I got this fancy big shot camera for Christmas from the man who gives me goosebumps. Every once in a while I like to pull it out and take it for a test spin.
And by once in a while I mean every 30 seconds or so.

Now, I am no professional photographer, I've only read to page 20 of my owner's manual, and I currently know how to turn my camera on. But by golly it's amazing what 18 megapixels of expensive camera anatomy can do to a picture.
We are talking "holy blazes batman!"

As my camera kept cranking out one adorable picture after the next I kept thinking
"I've got to share these with the world!
But how?"

I mean, I couldn't just keep posting picture after picture after picture on my blog...

wait a minute...

it's MY blog. I can do whatever the heck I want.

Peace out suckas!


Max is my #1 photography muse. He has little to occupy his time so he always has a spare minute to pose for the camera. He's a quick learner too. The second he sees the big hunk of black stuff in front of Mommy's face he whips out his best grin.
I love him! I love being his Mom!




Check out that drool! That's HD baby.



I love that I caught Max laughing in this one. This camera is Amaze-balls.



Kami and Max.
AAGH! Aren't they the cutest?


Okay, I picked to display this one because of Kami's face.
Pick your jaw up off the floor. She really is that stunning in real life.

I tell her all the time that I won't be able to send her to school anymore because she is getting way too pretty. She thinks its a joke. But one day, I'm seriously not going to let her go to school anymore and I'm going to lock her in a tower... like Rapunzel.
It makes perfect sense to me.

What?! It's unlawful for so much cuteness to exist and yet it does.
Max had been doing the scooting thing he does around the floor and when I glanced over at him I noticed his nose had found a sticker. You have to take pictures of that kind of stuff. It's written in the handbook.
I read it, pg 19.

sometimes it's best to sleep with your fancy new camera right by your bedside so you can capture moments like this even before you put your glasses on

Raw...r

Let me tell you a story about the time I cooked prime rib for Christmas dinner.

It's a doozie.

It'd been a hectic Christmas, set in motion by one special little over-achiever who somehow fell prone to the "more is more" mentality of Christmas commercialism.
For some reason, cooking prime-rib sounded like an extra fantastic, exciting, and delicious endeavor. It was simple really: salt and pepper the roast, put it in the oven, be sure not to overcook it, and then marvel in the ecstasy that is your cooking prowess.
In hind sight, I should have realized something was up... I mean, we ate Wendy's for Christmas Eve dinner, a culinary masterpiece I assure you.

I had just pulled the last of the spread from the oven; yorshire pudding, a first in our house. The prime rib was resting under a tent of tinfoil, allowing carry-over cooking to do it's magic. The table was spread with "extra fancy" Christmas dinner fare - roasted broccoli and cauliflower, mashed potatoes and au jus (my own special culinary concoction), yorkshire pudding fresh from the oven, and my triumphant prime rib in the very center.

While I rounded up silverware for the table Brandon ceremoniously cut into the prime rib.

"Um, hun, how exactly do you want me to do this?"

I walked into the dining room expecting to show my husband how carving a roast wasn't rocket science.

There they sat, the entire family, eyes wide, starring blankly at the hunk of meat in the center of the table. Brandon had the knife sawing back and forth as blood oozed out of the center of our "perfectly medium-well" prime rib.

This was not going to end well, I could feel it in my bones.
After 4 minutes of attempting to salvage any meat that was actually cooked to a color my children recognized as consumable, I set down my knife.

Brandon picked up the pretty platter with the very rare, very bloody prime rib oozing in the center of it and moved it in to the kitchen counter.

"I think it's kind of freaking them out..."

To be honest, I think it was more than "kind of freaking" Brandon out.

I passed around the plates of "salvaged" prime rib.


Landon immediately voiced his opinion

"I don't think my like this chicken... yeah, my don't like this chicken. This chicken's not good huh? Guys, this chicken's not good."
(For the record, all unidentifiable meat is referred to as chicken in our house. Kind of a blanket statement sort of thing)

Kami sat at the table, her arms wrapped protectively around her middle, as she stared mortified at her plate.

"I think maybe some smoke got into my tummy so I can't eat anything.
... maybe my tummy just hurts so I can't eat anything."

Cooper poked around at his plate and actually put some meat in his mouth. Although he did ask me several times what all the white stuff was. Every time I told him it was fat. He was pretty fascinated by it.

"Mom, why do you like this white stuff on the chicken?"
"I don't Cooper, that's fat."
"Well, if you don't like it, then why did you make this recipe?"

why indeed.

But it wasn't just that the prime rib was rare. To be honest it was all terrible. The "roasted" veggies were more a mixture of charred and oily, the special au jus tasted like root beer, (... don't ask. I have no words.) the yorkshire pudding fell flat and then got cold and dense, and the mashed potatoes... well they were actually edible. But we'd had mashed potatoes 2 days in a row so they'd lost their finesse.


I left the table after the second bite. Somethings are best to walk away from.


Kameryn was the last one left sitting at the table sliding food around on her plate.

