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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

You Capture: vibrance

Multiple choice.  I'm up at 5 am because:
a. the baby woke up at 4:30 am
b. I caught the kid's colds and can't sleep with this scratchy scratchy throat
c. someone (not naming names) was snoring. right. next. to. my. ears.
d. all of the above.

If you chose d then *ding, ding, ding* you get the prize!  I don't really have a prize, so don't bother me about it, people. 

Anyway.  You Capture.  Vibrance.  These are from the weekend when sleep and health were in abundance.  Those were the days.


{a little bit of a vibrant blue sky}


{This man is the epitome of vibrance.  Seriously, he reminds me more than anyone else in this world to enjoy life and wring every last drop of joy out of it.  I really, really heart you, B.  Even when you snore.}


{my vibrant boy}

{my vibrant-eyed girl}


{spring!  spring is vibrant!  come back to us, spring.}

Next week's You Capture is fun.  I'll have to wait until we're all back to healthy.  Cause the only fun around here right now is blowing noses.  And who wants to see pictures of that?

Monday, March 28, 2011

I heart faces: slice of life

I just got Lightroom thanks to our friend, Andrew!  I have been using it ALL weekend on all sort of photos.  I love it.  But my conclusion is that eventually, I will want Photoshop, too.  Cause I just do.  So I thought I'd enter another photo challenge this week with all my overflow of edited photos.  Click on the button if you'd like to see more.



This week's theme is slice of life.  Since we live within walking distance of 3 parks and about 5 playgrounds, a slice of life around here includes a walk to a park.  Even if the weather is just remotely "nice."  Nice is relative around here.  Here is the boy communing with nature:


He was literally talking to the tree.  Letting it know it had sap.  And it was sticky.  And he's not to touch it, but he'd really really like to.  We call him Mother Nature's son around here.

Friday, March 25, 2011

friday facts: I have a handy husband

One of my husband's many talents is working with wood.  He's good.  And he loves doing it, too.  We have many of his creations/fixes all over our house, and the other day I was thinking about just how much he has done since we moved into the house 4 years ago.  Well, there is one thing we use daily that he made before we started dating:

This trestle table. He brought it out on one of our dates to show off.  I was duly impressed.  It's important to be impressed when it is needed.  And now it's been through 3 moves and two kids.  It's a solid piece that pretty much blends with almost any decor.  It's perfect for us.  He plans on making chairs to go with it, and a couple months ago built the bench to go with it:


Perfect for the kids!  Soon it will be perfect anyway.  The beautiful quilted runner was made my my mother-in-law for my birthday.  It looks good in the dining room and goes perfectly with one of my favorite stained glass pieces.  See?


Pretty!                                                           

Unfortunately, because he does have a full-time job, and because I actually like for him to hang out with the littles and me on the weekends, some things take a while.  Like our deck.  Brian decided against anything so mundane as right angles for a deck.  Corners are dumb, according to him.  So it took two summers (and some cold spring and fall days) working with our fathers to get this finished.  There was blood, sweat and tears involved in this project.  Mostly tears from Brian working with his father and father-in-law.  It is a fact that for any manly project, each man will have his own strong opinion on how to execute said project.  It is also a fact that such strong opinions can be somewhat dulled by a beer or two (but not when working with powertools- we practice safe sawing around here).

Look ma, no corners!  And he even put a gate at the top of the stairs to the lower deck so that I can corral babies when needed.  It's great in the summer when I'm in the kitchen and I can just throw the kids right outside the sliding glass doors where I can still see them.  He added a cool little patio that we put our firebowl on and sit around in warmer months.  We have the wood ready and waiting.  (*hint, hint* Mother Nature, you cold-hearted bitch, you)



Further afield, you will find our outdoor playscape that Brian put together with our friend, Andrew.  It only took about a half a day!  Including all the cutting, etc.  Since it comes pre-designed, there were no fisticuffs between Brian and Andrew.  I like the word fisticuffs and think I will try and bring it back into popular use.


Fletcher loves this spot- his favorite.

