called IngramSpark. It is a sister company to Lightning Source but geared for smaller publishers and more user-friendly. Now I don’t know if I should wait and see what it is like or keep working it through with Lightning Source. My mom is getting anxious to get copies for her brothers and sister, so I think I’ll keep working on the Lightning Source route and if IngramSpark comes up before I get through it all I’ll check it out.

All of this has overwhelmed me at times. The layout for the book needs to be done again to fit their trim sizes and the export files have different specs than Blurb. I still haven’t got all that figured out but I think I’m getting close. I’m so glad that there are printers like Blurb to use for most of my projects.

Pupdate – Zodiac

Posted on June 14, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Once in a while Zodiac uses his paws like a zax and punches you. The most memorable time was when my friend Lisa, and I along with Zodiac and a career change dog name Osaka, where driving through the night to a Guide Dog for the Blind graduation. We were both too tired to drive, so the four of us slept in the car. At some point Zodiac punched out with one of his paws and caught Lisa in the eye. Boy did that ever hurt. I’m pretty sure her eye got scratched but it healed up fine. Of course Zodiac wasn’t trying to hurt her, she just got in the way of a powerful paw stretch.

Zodiac is still in phase 0! Half the dogs in phase 0 last week moved on to phase 1, too bad Zodiac wasn’t one of them. A new batch of dogs will be arriving on campus next week. If Zodiac doesn’t make it to a string this coming week than he must be having trouble of some kind. I’ll be waiting anxiously for Thursday and the next phase report.

Carol Joy Jenson

Posted on June 10, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/872281/47f26d11181207655b51946c659e9792?ce=blurb_ew&utm_source=widget

This is a book about my aunt who died when she was 13 years old. There was a limited number of photos and information about her short life so I used every picture I had and almost everything written about her. Because it was so focused it came together very quickly.

I had a lot of fun putting this together, so much fun, that it inspired several more books in similar format and size about her parents and another aunt with more to come. These books that are not so much focused on the chronology of someones life but more about telling the story of who they where and what was important to them.

A smaller focused project like this is very doable and very satisfying to too. Keep the possibilities in mind as you think about upcoming story projects.

Pupdate – Zodiac

Posted on June 7, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Jumping is probably my least favorite thing about Zodiac. Sometimes it comes so unexpectedly when I’m sitting at my desk working on my computer and “zap” his paws land abruptly on my arm and shoulder. I sure hope that his future handler loves this trait because I think it is just part of who he is. We have been able to moderate it but not stop it all together.

Zodiac was still in phase 0 this week. Of the 40+ pups that were recalled the middle of May, nine of them moved to phase 1 on the report. It looks like they started two new strings, one in San Rafael and one in Boring, Oregon. I don’t understand why nine dogs, eight would make more sense. A trainer usually starts with four dogs. Zodiac’s brother Zenith was one of the dogs that moved on to phase 1. Hopefully next week Zodiac will start the actual harness training.

Pupdate – Zodiac

Posted on May 31, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Zodiac was on the phase 0 report this week! Yeah! I know it may seem silly to be so excited to see his name but it seems like a little text message from our boy saying, “I’m here and doing fine.” The harness training at Guide Dogs for the Blind is broken into 8 phases plus they have what they call phase zero for when they dogs first get to campus, get physicals, adjust etc.

Here is the second spread in Zodiac’s puppyhood book.

“One day when he was young the back door wasn’t latched and Zodiac had a digging adventure out in the back yard. It took me a while to figure out how he got such a dirty nose in his “just earned my puppy coat” pictures.One of the zaniest things that Zodiac loves to do is dig in his empty dog dish. I usually take it to mean that he would like some ice cubes. Zodiac loves ice cubes! He will grab an ice-cube or two and dash into the living room to munch down on them or chase them around the kitchen.”