"You don't have to eat it if you don't like it Kami."
"Oh... well... I like the potatoes..."
"Kami, really, Mommy didn't like any of it. You don't have to eat it if you don't like it."

"Okay, 'cuz actually I don't really like it."

That's my girl.



After that disaster of a meal Brandon had this following gem of comfort to offer me:

"You know hun, I think maybe we just aren't prime rib people."

Yep.

If we were before we are definitely not going to be now...



Next year we're having ham.

Boys think about weird things.

A week or so ago I asked Cooper what his favorite animal was.
"You know what Mom, my favorite animal is a Ti-liger. They's real Mom, for reals"
For reals guys, he saw them on dirty jobs. A Ti-liger is a lion and a tiger mixed (aka a Liger) that then mixes back with a tiger. Equaling a TI- Liger. Only the coolest animal a 5 year old boy could ever dream of. Ask him, he'll tell you all about it.

Do you want to know why they are his favorite?
Something about them killing everything... I can't remember exactly what he said but I remember thinking "that would never be the reason a girl would like something"

I'm remembering this right this minute because mere seconds ago I overheard Kami say
"Guys, lets play puppies."
To which Cooper promptly replied "Okay, but I'm going to be a ti-liger."
Seriously, it's the stuff boy's dreams are made of.

...


Earlier this week we constructed our gingerbread house. The children made a joint decision not to eat any candy off of it until after Santa came (so he could see it, naturally) Before you go and faint from the shock of my children NOT eating the candy off the gingerbread house for x amount of days, please realize that that x stood for 3 days.
Well, Christmas is over and Santa has obviously seen the house already. Which means today was the perfect day for me to field the following question:

"Mom, is it okay if I rip the gingerbread house apart?"

"Um... no Cooper."

"But Mom, I really want to rip it apart so I can see what's inside of it."

...two minutes later...

"Are you sure I can't destroy it? It would be really cool."

Merry Christmas

A copy of this year's Christmas card with much love from our family to yours.

Being There.

I'm not always there for my kids.
In fact, just this morning, I selfishly assumed Brandon was going to pick Cooper up from school.
I was wrong.
I pulled into the empty parking lot to see a little boy all alone at the top of the hill, kicking snow. Where he had been, for seven minutes, with no hat or gloves, waiting for his mom to be there.
I haven't found a feeling more awful.
Yet I was so relieved to see him, I'd been nervous and scared the whole way there just knowing I'd let him down and hoping he was okay, worried that he would be scared...

...


It's been a difficult day for Max.

As a family we've had a rough time with upset stomachs the last couple days. Poor Max can't seem to make heads or tails of it; an owie tummy feels like a hungry tummy which feels like a miserable little guy. To make matters worse, every time he closes his eyes he's woken up by, what I can only assume by his cries, are some pretty painful tummy cramps.

We didn't sleep last night.

We haven't cleaned in days.

And, someone with a little more excitement than common sense, told her husband to bring in all the Christmas bins amidst the stomach flu... (always a smart idea)

When I woke up this morning I found my stomach to be back to normal and my house anything but. I had a list bigger than me and a baby I couldn't put down. And, I hate to admit it, but I really just wanted to put him down.
Just for a couple minutes so I could get something done.

I had arranged to help in Kami's class today. Her teachers had to be at a funeral and so had asked if I wouldn't mind taking full control of the class. We had to be there in 15 minutes and I looked like a woman who had been sick for 2 days. So I put Max in his crib and went in the bathroom to try and make myself look more like a human being than a swamp monster.

I heard him crying and screaming, but he'd been crying and screaming all day. Plus he was mad at me for putting him down... he could deal for a couple minutes.

Then Cooper called out to me from the bedroom,
"uh mom, could you come here?"
(this kid has some pretty nonchalant manners in intense situations, reminds me of my brother Jamison)

Even now I don't know why I actually went to him...

I rounded the corner to see Cooper on the ground. A screw had snapped out of Max's crib and one corner of his mattress had crashed to the ground, turning his mattress into a slide straight into the corner post. Cooper had stuck his hand through the slats and caught Max just before he smashed into the rails. His little hand was all that was holding Max up and Max was dangling head first, scared out of his mind. And for the second time today I was so relieved to see my little Cooper, right where I needed him to be.

He was a super hero for me today, and for Max.

I'm not sure what would have happened had he not been there. Max might not have even gotten hurt. But I'm so grateful I didn't have to find out. I'm grateful, twice, that I didn't have to know what it would be like if he wasn't. If he wasn't there.
I'm so grateful for his little person, being there, right where I needed him.

... and then I did a victory lap!

I walked into the kitchen and had to side step a step stool that had been stacked on a chair and pushed up to the refrigerator.

Common occurrence at my house.
(side note, someone should stop putting all the good stuff on top of the refrigerator. You're not fooling anybody.)

BUT...
When I innocently mentioned it to the boys something amazing happened.
Landon, immediately hopped down from his computer game, and said:

"My got it out, so my get to put it away"
(and then he did!)


...yep. That totally just happened.
(WAAAH! The crowd goes wild!)