Back to School

It was a long-awaited day at our house... the first day back to school for Laina. For Evie and Mylie, going to school is a dragged out process of slow integration which won't be completed until nearing the end of September. But nonetheless, today was a day for celebration in both Laina's and my eyes. She couldn't wait to see all her friends after the summer break, and I couldn't wait to not have to drag all 3 kids in tow every time I need to run errands.

I wanted to start the year off having my house clean and organized with everything the kids would need for school laid out the night before. Surprise, surprise, that didn't happen. Instead, the house was like a mess tornado due to the unfinished floor tiling that my husband was working on in two of our bathrooms and our laundry room. So not only was my house not clean and well-organized, but we were living without two toilets, one shower/ bath and our clothes washer or dryer. Despite being disorganized, we made it to school EARLY. That will probably be the only time this year.

So here they are, at the start of their school year:

(Mittens the not-so-much-a Kitten decided to make a guest appearance at the last moment here)

It's February!

It's going to be all pretty random here... just dictated by the pictures I have taken lately.

Kids love crafts... I love crafts... but I hate DOING crafts with kids. Especially with multiple kids. I don't know how teachers don't just completely blow their tops at school while doing arts and crafts. It's messy, it's frustrating, and you need about 8 arms in order to keep on top of all the demands for help. But here was a relatively successful craft time with the kids... it was a rock painting kit that they got for Christmas. Soon after this, they abandoned craft time and left me exhausted and with a giant mess.

Another thing my kids like to do? Build "fairy houses" all around the yard. These are usually contructed after foraging through the recycling bin and leave our yard dotted with what appear to be small piles of garbage. Pretty sure all our neighbors think we are bringing down the property value in the neighborhood!

Week 3 sisters project:

Seems like it has been a crazy cold/ flu season for us already and it isn't even over yet!! Last week Laina was sick and she ended up getting a cracked corner of her lips... the crack then got infected with Impetigo which is contagious so she couldn't go to school even though she was feeling better. So I had extra kids hanging around home last week, and then now, all 5 of us have colds. Hoping that is it for us this year! This was when Laina was home from school, but it was of the good side of her face that didn't have the skin infection on it. I like this picture because you can see Laina's brown freckle on her blue eye.

This isn't really a pretty picture, but it is a hopeful one!! Spring is on it's way, the first of my flowering bulbs are up! These are snowdrops just peeping out of the ground.

We went for a fun walk the other day with some friends at nature trail that ends up along the beach. First on the walk we saw a blue heron at the side of a river. I've mentioned before my irrational fear of these big birds here.

Some friend pictures :)

This one was going to be for the weekly sisters project but Evie wouldn't cooperate, so they did it with friends instead.

She is a photographer's daughter... makes me laugh because she sat down on this rock and smiled until I took her picture... and smiled so nicely! My kids would never do that willingly!

A completely un-photoshopped picture of the horizon... I thought the sky looked amazing!

Evie has been doing a little dance class for preschoolers while I do a dance exercise class at the same time. She absolutely loves it and gets so excited when it is time for "mine dancing" (she substitutes the word mine for the word my ALL.THE.TIME.) Here are some from today:

And all the fun of dancing caused her to do this:

I also did a pinterest project today that I have been wanting to try for awhile... tinting mason jars. Here is the link where I found the how to and here is the link where I found how to make my own modge podge. I don't love how they turned out, but I think it was because I used bright food coloring instead of pastel food coloring. But anyways, the kids think they are pretty and I think they will find their way into an upcoming party, so stay tuned for that!

Pictures... words will follow

I have a whole bunch of pictures bugging me that I need to blog, but everytime I come to blog them, I get overwhelmed (because January does that to me... makes me a big wet noodle that just wants to crawl in to bed and not get out again until Spring!). So I am going to just blog some random pictures and hopefully that will give me the momentum to come back and talk about them. Otherwise this will be a visual blog post, hehe :)

A Year Has Passed

I have been thinking about my growth (or lack of it) in the photography arena over the past couple of days and I decided that to kick start my progress, I would try reading through my beginner's photography course that I took exactly 1 year ago. While shooting in manual has become like second nature, it is still interesting to read through it and remember WHY you choose certain settings etc. It is mainly creative composition and editing that I am hoping to improve on this year, but I took some pictures today focusing on using the techniques I was taught in my "Rock Your Camera 101" class (now it is called Shooting 101) over at Clickinmoms

Evelyn was my model since the other two girls are in school all day, and it was kinda fun! Here are a few:







And one from our walk yesterday...

Week 1

So this year I am playing around with doing a Project 52 instead of the Project 365. I hope to still blog in between and get lots of practice with my photography but I haven't gotten a great start to the year. I have lots of things to say and actually a good number of pictures too but somehow can't make myself do a long post. It has been an epically bad week and am just barely putting one foot in front of another. Which is too bad really because if I had to go back and reminisce about the year gone past, I would say that overall, it was a great year for me and my family. But especially for me. I may not have grown as much as I had hoped with my photography, but I exceeded even my expectations in sewing and in some of the other areas that interest me. My mental health was overall very good too and I think that I am in a comfortable spot where I can sit back and start to plan for and enjoy my life and not always be in crisis mode. That being said, I am in crisis mode right now and only the mandatory activities in our life are getting done. It is an ominous way to start off the year, but hopefully it can only go up from here.

The plan is to take a picture of the three of my girls together each week for 52 weeks... so here is week 1.

