Her squish is slipping between my fingers. We're trading diapers for panties. She sleeps in a twin bed, a whopping two feet off the ground. She asks for makeup and when I put eyeshadow on her, she says, "Look, Mama! I beautiful!" She's not a baby anymore. :/

My, my, my. These children are getting more and more entertaining every day.

I have a tendency to throw away toys that are too messy (e.g. playdough or sets with too many parts). I don't know what I was thinking when I bought the kids art sets for Christmas. They loved snapping their crayons and markers in and out of the plastic carriers, but I could only handle a few days of that. I put all of their crayons, markers, and colored pencils in a bag and put the bag up high. Connor has shot up in height recently and knows that he can access anything by pushing a chair up to something. Thus, crayons and markers have been making their way out of that bag, one by one.

Connor is fine with them and asks to, "do art". Alaina will wait until I am not watching and kamikaze color.

Exhibit A: On the wall above the kids' table.


Exhibit B: On the inside of the toy closet door.


Exhibit C: On the landing at the top of the stairs.


Exhibit D: On Anthony's closet door.


Exhibit E: On our bedroom door.



Purple appears to be her color of choice. Being the creative thing that she is, she is not held back by artistic mediums. Her range includes purple sparkly nail polish (conveniently on beige microfiber chairs).


At least I have a little robot. Now if only this robot would learn to clean, ala Rosie from the Jetsons.

Where to begin after three months of not blogging? I thought about doing a recap of the last three months, but man, have they been busy. Halloween, Thanksgiving trip to Colorado, Christmas at home, family reunions, dabbling a little too much in paid photography. If I were to sum up our current state of mind and current goings-on, I'd use one word: home. Our new family schedule (Anthony in school four days a week, Connor in school two days, and me upping my hours at work) in conjunction with the wet and dreary weather has kept us home...a lot. Anthony and I like it, the kids...not so much.

Connor has been saying and doing a lot of cute and funny things lately. A few days ago, he brought me an english muffin with Altoids on top. "I made you a birthday tate, Mama!"


Although we've had mostly rain this winter, when we do have snow, Connor asks to "doe outside and fwow snowballs"! I don't know if Alaina could be any more like me, as she stands still in the snow and complains that her boots are wet. When Anthony eggs her on and softly tosses snowballs at her, this is the reaction we get. NOT INTERESTED.



Connor, on the other hand, loves being pelted by Daddy.

I love this series:






Connor made his first snow angel!


A long day of playing in the snow (more like 20 minutes before Connor said that it was too cold and that he didn't have any fun) leaves my boys pretty tired.


I wish I could say that we've had more exciting things going on, but actually, I'm quite enjoying the slowdown after the whirlwind that was December. Anyone else ready for spring?!

Phew! It seems like time is flying by relentlessly! I feel as though I haven't had a chance to breathe since we've moved, nearly a month ago! Here are a few photos of what's been going on with us lately.

Is bedtime bittersweet in every household? My kids know the art of behaving their very best right before bedtime in hopes of gleaning a few more minutes of play. Man, they play me like a fiddle! I'm always so ready to put them to bed, but that's when I can get all the hugs and kisses I ask for.


Alaina has been insisting on lots of bows in her hair every night. We often find stashes of bows under her blankets. She gets very upset if one falls out.


Apparently, the lights on my flash are AMAZING! :) I love the toothpaste remnants on his enthralled face.


Who gets sick of her hair and cuts seven inches off with eyebrow scissors on a whim? This girl!


I rented a pair of dream lenses for a wedding that I am lucky enough to shoot tomorrow. I took the 70-200 2.8, also known as "The Monster" to the park to try it out today. It is a beast! It is so heavy that after a short while, you have to use your monopod just to hold it up. I'm sure I looked like an idiot taking pictures of my kids from twenty feet away with a big lens and monopod, but you have to practice somehow, right? I love the swirly bokeh and I'm so excited to use it. Also, don't you just love Alaina's squished face?


When I got home, I took advantage of the wide angle lens to take some shots of our new place. It always amazes me how wide angles can make a room look comically huge. I love love love this kitchen.


As for tomorrow, do I have some nerves! Wish me luck!

I emailed Photobucket about the reds issue. Apparently, my files are too big for optimal viewing, so they recommend I pay for a pro account or resize every image. Blah, that's a chore for another day.

