Family Pictures 2015

Family pictures with two kids under the age of five is a scary feat to try for. I have been wanting to get them done this year so badly but also, two kids under the age of five! For a very long while I couldn't decide if it would be worth the effort! But then my lovely friend who takes pictures for a living posted a special she had, and I told myself right then and there, if you don't schedule this appointment right now it will never happen! Be brave! You can do hard things!

When we very first arrived to the campgrounds to have our pictures taken Jace promptly sat on a branch and we tried setting Beck next to him for a cute shot of the two of them together. But as I expected, Beck did not want to sit still on that branch! So Jace thought he would help the situation out, you know, really hold his brother down. What happened of course is that Beck immediately flipped backwards right off the branch and Stacy caught it all on camera:

I thought well, if this start of pictures is any indicator to how things will go... you know.

But then! The clouds parted and heaven reined down in all of its glory to cast upon us its magical miracles of giving my one year old the power to look at the camera and cooperate! We captured so many lovely pictures, some of which I was behind the camera jumping up and down like a mad woman while singing loudly the elmo's world theme song, but you do what you gotta do! And it worked!

The other problem we ran into was Jace's smile. Have you seen that episode of friends, you know the one, where chandler can't smile normally whenever the camera is put in front of him? That was Jace. You can see his "chandler smile" in some of the pictures, and it kills me. But we bribed him with a jamba juice which was waiting for him in the car and the promise of a dollar store toy if he could get through family pictures, and he did a mighty fine job!

And Rockie! Can we just talk about Rockie!? She is the best pup. She sits next to us and looks at the camera like a good girl would. Rockie was our first baby you know, along for the ride before kids were even in the picture, so she really is just this huge part of our family in every way.

I love pictures, I think we've established that here on my space. I love the moments they capture, and with young children, the milestones they capture! Kids have this uncanny ability to grow at rapid rates so that within a years time they are not even remotely the same child that they were just the previous year. I want to take as many pictures as I can to seal into my brain the memories of them when they were these people. Beck is almost a year and a half now, learning a new word everyday, showing off his funny happy-go-lucky personality. Jace is four and a half and will be starting kindergarten next year. It's our last year of no school for the next 18 plus years! Our last real year of freedom! It has been the most wonderful time of life and I want so badly to capture it all in as many lovely photographs as I can grab.

Heart eye emojis all day! Thank you Stacy for capturing these moments!



oh and TGIF! HAPPY FRIDAY friends! Get out there and get you some!


xoxo

iphone photo dump + thoughts on dinner

It has recently come to my attention that there are actually people out there who eat dinner every single night. I mean, not just eat dinner, but COOK it! Isn’t that absurd?! And also, I get the feeling that it’s normal. Do you ever do that? You discover something new and you think, well my goodness that’s ridiculous! and then you look into it some more and you find out that in fact it’s not ridiculous, it’s what they call “normal” and everyone is actually doing it except for you. 

Anyway. It seems that if I were to ask my search engine about this, I might find many studies suggesting how important it is to COOK and EAT dinner every night. So I don’t ask my search engine because, well isn’t it kind of obvious? I don’t want to hear about what a failure I am. I believe that google is likened unto calories, in that: if you don’t look at the amount of calories you are eating, then they don’t count. If you don’t google something, then every article out there doesn’t actually exist.

Moving on.

It has recently come to my attention that some people EAT and COOK dinner every night. Isn’t that absurd?! 

I always make breakfast. Almost always a bowl of oatmeal, sometimes eggs with cheese and tomatoes. Jace always has toast, and Dan is never hungry that early in the day. Sometimes I cook a special breakfast on special occasions. It’s always pancakes, because I always forget that Dan in fact does not like pancakes. Jace, on the other hand, would live off of them and so I suppose that’s why I keep making them. No one eats them except for Jace. It really shows who rules the roost around our house.

Am I losing you yet? This is all very relevant to my point, stay with me.

On occasion I find myself feeling particularly concerned with my lack of domestic ability. But wait, I’m not all that un-domestic. (Is that a word?) I can whip up a mean chocolate chip cookie. And I bake bread from scratch, did you know that? I start in the morning so that once we pass through all of the rising windows and the up to my elbows in kneading dough, by the early afternoon my home will smell like heaven and we will have warm fresh-baked bread on the cooling racks. Sometimes it turns out slightly dry and crumbly, which is always such a shame, but most of the time it’s very edible and that’s domestic, is it not? I also make pico de gallo by the bucket loads all summer long while the tomatoes are ripe in the garden. And I have this specialty dish of bbq skillet pork that really packs a punch and we always go back for seconds. I mean, the list goes on but what I’m basically saying is that I’m not terribly un-domestic. (I’m making it a word.)

So why do I find it so begrudging to put dinner on the table every night? I suppose it's one of those mysteries in life that might never be solved. (also to be noted, some of my favorite easily-accessible dinners: bagels, cereal, leftover chinese food, frozen burritos and little ceasers pizza.)

And sometimes I wonder, do you get to the end of my rants and think that there will be a point to them? If so, I am truly sorry to disappoint. 

But how about an iphone photodump, would that do? Here is another week or so in pictures, only the good stuff, straight from my phone to my blog. As you can see we have been really working hard to soak up this beautifully perfect fall that we have been blessed with. I hope it continues because, like every other sane person I know, I'm sure not ready for winter yet.

iphone photo dump

i'm kind of playing catch up on my iphone photodump, since birthday week threw off my groove.

i'm feeling all sorts of sentimental today and i don't think there is much of any doubt that it's because of the weather. i'd like to go on a rant about how autumn hushes the soul and how nature holds the key to my heart and how nothing tastes better than pumpkin mixed with dark chocolate and how drinking hot tea in the cool evenings will soothe even the dreariest of days. but i'll assume that you've probably heard this all a hundred times so far and it's only october the sixth! october is nothing but a barrage of feelings bombarding your internet feed from all of us fall loving girls.

so i'll skip the sentiment and go straight to the good stuff. our week (or two) in pictures! enjoy.