A Few Things About This One

A few things about this one......

1) She's beautiful.  Very beautiful inside and out.

My photography skills do not do justice to her beauty.

2)  She's smart.  Very smart.

So smart that I often pull out her birth certificate just to confirm that she was indeed born in 2005.

3)  She is very sweet and is always there for me when I need her to be.

It's one of her best attributes.

And 4)  The world is a much more peaceful, and boring, place when she is sleeping.

January 2008

September 2008

March 2009

September 2008

She is my oldest baby, and my sweetest girl.

I love her.

What a Morning

This morning has been rough.

Eli didn't sleep well.  Shocking I know.

Then he woke up at 6am.  I turned on his television, gave him a cup of milk, and some crackers and went back to bed.

A little while later he climbed in bed with me to watch cartoons and play on my phone.  I finally resigned myself to the fact that he wasn't going to let me sleep any more, so I got up and got in the shower.

It was after the shower that things really began to go down hill.  Eli's diaper leaked on our bed.

No big deal you think......right?

Wrong....we have a foam mattress.  I won't name the brand, but I despise the bed with a passion.  And of course I didn't have a water proof pad on our bed, so it went through the sheet onto the cashmere cover that comes with the bed.

That meant that the cashmere cover had to come off.  No easy task.

No easy task at all.

Hannah came to help me while I lifted up the 1,000 pound mattress, she unzipped the cover from underneath.  We had to do this on three sides in order to get the cover off.  Eventually I told Hannah that I could get the rest myself so she could go get in the shower.  To which she replied, "I really want to help you.  You look like you're really struggling."

I should have thought that a sweet gesture, but the build up of no sleep, Eli being a pain in the hiney as much as he possibly can, me not being a morning person AT ALL, and the struggle to get this horrible, terrible cover off the horrible, terrible mattress was just too much.  Luckily that one of my bad morning person traits is not to talk, so I just didn't say anything.

Thank goodness, because now I believe that was a really funny comment from a five year old.

And a sweet gesture.

Anyway, the morning has continued to include not only having to clean my bed, but also Eli's bed, cat puke, and the mess Eli made in his bedroom with the crackers I gave him to appease him early this morning.

The moral of this story is that I should just get up when Eli first wakes up cause he's never going to let me sleep after he wakes up......the extra few minutes of sleep is just not worth the turmoil that follows.

So, Morning!

Cause it sure ain't a Good Morning!

Cause I still have to get the horrible, terrible cashmere cover back on the horrible, terrible foam mattress.

Maybe I'll just order a new bed.....that would be SO much easier.

A Beautiful Day for a Visit to the Park

The weather Saturday was so beautiful that we decided to skip Tae Kwon Do and head to the park to have some fun.

Hannah, Eli, Sara, and Jennifer really enjoyed the outing.  The temperature was perfect and with the sunshine you just couldn't help but enjoy yourself.

I took about 150 pictures, and it would probably have been closer to 300 if I hadn't gotten tired of chasing the kids around.  The experience definitely showed that I am out of picture taking practice.  I started out in manual mode, which wore me down quickly because the light changed constantly which meant I was adjusting the settings constantly.  I then switched to Automatic, and then just stopped altogether.  Guess I need to get myself re motivated for picture taking!!

Some of the shots are pretty good, others not so much...a few are edited, most are straight out of the camera.

Anyway, enjoy.

Play Dough Afternoon

One of my favorite things about being a stay at home Mom, with all the kids in school and thus no kids at home, is the excitement I feel when it is finally time for the bus to arrive.  It is great to enjoy that time with them.  I feel no pressure since the house is clean, the laundry done, groceries put away, and all I have to do is hang out with my kids.  It's awesome!!

One of the first things we did when this started a few weeks ago was to pull out the play dough.  Both of my children love play dough.....I like it, but don't enjoy the mess that comes with it.  It also stresses me out to extremes when they mix the colors.  (There's my OCD flaring up again.)

Since the natural light coming through the windows was so nice I decided to try my hand at a few photos with my camera set on Manual.  I believe I have mentioned before that I'm decent at taking Manual photos outside where there is lots of light, but I struggle with those photos once we're in the house.

I must say, that I am very pleased with the results.  These photos are straight out of the camera.  No editing, no manipulating, just me and my trigger finger!

 This one is a little bright, but I think most photos of Eli turn out a little bright because of his fair skin.

 This one is better.

 I like what I did here.....on this photo I'm focused on the toy, but on the next photo.....

 I moved the camera slightly, focused on Eli and then moved back to make him focused and the toy blurry.  Not great composition, but still pretty cool.

 Hannah was creating lilly pads for her play dough frogs to race across.

 She is creative.

 Here is one of her frogs.

 An up close shot....I had a hard time getting the details.....guess I need to read some more on that.

 OH!  Hannah brought this book home from her school library.  It explained everything you ever didn't want to know about frogs.  She decided to create her own frog skeleton with play dough.

I think she did a great job, but those are some pretty thick bones on that skeleton!

We had a great time playing play dough that afternoon.  It was nice to enjoy the moment and not worry about all the other things I should have been doing.  I hope to enjoy more afternoons like this, and I must say a Mom could get used to going to the grocery store with no kiddos to help shop!

Future Comedian

WARNING:  The below video was filmed by a five year old, is very wobbly and likely to give you motion sickness.

Again, while cleaning out my cell phone memory, I found this video and probably 10 other similar videos, but I thought this was the funniest!

I wonder what she'll think of this when she's 15?

Pictures I find on my phone....

I am truly terrible about pictures on my phone.

I take them, intending to post them later, and then forget about them.

Well, my phone memory is getting a bit full, so I decided to go through the pictures and delete a few and was surprised by what I found.

This picture for instance......

 I didn't take it.  I LOVE it, and I am so glad I have it, but where did it come from??  It has to be from Thanksgiving.  I would normally just assume that Hannah took it, but she's in it!!!  Hmmmmm......

 LOVE this picture and I have no idea when it was taken or why, but obviously I took it.  Hmmm.....

 This is blurry, but adorable.  At least I remember taking this one.  Eli enjoyed this trip into the city to pick out our seats for the Hornets.

 And this was at a Birthday party....I think in October?

 Hannah was so excited to ride a real horse!  I am sure I took video of this somewhere....hmmm.....

 I have no idea where??  when???  a mystery...hmmmmm......

 SO CUTE!!  And again, I don't remember taking this!  hmmmm......

 Very cute, and I must have taken this....my arm appears to be stretched out like I was holding the phone in front of me.  Hmmm......

 Don't remember this at all, but that's my Mom's kitchen.......hmmmmmm.....

There were about 30 pictures like this.  I believe it is Home Depot.  And I am positive the culprit here is Hannah.  Why do I need 30 pictures of Home Depot???   Hmmmm.....

I guess I should check my phone pictures MUCH more often!

At least it brought a bit of excitement to my Monday morning!