Here's to hoping Flickr hosting has my reds!

I had the pleasure of taking some photos for this beautiful family this week! Here are a few of my favorites:

(Still having issues with Photobucket and my dear red tones. I thought I had it figured out with Adobe RGB vs sRGB, but I was wrong. Grr.)

My day in photos, minus the few hours spent at home in the middle of the day.

The kids and I went to the apple farm with Aunt Marinda and her boys. To our surprise, there weren't many apples! Apparently there is no way to time when the rush will be, and it beat us this year. Oh well, Connor loved the hayride and all the kiddos liked the playground.





Connor informed me that he was flying to Nana and Papa's house.



We came home and spent some time at the park. Pretty normal stuff. At 4:30, we hopped in the car to head up to Logan canyon to hopefully get some shots of the canyon in all its glory. Disappointingly, we discovered that the canyon would be much better photographed in the early morning, since all the colors were in the shadows by the time we got up. We stopped in Wellsville when I saw some gorgeous light hitting this horse's back, but this guy was so friendly that as soon as I got out of the car, he came over to me to see if I would pet his nose. He was cute.


I was kind of bummed out about not getting any pictures in the canyon, and there was still a few minutes of daylight left, so we decided to explore Mantua. I've always wanted to get up close to the beautiful water there. We drove around, not finding a direct path to the lake (or reservoir, whatever it is), until we spotted a berm that we could get on top of. At first, it was just me getting out of the car, but when I saw this view, I insisted that Anthony and the kids come and see it.


Connor loves any little thing that he can fit in his pockets. Rocks, coins, screws, you know. He may or may not have packed his pockets full of rubber playground material at preschool on Wednesday. I'm admitting no guilt, even though we had a talk about taking things that aren't ours and all the pieces are currently in a Ziploc, ready to be returned.


The hill up/down was a little steep. :)


It was a good day! So sad to see September go!

Busy busy bees!

Man, I feel like we haven't had a moment to breathe in the past few weeks! We moved to a little townhome in Centerville and have loved adjusting to our new home. My parents were the ultimate hosts and were so incredibly generous to share their home with us for the past 20 months! We can't thank them enough!

(I've been having issues with the red tones of my photos being leeched out when I upload to Photobucket. I can't decide what's worse: showing large photos with skewed color or showing small ones with correct tones. Hm.)

Our new place. Isn't it cute?!


After living in a basement for a while, I absolutely love waking up and enjoying breakfast with the sun. It's also nice to have the table oriented so we can all sit and have a meal together!


We drove up the canyon to check out some possible fall portrait spots, and found that they were hard to come by. In order to get this shot, I had to pull over on a dirt road above where the pavement ends up Little Cottonwood, then back the van down it until we reached pavement again. Worth it.




The kids are in heaven having their own bathtub. I bought these bathtub crayons for them last Christmas, and man, are they a hit! If I had had these as a child, I would have NEVER gotten out of the tub!


Since we have a place of our own again, I have been trying to be more domestic. I had grandiose ideas of being just like Jessica Seinfeld on my first try, baking up a storm to hide veggies in my kids' breakfasts. I guess the first sign that I was no domestic diva was that I opted to by summer squash in the form of already-pureed baby food instead of roasting and pureeing my own. Mom fail. And then I couldn't figure out why my batter ONLY smelled like squash, when I was supposed to be making pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. So I got out the allspice and added some, at the precise moment that it dawned on me that in an effort to make the baking steps fair between my kids (they must both have jobs at the same time), I had doubled the squash. I was out of oil, so there was to be no doubling the rest of the ingredients, and even though I know I should have just used applesauce, it was already 8 p.m. I eyeballed some more flour, threw a batch in the oven, and turned around to see that Connor had dumped the entire container of allspice in the remaining batter. Whatever. Spicy muffins, it is.


The beauty of young children is that they totally don't realize it when you mess up! All in all, they turned out completely edible, perhaps even yummy (we'll see in the morning when I whip out my signature spicy squash and pumpkin muffins!) Alaina was so excited, she took it upon herself to set up post in front of the oven and watch them cook. The whole experience wasn't a complete bust, since Connor said at bedtime that the "cupcakes" were his favorite part of the day!

Here's to relearning domesticity!