Welcome to my blog!

My super awesome husband gave me a super fabulous camera a few years back and I've been hopelessly obsessed and have driven my children crazy with, "look at Mommy" and "you can have a piece of candy if you let me take 5 pictures", ever since. Here are just a few of those moments I steel away from my uber cute kiddos, and a few more moments I occasionaly get to take of other people...to the relief of my family. I do love to practice on anyone who will let me, so if you would like your picture taken let me know!
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Friday, March 13, 2009

I love these guys!

I love the chance to take photos for other people. It gives me a chance to practice and improve. The only problem is that I'm a really shy person and am still trying to learn and improve my skills, so I'm a little nervous I'll totally blow it a give people really terrible pictures. So I love the chance to take pictures of this family because they're my really good friends and if I totally mess up I can just tell them I goofed and try it again. And they're cute people ta-boot. Some of my favorites from their New Years pictures.























Cutie Patooties

Sometime during the crazy month of December I got to take some pictures of my good friends 2 girls and her nephew. Aren't they adorable???

And I get to take more of the whole family just as soon as we figure out a time to meet up when it's not raining.

Christmas and then some. my longest post ever!

I love Christmas time! I guess this year was a little stressful with all the packing and moving and unpacking and surround sound project and sewer back up and job losing and all that.

Oh ya, did I mention we moved in and our sewer backed up the next day? And it was the weekend so the home warranty people couldn't get a plumber to come out and look at it. So we went to my parents all weekend so we could use an actual toilet without it coming back up the bath tub. So the plumber finally came out and couldn't find the sewer clean out to snake in the front yard and the home warranty didn't cover him actually setting foot in our house, so we had to take care of it. Long story short, my dad came over and he and Nathan found the sewer pipe, cut it apart, put in a new clean out, rented the Big Daddy of all snakes and cleaned it out. Poor guys. So we had sewer privileges again...for a while. Then it backed up again...another weekend at my parents. Cleaned it out again. Worked again. Backed up again. This time we had a plumber come out and put a camera down the pipe to see what the problem was. $250 later we saw a bunch of roots in the pipe. Nathan spent the whole day digging way down our front yard (at least we didn't have any live grass to disturb) and discovered the sewer pipe from our house didn't line up with the pipe at the street and the flexible coupling they used to connect the two had mostly slipped off which let a big root ball work it's way into the pipe, mostly blocking it off. He fixed it up and we haven't had any problems since. Yes, my husband is awesome and will even work in a puddle of sewage to save the day.







I wouldn't be happy if someone was trying to take pictures of me covered in poop either.

And then there was the job loosing. Nathan's company decided to close the doors....two weeks after we closed on the house and about three or four weeks before Christmas. They let go most of the engineering types who had anything to do with the future of the company and kept on a few management types to manage the production people while the make enough product to finish out contracts. The cool thing is they like Nathan (and who wouldn't love to employ such a hard working awesome guy?) and set him up with an interview with a sister company and told him they'd keep him on until they heard about that. Well, that job didn't work out, but in the mean time Nathan got an interview with an other sister company and got that job. Yippee! So he ended his first job on a Friday and started his second job the next Monday. Blessings abound.

But besides all that stressful stuff...and the tree falling down again and again, Christmas was great. Both kids are at a great age to be excited about it and enjoy all the traditions and events leading up to it.

Now for picture overload...

My mom always buys one of those huge tins of popcorn and Jared was diggin' it.


We did a lot of hanging out as a family. My big brother Peter and his fiance Kristian (girlfriend at the time, but very soon to be fiance) were in town so we wanted to spend as much time with them as we could. It's the first time I met her and she's super-fantastic!

Nathan


Thomas


Dad, doing what we all love to do...


Sarah LOVED decorating cookies, and is pretty talented at it too.


I just notice he is wearing Christmas colors. Way to get in the spirit, Thomas.


We watched the newer Willy Wonka movie on tv and Jared thought it would be cool to keep his gum behind his ear while he munched on some more popcorn.


Ew, my brother kissing! ;D


This was Christmas Eve. The kids got new hats and gloves with their Christmas pajamas.


Our little clan.




I think I was exhausted already and we still had a whole day of celebration ahead of us.


I think Nathan and I are more excited to watch the kids Christmas morning than the kids are to see what Santa has brought them. Here's Nathan ready to document it all.


And the kids on their long walk down to hall to the presents. Ok, it's a short walk, but feels long when Mom makes you walk slowly so she can snap a few pics.


She adores her Fancy Nancy. To bad her eyes are closed.


Jared got all kinds of fun stuff too!



That marble runner is rad.



Our girly-girl.




Then later we headed back to my folks for more presents and a family dinner.




Check out the cool princess outfit. She got two difference ones and I have to peel her out of them so I can wash them. She literally puts one on every single day.






And by the end of the day everyone was exhausted. If only we could all pretend to take a nap on the stairs.


But that's not all. The next day was Nathan's birthday!!! We celebrated by taking him out to breakfast and giving him a rip stick, which is totally awesome. Of course, I'll never be coordinated enough to use it, but the kids think their dad is the most awesome guy in the world when they see him on it.


I know for a fact that I took some pictures of him on it and the kids on their bikes/scooters, but they seem to have disappeared. Did they get lost when the computer crashed too??? Probably. Lesson learned again. Back up, back up, back up.

Christmas Breakfast, yummm

We had a church Christmas breakfast and Santa came to see the kids.


Jared decide he was brave this year and would sit on Santa's lap and tell him what he wanted for Christmas.


Madie had decided the same thing, but when he walked in the door this is what she did...

Yep, that's her running away from him at full speed.

Even if the kids are terrified I insist on a picture on Santa's lap. But I was sympathetic and didn't make her brave it alone.


She's recovering from the trauma here.

Someone needs a haircut...

I don't know why pretty people don't like getting their picture taken.




All the kids love Kristi! She's so much fun!!!

Choo, choo!

And and actual picture of me and Nathan together.


And a pretty good belly shot about a month before I had Abby.


I love Christmas breakfast with the ward! It's always fun and probably the only time my kids see Santa, so I hope they do it every year.