Lesson Learned.

Once upon a time, there was a girl. This girl liked to dream and learn and just be a little ADD about life ventures. On a minor not-a-whim, she started reading photography books.

In a half-hearted attempt to learn to use the camera better, she changed all the settings as suggested in the manuals. It worked! Pictures started to turn out a little better, her ability to adapt to different lighting improved, and the picture load was plentiful. Larger file sizes meant greater flexibility in editing, though the girl didn't use that flexibility to it's potential. The girl was pleased with the minor improvements she'd made, until one day when the mean, evil blog monster pointed out that in doing so, she had exceeded the storage capacity of her little blog.

Disgruntled, but not defeated, she pondered and contemplated what to do. One thought was to delete all the pictures previously uploaded, resizing them, and uploading again. Another thought was to delete the blog altogether and start a new one, paying closer attention to the file sizes. And yet a third was to cave in to the blog monster and pay for additional storage.

Blah.

This girl was not excited to pay for storage since the blog in question has been in operation for less than a year and her previous one didn't fill the minimum storage allowances in 5 years of frequent use.

Alas, lesson learned. The girl will always resize her images in photo software before uploading them, and the blog monster will make a little bit of money due to her ignorance oversight.

The end.

Spring Break Part 1 - Sequoia Nat'l Park

Hallelujah! His Hotness survived a brutal 3-days of work on a take home final and we were free to enjoy Spring Break with no thought of school... or at least with less thought of school. The best part of this Spring Break was having our Jellie-bellie with us. Our breaks were back to back so after a little figuring out we were able to have her for both weeks. The Hubs, Squirt, and I drove down to California to pick up our little bug. After like 7 hours driving and a quick hotel stay, we met her at Ihop and the adventure began!

From Ihop we headed straight to Sequoia National Park. 

This is the first of our National Park adventures that has all four of us, which means it's pretty darn special. Although, it also means that getting pictures where we are all on the same page for smiling or being silly is a little harder.

The park is lovely, though I confess that His Hotness and I prefer the Redwoods. The cinnamon-red color of the Sequoia bark is absolutely gorgeous though. We had fun speculating why there was no moss or lichen growing on the bark and then asked a ranger and learned it's because of the natural tanin in the bark - it has antimicrobial and fire resistant properties so it protects the trees from bugs and other threats.

We stopped at the Visitor's center for a stamp in our National Parks Passport and the girls got to explore. Ellie kept running around yelling "It's science!" I think her dad and I were both pretty proud of that.

We camped in the park and our site was fairly large. We picked it partly because there were other little girls adjacent to it. The girls made friends and were playing (without even knowing each others names) after about 6.4 seconds. I really wish our kids were more outgoing...

As it turns out, the other family was just there for the day and didn't stay the night. We set up camp and went exploring, after which some stick and pinecone baseball lessons were in order.

It was so nice when we left Visalia that His Hotness was in shorts (ok, nothing new there) and I was in a knit skirt and sandals. He may always dress like that, but I often put real shoes on when there is snow on the ground. That day I was too lazy to dig my tennis shoes out of the trunk and figured it couldn't be too bad. As long as we stayed on the main path all was well, but of course we had to venture elsewhere for a picture and that got a tad bit chilly.

We headed back to camp and played until dark, when we roasted S'mores. The Hubs doesn't like marshmallow but humored us and ate some anyway, while Jellie-bellie had never had one before! Her verdict? She likes the crackers and chocolate but not the "gooey part." Looks like it wasn't as exciting of a treat as I'd hoped. The camping however was a great success.

Munchkin Moving

Growing up is hard. So hard in fact, that sometimes we just want to skip it. Do you remember feeling this way?

Lately, Squirt has taken to saying she's going to move out when things don't go her way. In the past it's been a response to not playing video games, or going to a friends house, or some other disappointment. Tonight it was because we asked her to wash her hands before dinner. Determined to prove she can live by herself out in the snow (Something we would naturally never let her do.) or in an abandoned car at a junkyard (Really? I'm not sure how she thought of that one.) she took her blanket outside and endeavored to show that she could indeed stay out there for hours on end without getting cold.

She lasted about a minute and a half.

After a few hours of being convinced she was going to ride her bike to Texas, she is now calmly and peacefully sleeping indoors in a warm bed. It's hard. She misses her dad and puts us through a little bit freaking ton of drama as she is learning to handle some big emotions.

At least at this point no one is moving; not outside, not to the junkyard, and not to Texas. Here's hoping it stays that way!

Getting anxious

It's finals week... again. The quarter system just flies by and before we know it we are in the midst of finals again. Which means that if I want to remember what my husband looks like I will peruse the image files on my computer - or steal a passing glance at the hermit crab who periodically emerges from the office for a drink of water.

Finals bring good things too. Once they are over it is SPRING BREAK!!! We couldn't be more anxious for it for a few good reasons, not the least of which is getting to spend it with our Jellie-bellie. As if that weren't enough, we get to fulfill her many-months-long request to go camping. I honestly can't wait to have TWO little people out on adventures with us. And truth be told I can't wait to teach them the joy of roasting things. His Hotness thinks I'm crazy with the list of stuff I keep asking if he's ever roasted so I'm certain that will be quite an adventure in itself.

Oregon granted us a couple sunny days during which we completely forgot that we ought to air out our tent. Once the thought occurred to us it was, of course, raining. Instead we moved our furniture out of the living room and set her up right in there.

It displaced a ton of stuff...

And took up pretty much the entire room...

But sitting in it playing Skylanders was a complete blast - for Squirt anyway. Taking the tent down again made our tiny apartment suddenly feel HUGE. It's funny how that happens.

Happy Finals Week!

Every Who down in Whoville likes pancakes a lot...

In typical fashion (lately anyway) I'm really slow to blog about our life. Last Friday was the birthday of Theodore LeSieg, aka Dr. Seuss. Squirt's school had a reading appreciation day and book exchange. One of the perks of living in the liberal-arts-land that is Eugene is that the schools have really great programs to encourage creativity and artistic expression. The kids were able to dress as a favorite character from a book and Squirt chose to be Kit Kitteredge. Quite frequently storytellers visit the school and this day was no different. At the end of lunch, one of the storytellers handed out gifts to some of the kids. What kind of gifts, you ask?

Well, when Squirt ran home from the bus she was wearing this:

We have a sheep in the family.
She is in love with this silly little hat and sleeps in it almost every night. It's good to be a kid!

In our tradition we ate Whoville Stackers as an afterschool snack. Several years ago we started making teeny tiny pancakes and stacking them into tall skinny towers reminiscent of a drawing from a Dr. Seuss book. She loved them and it's stuck with us ever since!

I confess that they are a bit of a pain to make. With each pan full the pancakes get slightly larger as my patience gets weaker. About halfway through the batch I cave in and make full size ones but not until there are plenty to stack like this:

Stab, dip, and eat!  

Happy Belated Birthday Mr. LeSieg. 

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.