Swing Into Spring

I want to do a thoughtful post on Easter and what it means to me, because it is my favorite Holiday, but we've been too busy enjoying the great weather and celebrating.  But just so you know, Christ is Risen...He is Risen Indeed.

Sweet Pea has been loving her swing.  I have a year supply of swing photos.  These are just from yesterday.

She just makes so many great expressions.  We love it and she loves it.

When she slows down she starts to count.  1, 2, 3...GO!  Today for the first time she used 2 and 3 fingers for the 2, 3.  Her verbal words don't quite sound like 1, 2, 3...but we know what it means:  Give me a big push!

She loves going high and fast.

With the wind blowing in her hair...

And I love counting with her, giggling with her, shrieking with joy with her (which when I do it always makes her giggle), and taking lots and lots of pictures.

The others enjoy taking their turns in the swing next to her just as much as she loves her swing.

I just don't stand in front of them with my camera for long.
The boys like to jump off onto the ground (which I did as a child and never hurt myself...but internally I'm completely opposed to it; externally I allow it).

 This is my life and I love it.

 

Random Things from Our Weekend

It was a great weekend, and as soon as I finish this I'm going to sit down and watch TV, so I plan to be fast.  The pictures will have nothing to do with the commentary.

Saturday we deep cleaned the kids rooms and organized toys.  We'll see how long that lasts.  We did pack away some toys for now to limit the potential damage in the wake of Hurricane Sunflower and Tornado Sweet Pea.

Then the girls and I spent some time outside while the boys and Dad played StarCraft together.  Sweet Pea is definitely the one in the family with the most potential to buy us a house with her sports career.  The weather was beautiful.

Then we had dinner with friends.  Technically it was our Saturday night Home Fellowship Group/Bible Study/Small Group/Cell Group/Mini-church, etc. depending on what church you go to, but we call it HFG and since all but us canceled it was dinner with friends.  We missed the others and were sorry about their reasons for missing (baby with RSV and broken water heater being some of the reasons) but it was nice to only have 6 kids total instead of 22.

We did buy some hair clips for the girls this weekend.  We want a little less of Sweet Pea's hair to be bangs, but finding clips at times has been a problem.  With 25 new ones we should be able to make it a month or two.

Oh, how I loved being able to play with sunlight backlight again...and with my new lens it is fabulous!  It was the first time I filled my memory card in months.  Light is what I love about photography.

Sunday SnapDragon sang in both main services at church with a group of 6 other kids...hmmm, the rest were girls.  They sang the chorus of My Deliverer by Rich Mullins.  I enjoyed watching him so much and he really enjoyed being part of worship and was sad when it was done.  But I am glad he won't be practicing the same two lines over and over and over and over anymore.

Sweet Pea had her first communion at church (very early for any denomination) but you try having food and drink and not share it with her!  It seemed it would be better for the rest of the congregation to give her a little bit...thankfully our church serves juice, not wine.  I'm pretty sure God understands.

Today we watched the movie Elf and folded clothes.  We should probably cancel the DVD portion of our NetFlix.  I put Elf in our queue to watch at Christmas, but we sat on "Young Sherlock Holmes" for 3 months so we missed seeing it during the season.  I do admit we all enjoyed the movie, though Sweet Pea missed it due to the best nap she has had in 3 weeks.

Then Oak, the girls, and I went to McDonalds for dinner and WalMart.  The boys had dinner at home and played some more computer.  Huckleberry is almost 13 and SnapDragon 9...when did they get so old?  I don't know, but I must admit having two kids seemed like a complete breeze.  Sunflower even got to order chocolate milk since we weren't feeding her brothers.  A win-win for all. 

Warning...TMI...And Sweet Pea had her first BM in the toilet.  We had no intention of potty training at 18 months.  But she has been giving some signs she is ready.  Then today in the bath she started yelling at Oak when usually she loves baths, so he put her on the toilet and success.  We're not really sure where to go from here.  She is a year and a half younger then the others were.  Yes, I know...but we are lazy and they were slow.

On a completely different note, the lighting in the back of the yard through some sticks and brambles and under the cedar is gorgeous at 2 p.m. here.  Oak doesn't like the shot because he isn't sure exactly what her expression means, but since she followed it up with the words, "Mom!  Stop taking pictures and come in our house!" I think I know.  (The house was less than 3 feet tall, so I didn't stay long.  It was sunny but February is still pretty muddy.)

Then I spent an hour editing pictures and writing a blog post.  Overall a pretty nice, and relatively typical, weekend.  

 

A Club, a Compass, and a Child..or Two

Last weekend my facebook photo club made of all local photographers played a game of Photo Poker.  The way it works is the first person posts a picture with two elements in it...say a flower and pearls.  The next person has to use pearls and something else in their next photo.  

