WHAT'S THAT?!?

Cup 'o Playdoh

Seems like a logical thing for a 2 1/2 year old to do...

Forcing Spring upon us...

Ok, so technically, it is Spring.  But we've had some really bizarre weather.  We've had a few nice days, but we're still dealing with a lot of 30, 40 and 50 degree temperatures.  My new idea is that if we dress for Spring, perhaps it will force the nice weather to show up...

(Note: Please disregard the toy potato.  Evie wouldn't part with it for even a moment to snap a picture in her cute Spring dress.)

Another reader in the family

Samuel loves to read.  He loves looking at books and pointing out letters, pretending to read books, looking at pictures in books and of course, being read to.  He also loves magazines.  He climbed up in the recliner, grabbed a magazine and very methodically starting looking though it.  I think this was Popular Science...

 
And just so you can see the competition: Evie was in the room, Sesame Street was on and Lego's available...

Yet he was totally fixated on his magazine...



Definitely our boy!

Drive-by

Stopped driving long enough to get her picture taken...

Hey, they're takin' pictures of me!  Get you and your teddy outta my picture!...

Recent pics of kiddos

Well, my reverse psychology didn't really work.  And it doesn't help that my new laptop has Windows 8 which I'm still learning.  I feel like a kindergartener sitting down at a computer for the first time and being told to write some basic code.  Not gonna happen.

Anyhoo, I have some pics of Samuel and Evie I was finally able to get to and edit, so I'll post what I have.  You haven't seen the kiddos in several months, so you'll probably be shocked at how big they are!

Evie's been in a "what's that!" mode for about a month. She points to something... anything... and asks "what's that!" about a 100 times a day.  It's a tiresome game and I think she's near the end of it.  Hallelujah!  Here's "what's that!" in action...

Kitty cat slippers, sippy cup and a smile...

Evie has her moments, but for the most part she's a really happy little person.  When she's grinning for no reason, like below, we say "Evie's just happy to be here!"...

I'm not sure what this is or even how to explain it other than "it's Evie, so no telling"...

And lastly, Evie with a hat box.  Or a box hat.

                   


Samuel has all of a sudden become shy for the camera, so I don't have as many of him.  Dan tried to catch him off guard while coloring to snap a picture really fast.  I love the "huh?" expression as he looked up...

Then he caught on, went back to coloring and wouldn't look up again...

Then Dan hunkered down and got him to look up and laugh a little bit...

No more promises!!!

That's it... no more blog post promises!  Every time I say I'm back on the wagon, I quickly fall off.  I'll try a reverse psychology method on myself to see if I'll post more often this way.  So, I'm done postin'!  ;-)

My last post was about 2 months ago.  And although I haven't been taking as many pictures either, I do have some I'd love to share with you.  But I can't.

My desktop computer has been acting "strange" for about 6 months.  During this time, I'm pretty sure I said no less than 6 times that I need to save all of my files/pictures to a cloud drive so I could get to them anytime from anywhere.  Around 2/10, I told Dan I was seriously thinking about getting a new laptop to replace my slowly dying computer. 

On 2/15, Dan gave me an Amazon gift card for my birthday... YAY!  (Anyone who knows me, knows I'm an Amazon junkie!) 

The morning of 2/16 my computer officially died.  Specifically the video card went out - the screen was all psychedelic and jumping all over the place.  Fortunately, my hard drives are fine, I just can't see to get the data off.  First, I ordered a new laptop using my gift card!  Then I ordered a hard drive enclosure for my hard drive which will act like an external hard drive.  But then Amazon updated me that they were out and didn't know when they would be back in.  Yesterday (5 weeks later), I got an email telling me they're back in and will ship soon!  All this was to say that I'll be able to get to my pictures soon!

Now you're probably thinking, "yeah, but couldn't she at least be posting new pictures she's taken"?  Well, you see, funny story!  Not really.  When disconnecting my old computer and setting up the new laptop, I lost my camera cable.  Correction: not really lost, just temporarily misplaced.  BUT, I found it this morning.

