{Mother's Day}

I had a wonderful Mother's Day with my family.  My husband and daughter even went shopping for me at my favorite antique store!

An old camera, some old spice containers and a Fiestware pitcher in a cool color!

My brother came and the boys BBQ'd lunch for us.  We sat around visiting and eating all afternoon.

One of my Mother's Day requests was a picture of me and my kids, cause on Mother's Day you get whatever you want, right?! And I do not have enough photos of me and my kidos since I am usually  on the other side of the camera (and much happier there I might add).  Seems like a pretty simple request though, it's not like they are 3 year olds that don't understand the concept of sitting still to take a nice photo . . . some days I do think it was easier taking their picture when they were 3!!

My brother, Mom and Me!  Just missing Gina!

And I was hopeful for a nice family photo too . . .

So, while this wasn't exactly the vision I had in my head of how the photos would turn out, this is a perfect representation of my family right now, my life right now, so really, these are the perfect photos!

{Hello 2014}

One of the things on my list of things to accomplish this year is to dust off this ol' blog.  To say I was sad when I logged on and saw that I had ONE, just one, blog post for 2013, was an understatement.  I want this blog to be another way to document our everyday life and when I read through all of the old posts I love love love going back and reliving the stories and looking at the photos.  So why is it I can't keep it up?!  But this is a new year, a time to set new goals and have a fresh start. I'm totally just going to jump in where we are now and start documenting our life and quit thinking about it and making it more difficult than it really is!

This goes hand in hand with my Word for this year, which is DO, as in quit procrastinating, quit over thinking it, thinking it all has to be perfect, and just DO it!  So I'm taking baby steps to work on the things that I want to DO this year . . . blogging, being more creative, doing Project Life and actively working more on my photography business.  I think I'm feeling more capable of DOing these these things since I recently changed jobs, still working at the hospital, just in a different, much less stressful, department.  I seriously feel like a new person, I didn't realize until I was out of the old job how stressed it was making me

So I'm hopeful that now that I'm not bringing that stress home with me everyday I can focus more on the things I want to do for me and my family.

Just a little recap of 2013, for the sake of documentation! 2013 was a good year!  Trevor finished up 10th grade and started 11th, Meghan finished 3rd grade and is in 4th grade, they both are doing great in school.  Trevor got his drivers license!  Kinda was scary but I'm actually really enjoying having an errand boy!  He is very into his airsofting and video games, some things never change!  I can't believe he will be 17 in a few weeks.  Meghan is still in to many many things, Monster High Dolls, American Girl Dolls, Rainbow Loomb, One Direction . . . . and I could go on.  She makes us laugh and makes us frustrated all at the same time.  We work daily on trying to keep her and her "stuff" neat and tidy, losing the battle most days.

I'm sad that I don't have a currently photo of all of us . . . we never found a time to get out and get that done this fall, I'm still hoping to go out and get one of all of us together, soon!

Getting Away {Part 1}

Last week we got to take off and go camp for the week (somehow I never thought that would be something I would be happy about doing!). We spent the week up in Myers Flat in the Giant Redwoods. The week started off a little on the wet side but since we were snuggly in the trailer it really didn't matter, it rained mostly at night and sounded so cool pounding on the canvas, I'm sure it wasn't raining as had as it sounded. Since it was muddy and wet and on the cool side, there was some of this going on


On Wednesday we took off for a drive, it is so beautiful up there. We went to the Famous One Log House and saw tress that were 1800 years old and a log that was hollowed out and made into a house! A little on the tiny side, but considering it was a log . . . kinda cool how they made it work.


It cleared up mid-week and we were finally able to go down to the river . . . I'm sure it was only once or twice that the kids asked to go to the water, but it sure seemed like 100! Somehow they just do not see the beauty in kicking back and relaxing!


I spent much of the week reading my book on Lightroom, and can I tell you how happy I am that I have edited everyone of the photos 300ish that I took that are worth keeping and that I actually deleted many that were not worth keeping! That is huge for me. I also figured out how to make templates in Lightroom, so quick to do and I can blog so many more of them!

Stay tuned for part 2, it's time for me to step away from this computer I've been sitting at for more hours than I care to count!

Pictures

Today we went out for our 2nd annual photo shoot with the Tidwells. I'm pretty happy with the results.









And yesterday we had our annual Thanksgiving Day family photo! This one was a little more difficult because there are so many if us, and we could not go outside because of the tornado like winds. But on the plus side this year I have a remote for the camera, which means that Anth didn't have to run up and down the ladder 25 times trying to get the perfect picture!


All in all a productive photo weekend!

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Ready for a busy weekend

We have 3 Birthday parties this weekend, 2 today and1 tomorrow! That pretty much takes up the weekend! Will be a lot of fun, 2 are Meghan's friends and 1 is our nephew Koen. Monday is going to get here and I'm going to want another day of weekend to get done all the things I didn't get done!!! Oh well . . .

Also getting ready for Trevor to do STAR testing next week, I always want him in bed earlier than he wants to be, but he has always done very well on the testing, so it will be another early week for him. Will also have a track meet on Wednesday, he did pretty good last week doing the

Shot Put


The 4 x 4 Relay

and the 100

That all takes about 10 minutes of the meet, then there is about 2.5 hours of this! But, he's having fun, missing baseball a little bit, but enjoying trying something new.

Well, time to head out, going to try and get Meghan's bangs trimmed on our way to the party, can't see her eyes anymore!