Homecoming

Tonight was Homecoming at the school so we went to watch a little bit of Darrin's game. It was pretty hilarious when the team came out in their '80s warmups that Darrin had found in some storage room on campus. It was even more hilarious when they took the warmups off and played the game in their '80s uniforms. Serious shorty shorts.


This is Darrin cracking up as his team makes their way out onto the court.


This is the starting lineup in their tight little outfits.


This is Darrin's mom, Joshy and I enjoying the game.

Why???

Sometimes my babies are so naughty. I swear, I only turned my back for a second. Suddenly I hear Jake yelling, "Mommy! Mommy! Something bad happened! But only Joshy did it!"

When I walked into the kitchen, Jordan said, "I'm cweanin' up!" And tossed a pen back into the drawer.

Considering the evidence, I would say that Jake and Jordan happily watched Josh trash the junk drawer, and once it was completely empty, decided to come tell me. Guilty by inaction.

Photo Contest

To all my faithful readers who have little dudes running around...Peekaboo Picks is having a photo contest in honor of their first birthday. If you have a picture of your child devouring his or her birthday cake, send it to peekaboophotocontest@gmail.com

You only have a couple more days to get your submissions in.

Good luck!


Jake


Jordan


Joshy

Wanna see something funny?

I found this picture on my friend, Kelly's website. This picture was taken fairly early in our engagement, which would mean mid 1998. So, why didn't anyone tell my not to got out in public with poodle hair?

Frostbite Footrace

This morning my good buddy, April, and I ran the Annual Fur Rondy Frostbite Footrace in downtown Anchorage. I finished at about 30 minutes and 4 seconds. Not my personal best, but pretty freakin' good for not having run but once in the past month. Here's a picture of me in my new shirt with my bib number. More pictures on location to follow eventually.

A Big Moment!

Joshy hasn't been a big fan of taking bites of his food. So you will usually find me shredding some sort of food for him to eat for each meal...Eggo waffles, peanut butter sandwhiches, chicken nuggets...

However, after a couple of days of practice, I'm proud to say that my baby is taking bites and I'm no longer shredding!

My Baby!

My little baby had his very first wrestling practice tonight. My baby is old enough to wrestle? Darrin wouldn't allow me to attend the practice. I reluctantly agreed to stay home if he promised to take a million pictures. He did good.

Gearing up for practice. Check out those MUSCLES!

He was disappointed that he didn't actually get to wrestle at his first practice. But he had fun. He learned some stances and they did a Sumo type drill where they had to push each other out of the circle. Darrin said Jake was the smallest guy there by about five pounds.

He came home and showed me the stances he learned. One was the Square Stance and one was the Staggered Stance. He called it the Tiger Stance. Now that's just cute.

Camera Crazy

Today is kind of a quiet day. Not much going on for once. Darrin took Jake to basketball practice with him, so I took the opportunity to follow Joshy around with the camera. Here's few pics.

PS: Jakey starts wrestling practice tonight!

And here are some of Jordy Bug...

Rockin' out to Stellar Kart

Daddy's Home!

Darrin is finally home after leaving for an out of town basketball tournament on Wednesday. He said the drive was pretty treacherous, especially through the pass into and out of Valdez. The blizzard really didn't help either...

The kids were pinging off the walls from excitement to have him home. It is a nice conclusion to rather rough day. A late start getting to church (because I have to get four people ready all by myself) turned into a really late arrival back home afterwards. That's because I had a flat tire. I wasn't about to crawl under the car in a snow flurry with three frozen babies waiting on me, so I drove to the nearest TWO gas stations, both of which had broken air service. So I drove to Sears Auto (only five miles...) and they fixed it in about an hour. In the mean time, Grandma and I shuttled all three of them and the both of us down the road in our tiny Jeep Wrangler to have lunch.

By the time we made it home (at 2:30pm) Jordan and Josh were spent. They both fell apart as we unloaded and got ready for a nap. Jake and I spent the rest of the afternoon playing Go Fish and waiting for Daddy to come home.

He's home safe now and we pigged out on some chips and salsa.

Beaming With Pride

Yesterday, Jake and I spent a fair amount of time arguing about whether his name should be spelled with an "O" or a "U". It was his contention that only the "U" makes the "uh" sound required when saying "Jaycob." He has a point. But I stood up for my spelling of his name, all the while thinking how funny it was that the "U" was the problem. We've all been expecting that the "Y" was going to be the big issue one day. It still might, I suppose.

Anyway, tonight Jake excitedly called Grandma and me down to his room to see what he had done. Keep in mind that he has never attempted to write his name of his own accord, only when I'm standing over him, making him do it. So I am beaming with pride that he sat down with his magnadoodle and diligently printed out every single letter. I could care less that he wrote some of the letters backwards, or that his "Y" looks like an "A" but we are gonna have a chat about that "U"!!!

But have you ever seen a more perfect "a"???


My tearful exclamations of pride got him very excited. He followed me around for a while afterwards saying, "Didn't I make you so proud!?!"

Fun With Cars

While the other kids nap, Jakey turns our playroom into a car lover's paradise. I decided I'd practice some of my photography skills on him while he patiently tolerated my intrusion on his quiet time.

Practicing my focus. I love the blurry background shot.

All about perspective...and interestingness. By the way, Jakey always lines up his cars like this so they can race.

Something Fun

This is a little project I created for a recent article. So much fun! You can visit the site and order a copy if you love my kids. You can view a larger version by clicking the link at the bottom.

Click here to view this photo book.

Shameless Self-Promotion!