This whole series of events is what triggered my brain that I really need to do a blog post.  So, here's your post.  Sans pictures, but a post none-the-less.

Christmas tree decorating

I don't always have the brightest ideas.  I usually mean well and in my head, they all work out fine.  Executing those ideas don't always turn out well, if they happen at all.  This Christmas season's harebrained idea?

Tinsel.

Did you know tinsel was still sold?  I didn't.  But then as I was walking down the Christmas aisle, there it was calling out to me.

When, you ask, did it finally occur to me that tinsel doesn't go well with two cats, a two year old and a one year old?  Oh, about an hour into putting it on the tree.  You know that point when you decide you're too far into it to turn back.  I was at least smart enough to do this while Evie was napping, but did have one cat in the mix...

Samuel concentrated very hard on his task...

Here's one proud little boy helping Mama...




 After three hours of tinseling, I declared the tree done.  Not because it had enough tinsel on it, but because I was done tinseling.

The tree was really pretty, especially at night with the tinsel sparkling against the lights.  Although, by Christmas morning the lowest branches of the tree had considerably less tinsel than I put on it.  And Dan found Buddy (our cat) one day with a piece of tinsel hanging out of his butt.  But, other than that, it wasn't too bad.  However, next year I think I'll come up with a new harebrained idea.  ;)

Flower girl

This post dates back to Thanksgiving Day.  My sisters Cathy, Coady and their families came down for the day.  My sister Cathy owns/operates a florist and gift shop, so she always comes bearing fresh flower arrangements (thanks Cath!). 

It was a really nice, warm day, so I had Evie in a cute little blue and yellow dress and had her hair in her usual pigtails.  Cathy plucked a flower from her arrangement and stuck it in her hair.  And to our amazement, she left it there for quite a while.  I should have taken the time to get a really good picture, but it didn't occur to me at the time.  Nonetheless, this is too cute not to post:



Notice the lurker in the background?  Shortly before this picture was taken, Samuel got really upset/shy and went to his room to pout/hide.  When he heard commotion in the kitchen, it drew him out, but felt the need to stay at a distance for a bit.  After he saw the flower in Evie's hair, he came charging forward and turned back into his usual, chatty self.


Here's a link to Cathy's shop if you need to send flowers in the St. Louis area... A Moment of Grace Florist

Sam in a Hat

Samuel went around the house collecting his hats.  In a two year old's mind, it makes sense that if one hat is good, four is better.

First, you have to concentrate really hard to get the hats on just right...
 


Then you sit down and pose to show off your handy-work...

Play hard. Sleep harder.

When you're 11 months old, playing is serious business!  Both of the kids rooms are kid proof, so we keep their doors open so they can go in and out when they want.  Dan noticed Evie had been away for a little while and was very quiet.  That usually means they're doing something they shouldn't.  In this case, it means she wore herself out...




Ah, this picture explains it...




The ol' thumb in the mouth trick.  Evie can instantly put herself to sleep by sucking on her thumb.  She doesn't suck on it any other time.  But when you tell her it's time to go "night night", she'll drink her bottle and as soon as she's done, the thumb goes in and she's out!  I'm transitioning her from bottle to sippy cup at nap time, so hopefully she keeps this up.  Wish us luck!

Full moon

Have you ever tried to take a picture of the moon?  I'm guessing probably not.  Up until this point, I hadn't either.  Well let me tell you, it's not easy!

Something unique to living in the country is that the night sky is pitch dark.  I mean, can't see your hand in front of your face, dark.  I remember when we still lived in St. Louis, I went out with some friends one night and I parked at someones house.  It was about midnight when we got back and I couldn't get over how dark it was.  My friend thought I was crazy, but it had been so long since I had lived in the country, I forgot how dark it gets.  In the city you always have light around from street lights, neighbors, towers, cars, pollution, etc.

We had an absolutely perfect full moon and Samuel was mesmerized by it, so I thought I'd take a picture of it.  What I ended up with was a lot of blurry pictures with this bright white blurry orb in it.  I only had a few that came out semi-decent:

 Here it is with clouds covering it.  This was about the time Samuel spotted it...

