Goodbye kisses

Papa gets kisses before leaving for work.

Have yourself a merry little mind excersise...

OK, What I need you to do is get an envelope? I'll wait....



You got one? Ok, address it to yourself, lick it, and take it with you to get the mail. (doodles and awesomeness optional.)



You've got your mail? Now, close your eyes and pretend that the envelope you made is completely new and exciting to you. What could this be? What treasures lie within? Now, open your envelope slowly and then quickly look at this page and ooo and awww at the beauty and cuteness therein. Let's pretend I didn't take this picture this morning. Let's pretend I had it printed on a beautiful piece of card stock. Let's pretend it was mailed a week and a half ago. Let's also pretend that's not a runny nose you see on Doodle, and you can read the writing. You guys are doing great. Here is your treasure. Get ready to oo and aww

BEHOLD!

Good job guys. Maybe next year I will be on the ball. Until then, we love you all and hope you have a magical Christmas! It's almost the same as getting it in the mail, not really but it's better than nothing? Maybe?

Love to you all.

When you are having one of those days...

My son is a raging ball of fury. Why? Because I saw him doing a pee pee polka and asked him to use the toilet.
"No!" he says.
Wearily, I say, "Please just go use the potty. Just do one thing that I have asked you today without a fight."
Nothing.
"Honey, you will wet your pants just go please?"
Nothing.
Nothing.
*sigh*
Nothing.
"OK, I guess it's time for bed."
Screams and please no and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth...
J is standing outside of his room so he won't come out.

It's not been a stellar mommy day.

Ever have those days where everything is a fight? I mean, I was trying to wrap presents today and I was getting nowhere. Paper ripping and tape getting lost. I almost forgot to put flour in the cookies I still haven't baked, to say nothing of the surly 3 year old and his grumpy siblings.

So, I thought I would post these pictures of the little darlings. Because they are so little and oh so darling and I love them with all of my heart and soul even when they are surly. I hope they love me even when I am surly because I am afraid I was at times today.

We will do better tomorrow. I can set a better tone and tomorrow will be better, and if not tomorrow the next day, because bad days can only last so long.

365 coming soon...

I am going to be starting a picture a day project on the first. This is where they are going to be posted. Watch this space.
I might try to start getting into the habit early. :)

Practice makes slightly better?

I've been working on my photography skills and I still see many things I need to work on but I think my shots have improved and I find I enjoy it more. It is more frustrating because of the shots that don't work because I don't know what I am doing but when they do work, I still don't know what I'm doing, but they make me happy. Someday, I hope to know what I am doing, for now here are some happy accidents.

 If anybody has any tips or tricks or a constructive critique, I would love to get a different perspective on what I could focus on to get better.  I find I have all these things in my head to keep in mind and then kids are running all over in different directions and it all goes out the window. :)

Also I was thinking if one of my photography hobbyist friends wanted to take our family pictures, I would be happy to return the favor. We could swap services. Just thought I would toss that out here.

What Snew?

Hi,
We are alive.

We had a great Labor Day weekend. We went to a goat and llama farm. The boy told me he loved each and every goat individually. "Mommy, I love that one, and that one and that one and that one..."
and so it went.

The goats really loved his hat. I just love the joy in that first picture. Cousins and goats, can life get better?
Someone most decidedly did NOT like the goat farm, at least not from her seat.

Once I carried her all over she was happy and enjoyed the animals too. I want this goat because it looks like a fawn. I would name it Bambi and love it until it ate something I didn't want it to.

 Also, we experienced a goat-nado. This is when you walk into a pen with seemingly few animals turn around and about thirty goats are following you like a zombie hoard. It was pretty amazing. I took a picture but it's fuzzy. That might make it more zombie goat apocalypse tastic though.

We spent some great time with cousins and we took a trip to pick blackberries. We didn't find any blackberries but we found a tire swing and that's almost as good, maybe better.

I also took my camera off of auto and shot in Manual mode for pretty much the whole weekend. Scary! I was frustrated because I wasn't getting any better and it's like I knew I needed to make that leap and just learn from it, but I was so scared of missing the shots I wouldn't do it.Perfectionist doom! I learned a few things. Probably, duh, things, one being that it's better to underexpose than overexpose. Isn't that true of life in general? If more people underexposed what a world it would be. So, it was scary and I overexposed a lot of great shots, but here's the thing. I have a million pictures of my kids and I will have a million more so I will learn and get better and someday I will be able to say, "Yeah, I know how to use my camera." That will be a great feeling. Plus I got these of doodle and they are making my heart happy...

 I think she wanted the wings back on. Funny story, those were just floating around in the car and the boy found them and gave them to doodle. Happy accidents. He came up and said, "You a butterfly hu?" He's too cute.

 attempted walking

 Hugs!

 My parent's house is busting with apples, if you hadn't noticed apples in almost every picture.

Wanna share?

 There was much playing in the dirt and eating of the dirt and just loving the dirt.

You may be asking yourself, where is Moonpie in all of this. How come she doesn't have very many pictures of him. I've covered this before but I think this sums it up. 

I managed to get a decent one. :)

Hope your weekend was as great!

The end

PS, I am giving up desserts until Thanksgiving. Why Thanksgiving? Well there will be pie and if you know anything about the husbands family, there will be TONS of pie and if there is a pecan pie and there will be, or a lemon pie, and there will be, I will be eating it.  Prayers and love and encouragement accepted. It's day one and I am already thinking this was a huge mistake. Sugar and I have been seeing too much of each other though it's time to take a break and re evaluate the relationship.

Bobby pin safety

Doodle shoved this Bobby pin directly up my nose while I was talking to my friend on the phone. This is a public service announcement.