Which lead to me asking my husband how to locate and unlock our bullets.

And taking pictures of random objects like globes and our fabulous new Chinese stacking blocks (a generous, much loved gift from a friend for Chinese New Year.)

But even though I didn't even use a texture that second time I was actually never the first to post and at the end of the evening we found out those that were the fastest had switched to...gasp...shooting in JPEG and not editting their photos at all!  Granted they still created some impressive work, but we all thought maybe while we were shooting with intent, we didn't really want to lose all creativity and thought.  So one very talented, creative member came up with another way to play.  Photo Poker Relay.

Same concept, but you knew who was to go next and you had 24 hours to post your picture.  Today was my turn.  I was given a compass to incoorporate into my photo.

And the compass and composition in the photo before me was so beautiful (check out my friend's facebook cover page if you want to see).  But when I asked my friends if I could borrow a pretty compass a friend made me LOL by asking "As opposed to an ugly compass?!"

Alas no one had one for me, so I spent the day trying to pair my ugly, doesn't really work, children's compass/binoculars with that which I find beautiful in my life.

But she wasn't very cooperative.

I only got a few shots of her playing with the compass before she started crying about the back pack.

 

Do you see the compass in the lower left?  She was more interested in playing with her travel tripod.  I figure she couldn't go on a trip without her camera.

This one was almost what I envisioned, but oops!  Where is the compass?  Turns out she was sitting on it.  But by then she was done being on the bed.  I think she thought I wanted her to nap...with all that stuff?

So I called in my professional model.

And this was a close third choice, but you can't really tell he is holding a compass...plus I really wanted to hand off "baby" to the first time mom photographer following me not "child."

So we moved downstairs away from that whole bed/nap risk.

Which did bring Sweet Pea a lot of glee as she immediately started playing peek-a-boo with the maps and her big brother, SnapDragon.

And while SnapDragon did a great job of keeping the compass exposed as one would want in product shots, it just didn't quite seem like the natural incorporation I wanted.  

And when we moved to here I knew we were close to done...But I thought okay, take a picture of SnapDragon lying on a map with a compass in his hand...maybe that will work.
But of course when I went to snap another to go for a deeper depth of focus (having both SnapDragon's eye and the compass in focus) Sweet Pea got a fresh wind in her sails.

Which led to this gleeful, but not exactly what I was going for, shot.  Sure you can see just a hint of Sweet Pea's smile and a hint of the compass in SnapDragon's hand but no.

And when they both put their heads down and Sweet Pea started fake snoring (the funniest, cutest thing ever!), I knew it was over.  So I went back to the 5th photo I took, played with it for awhile, and posted it.

I guess I could have let the kids play in peace that last hour.

 

Wee People Wednesday

Life keeps getting in the way of blogging about it.  It has been sunny (not warm) but sunny enough to go outside, I've been making an effort to spend more time with friends and occassionally do the cooking, and I'm attending a Bible study while teaching another class the same day.  That is in addition to our usual school runs, piano lessons for SnapDragon, MOPS, church, Home Fellowship Group, photo club, etc.  I really do have the sweet life.  Add in the 4 most amazing kids on the planet and I have nothing to complain about.

But because I love to blog, take and edit pictures, and MOPS yesterday was all about taking time for yourself (ha, as if THAT was my issue) here are some photos of 3 of my littles from yesterday.

"Mom!  Go stomp on the frisbee and it'll stop the bad guys."  "Ummm, Okay."

It's for you!

This one likes to lie under Sweet Pea's swing.  Who knows why, but she thinks it is funny.

The slide only plays second fiddle to the swing. 

Have a most happy of Wednesdays!

Favorite Photo Friday -- The Swing

I had a week where I had time to write and nothing interesting (even to me!) to say.  Now I have a lot to say and no time to write.  The sun is out and it is time to play.
We got a new swing for the backyard swing set.  She only looks serious when it slows down.

Why we waited so long to buy a baby swing I do not know.

She didn't care who pushed her...

 ...as long as it was fast and high...

...which thrilled Sunflower as she still isn't positive Sweet Pea likes her.

But at some point Sunflower wants to swing, too...and while she is diligently "practicing that way to swing that Major Awesome taught me" sometimes she wants to be pushed, too.

So everyone had fun when big brother began pushing both girls.
Or there is the moment when Sweet Pea laughs and laughs and laughs because big brother is on top of the swing set looking down at her.

"Silly brother!" says Sunflower. 

Of course the swing isn't the only thing to do.  

There is the roam around the yard option.

And the slides.  But really there is no doubt.

The swing is a big hit!