Mostly uncovered and lighting up the sky...

Ok, so here's one of the bright, blurry orb pictures, but the clouds and trees are kind of cool...

And drifting away...

I'm sure you're glad you decided to spend the last minute reading this most riveting post.  If nothing else, it proves how much of a photographer I am NOT.  ;)

Chew toys

Evie is a chewer.  She'll chew on anything she can get her mouth on.  Fingers, toys, chairs, clothes, hair - it's all good.  Heck, she even chews on me!  I'm hoping we can break her of this habit in the near future, but in the meantime, here are a few pictures of her finding things to chew on around the house...




Any kind of dangly item at eye level is fair game.  She particularly love drawstrings...


                                



She also really likes wood.  Below I caught her chowing down on our bar stool, but she has also taken a liking to night stands, tables and crib rails...

It's a big world out there!

Evie started pulling up around the middle of October and a whole new world opened up to her.  She and Samuel love to look outside to see what's going on.  Here's Evie just after breakfast...

A little later, still looking outside...

One adorable smile and one slightly disheveled look...

Samuel got a little stir-crazy, so we let him go outside and play with his wagon and trucks by "himself".  We were of course sitting at the breakfast room table watching him the whole time, but it was so cute watching him play when he thought he was alone.  He played absolutely perfectly and didn't do anything that shouldn't have...

Largest egg EVER!

Well maybe not the Guiness Book of World Records largest, but it's definitely the largest egg that one of our chickens has ever laid.  Note the light blue egg in the back middle...

 It doesn't necessarily look that big in the picture above, especially since the one to the right is really big too.  But this will give you a better perspective...

I feel sorry the hen that laid this!  We of course cracked it open the next morning and it was a double-yolker.    Nobody can say that our hens aren't hard workers!

Don't quite fit

Towards the end of September, Samuel entered a jealous streak and wanted to do everything Evie did.  This included crawling on the floor, playing with her toys, etc.  Here, he wanted to play in her walker...



He managed to do this while I had my back turned and lost a slipper in the process.  The look on his face is priceless... I think his hesitant smile is trying to hide the fact that he knows he's stuck.

Back on the wagon

All right, I think life has returned to 'normal enough' so I'm pretty confident that I can resume regular posts.  My plan is to go back to the end of September photos to see what was going on.  I'll post until I get caught up and then, hopefully, stay caught up.

Wish me luck!

Don't give up!

I think this may be the longest run I've had for not posting anything.  I've been taking pictures, but just haven't gotten around to posting them.  We've had a lot going on trying to finish up animals for the year, Evie is a speed-crawler, Samuel's entered a jealous streak and I took a new position at work that has me working all kinds of crazy hours.

With that said, I WILL get back to posting regular updates.  Probably when I get a handle on my new job and when all the animal processing is over for the year - which knock on wood, will be in a week or two.

In the meantime, I'll at least try to get some pictures of the kids posted soon!

Colorful girl

These are two pictures that I snapped while Evie was playing on the floor.  There's nothing particularly exciting about them, but for some reason I love them.  Maybe it's because of the way she's looking at me.  Maybe it's because her outfit is one that only a 9-month old baby girl can pull off.  Maybe it's because she looks a little bit more like a girl instead of a baby.  I'm not sure, but I think they're just adorable!

Samuel's birthday party

We had a birthday party for Samuel the day before his birthday.  I was going to post pictures of his cute farm animal decorations, but I just went to look at the pictures and discovered I didn't take any.  Oops!  I guess I'll just have to use the decorations again next year for you to see.  :)

 Here are some pictures that I did take during his party.

At least I got a picture of his cake.  It was a cheesecake with a gluten-free shortbread/pecan crust...

Nice action shot of his soccer ball...

Playing with his fire truck...

A cute musical book set from our neighbors.  You can also see a hard hat and a sock monkey in the background...

An adorable car from Aunt Coady...