More recently, he put up a shelf with a wine rack for our glasses.  This is especially awesome since it cleaned out a lot of space in our cabinets.  He took bare wood and matched it to a dry sink that my own dad built before I was born.  Spare me the antique jokes.  It gave him some problems resulting in a hole in the other side of the wall.  Luckily the other side of the wall is the staircase to our unfinished basement.  It still turned out great:


{on a side note, this is the piece of furniture that we get the most compliments on.  thanks, dad.}
                                                                                       
His current project is replacing the glass patio table top that shattered last fall in a windstorm.  (We both swear we thought the other took down the damn umbrella) We'll see how it turns out.  This time he has to use right angles.




Wednesday, March 23, 2011

You Capture: youth

This week's You Capture is youth.  Which is perfect since we spent our weekend with our friend's gorgeous newborn, Lucy.  I have a gabillion pictures I could put up here, so I will try and restrain myself.  Here are a few:

"Show me a day when the world wasn't new." ~ Sister Barbara Hance 


{I loved her hair swirlies}



{*yawn*}



{baby blues!}



{hanging out}


{sleeping like... uh, a baby!}

Next week's theme is vibrance.  I'll be marinating on that for a little while this week. 

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

busy days, short nights

I should have posted something yesterday, but we had a busy weekend away (!) from the kids visiting our friends and their new baby.  And I've been spending every free second editing pictures of her.  She is just about the most gorgeous baby ever.  I got permission to prove it to all of you:


{I KNOW, I know. *sigh*}

There will be more tomorrow of this beauty for You Capture.  So come on back, you hear?  In the meantime, after spending time with the lovely Lucy, my ovaries were starting to scream at me.  And then I came home to my littles who both kept me up Sunday night, and I thought: ok, 2 is good for now.  And maybe forever, we'll have to see.

p.s. I also spent waaaayyy too much time redecorating my blog.  It was being a great big bitch.  There I said it, blog.  You were being a bitch.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Friday Facts: Running is fun! For other people.

The year before I gave birth to my first child, I decided to train and run in a 5K.  I decided my husband would be the one to train me.  This was a mistake.  My husband has been in the military for roughly half his life now, and training in the ARMY is much different from what I needed as a milquetoast, out of shape, squishy suburbanite.  Well, it's much different from what I WANTED.  I wanted someone to make it easy.  And enjoyable.  Starting to run from scratch is neither easy nor enjoyable.  But I made him train me, and he put in all the effort he that he also gave to his tubbiest private.  Which included something like pushing my back while running faster than I wanted and barking out things like: Go!  You're not running!  RUN!  Now you're not moving AT ALL!!!!  Geesh.  Yes, we're still married.  But we never ran together after that.  Well, to clarify, I never ran after that 5K.  Until now.

I started a program about a month ago to help me train myself this time around.  It is not much easier.  If I'm following it exactly.  Which I don't always do.  I'm easier on myself than my husband was.  But I know myself enough to know this:  If I make it super miserable, then I just won't do it.  So I only make it partially miserable.  The fun parts include getting a babysitter or dropping the kids off at the gym daycare.  Yay!  Also, I listen to music on Pandora this time around, which I didn't do before.  I listened to my husband shouting at me to MOVE MOVE MOVE.  Not so fun as music.  But as I have found, music has a big impact on how fast, how long, and how hard you work. 

This is the part of my post where I bare my soul to you.  This is going to be embarrassing, but the fact of the matter is that I am a big dork.  So here we go, stream of conscious from the last time I went running:

Ouch.  These new shoes make my toes go numb.  And they're rubbing the back of my heels a lot.  Speaking of rubbing, I think my thighs might start a fire.  Oh, here's the Florence and the Machines song my friend said was so good for running!  Here we go... run fast for your mother, run fast for your father... yeah!  This is good.  Ugh, my butt jiggles a lot when I run.  This is bad.  Oh look, that guy is lapping me before I get even one lap in.  So is this lady.  Wait, this lady is like 50.  Man, I'm outta shape.  Oh, old man.  Please put on longer shorts.  It is no longer the 70's and you are no longer in your 30's.  Hm, what song is this?  Adam McHeffey, I don't know who you are.  I like your song, but it's no good for running.  Let's try a different station.  Yes, the Broadway station!  That might be good.  Yes, it IS a hard knock life.  Hey, this is a good song for running.  Wait.  Can that guy hear that I'm listening to Annie while I run?  I better turn this down a little.  Oh, Les Miserables!  I haven't listened to this in eons.  On My Own.  Not so good for running.  Oh, but I'll listen a little.  This reminds me of when my husband was deployed.  Oh man, I better skip this song.  Oh no, I'm tearing up.  Oh no, that man is looking at me like I've gone crazy.  I'm now the crazy chubby girl who cries while she tries to run.  Ok, back to the Mumford and Sons station.