Some of you may have heard that my editor at Peekaboo Picks, Megan, recently gave me my own column devoted to all things crafty. This new venture has really had some fun and exciting side affects and it has been so much fun for me so far. It has really caused me to live far more "left-brained" than I've done in the past. I'm usually quite annalytical and task oriented with varying degrees of artistic tendency (do you like my self-diagnosis?). Anyway, lately my whole perspective has been changing and I'm seeing art everywhere. I think this process was occuring anyway what with all my scrapbooking, card making and photography, but this new venture has really given me a push.

Having just turned 30 a few months ago, I'm excited about reinventing myself in so many new ways. Not just artistically, but healthwise (running) and even parenting. Family craft time is messy and tons of fun!

In honor of all this, I have created a mantra for myself, or slogan if you will.

"Live For Today, Create for Tomorrow."

What this means to me is this...Enjoy the now, my kids, my husband, my life and everything that goes along with it. Things change rapidly and I need to cherish each second. The Creat for Tomorrow portion simply refers to my scrapbooks and the keepsakes that I create to pass on to my children. I want them to be able to look back over these albums and things and know that I cherished each step of their lives. Perhaps they will become family heirlooms, passed on down through generations where their kids, grandkids and so on can look through and know them, and us. Or maybe not.

Okay, so I just read back through this post and offically diagnosed myself as an over-emotional cheeseball.

Either way, follow my "She's Crafty" column here!

Alrighty, I'm done. And I'm thirsty!

Jakey Party

Saving the drama for his mama.

Today it is NEGATIVE 16 DEGREES!

I went outside to take a picture of something and Joshy got very upset that I was leaving.

So first I made fun of him...

Then I comforted him...

Then I put him to bed.

Family Time

Not much going on around here lately. Today Darrin was home all day (no games!) so we celebrated by going out to breakfast downtown. We put the kids down for a nap at home with Grandma and Darrin and I went to the mall to make some exhanges (from Christmas still!). We pretty much stayed home and did nothing for the rest of the day. The condition of our house can attest to that. The kids did clean the playroom before bed when bribed with ice cream. Here's some pictures from today.

Jordy and her "blankie hat"

Joshy on our way out the door to breakfast.

Jake and Darrin trying to get their hotwheels to do tricks.

Me checking the temperature. Believe it or not, it's warmed up a bit.

A couple of things

So last night Darrin came home with a wrestling singlet for Jake. The plan is for him to start wrestling mid-February. He can only wrestle if his molloscum is cleared up by then. The good news is, after being on medicine for nearly TWO MONTHS, he currently has no new outbreaks and all the lesions he has are scabbed over and healing. WAHOO! Isn't he the cutest little tough guy ever?

The bad news is, we discovered seven lesions on Jordan about a week ago. Here we ago again with another year or so of this mess. So far Joshy is bump free. Today I took Jordan to the doctor to comfirm the Molloscum and to get her prescription started. Both Jordan and Joshy were due for shots so Jordan got her one shot first and she just watched them poke her leg and said, "HEY!" And it was over. She's so tough.

Joshy had to have three pokes and he was not tough. In fact, he was a beast during the entire appointment. It's as if he knew what was coming. Anyway, it's over now and everyone is home, in bed for a nap.

This is a picture before going into the doctor, before I ruined the rest of their day.

Back out there

So today I managed to get outside for a run for the first time since well before Christmas. I have been running indoors a little but it's stifling and awful. Today was actually kind of warm, over 40 degrees! My friend and I ran the usual loop, about 2.5 miles in the slush. It was great to be back outside. And since I've been slow on the pictures lately, here's one I snapped just because.

Resolutions

I'm a tad late at documenting this but then again, puntuality was not one of my resolutions this year (though my hubby would probably argue that it should be) but I was inspired to try a couple of things.

The first is to read 50 books. Now that I FINALLY finished reading the Bible (took two years!) and have lifted the self-imposed reading restriction that kept me from straying to other things during my bedtime reading ritual, I am now ready to conquer a list of books that everyone should read in their lifetime. Before I do that though, I want to conquer the pile of books that has created itself aside of my bed, waiting for me ever so patiently for the past year. So far I have read three and have decided that's a pretty good start, it only being mid January. I'm a half a week ahead of schedule!

My second plan was inspired by a celebrity in the scrapbooking world (a scra-lebrity if you will), Ali Edwards, who took up a challenge to take a self-portrait every day for 365 days. I started yesterday so I obviously have only taken two. I will be documenting this challenge on Flickr which is in my links list. Some might remember that I had the personal thrill of meeting Ali at the scrapbook convention in Seattle this past November. I am such a nerd.

Finally, I am attempting to run a half-marathon this year. This May actually. I have been running my little heart out since July and have decided to add it to my ever-lengthy list of personal passions. There is just something about getting outside and just running!

Updates

I apologize for my lack of recent posting but it's been busy. Everyone is finally healthy (for now) and our routines seem to be back to normal.

Darrin is busy with coaching basketball and tons of schoolwork. Another month left in this term. Yesterday he returned from a whirlwind trip up to frigid Fairbanks where his JV team won both games and varsity won one and lost one.

I was recently asked to write my own column for Peekaboo Picks, the online magazine that I occasionally do product reviews for. My column will be all about scrapbooking and other crafty things. It should be fun at the very least, and it should keep me accountable with keeping my scrapping "to do" pile manageable at the most!

And because I can't post on this blog without a picture, here's the only one that I have taken in 2008. I am dutifully scrapping the night away (notice the dark circles?) Actually, I'm just posing for my new bio shot for the magazine. I was too tired to care that my dark circles would be seen by whoever. And to prove I don't care, I'm posting them here as well.