Christmas Break

Well, the year is drawing to a close and so is our Christmas break... it has been a great and an eventful couple of weeks, especially for one member of our family. Evelyn is frequently the perpetrator of acts of mischief but this week she took initiative not to commit daring deeds, but to potty train herself. She just decided one day to voluntarily go pee on the potty and the rest is history. I haven't had to change a diaper in almost a week now! There have been a couple little slip ups, but so far, this has been my easiest potty train yet!

One of our friends had done this cute little thing with her daughter last year at Christmas to give up her bottles (or soothers, I can't remember which...), and we had planned on doing the same this year, although with both bottles AND soothers. The plan was for Evelyn to go cold turkey... wrap up her bottles and pacifiers and put them out for Santa so that he could take them to a new little baby who needed them. In exchange, Santa would leave her an extra present. We talked about it with her in the weeks leading up to Christmas and she agreed to it. I was a little bit scared that we would have some sleepless nights until she got used to it, but Evelyn has been amazing! She has asked once or twice for her "ooshies" (soothers) but we stayed strong and she has all but forgotten about them now. I am relieved and sad at the same time. So proud of her for being such a big girl, but so emotional about my last baby growing up!

So! Some stuff we have done over the break...

Breakfast with Santa at a local berry farm... Evie and Mylie waiting to see Santa pull up:

Eating our pancakes with stewed blueberries on top!

Laina, Mylie and I went ice skating with friends to a winter wonderland theme thing...

There are a lot of things about this picture that I want to make excuses for.... the way Mylie has let the headband fall down over her bangs, the fact that they are wearing white tights under their skirts but with knee socks over... the way Mylie is pushing her tummy out and squinting... but Adam took this picture of them while I have having a Mommy time-out (ie. the kids were pissing me off, so I had to go to my room and take deep breaths until I was back in control) These were their Christmas outfits from Gap:

Christmas Morning!! Matching Carter's jammies

Evie with the thing she asked Santa for... a Winnie the Pooh stuffy

Love the look on Evie's face here... she was just so excited opening all her presents this year!

Laina got a Karoke machine from my mom... that should drive me crazy...

Sitting down to dinner... is it tradition for everybody else to wear the stupid paper crowns from the Christmas crackers?

This is Gigi... grandma to 10, great-grandma to 14! This was her first Christmas without my Grandad and we were all missing him...

My niece Jazzy enjoying her Christmas dinner

AAAAAANNNNND... if you made it this far, here is my first Valentine's project, haha, yep! I already am moving on to the next holiday!! This is a shirt, and yes, Evelyn is pants-less here... it looks like a short dress but isn't. I will probably make some leggings to go under this or maybe just put on some skinny jeans.

Updating...

I think about blogging a lot and wish that I did it consistently. I love looking back at the pictures and remembering all the little details of our daily life. Just things that you think you will always remember, but slip away without documentation. So here is a little attempt at an update rather than just waiting for a bunch of nice pictures to post.

What have we been up to? Much the same... my days are spent ferrying the kids from activity to activity and my evenings are spent watching TV with Adam or sewing up a storm. I just finished a large order for 15 aprons for a friend to give out as Christmas gifts, and surprisingly, despite sewing so many of the same item, I really enjoyed it, and think that aprons are something I might want to focus on when it comes time to open up an etsy shop with my sewing.

Evelyn is still very much a rule-breaker and mischief-maker... several of her exploits lately have involved food... we had to install a fridge lock on our refrigerator after she repeatedly helped herself to drinks of orange juice and milk by placing a sippy cup on the floor, then dumping the entire contents of the carton on top of the cup. The final straw came when Adam busted her gnawing on a half of a ham in her room after pilfering it from the fridge. She also had a little spell of climbing onto the counter in order to microwave food for herself (let's keep in mind here, she is only 2). When I caught her microwaving a banana in the skin, I asked her, "What the heck are you doing?" To which she replied, "warming it up" as if it was the most normal thing in the world. I guess I should just consider myself lucky that she wasn't microwaving something metal! She has since stopped trying to use the microwave after a very stern talking-to (although who am I kidding? She has probably just stopped for a short time in order to lull me into a sense of safety over the matter)

Mylie picked up a case of Hand Foot and Mouth disease from preschool which sounds much grosser than it is, but s extremely contagious. So she was quarantined from school for a week during which time she passed it to Evelyn and then Laina. So at prime Christmas shopping time, I had all three kids home and wasn't able to get out to shop without them!! Luckily my in-laws stepped into our den of contagion and gave us a break to get out and get some stuff done. Mylie managed to make it back to school in time to star as Mary in her preschool nativity play. Here she is with Joseph:

Laina has graduated to a big girl room... our neighbors offered us their teenage daughter's loft bed that came with a desk underneath which she desperately needed for doing homework uninterrupted. So now Mylie and Evie are sharing the room with the bunk bed, and Laina has her loft bed in the other room. Sounds pretty crazy allowing Evelyn to sleep in the room where I once caught her about to swing from the chandelier off the top bunk, but so far so good!

In crafty news, I punished myself by making and decorating sugar cookies today. Don't know why I continue to torture myself when I suck at it but I love looking at pretty cookies and cakes and keep thinking if I just keep trying I will eventually get better. Oh, and I enjoy eating them too...

I am also testing a new sewing pattern in 3 different sizes, so I should have some new pictures to share of those soon!

And random info: Mittens came in from outside today with half a forest stuck to her undercarriage. Like seriously, I have no idea how she got all this stuck in there, and it was thoroughly entangled! I had to cut some fur out just to get the biggest stick out from under there. How did she even walk to the back door like this? She was very confused and kept trying to chase the large stick in circles.