This is just about a 7 minute increment of what I'm thinking about when I run.  It's not pretty.  But I'm sharing because I knew you'd read this and not judge me.  Right?  RIGHT???

{I don't have a picture of me running- thank God.  I do have a picture of my husband on his last deployment to Iraq.  Now you see why I tear up thinking of missing him.}


Wednesday, March 16, 2011

You Capture: Emotion in Black and White

We have a lot of emotions here.  We live in a showcase house of emotions, if you will.  And these emotions change on a dime, trust me.  I'm not totally blaming the kids, I've been known to showcase my own emotions once in a while.  But only in a very level-headed, totally rational way of course.  Of course.  But my kids?  Totally irrational.  They will be laughing one second, and crying the next.  Fun times here!  So here we go.  Ready for the rollercoaster?

{Frustration}

{Sad. Guest model, Alex, showing some good lipage.}


 {Happy! About to be fed happy, which is reeeally, reeeally happy}

{Longing.  Napoleon longing for his pretend lover, my husband.  It's a beautiful, yet forbidden love. What's that you say?  It looks like sepia and not b&w?  Well it's not.  So shut up already.}


{Uh, not exactly sure I pinpointed just one emotion here.  It was at the parade so he was all, Oh no!  The firetruck is GONE.  Oh, wait!!  There's a BIGGER one.  Oooooo!!}


{Really, really sad on the right.  Really kind of annoyed on the left.}

{And, back to happy.  With a tear to back up my claim of moodswings around here.}

Ok, unbuckle your seatbelts and exit to the right.  This rollercoaster has come to a complete stop. 

Monday, March 14, 2011

I love a St. Patrick's Day parade!

Brace yourselves.  This is going to be a photo bonanza.  It's super hard to pick photos for my blog when we actually DO something with the kids.  We actually LEFT the house this past weekend.  A couple times!!  We also had good friends up from Indy and their sweet baby boy, Alexander. 


 I have to say that the kids were super cute together, and Fletcher shared his toys like a champ.  Alex is 3 weeks younger than Rowan, so it was fun to see them playing together.  Kind of together. 


We did a lot of playing at home, and Alex is just so chill.  He is super happy to just hang out and play, and I have to say he is a character.  He talks and babbles a LOT and is pretty darn cute, to boot!  On Saturday, our town had their St. Patty's Day festivities.  We got on all our greenery:









There's always a parade, and then the local bars have music and general merriment.  We had to skip out on the bars.  Thanks a lot, kids!  But that's ok, cause we prepared earlier that morning with Irish coffees and bloody mary's.  What?  We WALKED!!  We did indeed walk downtown to the parade, and man, oh man it was cooooollllddd.  But we bundled up and braved the elements like the brave little troopers we happen to be.  Plus the Irish coffee in our cups helped.  Shhh, don't tell those police men we saw in the parade.  Of course our town's police have much more pressing issues than our spiked coffee.

 {These people look like super cool awesome parade watchers, no?  I edited out the strollers.}

{This is the back view of my husband's kilt.  Uh, one of them.  He has quite the collection!} 

{This is what the dog did on my foot after the firing squad shot their guns.  Ugh.}



CANDY!!!!












 What fun! I would post more pictures of the parade, but seriously, why would you want to see that when you could see more of US?

{See?  Way better than another picture of a firetruck.}


Friday, March 11, 2011

friday facts: we love company!

Almost as much as this register, in fact.

{Rowan and her future husband, Alex}

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

You Capture: body parts

Now you know the mystery of why I have been posting pictures of my half-nude husband holding our naked baby on my blog and facebook.  Now you can stop thinking, "Awkward..." cause it's the weekly photo challenge, okey-dokey?  Lucky for you there was a stipulation to "keep it clean."  Warning for sensitive viewers: baby butt ahead.

{cute cellulite.  it exists.}



{pudgy paws}



{arm and belly.  and proof of papa's past poor choices}



{ok, so this one is a whole lotta parts, and not perfect, but way too sweet for me to exclude}


p.s. Don't you just love how You Capture was such a pawn in the habitual over-sharing of my baby this week?  Thank you, You Capture.