KidPics

A while ago I gave Squirt my point-and-shoot camera. She had so much fun playing with it and I seldom used it so giving it to her seemed the logical thing to do. She uses it quite a bit but I never think to check her memory card. The battery needs attention far more frequently than the memory card does. She's loaning the camera to His Hotness for the weekend which meant it was time to clear the card and see what was up. There were pictures of trees and toys, shoes, potatoes, friends, her room, drawings, closed doors, herself, and a bunch with nothing but total blackness.

A few things are evident:

• she still has no idea to wait and let the camera focus before pressing the button all the way (I've tried to help her, but all I get is an "I know, mom."
• she loves to change the setting to "pets" because of the little dog image that shows in the screen corner even if the pictures turn out crummy
• she is not camera shy, as evidenced by the 300 blurry self-portraits I found
• I can approximate the date pictures were taken by the way she captures her obsessions-of-the-moment
• she loves that it can take video and makes/narrates her own movies
• giving her the camera was the right thing to do, even if the images are less than stellar, simply because of the fun she has with it. 

Birthday Surprises

Last weekend His Hotness had a birthday. It was a significant one (as they all will be) because we are now the same age. Sometime back in October (19th, to be exact) I got an email from my MIL containing an itinerary. Not just any itinerary, but one containing a huge birthday surprise for my handsome husband.  After all, what could he possibly want more than to spend the day with Jellie-bellie?

The answer is nothing. There is nothing on Earth he would ever want more than that. Ever.

So the plans were made and the mild deceptions began so that we could pull off the surprise. I'd say it worked...

The only thing he'd actually asked for (or rather planned on his own) was to go to the BYU/Portland Pilots basketball game the night of his birthday. It isn't often he gets to watch his favorite college team in person any more. We went with his brother, niece, and mom along with our complete family. BYU won and it wasn't the blow-out that he was expecting, but honestly I don't remember any of the game because I was too focused on the little people.

I'd say Squirt liked Jellie-bellie coming almost as much as her dad did.

Jellie-bellie had a 100 days of school homework assignment to do during her stay with us. It was decided that she'd do a poster with 100 pictures of she and her dad. So the challenge then was to make sure we had 100 pictures. We did a few silly photo moments and were able to round up enough to get it done. We spent all Wednesday morning working on making a collage of the images while Squirt was at school. It was laminated to stay intact on the plane, and with that we were off to the airport again to send her home.

The weekend went quickly. We are sure counting down the moments until she is out here with us again. In the meantime, I had better practice my underdogs.

Goodness Gracious

We are still alive! Which is good news to us all after last week.
So here's our family life update in 60 seconds. Ready? GO:

• Squirt was more sick than she has ever been and it was a little challenging on us all. Amazingly it hasn't spread to any others in our home. 
• Last night we went to dinner with an Aunt of mine whom His Hotness had never met. It was a grand time with good food and good conversation. 
• His Hotness is getting into some busy times at school and has had some early mornings participating in studies and being made radioactive. It's a good thing he seems to really like all this experimenting-on-living-people stuff. 
• We are missing our Jellie-Bellie and counting the moments til we see her again. Squirt is enamored with the dragon Happy Napper Jellie-Bellie gave her for her Birthday and likes to take it everywhere. 
• After months of searching for pastry rings to use with some recipes I adore (like this one) a cousin blogged about English muffins and I found that if I searched for "muffin rings" instead of "pastry rings" there was a plethora of options available. All is right in the world, even if I do feel a tad silly over how long it took to figure that one out. 
• His Hotness is humoring me by watching The Bachelor and letting me drone on about the ridiculousness of it all and dealing with my analysis of everyone's personality. Our my guilty pleasure. 
• Oregon continues to surprise us with sunshine rather than torrential downpours this winter. It's a pleasant surprise, though I do hope it will not mean adverse results for the farmer's market when they reopen this Spring. 

I think that's about it. Happy Thursday!